Thanks to Island Writer

Terri DuLong, who blogs at Writing Away on Cedar Key, shared this video
with her readers and I want you all to watch it this minute...well actually it's three minutes, so I'm not linking to her post in case you don't have the energy to click so much. Once you watch it, you'll probably have the energy to read the backstory, which is heartwarming too. Thanks Terri!

Two Snow Days in a Row

You'd think mailing a package would not require three tries, but it did. First the Post Office was closed for Tisha B'Av, and the next day the Post Office was closed for a general strike. I figured three snow days in a row, even in July (!), would be too much, and it was.

Thanks, John. At least I cooled off a little, just thinking about snow.

The Blocked Teapot and the New Middle East

Once I read your suggestions for unblocking my teapot spout, I realized that you needed to see the problem with your own eyes - or at least a photo of the problem. Be sure to look at both photos 1 and 2 to appreciate the complexity we are dealing with.

And while we're dealing with complexities, and simply because it was still on the kitchen table leftover from Friday's lively Soup Salon, have a closer look at the diagram of the New Middle East, with the borders redrawn by the Squire of the Dascha. I added some annotations to clarify the otherwise - and perhaps even still - baffling collection of blobs. And do not make the mistake I made of misreading Shiite as Smith, and wondering whether the Mormons were also entering into the territorial disputes in our region?

I'm beginning to think the two problems are somehow intertwined and will have to be solved together.

Too dumb to have lived this long, or going senile?

I can hardly believe I did this, but I did and now I need all the help I can get. In the frenzy of throwing things away and ferociously cleaning whatever's left, I decided that my white teapot needed to be soaked in bleach water to remove the tea stains from the inside. I'm happy to report that the inside of my teapot is sparkly white again. But then...I noticed that the spout also had stains inside. So I took some absorbent cotton and soaked it in the bleach water and started poking it around the inside of the spout. And. the. cotton. fell. in. And now there is a wad of cotton stuck in the spout, which is all classically curvy, and it blocks any possibility of pouring liquid through the spout, in either direction.

Any ideas for how to fish this wad of wet cotton out? I think I have to use something kind of rigid, but also bendy and also grippy. (Please avoid scathing comments on my idiocy. I already know what you're thinking.)

Listing into port

Because it's so hot outside, I am attending to all of the indoor items on the following list. In fact, I think I'll spend a few minutes reorganizing the list to separate the indoor from the outdoor items, moving those indoor items that are dependent on outdoor items to the last. I do so enjoy fiddling with lists rather than actually doing stuff. As if there were any danger of my finishing everything...hah!

1. Plow through stuff in living room.
2. Plow through stuff on bedroom floor
3. Plow through stuff on office floor
4. Plow through filing cabinet
5. Plow through drawings stored on the balcony
6. Finish knitting Mermaid Girl's sweater
7. Get yarn for Els's sweater (consult on color/design ideas)
8. Organize yarn stash
9. Change light bulb in kitchen
10. Deal with parking ticket (pay or contest?)
11. Mail Pablofisherman's summer sweatpants [Israeli ones are cheaper and lighter]
12. Work on Report Card project [Dan, I have not forgotten!]
13. Re-cover kitchen banquettes
14. Copy videotapes to DVD
15. Re-cover sofa
16. Build more shelves in broom closet
17. Install magnets on broom closet door
18. Paint broom closet door
19. Get hand mirror fixed [It is part of an amber dressing-table set that was a wedding present to my mother in July 1923 - that's 84 years ago!]
20. Install door pull on clothes closet
21. Install more shelves in clothes closet storage
22. Get more drawers for office supplies closet
25. Repair office light fixture
23. Frame pictures and mementos
24. Hang pictures and mementos
26. Paint office
27. Paint kitchen tiles or get new backsplash
28. Plow through old floppies on PC
29. Replace pump for fountain on balcony
30. Glue wooden figurine
31. Troubleshoot cellphone-to-PC connection (Nokia PC Suite)
32. Refinish sideboard
33. Repair end-table leg
34. Repair Metropolitan Opera pilaster [plaster has disintegated as expected]
35. Replace lampshade in living room
36. Get scanner and scan 35mm slides
37. Albumise photos after 1956
38. Resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict

The Best Greeting Card

The caption is "To someone of rare ingenuity and resourcefulness"

My best friend sent it to me when I returned from knitting camp. How great is that?

