me-ander

Maybe It's The Coaching?

2009-07-15T07:19:00.002+03:00

Last night I had a very strange dream. It's the sort of dream that, in the past, would have caused my day to begin in a total physical panic.

I dreamt that I was in New York and going to a Broadway show. Tickets to these shows are very expensive; heavily discounted they can still cost $60 or more.

In the dream, I got to the theater and couldn't find my ticket. I remembered having it in my hand, but suddenly it was gone. I checked my pockets and bag and pockets in the bag, but I was somehow calm.

"It's only money. It's not the end of the world."

And then I woke up, calm, but curious about why I kept my cool and didn't go into anxiety panic mode.

For the past few months, Yehudit has been coaching me through my anxieties. I still have this week's assignments to do. I hope the dream is a sign that I'm on my way...

Nu, So Call Me: Yenta, The Matchmaker

2009-07-14T13:16:00.003+03:00

I've only gotten one great success as a "shadchan," matchmaker. I fixed up my cousin with a good friend of ours. Then I wasn't really trying, nor did I expect any great success.

Now, I've promised to help a friend find a wife.

He's a youthful, energetic and physically active blue-eyed 83 year old, bilingual (English and Hebrew,) veteran Israeli. He's a traditional Jew, devoted father, grandfather and great-grandfather. He's the neighbor who fixed our television. He's a retired scientist, so he's not afraid of modern technology.

Please pass the information around. If you have any ideas or want to know more, please email me shilohmuse at gmail dot com

Thanks!

Let's make two people very happy, ad me'ah v'esrim!

Matchmaker, Matchmaker,
Make me a match,
Find me a find,
Catch me a catch,
Night after night in the dark I'm alone
So find me match,
Of my own.

Tizku l'Mitzvot; may you be rewarded with more mitzvot.

Separation Anxiety and The Cell Phone

2009-07-14T11:05:00.002+03:00

Old time social mores and manners articles and columns used to discuss the quantity of forks at a formal meal or how to calculate the value of a required gift. Today it's texting and other cell phone usage.

Last month, was it only a month plus ago?, when I was visiting family in the states, a New Jersey bus driver berated me for talking on my cell phone. I had been told to call my host as soon as I took off, so he'd know when to pick me up. I hadn't noticed the sign about "no smoking, no eating and no talking on the cell phone."

In Israel, besides smoking, there aren't too many forbiddens on buses. In the society I'm in, in which it's common to give and hitch rides, cell phone taking is barely accepted. Texting and a quick verbal message, along with apologies to the driver, are generally alright. Just make sure you have a silent keyboard.

I think that cell phones must be off, not on silent/vibrate, in the classroom. My students' attention spans and power of concentration were weak enough without a certain percentage eagerly awaiting a call. And that's besides using the phone as a cheating tool.

And at social events. It's antisocial to be busy with someone else on the phone while sitting around the table. If you'd rather talk to that someone else, why'd you show up?

Did I, Or Didn't I?

2009-07-14T07:20:00.002+03:00

The question concerns my washing machine. Yesterday morning, after it laundered a "heavy wash" (including pre-wash) at night, I turned off the switch, opened it and was flooded by water so smelly it was clear that none of the water had drained out at all.

So, I quickly closed the door and tried to get it going. The motor made noise, so I knew it was "alive," but the drum didn't spin and the exit hose didn't fill.

Next I tried cleaning the filter, and tons of stinky water flooded the house. I pushed the water out the doors, cleaning the tile floors at the same time. No wooden or pvc or lenolium floors here in my house, thank G-d.

I kept fooling with the dials and shaking the hose and clearing the filter and running the machine until the wash seemed clean enough to hang in the sun.

Then I gave it, and myself, a rest. I also queried my yishuv (community) yahoo list about washer repairmen. Today, I'll try laundering again. Let's see if the machine works. If not... I'll call in a washing machine doctor.

My Dream Job!

2009-07-13T16:13:00.002+03:00

Wouldn't it be nice to be paid to blog? If I had a day job, I'd gladly give it up to blog. The situation is that I don't have a day job, not any more. Lots of talents, skills, experience etc, but I'm not making a living from it.

Last year I heard about people who are paid to blog. I wonder how I could get into the field. It's a new type of public relations. I used to work in public relations, over twenty-five years ago. I've also worked in all sorts of sales positions. I have to stop dreaming and find out how to really get a job like this.

We've All Heard Of Wedding Consultants, Event Consultants, But Did You Ever Hear Of A....

2009-07-13T07:30:00.002+03:00

....prison consultant?

For the rich criminals in the know, you just can't serve your term without one. Gevalt!

