a good investment

There's a saying to the effect that if you lend someone $20 and you never see him again, it was probably a good investment.

There's this guy who comes around a couple times a year with a kid in tow and some sort of fund-raising project for said kid's school, and Dani gives him money. (One can raise questions about whether that's really where the money goes, of course.)

Recently he came by (not on schedule, and sans kid) with a story about how a family member had just died and he needs to raise money for a bus ticket and if he could just borrow $30, he'll repay it when he gets back in a few days, etc. That scam is as old as the hills, but Dani and I looked at each other and shrugged, and he gave the guy $30. After he left, we simultaneously said it was probably a good investment.

And it seems we were right; it's been two weeks and he hasn't been back to repay the "loan". But that's ok, because he can't reasonably show his face looking for money for the school any more.

shiva

We went to the shiva for Ray tonight. (The funeral was yesterday, so this was the first one.) They had a good-sized crowd, mostly members of their congregation (I assume). A few other SCA people were there.

I had failed to give some SCA friends a heads-up that there would be a short service there; I hope they weren't too uncomfortable. The service was actually longer than what I'm used to, for three reasons: (1) Reconstructionists include more liturgy than we do; (2) the leader was having the group do the "let's all read this passage together" thing in a number of places, and that's always slower than just one person reading; and (3) the leader threw in other commentary along the way.

After that was over we spent time talking with the family members. Esther seemed to be very glad that we were there. It sounds like Ray's last few days were frustrating but not painful. She seems to be coping ok so far, at least in front of other people.

One of the people I met at New Light a couple weeks ago was there, and I spaced on where I knew her from and had to be told. Oops. Context is everything, I guess. (She turns out to be a relative of an inlaw.)

The SCA household has a dinner scheduled for tomorrow night. Esther is in that household, so I was semi-expecting the dinner to be cancelled in deference to the shiva, but I haven't heard anything about it. So I don't know what our plans are for tomorrow evening at this point -- maybe going to the dinner and leaving early enough to go to the shiva?

short takes

According to the ad, next week's episode of "Mister Sterling" is the season finale. Who ever heard of a nine-episode season? I thought shows that started mid-year ran 11-13 episodes, not 9. I wonder what the prospects for renewal are. It's got some rough edges, certainly, but I enjoy the show.

And speaking of short seasons, I do wish they would get around to releasing "Wizards and Warriors" on DVD before my Nth-generation videotapes rot. It was only 8 episodes, and it was some of the funniest fluff fantasy I've seen. It aired long before most of us had VCRs (back when tapes were $8-10 apiece), and I still remember chipping in with some fellow college students to pay for tapes and shipping to get copies from a friend. (Hi Lee, if you're reading this.)

Mystery food of the week: I've encountered "buffalo mozzerella" several times in the last few years, and not at all before that. I was wondering today about the definition -- is it made from buffalo milk? Did it gain popularity in Buffalo NY? Does it have nothing whatsoever to do with bison? A google search suggests that it's made with buffalo milk; I didn't know anybody milked buffalo. This, in turn, led me to wonder if buffalo is kosher, as milk from a non-kosher animal is also non-kosher. (Remember, I'm a city kid who doesn't tend to know much about exotic species.) I gather from a second google search that buffalo is kosher but controversial for some reason; I didn't investigate. I would expect buffalo that has been slaughtered in accordance with kosher laws to be rare, but that's not an issue for milk. So ok, I can eat buffalo mozzerella. I'm glad to know that after the fact. :-)

Mystery food runner-up: today we encountered "Pittsburgh spots" on a menu. We had to ask which branch of the animal kingdom that relates to. It's a whitefish. The waitress said it was kind of like "Virginia spots", as if that would tell us anything. I assume they do not actually catch "Pittsburgh spots" in Pittsburgh; I'd be reluctant to eat anything that came out of our rivers. She didn't know why it's called that, though.

Last night at the shiva a member of Esther's congregation, who was also my calculus professor during my freshman year (he remembered me, scarily enough -- we'd run into each other a year or two ago), walked up to Dani and said something to him in Hebrew. The exchange (a few sentences) was going by too quickly for me to parse, though I did catch the word "Ivrit" (which means "Hebrew"). It turns out that Victor was asking Dani if he correctly remembered that Dani spoke Hebrew.

I think I know how to say "I don't speak Hebrew" in Hebrew, though I've probably got the verb conjugation or binyan wrong. (I don't think "binyan" has an English equivalent. Imagine that there's one verb that can mean either "tell" or "command" or "speak", depending on a grammatical tweak. A binyan is one of these forms.)

We had an On the Mark practice this afternoon, the first one post-kid (that would be lrstrobel and fiannaharpar's kid, not mine :-) ). Jenn didn't come because they couldn't get a babysitter, so we did some shuffling of stuff and pulled off a reasonable practice. Scheduling for the next little while is going to be tricky.