Year in review 2024
Dec. 31st, 2024 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livWhat can I tell you about this year? I've been a rabbinic student for all of it, the course is going really well, but it's also eating my life.
Significant events
Reading
Games As predicted, our main tabletop gaming has been Innovation and Spirit Island. Innovation is brilliant because it has essentially no setup, the boards emerge as you play the game. And it really hits the sweet spot of offering meaningful decisions without being too mentally taxing. Spirit Island is a good, solid modern Eurogame, slightly too many moving parts but it's co-op and a good challenge for me andjack. A bit of Dog Park, an original set collecting game with absolutely gorgeous art, and Stardew Valley which works surprisingly well as a board game! And a fair amount of Wyrmspan, which in some ways is a better game than its ancestor Wingspan, but somehow imaginary dragons aren't quite as satisfying as real world birds.
There has been a good amount of gaming with my partners' children, too. A has got very much into 'party' games like Apples to Apples, Taboo, Concept and the like, and recently traditional games like chess, Scrabble, Yahtzee and Pontoon / Blackjack. G is very much levelling up to playing real strategic games, and we've been trying junior versions of loved games like Ticket to ride. There isn't a great overlap between games suitable for a precocious 4yo just building up tactical skill, and a 12yo who wants games that depend on social deduction and world knowledge but is still suspicious of modern tabletop games. Possibly we dragged him into long, complex adult games at too young an age. But lots of fun family gaming all the same. The standout is Mysterium Kids, where you have to play sounds on a tambourine to represent images.
Video games: this is the year I got sucked in to Civilization VI, which for me recaptures some of the flow-promoting nature of Civ II that I was hooked on in the late 90s, but fixes a lot of the balance issues. I never got into Civ III-V, but this one is very good meditation for me. I also highly recommend Steamworld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech. I love all the Steamworld games, really lovely art and great stories and worldbuilding and gameplay that's fun rather than pointlessly money-grubbing or pointlessly difficult. Steamworld Quest is a deck builder RPG that's just everything I want from a video game. I don't know if I'll replay it once I complete the main storyline, but it's great. (If you avoided other titles in the series because you hate pixel art, Quest is painted rather than pixel.)
My main phone distraction / fiddle has been Gems of War, which may be old enough to count as a classic by now. It's a match-3 RPG but actually good; nice graphics, not overtly sexist and racist, really lots of original characters rather than clones of all the other gacha games, completely playable without microtransactions. Also it has a slightly unusual mechanic for how the matching works to attack the enemies, it feels a bit more satisfying to play than most in this genre. Oh, and I got back into Flight Rising, a virtual pet game that feels very Old Web but is still fully active. I think quite a few of you play. Username ewerb if you want to friend me.
Media I essentially did not watch TV or films at all this year. Managed We Are Lady Parts S2, since it's 6 very short episodes and I loved S1 enough to make time to watch it. And Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl this week on Christmas Day. And that's just about it. I barely listened to music either, certainly not enough to make a list of songs.
People My husband and partners have been extremely wonderful and supportive and made tons of effort to keep our relationships strong while I'm busy and away a lot. I've been fortunate in spending lots of time withhatam_soferet now we are neighbours. angelofthenorth forgave me for dropping out of touch for several months and even came to visit. I've seen khalinche, wychwood and loreid all too briefly, squeezed around work-related travel. I continue to adore my classmates. I have very much missed doseybat and rysmiel and lots of other people.
Places
Plague Bad year but not the worst. Caught Covid at Worldcon, and I feel stupid for even thinking I could get away with attending a huge international con in the middle of a surge. Most of our partners' household got it two weeks after the con, which probably means it wasn't con-related, but back when we used to take Covid seriously, it used to be recommended to isolate for two weeks after a high risk activity, so who knows. And the person who skipped that round caught it travelling at the end of the summer.