Even in the United States of America, there's no real equality in the justice system.

It Has Returned!

2009-07-13T06:54:00.003+03:00

A couple of months ago, when construction was begun on the latest addition to our ever-growing, over-crowded school complex, we discovered that the bus rest-tremp stop across from the supermarket and around the corner from the main bus stop had disappeared.

The powers that be had just lifted it up and "carried" it to the temporary school bus stop. We were livid. That little structure had been our protector and rest stop from sun, wind, rain and exhaustion. Especially after our bus service was reduced, meaning that the buses no longer went up to our neighborhood, we needed a place to safely wait, sheltered from the elements.

When the powers replied to our complaints with:

"Be patient. A parking lot is being prepared."

All I could say and think of was that French Queen, Marie Antoinette's:

"Let them eat cake!"

A parking lot services those with cars, not us the "carless." Yesterday, I was overjoyed to see that we again have some shelter.

Thank you...

How To... Havel Havelim

2009-07-12T12:18:00.002+03:00

Here's the ultimate "How to..." from our "How to..." Maya. Yes, it's Maya's debut Havel Havelim.

Well, Maya, this certainly makes you a veteran Israeli jblogger!

She did a great job. Take a look.

If I Get So Many Compliments Now, Why...

2009-07-12T06:49:00.002+03:00

If I Get So Many Compliments Now, Why...

...Why was I considered overweight years ago when I weighed twenty pounds (8 kilo) less?

This peculiar situation has been troubling me a lot. I was considered "too heavy" all my life. It certainly didn't help that I was a teenager when Twiggy was the idealized figure.

My self-image, even when I was thirty and forty pounds less than my present weight, has always been that of a fat person. I truly wonder if that contributed to my obesity. It became a self-fulfilling prophesy.

I felt comfortable even at my fattest. That's bad. And I was in no rush to get the weight off. I was on the obese charts for about fifteen years. That's a long time.

Don't call it diet... Since I've changed my way of eating, I've been losing weight. I can't predict how much more I'll lose, and I tell people I counsel/coach that they shouldn't make strict goals. Just find a healthier way to eat and accept the results. Temporary diets are the worst, because the resulting weight loss will also be temporary.

Strange Coincidences

2009-07-11T21:54:00.000+03:00

Just before Shabbat I found the time to glance at a few blogs, among them Seraphic Secret. There I read a post about the most amazing young artist, Moshe Hammer, Z"L, of California, who had been killed in a tragic accident a few years ago.

I was so impressed by the examples of his work which illustrated the post and Robert J. Avrech's more complete article in the Jewish Press. Davka, on Shabbat our guests' last name was also Hammer, but they don't know of any relationship.

And a different sort of coincidence...

After Shabbat I came across an op-ed piece by someone who also does sketches, granted a totally different style and subject.

Michael Arthur wrote for the New York Times about how he became an artist.

The pen and ink drawings of Hammer and Arthur are very different. Arthur's focus on the people and leave lots of empty space. Hammer's are to illustrate religious texts and blessing. The pictures are complex and the space is full of Hebrew prayers and text.

I enjoy them both.

Shavua Tov U'Mevorach

Have a Good and Blessed Week

Losing A Different Sort of Weight

2009-07-10T18:22:00.002+03:00

It's no secret that I've been losing weight and blog about it a lot. My neighbors have been greeting me with:

"Nice to see you, at least what's left of you."

I'm glad that they notice, and I know that there's lots more to lose. My daily eating has changed, and I don't know what weight will become "my weight."

But there's something else that's lightening, and it's because I'm being coached by Yehudit. I don't want to go into any details, but let's suffice that the blogging me is just one (OK, considering my varied blogs) or a few of the various aspects of my personality.

There are things I must change, and it's not just my figure. Yehudit is helping!

They Asked For Chulent

2009-07-10T12:00:00.002+03:00

Very rarely do I make chulent, that slow-cooking stew, a lot of people eat as part of, or the main part of, their Shabbat day meal.

My family doesn't like it, or they don't like what I used to make, so I don't cook it.

But yesterday my neighbor who arranges meals for those who need them asked me to make someone chulent. If that's what they want, that's what they'll get. Here's the new version:

A couple of handfuls of mixed dry beans (lima, kindney and chickpeas.) Presoak, rinse and soak again for quite a while to soften.
A package of turkey wings, better ratio of meat to bones than turkey drumsticks.
Potatoes
spices, peppercorns, ketchup and whatever

After the beans have gotten soft, cook them up with the turkey and water. Then add the potatoes and ketchup and more water. If my pot hadn't been so full, I would have added carrots and onions.

