I went into the office today; it felt both good and strange. As soon as I entered the building, I ran into a friend who gave me a hug in sympathy — this would be unremarkable except that she had two brand new summer hires trailing her. I wonder what they thought; most companies probably discourage hugging in the hallway.

I couldn’t quite clear my inbox before leaving for the day (well, I could have, but then the two items I was actively working on would have been out of sight), but I’m awfully close. Tomorrow for sure.

And unfortunately, Robert Scoble’s Mom is now in the hospital. Robert, if you read this, go back to this posting and then read forward — some of what we went through might be helpful to you.

We blew out the shiva candle this evening. I had thought about letting it burn for the full seven days, but tonight, it felt like time to move on.

I usually don’t do e-mail on the weekend, at least not before Sunday night, and that only to make sure there are no surprise Monday morning telecons. But today, I spent two cheerful hours dealing with the last week’s mail. I didn’t get through everything in my inbox, but I did get rid of 90% of what had arrived while I was out (of course, dealing with the other 10% will take at least as long). I think I’m actually looking forward to going into the office tomorrow.

We had a busy day in other respects, too; this morning, we helped out at the Shir Hadash/Most Holy Trinity Tzedakah Day/Health Fair — we were there from 10 to noon, and during that time, the volunteers outnumbered the “customers”. We left just before the 11am Mass ended, and I hope they were able to attract a lot of people from that group, as well as throughout the afternoons. I did pick up one good idea at the Health Fair — there was a free raffle, and one of the prizes was an earthquake preparedness kit, consisting of a 30-gallon locking garbage can, filled with food, water, and tools. We have food, water, and tools, but they’re scattered all over the house — I plan to buy a can and create a similar kit (though I might omit the coloring books and crayons).

And we spent this evening at the annual Kehillah gala dinner, this year honoring Bobby Lent, one of the founders of the school. It was a good evening, with decent wine and food, though the speeches went on a bit too long (so we left before the Birkat Hamazon). And this year, they only had a silent auction, which I thought was a great improvement (and so did Bobby, since he mentioned that in his speech). We bid on and won two items: a Shabbat dinner to be made at our house by the head of school, and a four-hour consultation with an organizer (“the Time Butler”). We have to plan how to get the most value out of the latter item — I suspect doing so will be valuable all by itself.

I am very happy that I have nearly nothing to write about today. It’s been a routine Saturday — services in the morning, and then not much of anything organized the rest of the day. I can’t remember the last time I had a routine Saturday, though.

I’ve left the shiva candle burning, even though shiva is over; somehow, the idea of blowing it out seems too final. Maybe tomorrow.

Because Mom’s funeral was on Sunday, today was the last day of her shiva, and it actually ended at noon. So I spent the morning doing something I hadn’t yet done: actually sitting shiva.

I stayed inside, sat on the floor, and spent some time thinking about Mom; since it is not good to be alone during shiva, I also made a few phone calls. Of course I spoke with family, but I also spent time talking to one of Mom’s friends who’d I’d never met.

It helped.

And then it was noon, and shiva was officially over. So I went into the bathroom, looked at the mirror, and grabbed my shaver for the first time in a week. Then I went out for a long walk, first for lunch at a Mexican restaurant (happy Cinco de Mayo), and then over to Shir Hadash to talk with Rabbi Aron for a while. Then back home, where I sat and contemplated a little longer before going to pick Jeff up at Kehillah — today was his AP European History exam. Life goes on.

Tonight, there are no shiva minyans; it’s Shabbat. But I’ll be at services to say Kaddish.

Shabbat Shalom.

The alarm went off at 5:30 this morning, as expected. I turned it off and went back to sleep, also as expected.

But I did get up before Diane and Jeff left for the day. I knew I had to be out of the house by noon or so when the cleaning service was due, and there were things I wanted to get done. The most important of those was buying coffee — I’m the only coffee drinker in the house, and I’d made the mistake of letting the supply run out just before I left for Richmond the last time. So an emergency run to Starbucks was in order.

After that, I fielded a call from the roofer (they’ll be reroofing the house next week), and then left for lunch and a trip to the bank. I had brought some stuff back from Richmond which needed to go into the safe deposit box; I also had brought back some Savings Bonds that Mom had bought for me over the years, and I thought it might be a good idea to do something with them — as well as the bonds that I’d had since childhood which had long since stopped earning interest.

I took care of the safe deposit box easily enough, but dealing with the bonds was an entirely different affair. I’d checked out interest rates and decided I would do better to redeem them all and put the principal into a tax-free money market fund. So that meant I had 58 bonds to deal with. B of A has a simple form to fill out to redeem bonds — but each form is only good for 24 bonds. So I had to fill out 3 forms, listing 24 bonds on the first two and 10 on the last one. And I had to write down the serial numbers (well, I typed them into a spreadsheet). And sign them all. And list my account number on the first and last of each batch. And seal them into envelopes. All in all, it took about 90 minutes — and I won’t get the money for a few days.

But I finally finished and went home. The cleaners had come and gone; there was a fruit basket on the table that had arrived while they were there (thanks, Debbie and Pete!). There were also nine boxes on the driveway; DHL had delivered while I was dealing with the bank. So I brought the boxes into the house; nothing rattled, which is a good sign (but I don’t plan to unpack them just yet).

Then I had to run up to Kehillah to pick up Jeff, who was staying late to practice for his AP European History test tomorrow. We had a quick dinner, and then it was off to Shir Hadash, where we were having a double feature — two shiva minyans.

The first was for Arthur Harris, who had died on the same night as Mom; we met outside in the Memorial Garden. I was talking with Andrea, his widow, when someone told me that I needed to go inside for Mom’s minyan (intermissions are never the right length). I was surprised and pleased that my manager was there.

The service went quickly, and then people started talking — we finally left about 9:30. It was good to talk with friends — not all of my talking was about Mom by any means, but a lot was.

And that was the last shiva minyan — tomorrow, I plan to go to the regular Shabbat services in the evening, and of course we’ll be going to services and Torah Study on Saturday, as we get closer to the normal rhythms of life.

But I probably won’t get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning.