Blog/September 2020/Sep 4th

Sep 4th

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We had a pretty busy week, all told!

I have been having pain in three of my molars, so I went to the dentist. He said the teeth I felt pain in were fine, but one of the other molars had a sizable cavity which needed filling. So he filled it, which surprisingly didn’t hurt; but my mouth has been hurting ever since. That’ll larn me to stay away from dentists!

Mom’s had a painful wound on one of her toes for some four months. We’ve had nurses look at it, and doctors, and taken X-rays, and done various treatments. Nothing so far has helped. So this week we went to a special “wound clinic” in Jerusalem, where the doctor and his nurses fussed around Mom and tried to distract her (unsuccessfully) from what the doctor was doing to her toe. In the end, they gave her a very specific treatment to do, and in two weeks we’ve got a follow-up to see if the treatment is helping at all. After that, we’ll see…

Then, this week, a branch of our favorite “פיצוחים” (nuts and other crunchy stuff) place opened, in our town! It’s been four months since we were able to go (to the shuq) and get anything from them, so it was a treat to be able to get really (!) good nuts and stuff. We also loaded up on wine, and made a special trip to our butcher. All to get ready for the holidays, which apparently we’ll be celebrating once again without guests.

Our gov’t here decided to reinstitute quarantines. As of the moment, 30 cities around Israel are “red zones” and under heightened quarantine (our fair town escaped this time). It looks like a general quarantine is around the corner, however; just in time for Rosh HaShana etc. Not looking forward to this, really.

Various:

• According to Tim Pool, Democrats are leaving the party in droves because of the ongoing “fiery, but peaceful” riots.
• The recent massive growth in gun purchases in the US has election implications.
• An actual lawyer explains and presents the evidence in the case of Kyle Rittenhouse (the guy who shot three Antifa rioters).
• Another interesting article, on why the Chinese “don’t have opinions”. Spoiler alert: it’s not because of the CCP.
• Adele’s buns of fury.

Among other things this week, I decided to replace my laptop. The current one is a “MacBook Pro”, which is quite a nice machine; however, it’s pretty old now and things are working less well. Rather than replace it with another Apple machine, I’ve decided to get a high-end Linux laptop. I did a lot of research to find something which would fit my needs (as a programmer, a powerful machine is top of the list). I was surprised to find that a fully-loaded System76 laptop would cost (with delivery to Israel and additional import fees) less than half what a comparably equipped Apple would (in the US, let alone in Israel). To be fair, it’s not even possible to equip a MacBook as well as the machine I’ll (hopefully) be getting in a few weeks.

Though it’s not cheap, if it works continuously well for more than five years of hard use, it’s a good investment. If you’re interested, next week I’ll explain why not Apple or Windows.

In other news: I started the curing process for the olives we harvested two weeks ago. The process basically was: “after soaking in water for two weeks, put them in brine”. The brine consists of 3/4C salt, 2L water, and 1C vinegar. I got four sizeable containers of olives from this batch, and we’ll keep you appraised of their progress. Next week we’ll harvest another batch of olives, but I anticipate a lesser yield of usable fruit due to “olive fly” infestation.

Today’s high is supposed to reach 42C (108F) in Jerusalem, make that 45C (113F) here. OMG! We will probably move as little as possible and drink lots of cold drinks.

This shabbat we’re scheduled to have:
homemade ḥalla, grilled סרעפת (aka “entraña” in AR, or “hanger steak” in the US/UK), roasted chicken, various salatim, plum küchen, and various fruits.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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