It smells good!

"Retraining" My Yahoo

2009-07-10T06:20:00.002+03:00

Yesterday, sans food and water, because I was fasting, I must have clicked spam instead of delete, because I discovered all the blogger comments in the spam box. I check my spam box before deleting messages, because for some peculiar reason yahoo takes an irrational dislike to some senders. For a while, it was sorting my very own mail, sent from the same address, into the spam box.

It took a few weeks of rescuing the letters, moving them to the inbox and then opening them for yahoo to recategorize them as legitimate mail.

So, now I have to do this all over again with my blogger comments. It doesn't matter who is listed as "sender," they all go to spam.

TV Kashrut Problem

2009-07-09T20:50:00.002+03:00

There's a very popular cooking program on Israel's Chanel 1, Chaim Cohen's "Shum, Pilpel v'Zayit," "Garlic, Pepper and Olives." I have no idea if their studio kitchen is actually kosher, or sort of kosher or doesn't even pretend to be kosher.

I never saw him demonstrate a recipe combining meat and milk or some traif ingredient.

The problem is something that someone who only knows "the basics" of kashrut can get caught in. He used liver in a recipe as if if was regular meat. Liver requires a special kashering process, burning over a flame, so the blood will be burnt, destroyed. Other meat and poultry (poultry livers are kashered as beef livers) are soaked and salted.

Especially nowadays when we buy our meat and poultry, all kashered, cut and frequently frozen, ready for cooking, or even cooked and ready to eat, many people are unaware that liver demands special care. I've been married almost forty years, and I only kashered liver once. We buy chopped liver ready-made, and that's a rare week.

Liver is sold frozen next to all the other meat parts, which are already kashered. So I wonder if all the consumers realize that they have to treat liver differently.

Insulting! Disappointing, too.

2009-07-09T16:55:00.002+03:00

I haven't been very coy about my age. And I certainly can't be if I want to enjoy the discounts.

My parents were always asked to show proof of age when they wanted the "senior discount." They've always, and still, look younger, much younger than their ages.

This week I finally began using my discount bus ticket (had to use up the old one first.) I was devistated. Nobody, not a single driver has questioned me about my rights to senior discounts!

I Didn't Realize I Was So Tired

2009-07-09T09:16:00.002+03:00

My alarm gets me up early, at 5 something am, before 5:30 even. My general routine is to turn on the computer and while it's "wariming up," I make my coffee and start drinking my water. By the time I get to the computer, it's usually ready for action.

Today is a fast day, the 17th of Tammuz. That means: no coffee and no water. So, I figured I'd lie down on the couch for a few minutes.

...three hours later I woke up!

It's not like I've been all that busy this week. I haven't been busy at all. Maybe I just go to bed too late for someone who wakes up at 5 something am.

Amazing Email

2009-07-08T22:20:00.002+03:00

The modern world is really something.

Here in Shiloh we have an email group. It's used for all sorts of things, like "lost and found," getting rides, jobs and even babysitters. I used it to give away some shoes and even food we couldn't finish.

We announce celebrations and tragedies. We have "discussions," too.

This morning I realized that I had to find a new volunteer to bring the Torah Tidbits before Shabbat. The neighbor who had conscientiously and reliably brought it to Shiloh every week for many, many years had just moved to Jerusalem. Somehow, I had been entrusted with the job of finding a replacement.

I wrote up a bilingual announcement. English, because the English-speakers are familiar with Torah Tidbits and probably read it. Hebrew, because you don't have to a knowledgeable of English to do a great mitzvah.

Within a short time, there was a reply by a neighbor who works in NDS, an enormous high tech company. She wrote that she sees boxes of TT's delivered every week and wondered if we could get it that way.

I quickly called Toni, who's in charge of TT distribution. Yes, it would be fine. NDS is second only to the Israel Center in the number of Torah Tidbits distributed, over 1,500!

So, G-d willing, tomorrow my neighbor will take over the job!

Tizki l'Mitzvot.

May you be rewarded with more Mitzvot.

$elebrity, Isn't It All About Money?

2009-07-08T07:59:00.003+03:00

No doubt that this NY Times opinion piece is right. Michael Jackson, like Elvis Presley, is worth more dead than alive.

Dead celebrities are easier to market. And it's harder for them to sue from the grave.

Whoever gets control/custody of Jackson's kids will also control a lot of money.

MJ's Kids, Whose Children Are They?

2009-07-08T06:58:00.002+03:00

Who are the biological parents of Michael Jackson's kids?

