parsha bit: Mishpatim

There is a famous midrash in which God offered the torah to all other nations, but each asked "what's in it?" and found something to object to. When he offered it to Israel, they said "na'aseh v'nishma" -- we will do and we will hear, agreeing to abide by it even before knowing all the details. The talmud tells us that when this happened, 600,000 angels descended from heaven and placed two crowns on each man's head, one as a reward for "na'aseh" and one as a reward for "nishma". However, when Israel sinned with the golden calf, the angels desceded again and took the crowns back. (Shabbat 88a)

(Shabbat 88a is the source for the part with the angels. I don't know where the midrash comes from -- probably Exodus Rabbah, but that's just a guess. You'd think that, as famous as that story is, I'd have a citation to hand. Oops.)

Erik

Last night I attempted to water Erik, following the instructions (and demo) given to me by the vet. The results were... unfortunate. A skinny cat is sad enough; a soaking wet skinny cat looks truly pathetic. Poor guy. And once he got away from me, he wasn't having any towel action lest I use it to confine him.

I concluded that, at least until I get better at it, I need three hands. So tonight Dani helped me by operating the valve while I held (1) the needle and (2) the cat, and that worked much better. Erik was unhappy about the needle, for which I do not blame him in the least, but we were able to get a full dose into him.

Also tonight, for the first time this week, he ate canned food. He actually seems to have lost interest in the canned tuna; I gave him some earlier tonight and he picked at it, but when I later gave him canned food he wolfed it down. I hope that continues; he hasn't been eating as much (in sheer volume) of the tuna as he had been of the canned food, so I was getting worried. (Oh, and he's still not interested in baby food, though he'll lick it off his nose and glare at me for the affront to his hygeine.)

Early this morning I was woken up by him making vomiting noises, but there was no actual output. I guess that's one way for the anti-nausea drugs to work, but it's not the one I anticipated. :-)

"personal DNA"

The set of questions for this one was interesting. I'd like to know more about how they score it and, particularly, how fine the gradations are and how many labels they use in the results.

My Personal Dna Report

Best question in terms of pegging my reaction: a question about noticing what other people wear, with one end of the scale being "people wear things?".

(Summary: still INTJ. :-) )