Blog/August 2016/Aug 5th
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| August 5th (See this week's devar torah) | Comments or questions? Click here! |
It’s been a jam-packed week. Our guests were coming and going and touring about. Esther was working hard, I was working hard, Sarah was herding her grandpa.
My esteemed BIL and his family left on Monday morning, stopping off in Italy for a continuation of their vacation. They had a good time (according to their daughters) while here. Certainly, they got around a lot!
One anecdote from their visit: they went to the “lake” at one of the entrances to our city. At the lake there is a sort of amusement park for kids, with rides and such. The fee they had to pay was 45 NIS per kid; since there were two kids, the guy behind the counter told them, “OK, just give me 100”. They objected that even in Ma’ale Adummim, 45 plus 45 is 90 and not 100. I’m not sure whether the guy was too lazy to give change or simply trying to rip them off. They weren’t amused.
My esteemed FIL remained with us, and will continue to be with us until the end of next week. He’s taken to morning walks around our town, stopping to replenish his energies with a “coffee and pastry” along the way. He’s also been running off to Jerusalem to tour about, do shopping, meet with friends of his. Overall, he’s having a good, though quiet, time.
It’s his birthday this shabbat, so we began celebrating on Thursday by meeting him in Jerusalem at a bar called “Mike’s Place”. Esther and I figured we could at least have a beer and french-fries there, so we did. Best french-fries I’ve had in a long time, really! The beer was what you’d expect: cold and tasty. After that, we walked around a lot more, intending to take him out to the excellent dairy restaurant “Gabriela”, which we had enjoyed several times in the past. Imagine our surprise when we found out that it had converted over to become a meat restaurant (some seven months ago!), so we were frustrated and disappointed. We walked over to the (also excellent) “Piccolino” dairy restaurant, where the live music and good food made up, somewhat, for the disappointment of Gabriela. And a good time was had by all.
As for me, I’ve been trying to get the next release of 8th ready while having a full (or almost full) house. Once my BIL and family left, my office returned to my jurisdiction. Despite that, it’s been a bit difficult to close all the issues I need to close. Among other things, it turns out that the Android tablet I use for testing could not do “BLE” as configured, even though the hardware was BLE-capable. Google, damn them! So I spent some time re-flashing the tablet with the CyanogenMod version of Android: and, lo and behold! — the tablet is now working fine with BLE! Don’t you love these kinds of problems?
Of course, there are other issues I’m working through. For example: a mysterious memory corruption issue on Android which I am still tracking down. I hate stuff like that, I really do. And I had a minor surgery on Sunday to remove a mole the dermatologist didn’t like. That took up a large portion of my day. Amazingly (to me), I didn’t experience any physical discomfort from the procedure nor from its aftermath. I still have to have the stitches removed; at the moment I look a bit like Frankenstein’s monster. This, too, shall pass. I hope.
Today (e.g. as I write this) is the first day of the month of Av, when we “reduce our happiness”. So we need to prepare ourselves mentally for the 9th of Av, which falls on shabbat next week and is therefore delayed until the Sunday after (the 14th of August). But after the 9th of Av comes the 15th thereof, which besides being a happy day on the Jewish calendar, is also our 9th anniversary of making aliyah. We’re waiting for the rest of you to make that move!
This shabbat is my father-in-law’s birthday. To help him celebrate, we’ll have another four guests over for dinner. The crowd will enjoy:
baked chicken,
roast beef,
roasted potatoes,
ratatouille or roasted vegetables,
tarta de acelga,
Asian noodle salad,
roasted eggplant,
green salad,
celery salad,
egg salad,
rice,
baked salmon,
chocolate birthday cupcakes,
and ḥalvah.
Yes, ḥalvah remains on the menu. We still have about a kilo of it in the ‘fridge…
Until next time,
shabbat shalom and ḥodesh tov!
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