Monday, December 28, 2009

The catchup

It's been three years since I last had a post of any substance here. I guess before I start doing anything, I should at least give a quick summary as to where things stand right now:

Home Life
The Lovely Wife(tm) and I are now the proud parents of two incredibly beautiful, active, and mind-bogglingly stress-inducing boys:



We've traded the ever-shrinking one-bedroom apartment for the ever-shrinking and almost three times as expensive two-bedroom apartment

Fun Stuff
We've caught almost zero shows in the past few years, what with the no time and no money thing (see 1&2 above). Okay, "zero shows" for us is probably double that of what most of our friends see, but still. Going from 30+ shows a year to less than 5 is quite a slide.

Torah Learning
I've been participating in a semi-weekly gemara shiur led by one of my heroes' great-grandsons. We've made two siyumim in the past three years, although that rate is going to slow down considerably, as we're now learning bava metzia. At our current rate, I believe we'll be finished sometime in 2018 (the shiur's been ongoing for over 60 years now, so don't doubt that we'll make it).

I've also become addicted to yutorah as an online source of learning, particularly Rabbi Aharon Rakeffet's classes in History and Responsa Literature. I've gone through several hundred hours' worth of his courses, and am beyond grateful that he has allowed his work to be made publicly available.

Aliyah plans
It hurts too much to even talk about right now.

Friday, December 11, 2009

?

Could there really be signs of life here?...