Rosh Hashanah started tonight – happy 5782! Our friends hosted pre-service dinner (yummy!) this evening – they timed it so that we’d be able to get home in time for the start of the service.

We had to watch from home, unfortunately, but unlike last year, it was live, with the clergy and choir in the Sanctuary (and they are all vaccinated, masked, and tested negative for Covid-19 twice in the last 24 hours). Having people in the Sanctuary made a big difference in the way the service felt to me compared to last year – it was much more real.

Shana Tova – may we all be inscribed for a good year.

I was right yesterday – I was ready for bed before Delta answered the phone or the web chat. I tried again this morning, and this time Delta offered to call me back instead of making me wait; they said it would be “less than 38 minutes”.

It was closer to 48 minutes, but once they called I was connected to an agent almost immediately. She was able to change our flight home from Richmond to the one I wanted (a one-stop into SFO which will get us home nearly three hours before the two-stop routing we’d been automatically changed to would have). No long explanations or negotiations needed, either, even though I was changing the destination airport – she had to put me on hold for a couple of minutes to “manually make the change” and that was it.

Every time I’ve talked with Delta, the agent has been superb, making the necessary changes with a minimum of fuss, and I’ve given them praise on the after-call survey. If only the process of GETTING to an agent were smooth….

We took a sunset walk this evening. I’m not sure if the colors are due to the fires or something else (the AQI is 61 at the moment, not too bad), but it was a nice time to be out walking.