J and I got boosters shortly before we were infected. We both experienced relatively short illness and no very obvious lingering effects; we've been tired and run down and prone to respiratory crap for the second half of the year, but it's minor enough that it might be random. One of my partners had a pretty miserable time with it and took quite a few weeks to recover, and I was a bit scared about one of the kids in the acute phase but they're apparently fine now, and more than one family member has some chronic symptoms but we have no idea whether it's related to the infection or not. So on the one hand nobody in my immediate circle died or needed heroic medical intervention, and nobody ended up permanently severely disabled by official Long Covid. On the other, we all had between a week and a few months of unpleasantness which I would much rather have avoided.
I suppose the positive thing is that 2 years in I have more or less convinced myself that I can get on with being a student rabbi in relative safety. I can do things like take in person classes where few people mask, and travel to visit communities and stay in hotels, and lead services and teach unmasked, without inevitably catching plague. If I avoid gathering indoors with thousands of people, it seems like the levels of precautions I'm taking (mask most of the time, but make exceptions for eating and public speaking) are mostly protecting me.
Rabbinic work I led Reform services in:
Liberal services in:
One Orthodox service at Stoke, unfortunately a funeral of someone I cared about.
I've taught and preached at Beth Shalom, my home community, and Shaarei Tzedek joint with Bromley Reform. Mostly adult teaching this year, conversion classes and Biblical Hebrew primarily.
Dreamwidth Only managed to make 13 posts in total over the course of the year, and few of them are ones I want to revisit now. You might enjoy my link roundup on eugenics if you haven't already seen it. So I haven't been nearly as present here as I'd like, but as ever I am still reading absolutely everything my circle post. Took part in a really great friending meme and I'm excited to have met lots of lovely new people, includingjo, matushima, raven, bearshorty, maju, yourivy, 1empress, silviarambles and justphoenix. In no particular order, and I appreciate all of you, old and new, for writing interestingly about your lives where I get to read.
End of year name and pronouns update No change from last year. Rachel or Liv if you know me in person or online, Dr B if you're being formal. She/her > Neopronouns eg zie/hir > they or he. No shortenings / nicknames for my first names, no thankyou to Mrs. I am not a rabbi yet and should not be referred to Rabbi, but if you're curious, if everything goes to plan I will eventually be 'Rabbi Dr B' in formal contexts, or 'R Rachel' informally.
Overall I'd say that the year has been academically and career-trajectory successful. My socializing has been limited but my connections with family and friends have been wonderful when I did manage it. I haven't succeeded in building the online presence I want, though, either personally (eg posting properly here and on Mastodon), or professionally (eg setting up my website.) And I haven't made a start at all on learning to drive.
Previous versions: [2004] [2005] [2006] [2007] [2008] [2009] [2010] [2011] [2012] [2013] [2014] [2017] [2018] [2019] [2020] [2021][2022] [2023]
Significant events
- I travelled abroad for the first time since the pandemic began, a school trip to Paris.
- I bought a flat in Hendon, and got it set up, and moved into it. And then had to deal with emergency bathroom replacement, and with one thing and another I still haven't had a housewarming.
- My partner became Jewish and celebrated his bar mitzvah.
- I saw The Merry Widow at Glyndebourne with my family of origin, and Hamilton on tour in Birmingham with cjwatson. I also saw Fiddler on the Roof in Regent's Park, but sadly without ghoti_mhic_uait as she was isolating with Covid when we'd booked to go.
- I celebrated my third wedding anniversary (and 12 years of marriage / 16 years together) with jack with a very fine meal at Itadaki-Zen. I celebrated my 10th anniversary of dating cjwatson and ghoti_mhic_uait with a very exciting trip to Legoland.
Reading
- Ariel Kaplan: The Pomegranate Gate
- Nicola Griffith: Menewood, which is good and has some amazingly memorable moments, but not as mindblowingly amazing as Hild
- Michael David Lukas: The last watchman of Old Cairo, a very fun historical take on the story of discovering the Cairo Geniza, with a lovely OC contemporary viewpoint character providing the framing story.
- Dara Horn: People love dead Jews. Definitely important for me to read. Taught me stuff I didn't know about antisemitism and confirmed my impression that Horn is brilliant.
