Avri J. Balofsky

A treat from Shabbat:
"Hashem gave Avraham 10 testes."

Yes, our forefather was quite a man.

From earlier in the week:
"We learned how turtles get married today in science."
"How?"
"I'll show you! Sefi climb on my back."
"Nooo!"

I kept meaning to write about our busy Sukkot, but it never materialized. I'll guess I'll just point form it now for posterity... but first...

I've been at the task of earning more man points lately.
Now that I have a lawn mower I've been much better at getting my yard into decent shape. One more week and I'll no longer be filling entire garbage bins with my clipping. When I was mowing the back yard for Sukkot I accidentally mowed over the cord. This tripped a breaker and knocked out power in the house. Thankfully I've acquired enough man points to fix minor electrical issues. I took my exact-o knife and some electrical tape and spliced my lawn mower cord back together. I've also changed and installed a light fixture in Chana's room, and fixed it when Sefi pulled on it and snapped out one of the wires.

Recently we rebuilt standing closet in Chana's room. When we moved the carpenter was terrible and did an awful job putting it back together and it's basically come apart and all the shelves have fallen. We got some braces and screws and I re-attached all the support shelves, drilled new supports in, Fixed the backing on the whole thing, adjusted the rails/sliders on the drawers, and lowered the hanging clothing bar. This took about half a week during which Chana had to sleep in the guest room.

I've learned a little about cars in the past year, about where exactly the radiator is, adding water to it, and checking and changing oil. I've also repaired some rust damage. I could use a lot more man points in the car skill. I might use my next level up on that.

---

Ok. Sukkot..

Yom Tov was spent with my parents for one meal and with friends for another.

Sunday I worked, but went to a LAN party all evening

Monday I worked, but that night was the concert and we had friends come over and hang out.

Tuesday I worked half a day, and then starting at 2 was Games Day. (23 players, 11 hours)

Wednesday was a tiul to the beach in Netanya, shopping at Ikea, and housewarming party at housedaddy.

Thursday Chana went with her friend to some petting zoo, while we went to Jerusalem to meet up with some friends who recently made Aliyah.

Friday we just prepped for Simchat Torah. My cousins stayed by us and we had dinner at home. For lunch they went to mom's and we went to friends.

---

In other news... mom wants to move to Sfat. Where they will have a soup and ice cream shop and make their own cheese.... oh, and a goat might be involved. ... and a B&B and a coffee shop franchise of some sort.
Also commuting back to Bet Shemesh once a week to service podiatry patients here.

On Shabbat Chana really wanted to learn how to play Shear Panic, and her friend Yael came over so I taught her too. Yael only speaks Hebrew though, so I had to break my teeth and explain how to play the game in Hebrew. It didn't go too badly. I found most of the words I was looking for, and learned a new word, אֲלַכְסוֹן - diagonal.

Yarr. Now let us be relatin' the power of this ship's seaworthiness, for it be awesome and frightnin'. On it Ye Captainship do be uplifted. Ye crow's nest be filled with grog, and Ye sit in it sendin' fair winds. Ye alone do judge and bequeath doubloons or floggings. The cannons will be sounded n' the shanteys will cease. Like the bosun inspects the tars, Ye shall measure our worth n' scribe the verdict.

On Rosh Hashanah be inscribed n' on Yom Kippur be sealed how many be marked by the black spot and how many be given letters of Marque; who be shipshape and who be visting Davey Jones' Locker; who be dyin' an old salt and who be dancin' with Jack Ketch; who by cutlass and who by cannon, who by scurvy, who by keelhaulin', who by shark, who by maroonin', who by storm, who by gun, who by hangin', and who by walkin' the plank.

But looting, plundering, and pillaging will remove the black spot!

My officemate was leaving and going home for Rosh Hashana.
I turn to him and say:
[Me]: "Have a good sweet year, and if I've offended you --"
[Several voices from the hall]: " IF???"

Rosh Hashana is the Day of Judgement, the day God will decide who will live and who will die in the coming year. As such it is traditional to get a haircut before that day, since somebody who is already condemned to death stops worrying about their appearance, we want to show that we are confident we will be judged for the good and will live.