Your Own Private Lebanon *****UPDATED****

********ANOTHER UPDATE**********
Here is a link to Lisa's first installment write-up of her Beirut experience, on Pajamas Media. And here is a link to a video of the Channel 10 broadcast (warning: it's in Hebrew).

********UPDATE******************
Lisa's piece of reporting from Beirut will be broadcast on Israel's Channel 10 tonight (Wednesday, July 11), 8 pm news broadcast
********************************

Erstwhile reporter Lisa Goldman has been doing some stealth research in Lebanon, and has come back to tell the tale. We were concerned about her safety while she was there, so last week I received an SMS to announce that she was home safe.

That same day I got an email from my friend Miriam, who was visiting her family back in the USA, to tell me she'd be back on Monday with lots of news from Lebanon.

It took me a few seconds' of confusion before I remembered that Miriam's family live in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

Untangling Knots, Part IV

I am definitely making progress since I began Untangling Knots. The computer room is shaping up very nicely, although I still have many years' worth of paper files to go through. Hurray for apartment therapy!

You can see some notes on the photo at flickr.

"Everything is Deeply Intertwingled"*

*Theodor Nelson

Yet another connection revealed: My fairy godson Nominally Challenged regularly reads a blog by Lawrence Schimel. NC and I have known each other ever since he moved to Tel Aviv many years ago. During the course of that time, NC sang with a mixed choral group of Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs called Voices for Peace. I mentioned to NC that my niece Ellen Kushner had a nationally syndicated radio show of folk/ethnic/world music, and she might want to play the Voices for Peace CD on the air. Even though Ellen lived in Boston at the time, I sent a copy of the CD to a friend in New York for delivery to Ellen, because I knew Ellen was planning to move to New York and I wanted them to meet, which they eventually did, but by that time I had forgotten about the CD and I suspect my NY friend did too.

In the meantime, NC moved on from music-making to other art forms, and Ellen and her partner Delia Sherman moved from Boston to New York. (I suppose I'll have to go back to New York to make sure my friend delivers that CD, so it seems my personal delivery service vacation may be cut short).

Anyhow, yesterday, NC reported to me that Lawrence had posted text and photo about his lunch with his friends Ellen and Delia in Madrid.

Conclusion: Readers, no matter where you go, the Blogosphere is watching you!

Intermittent Nets

Even Mohammed didn't actually fix my computer's Internet problem, which returned yesterday afternoon and disappeared again this morning. I'm beginning to think my computer is trying to tell me something...who knows what? I'd better take this window of opportunity to discuss the wonders of the International Postal Service aka Snail Mail.

You devoted regular readers of this blog will recall that I went to Flahdida in April. While there, I learned that my half-grandniece-in-law at the dascha had cleverly ordered some items from the Internets and had them sent to her auntie's house, the very same Pippi Bluestocking I was visiting, thus saving the more costly delivery charges to Israel. She also cleverly told her auntie that the items could be mailed or delivered either by me or by auntie, thus leaving us several options.

Among the items was a beautiful and heavy book, which I declined to schelp to LA, NY, and Tel Aviv. However, I also thought it was too heavy for Pippi Bluestocking et al to schep, so I took it upon myself to pack it up and mail it. Having found among their impressive box collection a suitable book carton with a little extra room in it, and seeing as how said half-grandniece-in-law (HGNIL) is a budding fashion designer, I bought her a couple of sewing books that the local library had on sale in its Friends of the Library shop, and stuffed them into the box to fill it. Prowesslessnesslessness cooperatively drove me to the local Post Office (walking in Flahdida during daylight in April is apparently illegal), where I decided to send the books by sea for $26, rather than air, which would cost more than double. My experience has been that sea mail takes 6 to 10 weeks, and these books were not needed urgently.