- Naomi Alderman: The Power .Great premise, but probably should have been a short story. Ended up leaning way too hard on lots of gratuitous and extremely graphic sexual violence and torture; I accept the point that violence isn't an inherently male thing but rather a function of some people having power over others, but I didn't need that many examples of gender-reversed horribleness.
- Maggie Anton: Rashi's daughters III: Rachel. Third in a pretty middle-brow series where historical research and Jewish feminism are blended with historical romance tropes including lots of sex scenes. Like the earlier two in the series, very much catnip as Anton has read exactly the same cherry-picked rabbinic texts that could be interpreted as feminist that I have.
- Imogen Hermes Gowar: The mermaid and Mrs Hancock. Very original historical, reminds me a lot of The crimson petal and the white with its somewhat realistic portrayal of historic sex work, but at least somewhat less depressing.
Games As predicted, our main tabletop gaming has been Innovation and Spirit Island. Innovation is brilliant because it has essentially no setup, the boards emerge as you play the game. And it really hits the sweet spot of offering meaningful decisions without being too mentally taxing. Spirit Island is a good, solid modern Eurogame, slightly too many moving parts but it's co-op and a good challenge for me and
jack. A bit of Dog Park, an original set collecting game with absolutely gorgeous art, and Stardew Valley which works surprisingly well as a board game! And a fair amount of Wyrmspan, which in some ways is a better game than its ancestor Wingspan, but somehow imaginary dragons aren't quite as satisfying as real world birds. There has been a good amount of gaming with my partners' children, too. A has got very much into 'party' games like Apples to Apples, Taboo, Concept and the like, and recently traditional games like chess, Scrabble, Yahtzee and Pontoon / Blackjack. G is very much levelling up to playing real strategic games, and we've been trying junior versions of loved games like Ticket to ride. There isn't a great overlap between games suitable for a precocious 4yo just building up tactical skill, and a 12yo who wants games that depend on social deduction and world knowledge but is still suspicious of modern tabletop games. Possibly we dragged him into long, complex adult games at too young an age. But lots of fun family gaming all the same. The standout is Mysterium Kids, where you have to play sounds on a tambourine to represent images.
Video games: this is the year I got sucked in to Civilization VI, which for me recaptures some of the flow-promoting nature of Civ II that I was hooked on in the late 90s, but fixes a lot of the balance issues. I never got into Civ III-V, but this one is very good meditation for me. I also highly recommend Steamworld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech. I love all the Steamworld games, really lovely art and great stories and worldbuilding and gameplay that's fun rather than pointlessly money-grubbing or pointlessly difficult. Steamworld Quest is a deck builder RPG that's just everything I want from a video game. I don't know if I'll replay it once I complete the main storyline, but it's great. (If you avoided other titles in the series because you hate pixel art, Quest is painted rather than pixel.)
My main phone distraction / fiddle has been Gems of War, which may be old enough to count as a classic by now. It's a match-3 RPG but actually good; nice graphics, not overtly sexist and racist, really lots of original characters rather than clones of all the other gacha games, completely playable without microtransactions. Also it has a slightly unusual mechanic for how the matching works to attack the enemies, it feels a bit more satisfying to play than most in this genre. Oh, and I got back into Flight Rising, a virtual pet game that feels very Old Web but is still fully active. I think quite a few of you play. Username ewerb if you want to friend me.
Media I essentially did not watch TV or films at all this year. Managed We Are Lady Parts S2, since it's 6 very short episodes and I loved S1 enough to make time to watch it. And Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl this week on Christmas Day. And that's just about it. I barely listened to music either, certainly not enough to make a list of songs.
People My husband and partners have been extremely wonderful and supportive and made tons of effort to keep our relationships strong while I'm busy and away a lot. I've been fortunate in spending lots of time with
hatam_soferet now we are neighbours. angelofthenorth forgave me for dropping out of touch for several months and even came to visit. I've seen khalinche, wychwood and loreid all too briefly, squeezed around work-related travel. I continue to adore my classmates. I have very much missed doseybat and rysmiel and lots of other people. Places
- Retreat in a little village outside Oxford with some American rabbinic students
- Paris, also on a school trip
- London a few times to see friends and do tourism, apart from sort of kind of living there
- A week in Hunstanton with jack in May, which got a bit squeezed between college commitments but was very lovely.
