Saturday evening havdalah

 Last night I watched the Rock Shabbat service that was streamed on YouTube and it was great, Philip played the jazzy Le'cha Dodi in his trumpet and their very good lead guitarist shredded and it was the usual Pretty Good Time. But then the rabbi pulled out a surprise - he'd come up with a sort of rap thing about the history of the Jews and it was really good. I'm reminded of one of those Schoolhouse Rock things that you learn from because it's so catchy and good. In fact I just wrote him an email saying as much. 

I don't know why I feel so weird, although the scratchy throat may indicate something - some kind of cold or flu. 

Or I could have been allergic to something in those Universtar noodles. 

Or it could be due to the fact that my drinking had ramped way up, and now it's ramped way down. If I've got liver damage or something like that, it may take some time to start feeling normal again. 

After the service was over, I got out the tub and took a good thorough bath. The night before I'd been, it seemed, shivering and sweating in my bed and it was not pleasant. A clean body makes sleeping in this warm weather a lot easier. 

Then I had my Shabbat dinner, some wine, and watched something about the history of the Jews in America which was pretty interesting. 

I actually woke up around 6:30 in the morning which was way too early, so I got up, had some lemon water, and went back to sleep until 1:30 or so. Then read some science fiction book in which all kinds of crazy things happen and you get the feeling some profound truth is going to come out of it, but in the end it's just clever writing and a pastiche of half-assed ideas. 

It was a book from my boxes of books to trade in. Maybe I should have read "Cry, The Beloved Country" instead but after grinding through the SF one, I had a look at "Cry" and it sounds idiotic. The idea seems to be that if you just treat the Africans in S. Africa with kindness, they'll straighten right out and be civilized. Except that's not what history has taught us - rather, they'll massacre you.  So I probably won't read the thing.