Weeks passed. I returned to Israel. I went away again. I returned again, this time with the relatives we share. HGNIL announced that she had received a notice that the books had arrived in Israel! However, the customs people decided they had to open the package in the presence of the recipient, and the notice mentioned this detail. It meant she had to present herself to the Main Post Office in Haifa to observe the Examination of the Package, because her local post office does not have customs inspectors available for such important tasks. Haifa is about 1/2 hour's drive from the dascha, but she doesn't drive yet. Her father categorically refused to participate in this project, having previously suffered sufficiently at the hands of the Haifa Postal/Customs Authority.

So this past Monday morning I proposed a Family Outing. Her father was at work, her younger sister was at horseback riding camp. Why not an expedition to Haifa to recover the package? And so it came to pass, with Prowesslessnesslessness again driving me to a Post Office, this time to retrieve the same package we had mailed in April. Of course none of us knew where the Haifa Main Post Office was, but we managed to find it using clues like the address, a map, and some helpful road signs. The customs guys there were having a little party in their air-conditioned subterranean lair, trying to determine what a tubular package from China could possibly contain. They took a break from this entertaining pastime to retrieve the very package I had posted (in the Snail Mail sense, not the Blogger sense) about 11 weeks ago. When they opened the book package, they decided that HGNIL should sew them some new trousers, but would not have to pay any duty or penalty.

To celebrate the completion of delivery, we all went out for brunch by the sea, and found a tractor outside the restaurant (see photo).

Savtadotty's International Postal Service is now closed for vacation.

One Continuous Trip, Last Leg

Since June 7 I have been on one continuous trip, and this leg, at the dascha, is (hopefully) the last one. You see the dascha houses two of Little Bear's cousins, and after a brief reunion in the White City (Tel Aviv) we caravaned in two cars (mine rented for the purpose) up to the country for a few days of bucolic delights.

For my dear geeky readers, I will now summarize the past three weeks from technological point of view:

- England's electrical outlets, as we all know, determine the boundaries of The Empire, as do driving on the Other Side of the Street. Pippi Bluestocking is a MacIntos#h laptop user, and carefully acquired a three-pronged adapter plug on her very first day in London. It took her a bit of experimentation to determine that our flat had many wall switches to control the flow of electricity to every outlet in our flat. In one week we never did match up all of the switches to their outlets.

- European train tickets purchased over the Internet are printed and delivered to Israel by international courier service three days later. The return address is Coral Springs, Florida. Who would have guessed that Europe was outsourcing customer service to Florida?

- Upon arrival in Israel it took three days to acquire a three-pronged adapter plug for local electrical outlets, mostly because of our own conflicting priorities, the heat, and Little Bear's erratic napping, and the typical Israeli's casual attitudes toward all aspects of electricity other than its price.

- My Internet service inconveniently dropped to zero on our third day home. The helpful service guys at ActCom determined after a 45 minutes of collaborative testing (those guys have the patience of saints) that the problem was not my modem, or my connection, but rather my antiquated and useless antivirus program. As soon as it was uninstalled, by Prowesslessnesslessness (when your son visits you only once every two years, there are many son-specific jobs piled up: for example changing high up light bulbs, installing new DVD player/recorder), Internet returned! Hurray! A note on the tech support guys at ActCom: their Hebrew was flawless, but their English had an accent I didn't recognize at all. During the 45 minutes we were working together, I finally wormed his name out of the senior guy: Mohammed. I am so pleased that ActCom has Israeli Arabs on their tech support staff, and so sad that it's remarkable. I seldom encounter Arabs in the course of my daily life.

- Israeli cellphones that in theory accept sim cards for English cellphone service, in practice do not work in England with said sim cards unless the Israeli service provider (or someone knowledgeable) unlocks something in the phone's setup. If this is not done, local calls in London are routed through Israel, at an as-yet-to-be discovered cost to the subscriber.

- London's underground has been modernised (note British spelling...I'm so cosmopolitan!), but its ventilation system still does not account for warm weather. The transit system is superb, but fare calculation required for any given trip is equivalent to preparing a U.S. Income Tax Return (OK, OK, I'm not so cosmopolitan after all).

I have three more days to enjoy active grandparenting, and then I hope to catch up on my regular work: blog reading and commenting.