weekend bits

I heard a great comeback the other day. Someone had moved in with an SO before marriage, and a holier-than-thou relative was giving her grief. The relative reported that she'd learned about this sinful situation from some mutual acquaintance who also disapproves, and what did she have to say for herself? Her response: "Were you... gossiping?"

Sukkot morning there was a bar mitzvah. I wasn't thrilled to hear that; usually that means the bar-mitzvah family takes over and the regular congregation feels pushed off to the side. So that's not a nice thing to do at a service that is the only option for the greater congregation. (On most Shabbatot we have two services, the one the regulars go to and the bar-mitzvah service that the family pretty much owns. I wish it weren't that way, but it is. On holidays we don't do that, though; there's one service.) However, it worked out; the bar mitzvah was very good and gave one of the best talks I've heard from a kid so far. I hope that was intentional -- that a particularly promising student was given the honor of having his bar mitzvah at a holiday service -- but I don't know if it was. They schedule those pretty far in advance, so he would have had to have been particularly promising two years ago.

Today Dani and I went to the Shadyside home tour. We've never been to one of these before. Other neighborhoods have them too (though I've never heard of one in Squirrel Hill). The tour consisted of seven homes, all of which are clearly objects of obsession for their owners. I had assumed the tour would consist of big impressive mansions (there are several in Shadyside), but it was a mix of mostly "normal-person" homes, though with often-impressive restoration work. One small house was obviously a bachelor pad; the "bedroom" was in a loft visible from everyplace except directly below it, with no curtains or the like. Not the sort of place you live with a non-romantic roommate, or your kids. :-)

Tomorrow we are getting a new furnace. It's the sort of thing you shold do every half-century whether you need it or not. :-) Seriously, we think our current furnace is running at about 50% efficiency, and the new one will be abut 95%, so that should bring some relief on the winter gas bills.

( Hebrew minutiae )

bootleg DVD

The DVD is in fact a bootleg. I sent email to the seller (via Amazon) pointing this out and asking for a refund (and return postage if he wanted the disc back). He wrote back last night (points for promptness) saying he didn't know it was a bootleg, thanks for bringing it to his attention, and he has no use for the disc given that. I received email from Amazon confirming the refund a few minutes later.

I don't know if the seller is being truthful about not knowing; it feels like it could be true, but that could of course be a standard "oops, got caught" response. It has the ring of truth to it. I responded and gave him a subset of how I knew it was a bootleg, saying that if he's buying DVDs from others to resell he might want to look out for stuff like this. (I did not mention all of the problems with the disc, in case he's in the fraud business but just not very good at it.)

I don't know whether I should now notify Amazon; were it obviously fraud I would of course do so, but this seller might just be naive. (Also, if he had asked for the disc back I would have notified them.) I'm also not sure what to do about feedback; I'm leaning toward 3 (neutral) and a terse description of what happened, good and bad (fast delivery, bootleg DVD, very prompt response, seller said he didn't know). I want to be fair to both future customers and the seller, and I don't have much information to bring to bear on the question.

(no subject)

Happy birthday magid and grouchyoldcoot! Sorry North Korea pre-empted your happy days.