Day Twelve/Thirteen

We finished ASIST training today. There was one highlight moment of the day. The day was spent role-playing suicide interventions, with one student playing the potential suicide and the other the friend/counselor. At the beginning, one of the instructor's played the suicide and had people come up and try to intervene. One of the young chaplains went up and started asking him what was wrong. The "suicide" went off on how his wife cheated on him and she was all he had and he had no reason to live... The chaplain, with all earnestness, asked, "I know how you must feel" to which the suicide turned to him and said, "Why - has your wife cheated on you?" Without a hesitation, the chaplain said, "Not yet."

Awesome.

Class ended early, so I printed off my study material (we have our first test on Tuesday) and went to my room to change for my workout. I got to the gym and did a 4.5 mile interval run. I looked down at the display and thought, "I can run another 1/2 mile - let's just make it an even 5 miles!"

I began feeling it by the last 1/8 mile. Not as badly as I felt it for the next two days! More on that in a minute...

I arranged for a friend to take me to Reb Hesh's house at 1845, as he told me we would be davening at his assistant's house. I got there to discover the plans had changed, and we would be staying home for the night. He had a couple over for dinner (the guy grilling in the Lag B'Omer pictures posted previously), and Reb Hesh cracked open the 18 year old Glenlivet I bought him on base. Yummy!!!

One would think with some great Scotch in the system I would have had a good night's sleep. However, my right knee and hips were hurting me so bad I could not get comfortable. Nor did I have Advil. I tossed and turned the whole night until I finally struggled out of bed at about 0730. The 10-minute walk to shul was not fun - and when I got there, I helped set the shul up (they tear it down after each Shabbos service, as they rent space in a country club - they are moving into their own building within a month) which also hurt like the dickens!

I'm not gonna lie - last week I commented on how long the services were. Well, this week I decided that there was nothing I could do about it, nor did I have anything to read... so I may as well read slowly along with them. I must say I had one of the best Shacharis prayers I have had in a decade! We started at 0900 and ended at 1230 (!) after which we tore down the shul and went to Reb Levi's house (Hesh's assistant) for a big kiddush in honor of his birthday. We left at about 1500 and had a perfunctory lunch, which included an awesome conversation about the state of Judaism today (my favorite topic!) and I got to my nap at 1730... however, after an hour the pain in my knee and hips woke me up.

I left the house at 2130 - a friend picked me up - got home, took Advil and went to bed. Sunday should be better...