Blog/March 2018/Mar 9th

Mar 9th

I felt like we didn’t do much this week, but then I looked at my calendar and realized I was just trying to protect my brain from exploding.

We started off by taking mom to get her eyes more closely examined by a specialist, since she was getting a particular treatment in the US. So we traipsed off again to the Hadassa Ein Karem hospital; but this time, we had quite a long wait. Mom was not amused by that, but we tried to explain to her that the hospital is a major urban hospital, and that they don’t necessarily take people in the order of their appointments if there are urgent cases presenting. Which there apparently were.

In any event, the doctor told her that he doesn’t think she needs shots in the eyes right now, and that she should re-check in two months. So even though it was a pain to go there, and the wait was really long, the news there was pretty good: no painful shots.

Lately (in the past several weeks) I’ve been getting a lot of calls from Israeli companies looking to hire me. Unfortunately, almost all of them are interested in full-time, on-site, employees. While it’s nice to know I could get such a job pretty easily, I can’t do the full-time on-site thing at present (nor, honestly, do I want to). So I tell them I am happy to work as a freelancer, off-site, and come in once or twice a week to their office. Most of those calling me aren’t really interested in that, and there the matter rests.

But last week, one of them said he would discuss the matter with his team and get back to me. I figured that was the end of it. Then this week, he called me back and asked if I could make it to his office to discuss what they do and what they want. So I did. The next day, they started giving me work to do (we hadn’t yet signed a contract, so it was jumping the gun a bit, but…).

So I started a bit of work for these guys, and if we like each other it will probably develop into a long-term relationship. As always, “we’ll see”, but it’s a good start.

Around the town and the world:

• Meryl Streep is overrated
• “Oscars more woke…”. This is why your ratings are plummeting, people.
• Ben Shapiro’s take on the posturing
• Welcome to Progressive Utopia
• On a different note: malware from space
• Is it related to the creepy laughter emanating from Alexa devices?

Later in the week, we went to the optometrist to get fitted for new glasses. My arms keep growing longer, and my current glasses are not strong enough. Mom’s been complaining that her vision isn’t as good as she would like. So off we went, and the very nice optometrist checked out mom’s vision and told her that, regretfully, she couldn’t help her with glasses. Actually, that’s what the opthalmologist had told her he suspected would be the case. The optometrist didn’t charge her for the check-up, which surprised me. Then it was my turn: and she said she would increase the number on my reading lenses, but that my distance lenses were “perfect”. So I’ll be getting a new pair of glasses in a week or two. It’ll be nice to shorten my arms a bit.

The weather was quite hot (for spring) this week, but the heat-wave’s broken and the temperatures are more normal and no rain is in the offing. We’re entering the pre-pesaḥ warm dusty-wind weather scenario now.

My nephew, his wife, and my grand-nephew will be staying with us this shabbat, which should make my mom very happy! We’ll try to keep them entertained and fed with:
chicken soup, chicken thighs, veggies, matbukha, salatim, pastel de papas (sin manteca, por supuesto…), and chocolate-chip cookies.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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