Little things I've been meaning to post

Xander has five teeth now. Five! He also waves hello and goodbye if you wave to him first. And he's great with daycare, he has lots of fun and doesn't squawk at all when I leave him in the mornings.

The HUC library won't give me a carrel, since I'm not a 5th-year working on a thesis. Instead I've been camping out in one of the conference rooms, which I technically can get kicked out of anytime, but is actually much bigger than a carrel and has a window. It's not so bad seeing as I schlep all my books anyway.

My pulpit in Richmond, Indiana asked me to bring the Shabbat challah every time I visit because there's nowhere to buy challah there. You'd think I'd stop being surprised by stuff like this, but no. You'd be wrong.

The dean of our campus teaches my Homiletics class. Halfway through yesterday's session he wrote something on the board with a bad dry erase marker, and it was so light that I couldn't read it. I asked if he had another marker. Without missing a beat he turned around and said, huffily, "NO! We're having budget problems, haven't you heard?!" The whole class cracked up.

Jonathan and I own this role-playing board game called Age of Mythology which we'd never played before. Antonio's visit was the perfect reason to break it out. Antonio spent one evening reading the (extremely complicated) instructions. The night after that, we began to play. Last night we continued the game, and what do you know? Once I finally understood it, I did really well. Turns out I can get kind of competitive when my army of archers is being attacked by a Norse mythic Valkyrie. I can't believe that I avoided tabletop games all throughout college when I was involved in a role-playing group, and I finally fall prey to it ten years later.

Xander made an art project! He "painted" cardboard Shabbat candlesticks. They're utterly adorable. I love this part of being a parent.