Details, Details

Happy belated Purim to all who celebrated yesteday (or today)!

My Purim was exhausting, but so worth the lack of sleep.

It began with a cab ride to KOE with mbarr - because we both cut it so close that it's a good thing we didn't walk. Granted, I was reading the second chapter, not the first... Did I mention I read megillah. By the way, it's fun to sit there chanting Hebrew on the subway - just because it's fun to look strange on the subway - at least, strange in a nonthreatening and nonsmelly sort of way...

After that, I should have gone to bed, but it was Purim, and who goes to bed early when there are drunken spectacles to enjoy at margavriel's apartment. A small but festive gathering that included all sorts of interesting hats - hard hats and black hats and caps and paper crowns. I did not wear any hat, but mysticengineer, nuqotq and margavriel were posing in them and passing them around. Let's just say there was much merriment - and yes, I have pictures, and yes, they will eventually make it online...

Somehow got to bed after midnight.

And woke up about four and a half hours later - well, that's when my alarm went off, but I may have woken up even earlier - to make it to megillah reading at the shul around the corner. I even dressed in my usual Purim day "costume" - only this time, a slightly more professional version of frum, the kind of outfit that one can buy at Old Navy and The Gap (well, Gap Outlet, anyway...) - so that I would fit in at shul. I think the only person wearing pants was AF - and I'm not sure she was, but if she was, it was only because she was in an actual costume - her gi from taekwondo. (She teaches six-year-olds, and wanted to hear every word of Megillah before hearing bits and snatches in school.)

Megillah reading was introduced in a way that went something like this: "Ladies and gentlemen, before we start megilla reading, please check that your cell phones are turned off. For those of you who haven't been here before, I want to let you know that this megilla reading will be fast. I hope you are able to hear every word. I will stop once briefly for Haman's name, the first time it is read. After that, I won't be stopping, and if you make noise, you risk causing yourself or others to miss words of the megillah." That is VERY paraphrased, but all of the ideas are in there...

And yes, it was fast.

And I even got to work on time.

And my coworkers got all excited about the hamantashen - so much so that I brought them some more today.

And the best part was, I left early and missed my least favorite class.

And then I got all sorts of exercise shlepping around the UWS delivering mishloach manot. By the way, shirei_shibolim - I have one for you and terriqat. I tried to deliver it but somehow had the wrong address. Perhaps we can connect later so I can give it to you. But all the others got delivered, even if I was an hour (hour fifteen?) late to seudah. Of course, it helped that mysticengineer was running equally late, and so I had company.

Plus, I got to deliver one to my family - which then got passed along to a family friend who was in the car - my dad came to get my sister for seudah at home, and I got there with her mishloach manot at just the right moment - plus the one for the family.

And the seudah at JH's shul was lots of fun. Low-key, lots of meat, and some very good wines. Especially the Merlot.

Then there was Marx Brothers, but I was too tired to really enjoy it. Good thing we left to go to mbarr's apartment, where I was able to enjoy a different DVD while curled up half-asleep in a pile of pillows on their very comfy couch.

Wine or exhaustion? You tell me. (Or, then again, maybe I shouldn't encourage opinions on this one...)

Anyway, it was a very comfy end to a very happy day.

And it was so hard to get up so that I could drag myself to bed...

Once again, happy belated Purim! I hope all of you had just as great a holiday.