The Talmudist

So I spent the last days of Pesach at a hotel, and couldn’t get passed the striking resemblance between many of the vacationers and the humans from the film Wall-E.  Seriously.  I got to join the eat, sleep, rinse & repeat Borg, but not for long enough to look any less emaciated than I always look.

Some other thoughts from the road, the hotel, and, well, from the entire Chag:

– There are more signs along Pennsylvania highways warning (regular) drivers about other drivers that might be driving ‘under the influence’ (UTI) than the number of signs warning against driving while UTI – period (I was sorta keeping track).

–There is no in-between on Sefirah beards; they either make you look like a rock-star or a vagrant recluse.  Grower beware.

–I needed to take a smoke – it was hard enough to find a yarhtzeit light to get things going, but I really didn’t want people to see me smoking on yuntiff as some modern poskim now say that it is actually assur to do, as it is no longer considered to be ‘ochel nefesh.’  So understandably, I wanted some degree of privacy while consuming my cancer stick.  Going up the top of the hotel’s stairwell, I got to the door that leads to the hotel’s roof (perfectly solitary smoking spot, for sure).  In the past when I would see exit doors that said EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY, my knee-jerk reaction would be to not use them, as I would always think that an alarm would sound upon opening them.  This is not (supposed to be) the case, an alarm sounds if it says so on the ‘emergency exit’ signs – if it doesn’t make mention of an alarm, none (should) go off.  I was confronted with one of these doors on this particular smoking excursion, and after some mature interactions in recent history with such entranceways, knew that I could go thru the door without sweatin’ it.

– I caught a bad cold on the very last day of yom tov and spent the balance of my Hyatt stay in bed.  I’m currently pounding this post out in my bed, still sick, hoping that I’ll ‘get well soon.’  My dad was kind enough to go out to the drugstore and pick me up some cold meds, so instead of bynging on after-Pesach bagels, I’m going to get high on NyQuil.

Happy Shabbos everybody!