The math may not be accurate, but the statement is true, nonetheless (as long as you read your dates in American style, anyway).

They shouldn’t have

Diane and Jeffrey both got me things I wanted for my birthday, but I suspect they really shouldn’t have. Jeffrey gave me Iron Chef: The Official Book, and Diane got me a subscription to the Sunday New York Times. Both will keep me busy for many happy hours (and the subscription will require an increase in the household pencil budget, especially at the eraser end!).

The play was good; at the end, we stood and applauded (but only about 20% of the audience did likewise). And we even stuck around for the discussion afterwards. I would recommend it, even if the Merc didn’t.

On Sunday, we went knife shopping. Al, it’s your fault — I was happy with my dull knives until you started talking about your Global knife and I bought one. Then another. Then a sharpener. Yesterday’s purchase was a set of steak knives (which we mostly use to cut oranges) to replace the “never need sharpening” cheapies we had, and which had dulled over the years. We now have a set of Henckels steak knives…and I’m steeling them after each use. Sheesh.

We also tried to watch the first episode of Firefly, which we’d Tivo’d on Friday. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to check to see if there was a baseball game before the episode…and there was, and it ran long, so we only got the first 30 minutes of the show. It was still cute and showed promise — it is an unabashed Western in space (down to the music, and the barroom brawl to start the first episode); we’ll Tivo next week’s episode and see if it’s worth continuing to watch.

And I think we’re in the market for a widescreen TV. I’d love to get a plasma screen, but we watch too much 4:3 stuff for that to be a good idea (plasmas burn in over time, and 4:3 stuff causes uneven wear). The Samsung 507 DLP projection HDTV is awfully tempting….

It’s been weeks since I wrote a meaningful blog entry; today isn’t going to be the day, either, but I want to get back into the habit of writing regularly, so this will have to do.

Some random synapses are still firing, though….

We watched the first episode of the new season of Enterprise on Wednesday and enjoyed it. I was startled by Ho Shi’s new look when she dropped out of the duct, though — who does she think she is, Captain Kirk?

Last night, we were treated to a power failure around dinnertime; luckily, we’d already planned to go out to eat, so it didn’t actually interrupt cooking. And after dinner, we went out for a little walk and saw the Minuteman contrail in the sky; we didn’t catch it in time to see any colors, but it was still beautiful in black-and-white.

The weekend looks busy, with our first San Jose Rep show of the season, as well as the grand reopening of the Los Gatos Town Plaza, and Jeffrey’s first Bar Mitzvah tutoring session with the Cantor. Oh, and Sukkot begins tonight, and we’re on Oneg duty.

Shabbat Shalom and Hag Sameach!

Not during the fast itself, I hasten to add — but before and after. At least it’s a problem for us; we have a big dinner before Kol Nidre, and then a big break-the-fast after the holiday is over. And the next day (today), I’ve gained a pound or two.

It happens every year, too. Good thing I can eat what I want the other days of the year!

I had set my alarm early to call in to an all-day IBM meeting on the East Coast (normally, I would have gone there in person, but travel money was tight).

I dialed into the conference bridge, and after giving my password, the first thing I heard was someone saying “and they’ve bombed the Pentagon, too.”

My first instinct was to go to the Top Stories page on the New York Times’ website. But it didn’t respond. I tried CNN; it didn’t respond either.

So I turned on the TV, and a minute later, walked back to the phone and told the people in the (TV-less) conference room that I’d just seen one of the towers of the World Trade Center collapse.

Somehow, we actually tried to get through the first presentation, but no one’s mind was really on the subject. And after that, the call and meeting just sort of ended; there were more important things to think about.

Today…

I’m at a three-day IBM meeting on the East Coast. In four minutes, we’ll observe a moment of silence for those who were murdered one year ago today.