Yay! After my rabbi wrote me a cute little letter, I got out of work to celebrate Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. Woohoo. Shemini Atzeret was okay but Simchat Torah was eye-opening. Shul turned into a circus of children and men dancing with children and men with torah scrolls. It was hilarious and fun. I was up in the “bleacher” seats so I didn’t have a chance to dance and I think I would be to scared to hurt the Torah.

Then even though I was pretty exhausted, I made it down to Chabad, a couple of blocks away from KJ, and I ran into my pal Allyson chatting it up with a cute guy with an accent. Then I ran into my former boss (ew!) and finally, I met another cute guy, Bobby, who Allyson had been chatting up earlier. First impression of Bobby wasn’t good. He was smoking and chatting it up with two girls that were even younger than me. Turns out Bobby’s 36 and very cool. In fact, the girls and Bob talked Allyson and I into going over the West Side to check out some other shuls.

First shul was Reform…which I could figure out really quickly by the fact that they had, um, microphones and girls giving aliyah over microphones and men and women dancing together. Whoa. WE got out of there pretty fast. We left the girls, two really nice early 20s-something chicks who were Conservative and Reconstructionist and were pretty sure Orthodox Judaism is sexiest. Hmm. We finally ended up at Carlebach which was packed. The room was divided in two with guys and girls dancing on opposite sides. I stood up on a chair and clapped and managed to spot Albert (one of the cuties from Devora’s building, roomie of Yaakov). We stayed until the Rabbi gave an awesome speech. The atmosphere was awesome. I got high off the energy.

Afterwards, Bobby and I dropped Allyson off at the bus stop and walked to the East Side through Central Park. Amazingly, we did not mug or die and Bobby promised to defend me in case either event came about. Despite the fact that Bobby’s truly gorgeous and has even gorgeous-er (not a word) blue eyes, we managed to have great conversation and by the end of the night (12ish), I felt like I’d made a new friend. Yes, just friend, people, calm down, remember that I’m not allowed to date until I’m Jewish!

First thing I noticed in my email inbox today…my lawyer emailed me to let me know that my mother is appealing the court case that awarded me custody of my sister. Wait, my sister is 18, how can this happen? SIGH.