parsha bit: Toldot

The torah tells us that Yitzchak grew blind "from seeing". What does this mean? Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah said that his eyes grew faint from seeing the evil deeds of his son Eisav. According to him, God said to himself "should Yitzchak go out into the market and hear others speak of Eisav's evil deeds too?" So God dimmed his eyes so that he would stay home and be spared the embarrassment. (Genesis Rabbah 65:10)

Pittsburgh: not for novices

Oh man, do I feel sorry for the driver I was just behind.

I was returning from a friend's house, driving eastbound on Penn through East Liberty. There are a couple places where the left lane becomes a forced turn, so naturally the fellow from Florida tended to stay in the right lane. Then we got to Penn Circle, where there are three lanes and he took the center one -- a move that would be safe in many places, but in this case is a forced right turn. He realized that he had to be in the left lane to go straight and crossed the painted line; fortunately I anticipated this and he had room.

Then there is another forced turn from the left lane, and then we got to the other side of the circle, where the right lane has an unlit "buses only" sign. He went into that lane, and this time there was a concrete barrier instead of a painted line.

I sat there at the red light wondering what he would do and resolving to make noise and gesture wildly if he tried to go straight (which I suspect is hard to recover from). Far better for him to make the illegal sort-of-left turn and then glitch back onto Penn in front of me. The only thing worse would be if he made the illegal right turn onto the one-way circle.

Just as the light turned green he started to back up. Ok, that works too. :-)

I live here and at some point in time I've made all of those mistakes. The signs aren't always easy to see at night. However, I do not have the distinction of having made all those mistakes in the same trip. Poor guy.

thankful

I am thankful for many things, including:

Family, most especially a loving husband, parents who are happily married and pretty healthy, and the cats.

A wonderful rabbi who teaches me, encourages me, shares with me, and gives me special opportunities not available to others.

A job where I am able to do what I'm good at and where I'm apparently well-respected by people above me (and at least some peers). There are certainly challenges when a small company is bought by a mega-corp, but we have also retained some of what made it good to be at that small company.

A passion, not related to my technical career, that challenges me, excites me, sometimes scares me, and forces me to really think and evaluate -- and that brings rewards for its own sake.

The opportunities available to me through LiveJournal: a place to share ideas and interact with interesting people I might not have met otherwise. Writing is important to me; the sheer act of writing something down helps me analyze it. I don't need LJ to write, but I find that having an interactive audience pushes me to write.

Comfort++ -- health (physical, mental, spiritual), financial grounding, and the ability to spend time doing things I enjoy.