Shabbat, family visit

Shabbat services were well-attended this week. I think we have a significant number of interfaith families in the congregation, so I wouldn't have been surprised by sparse attendance.

This morning my rabbi asked us to mention, during this darkest part of the year, something that brought light into our lives. Most people mentioned family in some form. He pointed out that where there's light there's also darkness, and certainly all families have times of strife (including Yaakov's family, which we read about one final time this week).

My family is pretty good in that department; there are some tensions and disagreements, of course, but mostly we all get along pretty well. I'm lucky to have parents who still love each other very much and other family members who are doing ok. My niece still needs some basic socialization, but oh well. (Her younger brother, who used to be a real brat, has grown up considerably, and is better behaved than she is at the moment.)

We visited them this evening for dinner and exchange of loot. (It's not my holiday, but it's theirs. I can play along to keep them happy.) Everyone seemed to be happy with what we got them. We had one challenge: my parents had hinted that they'd like a new card table and chairs, but it's not practical to wrap that. So we stashed them on the porch, and I wrapped up a deck of cards. When they opened that I said "and here's something to play them on" and we brought in the real gift. That went over well.

My father had asked Dani to bring his laptop along (it's a Mac running Panther). They spent a while playing with it before dinner, and he liked a lot of what he saw. So the copy of Panther we got him went over very well when we gave it to him later.

On our way home, several blocks from my parents' house but not yet on the highway, I observed to Dani that the car felt a little bumpier than I know this road to be, and asked if he had a flat tire. (I had a specific nominee based on the feel of the ride.) That was in fact the case. It looked like it might be fixable with an air compressor (at least for the nonce), so I called my parents to ask the location of the nearest gas station with air. They said they had a compressor, so we went back there. (At tonight's temperatures, driving on it and risking damage to the rim seemed like a better idea than changing the tire.) It turned out, though, that the tire has problems beyond what a refill can solve, so I suggested that we're paying AAA for five service calls a year and it's awfully cold out. It didn't take much to convince Dani that we could wait inside my parents' nice warm house for someone to show up and do this for us.

We were promised service within the hour and someone showed up 45 minutes later. With the right tools (a real jack rather than the toy that came with the car, and a power ratchet set instead of a hand wrench) he had the tire changed in just a few minutes and we were on our way. It turned out that my parents know the guy, because small towns are like that. In the process of digging out the doughnut Dani stumbled on the air compressor that he'd forgotten he had (and I never knew about). Heh. Not that it would have helped this time, of course, but it's useful to know that it's there.

random bits

While we were in Sears waiting for Dani's new tires, he noticed a "bilingual tire gauge". Yes, it talks to you (in English or Spanish). It also has a decent-sized digital display. So I went looking for one that has the display but doesn't talk, because I have a lot of trouble reading a conventional gauge and thus do not check my pressure as often as I ought. Alas, there is a hefty surcharge for silence. So I got the noisy one and will hope for minimal annoyance.

Erik (the underweight cat) has developed a voracious appetite (for him) in the last several days. I'm happy to oblige, but I wonder what the difference is. I did buy a new type of food to try out on him on spec, but he's also chowing down on the food he had previously shown little interest in. Maybe he just needed some new flavors to jump-start his appetite. It's probably pretty boring (culinarily, at least) to be a domestic dog or cat, getting the same stuff day in and day out. Think back to childhood and those "tuna casserole again?" moments, and that probably wasn't daily. :-)

Dani and I finally saw The Incredibles this afternoon. Fun movie. They probably should have included a family pet, who would exhibit absolutely no powers but keep you wondering. But maybe I'm being influenced by The Crossovers. :-)

We saw a matinee and all the previews were aimed at kids. Is that because that's what's attached to this movie, or because you get different previews at matinees than at evening shows? There was also a short feature -- haven't seen one of those since I was a kid -- and it, too, was pretty clearly for the kids. Well-done technically; insipid artistically. (I didn't catch a title.)