I think I take that one step further. You see the day of judgement is on Rosh Hashana, but the book isn't sealed until the Day of Attonement, on Yom Kippur 10 days later. (And some say appeals are still taken until Shmini Atzeret, 12 days after Yom Kippur). As such I get a haircut before Rosh Hashana that won't look good until at least 2 weeks later.

So that was depressing. I just looked through my past few years of Rosh Hashana postings, and I seem to have a bad habit of trying to resolve to better myself a little each year, but the following year's posting showing no improvement or even some regression.

I look at this paragraph from 2 years ago and feel like it's the exact same thing I could be saying this year (aside from the whole Shmitta thing).
Secondly. I feel ill-prepared for Rosh Hashana (Jewish new year). I haven't been learning nearly enough... or at all lately. I haven't woken up in time to go to Shacharit (morning services) in a long time. ... I just don't feel the drive to get into the pre-RH teshuva (repentence) action this year. I haven't even gotten my pre-RH haircut yet, and heaven knows I need it. I just haven't felt as connected lately. It's not like I'm breaking any laws, I'm just not really doing any positive ones so much. I've kinda hit neutral.

It's been a decent year as these things go. Chana is in grade 1 now and is really doing well. Sefi is fantastic and enjoys his bedtime routine of stories and singing. He walks around covering one eye with his hand and going "Arrr!" (Which reminds me I still need to get around to doing my translation of Netana Tokef). Lorien is pregnant with #3, and we parents shall soon be outnumbered. We bought Gina ('97 Honda Shuttle) and sold the Civic ('95). We watched through Buffy (and almost finished Angel). Games night is still going well.

On the negative side our fridge broke, a mouse ate our food, and we were invaded by ants. The Civic wasn't worth as much as we'd have liked it to be and it was a good chunk of lost money. Our neighborhood lost 66% of its Ira's in one day as they both made yeridah.

It was a pretty average year, nothing special. Blah.

And here comes some boilerplate forgiveness stuff which I totally mean sincerely:
If I have done anything in the past year to offend you or hurt you either physically or emotionally, on purpose or by accident, knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly, in action or in word, I hereby beesech your forgiveness and apologize for what I did. I forgive anybody who may have sinned towards me whether I know about it or not.

I set my alarm for 5:30am... let's see what happens.

Finally got around to cutting this and uploading it to youtube. Enjoy!

Today is Chana's first day of grade one. She'll be taking the public bus home with a friend in her class (and the friend's older sister). She looks so grown up.

I never got around to blogging much about the Toronto trip... it wasn't so exciting :)
I'll look at my notes and get around to writing about anything that would be interesting.

More importantly, and as many of you already know, this year International Talk Like A Pirate Day conflicts with Rosh Hashana! It will be difficult to resist the urge to show up to shul wearing an eyepatch and bandana. Not to worry me hearties though, I am amidst writing a seaworthy version of Netana Tokef (Who by scurvy, who by cutlass, who by cannon, and who by walking the plank).

In sadder news today my neighborhood supply of Ira's is down 66% as two families are moving back to the States.

We're back in Israel after a nice vacation in Canada that I may or may not end up writing about later.

We knew we were coming home to an empty fridge. While we were gone the fridge's motor blew and everything inside it died at some point between a Shabbat and a Tuesday when it was found. We're starting to think that there may be an electrical problem with the house. Since we've moved in we've lost two light fixtures, a fan, a washing machine part, a dryer fan, and a fridge motor. Perhaps something is afoot.

Aside from that though, when I opened up the pantry after coming home I found a large pile of sugar or salt on the shelf. Strange. I moved something around and saw a brown blur run past. Great. Now we have mice in the pantry. Now we really have no food in the house.

We abandon home and hearth for a month and everything goes to pot. Sheesh.

I hope the kids don't take too long to get back on schedule.

I just haven't had the inclination to blog lately, but I really should get something done.

Here we are on my second week (Lor and the kid's 4th week) of vacation in rainy and chilly Canadia. We spent last week at a cottage near Haliburton with my in-laws. The weather was actually really nice for the first half of the week, which we spent on the beach, boating, and swimming. Chana learned how to swim, she's taken to it like a fish. She made a realization that she could be like a boat with her arms like oars, and she just started swimming, lasting through multiple breaths without touching bottom, swimming with her head underwater and coming up for air. Really impressive. Lorien's dad played a pretty big part of teaching her to swim, he was much better at it than I was.
In the evenings we'd play board games like Scattergories, Apples to Apples, n' such. There was one failed attempt at Trivial Pursuit which was mercifully cut short.

