Today was the last day of Hebrew School of the year.

We only had about a half hour of regular class: I did a version of blackjack using the numerical version of Hebrew letters. The goal was to get as close to 613 without going over.

See, the values of the letters are, for the first ten letters, 1 through ten, for the next nine, 20 to 100, and then 200, 300, 400. So 613, which is the traditional number of commandments G-d gave to us (although, when you count them out, you have to be real creative to hit 613 without going over or under -- there are several different lists out there of what the 613 are), is a pretty good number for this.

We had a deck of cards with Hebrew letters; kids could hit or stay.

Since there was only half an hour, and the four kids I had were spending a good portion of their time talking (which I didn't mind for the last day), when we were told that it was time to go upstairs, Kalilah was ahead with 184 points, and Annessia was in second place with something like 92. But Kalilah wanted to do just one more round.

Annesia pulled a ת, the final letter in the Hebrew Alphabet, jumping her ahead to 492, and she won.

Anyway, none of the activities that we had in the all-school program were particularly Jewish-educational (just fun things like making things out of graham crackers and marshmallow fluff, things like that), so I didn't mind that Annessia and Kalilah didn't want to participate, so we just sat and talked. And they were annoying at me in the way that they tend to be. And when someone came by to give me my paycheck for the day, I stuck it in my guitar case, and Kalilah grabbed it, and ran into the other room to look at it and see how much I was paid per class.

She came back and gave me the paycheck and said, "That's not a lot of money. That's really pathetic." I pointed out that it IS only for one day of teaching.

"Yeah, but then the only other thing you do for money is tend bar."

Anyway, we kept talking, and Annessia asked who did the cleaning in our household, me or my wife, and I said, mostly me, and she asked about laundry, and I said, always me, and she asked about cooking and I said, almost always me. She said, "So what does your wife do?" I said, "She WORKS. A lot. She's a designer at a software company."

Kalilah nodded in sudden understanding. "OH! So THAT'S how you get money!"

Yes. Yes. It is true. A designer in a software company makes better money than a Hebrew School teacher/bartender. It's a fact of life, and one that eleven-year-old kids are quite aware of. I had to explain that the reason I tend bar and teach Hebrew school is because I really do genuinely love doing it, and Kalilah looked truly dubious.

Ah, well. It IS true, though.

A computer game I've been playing.

So, in my goofing-off time, I've been playing a couple computer games.

One of them is Teudogar and the Alliance With Rome, in which you play a Germanic warrior who has to either get his tribe to ally with Rome against the other tribes, or to form an alliance between tribes strong enough to fight off the Roman legions. I've been playing the demo version, which only allows you to get so far, and I'm going to have to decide soon if it's worth buying.

One of the things I'm liking best about this is the magic system. See, your character can learn various forms of wizardry. Like the ability to find hidden objects. Which your character does by, y'know, looking at things for things that are different.

You can also curse your enemies and bless your friends in combat. However, how effective such a thing is is based on the TARGET'S Faith rating. So, y'know, the Romans, who don't believe in your curses, are immune. . . the more superstitious the target is, the more effective it is.

The magic sword you get has exactly the same stats as a regular sword, except that it helps your morale . . .

You can also cast runes. When you cast runes, the computer pulls out three runes for you. Or, you can have various people who know wizardry cast runes for you, and then interpret them! If you do this, it usually costs about five silver, and it goes as follows:

"You have drawn Man, War, and Illness."

Then you can ask for an interpretation, and you get,

"Think of in what respect you have experienced a Man, and now experience War. In that manner, you will experience Illness, and unavoidably so!"

And then you get a bonus to your Faith and Life Experience scores -- the higher your Faith, the higher the bonus.

You also encounter a seer who will give you predictions such as, "I see an alliance which will fall apart when a situation changes!"

Again, you get stat bonuses for this.

I LOVE this magic system.

Also, in the manual, the game designer confirms that the runes are entirely randomly generated. He says that you nonetheless can get useful information by thinking about them, as often as not . . .

Lis mentioned that she had a dream the other night

She said that she's not going to blog about her dream, so I will.

In Lis's dream, for dream-logic reasons, I was at her office, and she was driving to pick me up.

So, she dreamt that as she was driving along one of the not-very-big roads around there, just a couple blocks away from the office, she saw some roadkill in the middle of the road. And then she saw a big black bird swoop down and land next to the roadkill and start pecking at it.

She dreamt that she quickly went to pick me up, and told me to hurry, because I HAD to see this.

Because it was a penguin.