Another quiet day – we hit the Farmers’ Market in the morning and had very fresh salmon and corn for lunch.
The Shir Hadash Book Group (which Diane chairs) met over Zoom to discuss Philip Roth’s Nemesis; I’d read it when it first came out but didn’t reread it for the book group, so I was a little behind the curve for the discussion.
And the rest of the day went to High Holiday prep, Toastmasters work, and reading.
A quiet day, as I said.
Shir Hadash has been live-streaming its services on Zoom; we also record them and make them available on the Temple’s website at https://shirhadash.org/live. Diane and I usually attend the live service on Saturday morning unless it’s a Bar Mitzvah. Today was actually a B’nai Mitzvah with two kids from different families officially becoming adults, but it was my week to tend to the recording today, so we attended anyway.
It was a lot more interesting than I expected it to be – both of the teenagers were articulate and had written thoughtful speeches, and the logistics weren’t nearly as bad as I feared they’d be. Not knowing the families meant that the parents’ speeches when they were presenting the tallitot to the kids were less than compelling, but I am sure that was the case for anyone who didn’t know us when Jeff had his Bar Mitzvah, too!
It’s been another day packed with miscellaneous action and activity!
There was a letter from Chase Bank waiting for me this morning (well, it was really an email telling me to log into my account and look for a letter there – security, y’know) about my non-functioning webcam. They’ve given me preliminary credit for the purchase and, unless the merchant convinces them otherwise in the next two months, it’ll be a permanent credit. I look forward to putting the webcam onto the e-waste pile, whether I get the permanent credit or not.
We made another stab at Crispy Frico Chicken Breasts With Mushrooms and Thyme (see May 12 and June 21). The third time was the charm – I used the Anolon skillet for the stovetop work and the Lodge pan for the oven; I also used plenty of just-grated Locatelli Romano Pecorino cheese instead of a measured quarter-cup of Kraft Grated Parmesan. Nothing burned (though there was a little smoke), the mushrooms weren’t charred to death, and the cheese formed a nice (but not photogenic) crust on the chicken. And cleaning two pans with nothing burnt on is easier than cleaning one with a lot of residue.
I continued to work on the special High Holiday Honors processing for this year for Shir Hadash; some honors will be divided among two or more readers, so I have to make the code deal with that and create new cue sheets for the divided parts. I started out writing special-case code to handle the changes and quickly realized that I would be better off properly integrating things into my code and control files – now I have to undo the special-case code I wrote yesterday when I thought there were only a few exceptions for this year!
But I’m not working on any of that for the next 24 hours – Shabbat Shalom!
How was my day? Toastmasters in the morning, working on High Holiday Honors for Shir Hadash in the afternoon, and a walk in the evening.
There was a new recipe, too. We made Curry-Rubbed Cod with Corn, Summer Squash Saute and Tangy Cherry Tomatoes for lunch; it was easy and very tasty.
Happy Thursday!
They say that if you eat a frog first thing in the morning, the day can only get better from there. I didn’t eat a frog this morning, but I did have an early dentist’s appointment to have my permanent crown installed. It was quite uneventful and hardly uncomfortable. Traffic was very light, too – so light that I almost forgot to stop for the red metering light as I entered Highway 85! Fortunately, the drivers behind me stopped, too.
Last year, Diane and I decided we would skip ConZealand, the 2020 Worldcon. We’d been going to fewer and fewer events at the Worldcons we did attend, and we’d skipped 2019 in Dublin, and if we were going all the way to New Zealand we wanted to see more of the country than going to Worldcon would permit, especially given other travel we had planned for this year, and I forgot what else. So in February, we tried to sell our attending memberships – I was successful (closing the deal while on a bus in Costa Rica), but Diane still has her membership.
Today, we got a note from the Chicago in 2022 bid reminding us that, as Friends of the Bid, buying a supporting membership for 2022 and voting in Site Selection would get us free attending memberships and that the deadline was less than a week away. They also reminded us that it was going to be a contested election, since Jeddah, Saudi Arabia was also running.
We thought about it and decided that there was a fair chance we’d want to go, so I bought a new supporting membership in ConZealand (required to vote), and then we each bought memberships for 2022 and voted.
The Jeddah bid is interesting and the site is amusing, but I don’t think they have much of a chance (their bid questionnaire points out that “the sale of alcoholic beverages is prohibited in Saudi Arabia”, to name just one disadvantage). If they do win, we won’t get those free attending memberships, so our decision will be easy!