Blog/November 2010/Nov 12th

Nov 12th (See this week's devar torah)
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Hi again!

Enough already! Sarah's sick. My aches and pains. Another shiva call. On the bright side, at work we finally released our product to a Very Big Client™. Turkeys fly.

Poor Sarah came down with a cold/sinus infection at the beginning of the week, so she's been home most of the week. She feels guilty leaving her elderly charges -- since they depend on her; but her supervisor told her it's better she stay away from the elderly if she's sick. So that's what she did, and we hope she has a רפואה שלימה (speedy recovery)!

Poor me, my leg's been aching for a while. It's a bit long and complicated to explain everything, so suffice it to say this week the burning sensation in my leg got to be too painful, so I took a sick-day and went to the doctor's office. After I relayed to the doctor my litany of suffering, she said "די כבר!" (enough already!). Anyway, her opinion is I have some inflamed tendons pressing on nerves; we'll see if she's right after the medicine she prescribed has had time to take effect.

Poor our neighbors. A couple months ago, our (very nice) neighbor's father passed away, so we paid her a shiva call (consolation visit) in Jerusalem, where her family is. Then just this past week, her husband's father passed away, so we paid him a shiva call in the north of Israel, near Tverya. ינוחמו מן השמיים (may Heaven comfort them).

On our way to the shiva call, we stopped to put gas in the car. I didn't put the nozzle in properly, and as I was cleaning the car's windows, someone started yelling at me that gasoline is pouring out of my car. I ended up dumping a lot of gasoline on the floor of the gas station, and was just a little concerned that the place might go up in smoke because of my stupidity. But B"H, the attendants poured soapy water on the spill and dissipated it -- much more effectively than the BP guys did -- and told me to go away. Well! Enough already with the bad news!

Finally, I reached the end of the Extremely Stressful Period™ at work. We released a final product to our Very Big Client™ -- some of you may have heard of them, Verizon Wireless (links to our products are at the bottom of the page). Everyone, including Verizon, is happy; I'm just hoping we get some sort of special remuneration for the unprecedented stress during the development period!

I know I go on about how making aliyah entails adjusting one's lifestyle to Israel's reality. Nevertheless, some things are not meant to be messed with. I've been cooking Thanksgiving meals for over twenty years, and my family demands I continue. So of course, we had to order a whole turkey; and the butcher called me back the next day to inform me it had arrived. But when we went to collect it, they couldn't find the freedom-loving fowl -- we thought maybe it had flown away! Anyway, they did encounter it the next day, and delivered it to us; so we're safe this time.

Last week, Esther started harvesting our olives, and put up a few jars. But since she is, ehem, vertically challenged, I took it upon myself to harvest more this week -- and I bagged almost 2kg! It's interesting that two trees which look almost identical have different varieties. One has smallish olives which ripen quickly, the other has bigger ones which take their time. So it looks like we'll be pulling several more kilos of olives off over the next month or so, as they finish ripening.

On the very brightest note, shabbat is almost here! This time no guests, unfortunately. The menu includes: baked chicken, tuna salad, chicken soup, rice, green beans, chard-mushroom pashtida, eggplant, marble cake, chili, fennel-persimmon salad.

Until next week,
shabbat shalom!

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