Our spice supply was getting a little low; in fact, we were basically out of thyme. Our timing was good, though; Penzeys Spices was running a sale on thyme today – a quarter-cup jar was only $1, more than two dollars less than usual. So we headed up to Menlo Park today to restock.

It was a beautiful day, so we decided to take a walk before going to the store. We’d walked up and down Santa Cruz Avenue in Menlo Park many times, but only the stretch between El Camino Real and Draeger’s Market. Today, we went further.

Just across the street from Draeger’s, we found Fremont Park, built on the remains of Camp Fremont, which was built during World War I to train soldiers – it basically turned Menlo Park into a real city.

We continued walking down Santa Cruz Avenue for about a mile, then turned north and walked to Valpariso Avenue, which separates Menlo Park from Atherton. We couldn’t see much of Atherton; nearly all of the properties on that side of the street were fenced and gated.

We returned to Menlo Park and did our shopping at Penzeys; I left with only nine different kinds of spices.

This evening, we met another candidate for the associate rabbi position at Shir Hadash; he, too, gave an interesting lesson, taking about Og of Bashan and challenging us to delve into the Torah, Talmud, and even later commentaries about him. He finished the lesson with a poem by George RR Martin, The Last of the Giants – not the source material I’d expect from a rabbinical candidate, but appropriate to the lesson.

I’ve been ripping discs and converting them to MP4 files all day (again). I finally figured out an efficient workflow and converted all six discs in The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection in just a few hours.

Then my new toy arrived, a UHD-capable Blu-Ray reader. Our late friend John had given us a Blu-Ray of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty a couple of years ago and we hadn’t gotten around to watching it; I thought it would be only fitting to make that my first Blu-Ray rip.

Ripping it was easy; converting it has been a bit of a battle. I use Handbrake to do the conversions, and it’s happy to use every bit of CPU power it can get. It typically converts a DVD in about 15 minutes – no problem. A Blu-Ray requires a lot more work – so much that the CPU in the MacBook Air got hot (over 180F) and slowed itself way down to protect itself. When I started the conversion, it was running at about 24 frames/second; by the end, it had slowed down to 6 frames/second.

I’m going to use my Mac mini for the next Blu-Ray conversion; it’s slightly slower than the Air, but it has a fan and should be able to run at full speed for a lot longer.

Shabbat Shalom!

Shir Hadash will be bringing in a new Assistant Rabbi in July, and the first candidate visited today. She held two teaching sessions, and I was at both of them.

I was a bit out of place at the first session, which was part of a continuing series about Nashim: Remarkable Jewish Women. The series is always open to everyone; the only men there today were Rabbi Nico, our Temple President, and me (I think that’s two more men than usually attend). Our candidate led the session and took us through some of what the Talmud says about Beruriah; she sparked a lot of discussion and I learned a lot.

The second session was a short Torah Study and informal discussion with the Board; she talked about social justice and the interesting coincidence that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s initials, MLK, are also the root for the Hebrew word for “king”, melech (מלך). Again, I learned a lot and really enjoyed meeting her.

We have another candidate coming on Saturday evening; I’m looking forward to meeting him, too.

I’m glad I’m not on the selection committee.

I was really happy about my score for the final running of the Almaniac when I got the answer booklet – I thought I had only missed one question of 81, and I was pretty sure I had earned a trophy (I didn’t see a footnote which affected the answer for the one question I missed).

So I was crushed when I got the final result booklet and found that I’d missed two questions and wasn’t getting a trophy after all. I asked the Old Maltese to rescore my submission and got a prompt response.

The final question on the Almaniac requires you to add up the last digits of the page on which you’d found the answers for questions 5, 15, and so on. Easy – the sum was 48. And I wrote 8 on my scoresheet – the last digit of the answer, not the actual answer. Which was wrong, and cost me a trophy.

Oh, well – I still have a plaque from my best previous finish in 1993!

We had to be out of the house this morning for our housecleaner; Diane had a dentist’s appointment, so the timing worked out well. While she was in the chair, I wandered around the area (near Westgate Shopping Center) to get a little exercise. The weather was beautifully clear and not too cold; I was surprised to see snow on the East Bay foothills.

After she was finished, we went over to the Los Gatos Creek trail for more walking; the water was muddy and flowing very briskly. We saw a lot more birds in the water than we often do; there were lots of ducks, as well as a few more unusual birds (I think these are cormorants).

This evening, I went to Toastmasters Club Officer Training. It’s nice to be able to do it from home – the food’s much better here!