Then it started to rain, and it hasn't stopped yet. The kids are really much worse off when they are stuck inside all day with no outdoor time. Add that to the fact that there is currently a city worker's strike in Toronto and you have a pretty crappy vacation city.

Tons of stuff is closed, garbage is being dropped off in the city parks, it's raining all the time, and we have no car. Most of that is Toronto's fault.

On the bright side we actually managed to make full day plans for tomorrow involving park time (hopefully), bowling (if we can get bumper lanes for Sefi), supper with my grandfather and great aunt, and the hopefully getting together with a friend after the kids are in bed.

Also there is a pirate festival next week in Milton which we plan to make it to. Should be similar to the medeival faire stuffs, but with pirates. Yay pirates.

It's been a busy couple of weeks in our lives.

We've purchased a new old car. She was bought two years to the day that we bought our old old car. She's a purple Honda Shuttle with the mileage of a girl half her age. She's a 1997, but only has 90,000 kilometers. She's had regular maitenance and is in really good shape. There's a little bit of rust by one door that I'm going to pick up some spray for, but that's about it. The paint is sun faded and my neighbor suggested that I paint and/or buff it, but why in the world would I spend money on my car in a way that doesn't make it more functional. In fact all it would do is make it more likely to get stolen. No thanks.

I haven't posted about this, but in the past couple of weeks Lorien has been running around going crazy trying to figure out where Chana should go to school next year. Academically she's definitely able to go ahead to grade 1, but we were worried about her social skills. This year she's made great progress with general clumsiness (thanks to horseback riding, OT, and ballet), but it was a very hard year socially for her. She didn't make any real friends in her class and often played alone and was teased. We thought that she might have a mild case of Asperbergers or some PDD. Lorien did all kinds of research into resources and procedures and documents and assessors to figure out how to go about deciding the right place for her. Whether to stay in Gan Chova, to go into a regular grade one, to go into a special communications oriented grade one class in Jerusalem, etc. We got somebody to go and observe her in class... and of course on that one day she actually has a totally random good day and plays with others and behaves fairly normal. (The next day she was back to being chased around and teased). She had a one on one meeting with the psychologist and he said that she's very bright, and if she has anything it's very slight. She's too young and it's too mild to assess anything definitely and he recommended going to a regular grade one and evaluating how it goes.
Maybe it was all just a lack of maturity and she'll do better this year. I hope that's the case.

Lorien's leaving to Canada on Sunday night with the kids, which makes me a bachelor for 2 weeks. My neighbor has already scheduled some Wii time with me.

School's out which means a surge in game night attendance. We had 10 this week, and that'll probably go a little higher.

Lorien's been getting a decent amount of work lately which is nice. My work has been pretty busy lately which is nice. The pace is picking up as we're doing load testing finding any structural issues, and gearing up for some major stuff. I'm really looking forward to my vacation though :)

Chana had a cute line the other day which really outlined how bad the tooth fairy idea is. She recently got a frisbee from the tooth fairy and promptly lost it at school the next day by throwing it on a nearby roof.
"Don't worry Abba."
"Why not? Did the teacher say she could get it back down for you?"
"No, but I have another wiggly tooth!"

Sefi is a chocolate-milk-a-holic and NEEDS one after waking up in the morning and after naps. He's still an occasional biter in gan, we've been trying to work on that, but we really just hope he grows out of it soon. He got a new shape sorting puzzle with shapes with holes in them that slide onto pegs and he's really good at it. Supposedly that's pretty good for somebody who's not yet 2. Lorien just hope he sleeps on the plane.

Evidently the lady I called at Canada Post was not entirely correct. My mother in law read the delivery notice and it said that somebody else could pick it up if they had signed permission. So we scanned in a copy of my passport, wrote up a letter, and I signed it on Lorien's tablet PC. We then emailed the letter to mom.

The package is now safely home in London.

Yay! Thanks again to my ever-so-patient inlaws who I made jump through hoops. I'm so sorry.

