peneli was visiting me for Shabbat! She had a grad school assignment to spend some time experiencing some other cultural experience, or something like that, so she decided to do my Shabbat thing with me. Her train was late, so I went to West Philly for Kol Tehilah and the start of a Salon potluck. Ilana and I left early and walked back to Center City. I met up with peneli at my place, where my roommate had let her in, and where the two of them and my roommate's two friends were already bonding.Saturday morning was the third meeting of Minyan Tikvah! Even on a rainy morning, we had 30 people there. We didn't quite have a minyan for the first 15 minutes, and things felt a little lethargic for a bit after that, but by the end it had all picked up and was quite good. (And you don't really need a minyan the first 15 minutes anyway.) Marc's dvar torah was particularly good. That was followed by lunch at Marc and Miriam's, with about a dozen of us in attendance. Afterwards I went back home, and
peneli and I napped and chatted. She wasn't feeling well, but I hope she got enough of an Authentic Shabbat Experience™.As soon as Shabbat ended,
jox and Andrew joined us and, after some false starts due to the torrential rain, we headed out to DC. Dropped off peneli and arrived a few minutes before 11 at msschein's birthday party! Last year when she had the same party here, there was a crowd that arrived late night from DC, so I figured we'd return the favor. I knew about half the crowd (including arctic_alpine, rivka_m, and a bunch of non-LJ people), and once it thinned out at about 12:30, I knew basically everyone left. We finally left rather late, and I ended up crashing at rivka_m's place at about 2:30.Sunday morning, I attempted to firm up some tentative plans. My friends seem not to be social before noon on Sundays, so I wandered around Mt Pleasant and had some breakfast by myself at first. Then I started having 1-hour socialization appointments. Becca G at 12:30, Jess G at 1:45, dropped by for about 20 minutes to see BZ and EAR and be surprised by BZK being there, picked up
jox, stopped by alanscottevil's for a bit, and jox and I were on the road by 4:15. A nice car ride back, some chilling at home, and then finally, blissful, blissful sleep. 