- Brighton to see sibs, Worcester and Northamptonshire to see jack's mum.
- Glasgow for Worldcon, though I didn't get out into the city much.
Plague Bad year but not the worst. Caught Covid at Worldcon, and I feel stupid for even thinking I could get away with attending a huge international con in the middle of a surge. Most of our partners' household got it two weeks after the con, which probably means it wasn't con-related, but back when we used to take Covid seriously, it used to be recommended to isolate for two weeks after a high risk activity, so who knows. And the person who skipped that round caught it travelling at the end of the summer.
J and I got boosters shortly before we were infected. We both experienced relatively short illness and no very obvious lingering effects; we've been tired and run down and prone to respiratory crap for the second half of the year, but it's minor enough that it might be random. One of my partners had a pretty miserable time with it and took quite a few weeks to recover, and I was a bit scared about one of the kids in the acute phase but they're apparently fine now, and more than one family member has some chronic symptoms but we have no idea whether it's related to the infection or not. So on the one hand nobody in my immediate circle died or needed heroic medical intervention, and nobody ended up permanently severely disabled by official Long Covid. On the other, we all had between a week and a few months of unpleasantness which I would much rather have avoided.
I suppose the positive thing is that 2 years in I have more or less convinced myself that I can get on with being a student rabbi in relative safety. I can do things like take in person classes where few people mask, and travel to visit communities and stay in hotels, and lead services and teach unmasked, without inevitably catching plague. If I avoid gathering indoors with thousands of people, it seems like the levels of precautions I'm taking (mask most of the time, but make exceptions for eating and public speaking) are mostly protecting me.
Rabbinic work I led Reform services in:
- Newcastle (Shabbat and Purim)
- Milton Keynes (Shabbat and Pesach Seder)
- Southport (Shabbat, Rosh HaShannah, Yom Kippur)
Liberal services in:
- Birmingham (Shabbat, Pesach)
- Beth Klal Yisrael (the LGBTQ+ focused community)
- Mosaic (Shabbat during Succot)
- ELELS (observed service)
One Orthodox service at Stoke, unfortunately a funeral of someone I cared about.
I've taught and preached at Beth Shalom, my home community, and Shaarei Tzedek joint with Bromley Reform. Mostly adult teaching this year, conversion classes and Biblical Hebrew primarily.
Dreamwidth Only managed to make 13 posts in total over the course of the year, and few of them are ones I want to revisit now. You might enjoy my link roundup on eugenics if you haven't already seen it. So I haven't been nearly as present here as I'd like, but as ever I am still reading absolutely everything my circle post. Took part in a really great friending meme and I'm excited to have met lots of lovely new people, including
jo, matushima, raven, bearshorty, maju, yourivy, 1empress, silviarambles and justphoenix. In no particular order, and I appreciate all of you, old and new, for writing interestingly about your lives where I get to read. End of year name and pronouns update No change from last year. Rachel or Liv if you know me in person or online, Dr B if you're being formal. She/her > Neopronouns eg zie/hir > they or he. No shortenings / nicknames for my first names, no thankyou to Mrs. I am not a rabbi yet and should not be referred to Rabbi, but if you're curious, if everything goes to plan I will eventually be 'Rabbi Dr B' in formal contexts, or 'R Rachel' informally.
Overall I'd say that the year has been academically and career-trajectory successful. My socializing has been limited but my connections with family and friends have been wonderful when I did manage it. I haven't succeeded in building the online presence I want, though, either personally (eg posting properly here and on Mastodon), or professionally (eg setting up my website.) And I haven't made a start at all on learning to drive.
Previous versions: [2004] [2005] [2006] [2007] [2008] [2009] [2010] [2011] [2012] [2013] [2014] [2017] [2018] [2019] [2020] [2021][2022] [2023]
