Friday – Day 284
May 14, 2013
Friday I woke up early to drive Dani Levine’s car back to center city with Ariella. Unfortunately our run that day was cancelled as she didn’t want to have to shower before her interview the following hour. However, our walk back was lovely, and I really treasured all that time I had to talk with her, knowing that I would soon find it difficult due to a large time difference.
The rest of the day I spent preparing to leave, packing my bags, clearing my room and taking a short nap.
In the evening I again donned by Glee Club uniform to perform for the first of the big Alumni Weekend gigs. The president’s reception. Alumni weekend is the one weekend a year when all alumni return to celebrate their alma mater, and are treated to all sorts of fancy events while being prodded for donations. The most prestigious of the events was the President’s reception. A function for high level donors. This weekend our repertoire was somewhat limited to traditional songs of Penn. Mostly, a medley of Penn songs, the Red and the Blue (our school song) and the Glee Club anthem; Afterglow.
Following the reception and an hour and a half of rehearsal, I headed to my room, changed for shule and headed to Hillel. Dinner tonight was with Chaim, Jacob Chevitz and Ben Fisch. Dinner was delicious (particularly the cajun brussel sprouts) and was a good chance for me to get to know a few people I didn’t know as well before. Ben Fisch was particularly interesting as he worked on proving an interesting result in computer science for his thesis that was significant enough to need peer reviewing by the scientific community at large, rather than just his individual professors. After dinner I was straight to sleep.
Shabbat/Sunday – Day 264/265
April 26, 2013
I slept in pretty late the next day, needing a way to recover from the big night before! Lunch was at Hillel with Sarah, and we chatted in the Rodin lounge for a few hours before going to see my friends from Glee Club and Penn Dance in from their production of Macbeth.
Following that I had only a short while to get changed into a proper suit for the University Choral Society’s performance of Brahm’s Requiem. As a result of having learnt the music well, I was able to more completely enjoy the performance and really threw myself into it. The result as per the recordings later released was pretty glorious.
Sunday was incredibly busy. First thing in the morning it was off to a Glee Gig. A few of the guys and I walked for forty five minutes to get to the historic Pennsylvania Penitentiary where we performed a small set for the benefit of the preservation foundation. After returning home, Sarah spent most of her time with Julia whilst I prepared my final project for security, my final physics problem set and, attempted to study for my Networks midterm the next day.
Friday/Shabbat – Day 235/236
March 28, 2013
Friday was my usual morning of work and TA training and meeting in the afternoon. Wasn’t feeling so well for much of the day and ended up skipping on the Glee Club trip to Boston. Felt my health would be best served back on campus.
Shabbat dinner was something very very exciting this week. The bi-annual Levine CIS@Shabbat. The dinner for Jewish computer scientists (and Louis Petro #psaklouis). Dinner was lovely, the conversations binary and lively and I felt very much at home. I’ve been getting much closer to Ariella recently, and this was another good chance to hang out together.
Shabbat was Aviva’s birthday and as such a surprise lunch was planned. Ariel Menche, her boyfriend had come in for the weekend and we had a great time surprising her with a loud happy birthday, shortly after she awoke. Lunch went for a couple of hours, again in excellent company, though less nerdy than the night before.
The afternoon was a good ‘shluf’ (nap) before coding again till 5:30AM, when I finally got my latest project complete!