Scrabble in Hebrew!

Scrabble in Hebrew!
Originally uploaded by savtadotty.

That's Noorster and Oleh Girl playing against Gucci (dog) and Danny, and Miriam and me (not shown). Gucci and Danny won, and we had enough fun to do it again!

Here's the way the board looked at the end of the game.

e-Spring Harbinger!

I was sitting in my kitchen with friends one balmy afternoon last month when I heard an unfamiliar chirping sound. I looked around and said, "It reminds me of the sound my smoke detector used to make when the battery was dying, but that was before I moved here, where I don't have any smoke detectors." Mystified, I ran through the list of appliance beeps and chirps, and took a quick walk around the apartment looking for the exceptional blinking light. Nothing. When I returned to the kitchen, Lisa shot me an amused look: "Savtadotty, it's a bird. Outside. In a tree."

Tour Guides Earn Their Money!

I am so warn out from traipsing around Tel Aviv (Sheinkin St., Carmel Market, Neveh Tzedek) in the midday rain today with my visiting distant cousin that all evening I've been going into one room or the other and forgetting why I'm there. That never happens to anyone else, right?

I Love Tourists

Anyone who braves the discouragement of their fearful or politically close-minded friends and relatives and actually makes the long journey to visit Israel for the first time gets a big "bravo!" from me. And if it's one of my relatives, albeit a very distant one, and actually not one but a couple, even if I've never met them before, I'll do whatever I can to make their stay enjoyable.

In this case, the couple in question are the second-cousin and spouse of my second-cousin's wife, here for a professional conference plus a few days of touring. Because their conference is in Jerusalem, they've made the conference hotel their home base. I'm please to see that as recently as April 16, 2006, The New York Times considers Jerusalem worthy of an article in the Travel section!

As it turns out, someone the couple did know beforehand recommended a tour guide, who happens to be married to an archeologist. And not just any old archeologist: Avner Goren, the man who guided Bruce Feiler, the author of Walking the Bible and Where God Was Born. Avner is also quoted on page 3 of the NY Times article. So their conference hasn't even started yet, and they're already planning their next trip, maybe to volunteer on an archeological dig.

I'll have a tough act to follow as their tour guide in Tel Aviv.

By the way, they aren't Jewish. In considering this, I reviewed my family tree and discovered that we now include non-Jews of Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, English, Danish, Irish, German, and Sufi backgrounds. I'm the first known Israeli, and it's more of a foreground than a background for me.

You Know More Hebrew Than You Think

Q: How do you say "Cream Cheese" in Hebrew?
A: Filadelfia

Q: What's the Hebrew word for "sweatpants"?
A: Training (pronounced "trenning")

Q: How do you say "Country Club" in Hebrew?
A: Kuntree

P.S. There is going to be a scheduled Blogger outrage at 4PM PST. What will they think of next?

My Son, The Lawyer

Hey everybody, my son Prowesslessnesslessness passed the Florida Bar Exam on his first try! I'm proud. Wouldn't it be a hoot if they wore white wigs in Florida courts? Then I'd know exactly what present to give him.

Phooey, Another Bomb Went Off

Don't you just hate it when a bomb goes off near your house? So much noise, sirens, cellphones ringing. Yuck!

(Black humor gets me through it.)

Lisa, the professional journalist, has posted photos.

We Laugh and Cry at the Same TIme

Q: Who is a Jew?
A: Someone who clicks on An Unorthodox Approach to Cabaret*, and then on "Listen," and laughs and winces simultaneously during the first 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

You might as well keep hunting for those painted eggs though. Happy Easter!

*If that link doesn't work, try cutting and pasting (it's worth the trouble!):
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5336255

Pooh Comes to Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv Winnie the Pooh Mural
Originally uploaded by savtadotty.

I was walking home from Florentin at dusk, (which lasts a very short time around here - the sunsets consist of the sun falling into the horizon over the course of about two minutes), and was greeted with another Tel Aviv surprise. Did the incident depicted on this Tel Aviv wall ever happen in the original stories?

Hag Pesach Sameach! Happy Passover!

Happy Passover! Hag Pesach Sameach!

The Ten Plagues toys ("Plagues in a Bag") come from the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance gift shop. They're a very big hit at the Little Bear household.

Cutting a Rug for My Birthday

My friends and I celebrated yesterday by removing an old and dusty carpet from my study. No, that is not me in the photo: I was busy photographing the workers. The effort was fueled by homemade chocolate birthday cake. My computer got so excited that it conked out and will have to go for treatment tomorrow. (I'm blogging chez Noorster!)

Jo Spanglemonkey offered to give me a pony. I ungraciously rejected the generous offer, mostly because of the neigh..bors. (They would be too jealous.) Thanks anyhow, Jo.

My Own Private Idaho

Many other bloggers from Israel have pretty well covered our recent election, which leaves me with the job of watching for the rain to clear up so I can walk my dog. No, I did not vote for the Elderly Party. They got all their Knesset seats without me! I voted for Kadima. As it turned out, they needed my vote more.

A Birthday Card from Africa

Africa Birthday Card
Originally uploaded by savtadotty.

My best friend and her husband are just finishing a month's volunteering in Uganda with the Health Volunteers Organization. She is a social worker and her husband is an orthopedic surgeon. The e-mails have been amazing...I wish I could convince her to write a blog just about this trip.

Anyhow, I wrote that I envied her the sounds she was hearing...the drumming and the singing she described so beautifully. Here is the (early) birthday card my dear friend sent me. On the back she wrote that the drums are drumming "Happy Birthday to Yoooooooo," etc. The card makes me want to get up and dance.