GNAGB

7:32 AM Hanging in my office pre davening with six sophomore boys. Ari "I was on time" M. is here with posse. They're listening to ipods and texting just for a change of pace. We're talking about stand up comedy and life. Soon minyan.

8:39 AM I am in my neat and empty classroom perched atop a pupil desk so I can comfortably write on the computer glued onto a podium in the corner of the room. It's about a minute to class. Four in a row, then two more, forty two minutes a piece. A student told me the other day that while bored in a class he did the math. He figured out that every period of class costs his parents twenty dollars. This made me feel good because sometimes I give a thirty dollar class.

11:59 AM My fourth period in a row finished a few minutes ago. Soon, four scheduled meetings with students, one class to teach (tests to return), drop ins and and and.

Remember to breathe. Breathe out physical discomfort and pain. Breathe in peace. Breathe out noisy distraction. Breathe in peace. Breathe out myriad thoughts. Breathe in peace.

Remember gratefulness. I have a friend. We remind each other to be grateful. We make lists. My top five always included that my parents were alive. Now it's that my father is alive and should continue to live and be well. Also on the list: G-d, Judaism/ spirituality, imagination...
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5:21 PM My workday was non stop I till I called "Ad kan." In life sometimes you have to say "ad kan." It's like shkiah on Shabbos, like the buzzer in a basketball game, like the takeoff of a train... I'm back in my New York City abode. Off to the lower part of the city soon. Life beckons.

5:29 PM Decompressing and it feels so good.

A fellow blogger (Psychotoddler once compared it to being a fellow superhero) sent me this note (and has told me in the past that he/she is fine with me sharing what he/she writes me):

I thought of you on Purim. I remember how tough it was to not receive shaloch manos on Purim. Particularly for a sensitive one like me who always needs reminders that people are thinking of me. I don't know if that was your experience, but I imagine it must have been tough. For me the blog, at least the part where I send it out, is, like the shalach manos - a cry to find out if anyone knows I exist.

Just a word or two - I get it with the blog, and relate pretty completely. For some reason shlach manot is not my thing. I usually return ones to those who give me. One person left one out side my door and I reciprocated and the mitzvah was done.

Andy Rooney once said you can analyze a person through anything, and though he didn't give the example - the way people deal with/react to shlach manot is as interesting to read as a person's signature or face.

I came home and got the mail, something I don't always do. There was a time when I ran to the mail, as many people do. That was when I was younger, and when there was a chance of getting a hand written love note or even just a letter saying hello. Since my mother passed away the mail has been a bit more interesting, albeit sad. It's over two months and cards are still coming in. Today there was a card saying that a donation has been made in mom's memory to Bnei Akiva by a friend/guest from the Passover retreat where I officiated for the past ten years.

Also there was the New Yorker. I find that )poetry aside) there is so much that I connect to in that magazine that it's hard bordering on impossible to take it all in.

10:23 PM - I'm back from post work life, to home life. Trivia question: does anyone remember what Michelle Pfeiffer in the Batman movie - in which she was Cat-woman, but this was her persona before she became Cat-woman - would say whenever she returned to her apartment?

10:32 PM - Acclimating. Thinking about tomorrow. At some point after school I'll be meeting up with a dear old friend. We'll head together to Mendy's where we'll meet up with our former classmates for our reunion. My old buddy Scott Gordon's death has shaken the class up and caused us to reunite all these years later. In a way the time to post about it is after it happens, but the anticipation is making me write.

I'll be seeing some people I haven't seen in a very long time. I hope to thank Bruce for introducing me to the music of a young, new, unknown singer named Elvis Costello. Our lockers were next to each other and I noticed the round My Aim Is True sticker in Bruce's locker and asked him about it. he told me that a neighbor in his apartment building in Forest Hills worked in the music industry and gave him music and paraphernalia of this new artist. Bruce was into him. He gave me a sticker and lent me Armed Forces, which I taped and committed to memory. Elvis Costello lives for me, and for my radio station WFUV.

11:03 PM Zonked. Time for bed.

My quote of the day to share is, "Silence is seldom misquoted." I found these mussar magnets in Yaakov Kessler's stationary store in the center of Yerushalayim this past August. I really like them. Pretty much each saying is a winner.

On Shabbos this book by Richard Carlson was in Shul on a ledge next to my seat. I like it.

Good night and G-d bless

everyone reading these words,

both known and unknown.

Everything is for the best.

Non readers should be blessed too