The children don't look like his early pictures at all? They also look too dark to be the children of Debbie Rowe and Arnold Klein, his dermatologist. Though, of course, that's just my guess.

No doubt he chose the biological parents to create the look he wanted for his children. They are good-looking kids.

Welcoming A "New" Neighbor

2009-07-07T22:27:00.002+03:00

"New" is in quotation marks for a reason. He has been in Shiloh for about eighteen years. He came during my days as a member of our "Va'adat Klita," Acceptance Committee. I always feel a special connection with those I "accepted."

For many years, whenever I needed a community announcement translated into Russian, he was my translator. And when I was given a budget to promote my "ripped flag," he made it trilingual with his Russian translation.

When I welcomed him at the party, I mentioned that he was our Russian translator, he hurriedly get the packet with the trilingual card and ripped flags. I was so move that it is something that means so much to him.

For all those years he lived in temporary housing down the hill, near Tel Shiloh. A few years ago, we heard that he bought an old house in my neighborhood. The renovations went slowly, very slowly.

Considering the housing shortage here, it had seemed a wasted house, when so many families were desperate for one.

Well, he finally moved in, and tonight was his "Chanukat HaBayit," the ceremony to "dedicate" his new house and bless it.

May it be a blessing for all.

Another Bad Haircutting Story

2009-07-07T07:01:00.003+03:00

I guess there are all sorts of ways to suffer from bad haircuts.

I returned to Shuki Zikri Duri haircutting school for what will probably be the last time.

Davka, this time the actual cut was OK. Being that the student didn't seem very experienced, the teacher did most of the work. This young student seemed repulsed by having to wash my hair. He (yes a male; I didn't request a female, which I heard someone do when I had just finished) did an awful job. I'm sure that my hair wasn't properly rinsed.

Another problem there is that the combs and brushes come out of the student's private bags, and they don't seem to be cleaned at all.

By the time I came home I felt that my head and body were "crawling" and itchy, if you get the drift of what I'm saying. So, I took a good (water-wasting) shower and shampoo and combed my hair with a fine-tooth nit-picker metal comb when it was all soapy and creamed. I didn't have my reading glasses in the shower, so I don't know if anything was removed. Then I used a blow-dryer to bake it all, if there was anything to "bake."

Afterwards, B"H, I felt "normal." We'll be having new next door neighbors by the time I need my next haircut, and she's supposed to be a trained professional. Hopefully, she won't charge too much. So I'll give her a try. Convenience makes a difference. Also, my hair is covered for religious reasons, so I don't need the best haircut.

Greeting Michael Jackson

2009-07-06T17:38:00.001+03:00

Very Helpful Kids

2009-07-06T06:08:00.003+03:00

As I was leaving Ofra, to find a ride home, a ride came to me. My friend was pulling into the gas station. As soon as she stopped and turned off the engine, her two very energetic little boys jumped out and very professionally got to work!

My Coaching

2009-07-05T22:12:00.002+03:00

This should be considered a "double" post. I coach a diet support group, and I'm being coached.

Yehudit is trying to coach me into a new, successful more confident me. I'm probably a tough cookie to break those "blockages." She's great. I'm just a difficult person.

It's funny. At my 60th Birthday, my kids produced a PowerPoint presentation and mentioned that I'm the only person getting senior discounts who still doesn't know what she wants to do when "grown up."

The only jobs I've ever kept for any period of time, ten years plus were my teaching jobs. I was the girls gym teacher in our Shiloh Elementary School for thirteen years, and I taught EFL English in the Beit El Yeshiva High School for eleven years. Other positions lasted less time; though a couple were for four years. I used to work at a few jobs simultaneously; none full-time, of course.

I'm really enjoying my diet coaching, and the group seems happy with me, too. But to make money from it, I need quite a few groups with enough participants. If anyone is interested and willing to organize, let me know. Of course... a special deal for the organizer.

We're In The New York Times!

2009-07-05T20:11:00.003+03:00

All I wanted was to find a New York Times article about Bibi's big mouth to link in a Shiloh Musings post. It's big news here in Israel that our Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu used the dangerous phrase "two states for two nations." I couldn't find it in the NYT.

But I found the following on the "Israel page."
Headlines Around the Web

What's This?
The Associated Press
July 5, 2009
Israel's Barak Seeks Peace 'Understanding' With US
The Washington Post
July 5, 2009
Settlements, regional peace on Israel-U.S. agenda
me-ander
July 5, 2009
Choosing The Best Melon
Global Voices
July 5, 2009
Israel/Palestine: Al Jazeera Journalist Detained
Mystical Paths (aka mpaths.com)
July 5, 2009
Cute Only-In-Israel Video