sj, take care of yourself. I can e you from my cell phone or text or call you personally if you would like.

You dorks better start saving up your money if you want your asses beat....

::starts counting money in spare change jar::

I'm going to take a week away from the board.

As has been said, take care of you! {{{sj}}}

I am, for the first time since my Big Career Crisis of nearly two years ago (just before discovering b.org, actually), experiencing pretty regular anxiety.

I blame my decision to start pursuing a personal education on Judaism in a serious, focused way.

I'm scared. Scared of all there is to learn. Scared that I'll eventually choose to go through with it, and commit my life to this big, strange thing. Scared that I'll choose NOT to go through with it, and sign the death warrant on the best relationship of my life. Scared that Rabbis will yell at me or generally be scary. Scared of... all manner of things.

I just started my student teaching today. I should be scared about that! But no. No room.

Scared that Rabbis will yell at me or generally be scary

You don't have to worry about rabbis yelling at you gris. It's the tentacles and razor sharp fangs you have to watch out for.

You don't have to worry about rabbis yelling at you gris. It's the tentacles and razor sharp fangs you have to watch out for.

And the laser beams! The laser beams they shoot from their eyes! And they'll cover you with hair spray!

Oh, wait. That last part is the Rabbot. Forget I said anything.

Can you put the question of end results aside enough to focus on the learning? I know that your situation with GG is what inspired you to study in the first place, and it makes the whole question of your eventual conversion (or not) seem pretty urgent, and I don't want to sound either unrealistic or pollyanna-ish when I say "just do it for the love of study!" But don't think of it all in terms of cramming for a test, so much as exploring something strange and big and cool and frequently kerfuffly and (again) strange, with occasional commandments to get drunk and read at the dinner table. Which, now that I think of it, sounds strangely like fandom.

(Also, in my experience, the rabbis won't yell at you, but they might get rumbly when they can't find their glasses.)

Nicole, go you, with the not smoking!

{{sj}} Take care of yourself, sweets.

You don't have to worry about rabbis yelling at you gris.

Spoken like someone who never met Rabbi Kahn...

(He was ex-Navy. One time he threw a chair across the classroom. Which was awesome, because the kid he was pissed off at was a snotty little prick who totally deserved it. He should have thrown the chair at him.)

"just do it for the love of study!"

This sounds like the perfect approach to take with the rabbis. They are all about the love of studying.

t sneaks in a hug of Gris before he becomes all orthodox and it isn't allowed

I need suggestions of bland food. My tongue hurts -- this always happens when I have an impending illness or plague of some sort, and believe me when I say I'm undertaking every preventive measure I can think of -- and I'm hungry but everything I can think of to eat immediately makes me think it would just hurt my tongue.

The best comparison I can make is -- have you ever eaten too much of an acidic food (tomatoes, citrus, Sweetarts) and had your tongue get all sore? Yeah, that's what it feels like. And so I can't think of anything that I want to eat that wouldn't hurt.

Even hot food -- even if it's bland -- sounds like it would hurt, and I don't want sweets, or else I'd get a milkshake. Bah. I just ate a banana, and I could definitely stand to skip a few meals, but I'm hungry, damn it, and my tongue is thwarting me.

So, lukewarm bland nonsugary food suggestions?