Blog/November 2010/Nov 5th

Nov 5th (See this week's devar torah)
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Hi again!

A reasonably quiet week here, but not there. Not a lot of excitement in our domestic situation, B"H, except that Hemidactylus frenatus paid a call.

One day this week, as I was talking to my mother on Skype, I was interrupted by a loud shriek emanating from my lovely wife. A gecko was glaring at her balefully from its safe perch on the ceiling of the room. Naturally, being the only bearer of a "Y" chromosome in the house, it fell to me to banish the poor creature. By the way, geckos are not easy to dislodge -- their feet have incredible sticking power. Anyway, mission accomplished -- but the next day, I got an urgent phone call from this same wife, informing me there was another gecko, this time in the kitchen! Oy! Since I was far away, she took it into her own hands (so to speak), and swept it out. Don't get me wrong: I like geckos, they're very useful -- but I prefer them to remain outside. Especially if my wife is inside.

So as I said, here there was little to report on. But there, in an astonishing sweep, the bums were thrown out. Mostly, that is; the People's Republic of Washington State still kept their kleptomaniac mom-in-tennis-shoes -- or so it appears at the moment. The Republican sweep is good for us here in the Land, I think, as it means the Obummer will have much less ability to apply credible pressure on our feckless leaders. However, unless the Republicans can actually come up with concrete plans and get the people of the US behind those plans, they may find their mid-term euphoria to be short-lived. And that would be a real disaster for the US and for Israel and the rest of the democratic world. Another term of the Marxist-in-Chief could be the end of America as a world power.

In other news, I've started working on translating the "Fundamentals of Torah". I'm also working on a web-site project, and developing some cool and useful ways to do this. Soon I hope to make the web-site public; for now, you'll just have to wait. Sarah got a bite-guard because she apparently grinds and clenches her teeth at night, causing her jaw to hurt. Daniela has been taking exams and is very busy. Work has not relented its insane pace, but I have relented on caring about it.

Oh, I almost forgot. If you use Facebook and want to avoid having your account subverted, there is a simple solution. Use Firefox, install the "NoScript" extension (you should have done that before, if you hadn't already), go to its preferences, select 'Advanced' and 'HTTPS'. Now, in the 'Force..." edit area, type *.facebook.com and press 'OK'. This will force any page from Facebook to use a secure connection (SSL), making the Firesheep attack impossible.

This shabbat we have no house-guests, but nevertheless have guests for both dinner and lunch. Hopefully they'll enjoy musht betanoor, chocolate brownies, BBQ chicken, shnitzelonim, fried eggplant, d'fina, homemade hummus, sweet-potato salad, roasted peppers, roasted potatoes, and don't forget this week's special: red-lentil soup!

Until next week,
shabbat shalom!

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