Monica

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But first, a nifty photo of migratory birds posted by spinozany from Reuters:

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Erik and Baldur always stand while eating, while Embla always sits. (This feels like the beginning of a logic puzzle: standers always lie, and... no, never mind.) I wonder why that is. Is it a gender thing? An individual-cat thing? Random but consistent for a given cat? Usually random and my cats are weird in their consistency?

Useless cat made me laugh out loud, disturbing the nearby cat. (Link from nancylebov.) Dani pointed out (after I sent him the link) that if you Google for that phrase (without quotes), the first three hits are to that page and the fourth is to some editorial comments about a certain Unix command.

I drove Dani's car home today (so he could stay and hitch a ride later). There are things you know intellectually that aren't ingrained no matter how long it's been: I kept reaching for the gear shift. Oops.

Embla has been less skittish lately, even cooperating when I pick her up. Whether that's because picking her up is likely to lead to canned food, or because treating hyperthyroidism is calming her down, I don't know. (Fortunately for me, Embla is utterly indifferent about foreign substances concealed in food, at least so far. So medicating her is easy.)

Plans continue for the Purim feast in two and a half weeks. I expect we'll get a bunch more reservations at tomorrow night's meeting. I did a test run of one of the looks-good-but-haven't-eaten-it recipes tonight, and it passed. I'm pretty happy with the way the menu is shaping up. I'm also grateful for the offers of help I've received.

Apropos of Purim (but not this event), I recommend megillah2a to anyone who's either following the Daf Yomi cycle or just interested in some of the talmud's coverage of Purim.

Our associate rabbi is starting a beginners' talmud class. Good! It's during the work day -- not so good for me, but if it works for others, I'm glad. I hope someday to take an evening class from him.

The person signed up to read torah this Shabbat fell ill, and I've been tapped to pull together something. I'll probably read rather than chant because that's faster to prepare, and everyone's ok with a partial reading given the circumstances. A couple years ago I wouldn't have been capable of pulling something together at almost the last minute, so that's progress! (Last time I got one not-too-long aliya up to speed (with chanting) in about six hours of work, and then it was just maintenance from there. I remember when it took six weeks.)

I received a call from my vet's office today. I had the last two appointments of the day, and gee the snow and sleet are looking bad, and if I wanted to reschedule they just wanted to let me know that that would be ok... yeah, I can read between those lines. :-) It's just routine checkups, so I suggested we let the vet and technicians go home a little early.

insomnia

This nicely-crafted poem by siderea is well worth your attention. I say this as someone who doesn't tend to like poetry, by the way.

The Discworld cake has been floating around for a few days, but if you haven't seen it you, you should.

This script for an election ad by osewalrus is brilliant! Now if only someone could produce it.

I stopped in at the vet's office on Thursday to pick something up, and whom should I see but my original vet? I only switched from him to another at the same office because he stopped working out of the Shadyside office (and then returned only on Saturdays). Now he's there one evening a week. At this point I would feel awkward switching from my current vet back to him; she has given me good service and a lot of attention and caring, after all. But wow, the really great one is back! So if I ever need an appointment and can't get one with her (she's only there one evening a week -- different evening), I have another option. I hope it lasts.

What is it with cats and plastic, anyway? All of my cats like to lick plastic. (They don't ingest it -- just lick.) Embla likes to rub against it. Huh?

Saturday I had lunch with the Orthodox (Chabad) family we visited once before. It was a pleasant afternoon. ( Read more... )

Yesterday we got together with other members of our Pennsic camping group to make some camp furniture. We have two problems to address: we need more seating, and we need places to put the miscellaneous clutter that accumulates on the tables. So we made chests, specifically sized to work well for seating at tables. Some people actually built them Saturday; Sunday was sanding and painting. Note for future: sawdust is, or behaves like, an allergen. Oops. We had fun, and the chests are very spiffy -- comfortable to sit on and good for storage. We made two "one-seaters" and one double (it's three feet long). The double will require two people to carry, but the singles are light enough to be moved by one person.

After dinner and the departure of most of the people, Dani and I stuck around for a while to play games with Alaric. The first game we played was Vinci (I forget who publishes it). It's a neat game, though I think it plays rather differently with three players than with the max of six. You play on an abstract map of Europe, and you play a civilization with two arbitrary characteristics (such as "extra points from grasslands" or "extra points from resource spaces" or "get extra temporary soldiers at the start of each turn"). On your turn you expand/attack, then score based on your position, then pass to the next person. Units that you lose due to conquest are not replaced, so over time your ability to score decreases. When you think you've reached the point where it's no longer worthwhile, you declare that you are going into decline and get a new civilization to play on your next turn. Your tokens from the previous civilization stick around, and score, until blown away by the other players. When someone reaches a certain score threshold you complete the turn and then high score wins. I ended up with civilizations that were fairly straightforward to play, and won by a few points. I would enjoy playing this game again with more people; I think more players would force faster turnover.

After that we played Carcassonne; I'm not very good at it, but it was fun. Sometimes I think I will never get a handle on the strategy for claiming fields. We played with an expansion that included some new tiles, all of the "double or nothing" variety. For example, by default, at the end of the game, a partially-completed city still scores some points; if it contains a cathedral tile then it scores more points if complete but none at all if incomplete. I haven't played enough to know if this actually adds anything, or if it's just needless complexity. I suppose it can work well if played hostily -- that is, play a cathedral into someone else's city that you think he won't be able to complete.

This weekend we watched more of B5 season four, specifically the end of the shadow war. This seemed abrupt in the first run; it seems even more abrupt now. I assume, but don't know, that if JMS had known he had a fifth season, he would have carried this war through this season and into the fifth, and focused more on the Earth and Minbari civil wars. That would have made a much better story, I think. We were both struck by how well the end of "Into the Fire" could have worked as the end of the series -- not that that's where he would (or should) have ended it, but in terms of the storytelling, it had "major wrap-up" written all over it.

Another show where watching the DVDs reinforces a past impression is West Wing. Watching season three on DVD so soon after the broadcast of season five emphasizes just how much better the show was in the prior season. I think season four might have been weaker than season three, but five was much much weaker than anything that came before. Sad.

My cats are psychic. (Maybe also psycho, but that's another subject.) I opened several cans tonight in the process of cooking tonight's dinner and prepping for Shabbat. They came running exactly once -- when I began to open a can of tuna. They couldn't have smelled it and reacted unless they have teleportation technology. And if they could teleport, the occasional wrestling matches would be shorter.

Purim is coming up soon. It is, among things, a day of some amount of silliness. I am looking for inspiration -- or better yet, stealable material -- for the "kiddush" to recite at the festive meal. (Kiddush is a blessing said, over wine, to sanctify Shabbat and other holidays. It's formal and has a fixed text and stuff -- except Purim doesn't have a kiddush, not being a Torah holiday, but that never stopped people from having fun.)

I wore a talit at services this morning for the first time at that congregation. (Well, I also wore a talit when I led Shabbat services there, but I was specifically told I should for that.) The people who were encouraging me said positive things and I didn't notice anyone giving me strange looks. Good. Now I can be consistent. They gave me an aliya, and then asked me to stay up there to lead concluding prayers. That was nice, and I do that part pretty well. (If Kriat Sh'ma weren't kicking my butt on the Hebrew I could lead the entire morning service. Note: we don't do a chazan's repetition of the Amidah, so there's no nusach to learn there. Everyone is presumed to be competent to daven for himself.)

I have located exactly two gas stations that serve diesel fuel within a couple miles of my home. (One's in Oakland and one's in Swissvale.) That's not enough for me to be comfortable buying a car with a diesel engine.