We did something unusual this evening – we attended an in-person talk at Shir Hadash. The speaker was Mark Oppenheimer talking about the Newish Jewish Encyclopedia, which he’d edited along with the other two principals of the Unorthodox podcast – their goal was to touch on all aspects of being Jewish and to be funny in the process.

The entries he read during his talk certainly lived up to that goal; I’d hoped he’d have copies for sale, but I guess that would have been too much to schlep, so I’ve ordered a copy. And we’ve put Unorthodox on our podcast queue.

He’ll be giving another talk tomorrow on his most recent (and much less funny) book, Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood, and I’m looking forward to hearing him again.

Beyond that, it was a typical Saturday – Torah Study and Shir Shabbat in the morning and lots of walks. The weather was pleasantly warm, and flowers are blooming!

Our first mixer was a Sunbeam that my Mom gave us; it had a nice heavy base, but its motor burned out sometime in the early 90s, so we replaced it with another Sunbeam. The new mixer has the same “Mix-Finder Dial” but that’s about all that didn’t change. In particular, the base is very light plastic, and the only thing keeping it in one place when you use the mixer is the five rubber feet on the bottom.

Two of those feet have gone missing over the years, and now when I use the mixer, I have to hold on to it to keep it on the counter. There are worse problems to have, but it’s annoying – so today, after making pretzels, I decided to see if I could find new feet.

My first stop was a local knife shop, Williams Cutlery, because they carry a lot of kitchen gadgetry and are nice people. They didn’t have feet, but suggested I try Appliance Repair Express across the street. I brought in the base of the mixer; they took it into the back room and found replacement feet – and gave them to me free. They even gave me a couple of spares.

I hope the mixer’s wandering days are over – I’ll find out next time I make pretzels.

Shabbat Shalom!