Well, I guess the silver lining in the pandemic for last week was that, since we're working from home, I had more meals in a sukkah than ever before. (There's no way to do that at the office.) And for bonus points, it only rained for one of the days! Neat.

Services were via Zoom. For both Sukkot and Sh'mini Atzeret (first and last days), both of which were on Shabbat this year, the Zoom setup actually worked -- cool. (There have been some other Zoom failures, where I set it up Friday before sundown and on Saturday morning I've been kicked out.) Even though it was all online, my synagogue continues to do combined festival services with another congregation whose standards are, um, not up to mine. And both times they had the lion's share. I'm done with that. Already I didn't go in person -- not even to my own, let alone to the other one that's a two-mile walk each way -- but now I realize the discontent runs deeper. I suspect we will still be doing this come Pesach in the spring, so, note to self, do something else.

It turns out that the hagbah that I recorded in advance was for our service Friday night, not Saturday morning. So I wasn't actually there (because you cannot cue up two different Zoom meetings on the same device). Oh well.

I miss the morning minyan. Even when it doesn't feel like a real service because of Zoom. This coming Shabbat should be back to normal, yay.

I bought some additional lights for my sukkah this year which, due to delays, didn't arrive until mid-week. The description said the lights could be chained -- which is true, but I had missed that they mean with like kind, through a special connection that is not a standard plug. So I'll need to remember to get some outdoor-grade splitter before next year; the idea here was to augment, not replace, my current lights.

Velcro cable ties make stringing lights really easy. Just sayin'.

And now, after a burst of holidays in the span of three weeks, we are back to "normal time" for a while.