Here is a recent spam email I received.

From: Aditya Abbott [stewartb@aol.com]
Subject: detp sxx yefhjh tcaw ecky

fhjhp caw positeckywion
atsgthe detppart
you sxx by yefhj
youptcame peckyfrom tcatsgtart.
Illbedetp besxxfore yefhj.
beptca pouncepeckypony.
thiscatsgceremony
detp filsxxlsmy yefhj.
a punptcach toy vopeckylunteer kcatsgnee.
is detpalu wasxxnt tohyefhjear
aptcand apeckyyou wcatsgsee.


That's it, in its entirety.

Is there some secret message I'm missing here?
How is this supposed to cheat me out of my money?

I hate Canada Post. I made my annual board gaming purchase and had it shipped to my inlaws in Canada. I unfortunately forgot to have it shipped C/O or ship it to my mother-in-law's office. The package arrived, and nobody was home to pick it up, so it was routed to the local post office for pickup.

If somebody had been home, anybody could sign for it, and it'd be fine. Now that it's in the post office nobody can pick it up but me. Not even if they live at the address I shipped to. I called the Post Office to see what we could do since I was currently out of the country on business. Could I fax over my passport, a note, and a signature? No. Could I have the shipper notify Canada Post that it was ok for anybody to pick it up? No. Was there anyway to have anybody who wasn't me pick up the package? No.
...
How about if they had power of attorney?
...
Yes.
Aha! Thanks!

We thankfully gave my inlaws power of attorney before we left so they could manage any bank thingies n' such. Who knew that we'd be needing it to pick up postage parcels?

We are expecting another addition to the family on December 31st give or take.
I wonder if I'll finally get a birthday month buddy.

One note I forgot to make about our night out for our anniversary. My mom came over to babysit the kids so we could go out. Not only did she baby sit she even did the dishes. Not only did she do the dishes she even washed the floor! Dayenu!.

Living near my mom has worked out better than I could have ever hoped when we apprehensively moved in around the block 2 years ago. I just wanted to take this opportunity to say "Thanks Mom!" My mom rocks.

Thing the first:
I discovered today that one of our bags of milk leaked all over the bottom of the fridge, and had evidently been like that for a few days. The bottom of the fridge was still covered in paper from Passover and the milk had dried a bit and was attaining a cheese-like consistency.

Thing the second:
It didn't smell all that bad which was surprising. It smelled like cheese.
It tasted ok too.

Tonight we finally went out for our real anniversary dinner after the fiasco that was our first attempt failed miserably.

We went to the Jerusalem Culinary Institute restaurant night. The menu looked pretty good as put out an ad and we booked a reservation last week. It was fantastic, the perfect amount of food, very tasty, and at a great price point. We had the sesame seared salmon and the roasted veggie antipasti for appetizers. (The antipasti was amazingly good, the best thing of the night I think, even better than the fish and meat... and this is coming from me!). Main courses were the steak and the chicken breast. The menu had changed slightly from what had been advertised online (I ended up with french fries instead of Duchess potatoes), but everything was still good. For desert we had an apple strudel and chocolate mousse. We ended the night with a cup of tea. We of course shared all our courses with eachother, and thankfully everything went well with everything else.

The dinner took place outdoors by candle and torchlight. It was fully booked with about 35 people there total. It was a really nice atmosphere.

As a bonus surprise when we paid for the meal (100 shek each) the receipt came back with a tax receipt! Evidently the meal was actually a tax deductable donation to the school. That means we'll get 35% of the cost of the meal back. 130 total for a really nice dinner for two? Sounds great! We'll definitely look into this again next year.

We also asked the head chef, when he walked around, about the possibility of them catering a turducken for my birthday. He was totally into it and said it would make a great class project. This may be like getting your hair cut at the student barbers, but it'll hopefully be a slightly cheaper way to get a really nice turducken made for us. Heck, it might even be tax deductable in the end! (That'd be sweet)

NASA To Trigger Massive Explosion On the Moon In Search of Ice
from the smashing-darling-smashing dept.
posted by timothy on Tuesday June 16, @12:13 (Moon)
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/16/1556254


cf. Apu's ice fetching expedition to the arctic.