Introspection follows

A report has reached TRS that when the tenth man came to the Minyan this morning, the Rabbi said, "The tenth man is called a 'tsenter'. The eleventh is called the 'Pisher'. Why? Because before he comes, no one can go to the bathroom." Cute, no?

It appears that our Yom Kippur prayers were successful. How do I know? Let's just call it manly intuition. I understand that some people might be skeptical of my claims of special powers, and even more skeptical of my writing anything worthwhile reading. Well, let me be the first, and possibly the only, one to assure you that in fact a particularly scintillating post will be forthcoming. Some day. I feel like a music producer, telling his adoring public that the new CD will be out by Chanuka-no, Tu B'Shvat, I guarantee it-Purim at the very latest-did Pesach really just make that whooshing sound?-Lag B'omer, or the price goes down by a dollar-unavoidable delays, out by Shavuos-will Elul do?-joy, it's here! Sukkos!-sorry that the quality is so low, we were rushing it-next one will be far superior, out in six months.

In other news, it was nice to go on Drudge tonight and see that the market again lost lots of people lots of money. I'm finally beginning to be sobered by all this money shtuff. Seems to me that when TRS starts taking things seriously, you know that life is pretty bad. For example, this Yom Kippur, I only really took one prayer seriously. Yes, of course I Davened everything, and quite nicely too (If I do say so myself), but only one was my heart really in it. Unesaneh Tokef is truly an awesome prayer, but so are all the others in the Yom Kippur Davening. What made me take this one seriously is that many years ago, when I was a wee little thing in eighth grade in Torah Academy in S. Louis Park, MN, I had a teacher named Rabbi Yaakov Waxman who taught us the story of Unesaneh Tokef. And when he read it out to us, he was crying.
I was thinking about this today, how a little action someone does nearly ten years ago can have such a profound affect now. All right, so my having a little Kavanah during Davening is hardly a "profound affect", but I do flatter myself when I believe that Rabbi Waxman was not thinking that he would accomplish this with a couple tears, teaching a bunch of spaced out and bratty eighth graders. It really makes you think about all the little things you do, whether you're having a positive or negative affect on someone, and how that will affect them for the rest of their lives.
Sure, a lot of times you're actions carry no apparent weight. What I mean to say is, just because you do something it doesn't mean that anyone will ever remember it; most people can hardly recall their own actions, let alone others. Still, obviously everything you do affects everything else, and sometimes, people might even recognize this. And it's nice when you're able to say, "Yeah, that was a good thing there," because all too often we're able to say, "Man, that was rather moronic."

Sorry about all this introspection shtuff at the end here. It was kindly meant.