I don’t know how the winds were in the hills, but they were pretty tame where we live. We probably won’t unpack for a couple of days, just in case, but I have retrieved some of the candy already!

It was a beautiful afternoon, so I decided to take a walk. I had a small balance left on my Starbucks card and I wanted something sweet, so I used their app to order a small Frappuccino and walked over there to pick it up. There were a LOT more people in the store than I expected – I grabbed mine and left as quickly as I could.

I’d made one mistake, though – I hadn’t checked to make sure that autoload was turned off on my card. So, instead of reducing my balance, I added to it!

Starbucks Customer Service said they couldn’t reverse the transaction, but they could send me a check for the amount of the autoload. I’ve turned autoload off for sure now, and I found out how to get the balance on the card refunded when I bring it below $10…which will require yet another trip to Starbucks. But it won’t be anytime soon.

The National Weather Service issued a Red Flag Warning (extreme fire danger and very high winds) for tonight and tomorrow. PG&E has turned off power to tens of thousands of customers (mostly in the hills) around the Bay (not us). The news reports included suggestions that everyone have a go-bag packed and be ready to go – so we packed our bags this afternoon, just in case.

We also responded to the suggestions that everyone get their flu shots before the end of October – we went to Pharmaca in Downtown Los Gatos because it’s more pleasant than CVS or Safeway. It didn’t hurt that I had a $10 coupon for my birthday, that they gave us each a $5 coupon for getting vaccinated there, and they have a good selection of chocolate. I think we spent longer deciding on the chocolate than it took to get the vaccinations!

And in the interest of preparedness, Diane put the new chocolate in the go-bag. We’re ready!

Diane read Torah and I led services for Shir Shabbat this morning. I wasn’t trying to be quick, but we were finished in just over an hour, which gave us plenty of time to relax for the rest of the day.

I hope your day was good, too!

There’s an old joke about the lobbyist and the legislator. The lobbyist takes the legislator out for dinner and drinks and asks “if I made a million-dollar campaign contribution, would you back my bill?” The legislator says “Of course!” Then the lobbyist asks “what about if I only contributed a thousand bucks?” The legislator replies “What kind of public servant do you take me for?” and the lobbyist answers “We’ve already established that; now we’re just haggling over the price.”

I switched my cell service from Google Fi to T-Mobile a bit over a month ago because it was cheaper (Google Fi was $20/month plus $10/gigabyte plus tax; T-Mobile is $30/month flat rate). I didn’t consciously change my data usage, but now that I don’t pay by the gigabyte, I find that I am using a lot more data than I did on Google Fi – and I’ve started noticing that I’m pulling the phone out and looking at it while I’m out walking, which I wasn’t doing before the switch.

I used 2.45 GB during my last full month on Google Fi; I used 4.69 GB during my first month on T-Mobile, and I’ve used 1.88 GB in just 5 days so far during this billing cycle!

I guess my price is $10/gigabyte.

Shabbat Shalom!

We were supposed to go to Berlin this morning – that is, we were supposed to go on a virtual tour of the Hannah Arendt exhibit at the German Historical Museum with a group from the Santa Ynez Valley Jewish Community. But a few minutes before the scheduled time, the guide had to cancel because of Internet problems in Berlin, so we had the morning off.

And if it weren’t for the pandemic, we would have been in Cape Town for a Wine Tour before our big Africa cruise and photo safari.

But with the world as it is, I did the most useful thing I could – I text-banked for MJ Hagar and Joe Biden in Texas. I was given three hundred names at a time to contact (this is all done through the computer and a system called ThruText – my own phone number was never exposed); generally, fewer than 10 responded in any way.

Most of those responses were “STOP” or words to that effect – at which point I entered the person into the system’s opt-out list to ensure they never heard from us again (sometimes with a polite apology, sometimes not, depending on the nature of their response).

There were lots of “wrong number” replies – those got the appropriate response. And there were a few “I’m with Trump” (or equivalent) answers; they got a polite “thanks, have a nice day” (one person responded to that with “you have a blessed day, too”, which I appreciated).

And then there were a few people who had already voted – our goal is to get them to tell their friends or even to volunteer. I don’t think I got any volunteers, but one response made me very happy:

I’ve got all my family registered & voting. 17 of them w only one lone trump supporter. Got my grandsons to change their voter registrations & DLs 2 months ago. My husband & I voted from out of state by mail in & express mailed our ballots a week ago. My daughters & I just raised $65k for Emily’s list. I appreciate your volunteer efforts.

There wasn’t a canned response for that, but I did manage to type “Thank YOU!” just before the texting window for the day closed.

It was pretty easy – with a lot of time waiting for responses or more names to become available. The campaign has a Slack site to help volunteers be more effective and to answer questions about how to reply to “unusual” responses from voters.

If you want to help out, signup here. You have to read through a short presentation and take a brief quiz before being given contacts – but it’s worth it.

12 days left until voting ends. Vote Biden/Harris!