My winning streak in Learned League didn’t last long; yesterday’s match was a tie. I missed this question:

The works of Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov include Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, and what 1896 play, his first major work, which, despite its title, is actually set somewhere inland in present-day central Russia or Ukraine?

The best I could come up with was “Deep Souls”, which was wrong. The right answer, of course, is “The Seagull”.

We spent the morning at Shir Hadash, first for Torah Study and then services; Diane chanted Torah. There was a “Lunch and Learn” afterwards, but it was so crowded we went home instead, arriving just before FedEx delivered my replacement camera, two days before I expected to receive it.

After lunch, we drove into the mountains to take advantage of Silvertip Vineyards' closeout sale; we came away with two cases of Pinot Noir and half a case of Syrah. As long as we were in the mountains, we also stopped at Burrell School Vineyards to pick up our November order. I hadn’t planned on tasting anything there, but the owner mentioned that their 2006 port was on sale for $10/bottle and was available for tasting. We left with three bottles (only $25!), plus our order. And we have another pickup party tomorrow afternoon!

I haven’t had a chance to use the camera yet or work on the home automation, but that’s OK – it was nice to have a mentally restful Shabbat!

The Learned League season started on Monday. I lost my first three matches, but this morning, I awoke to the pleasant news that I’d won Thursday’s match. I’d gotten all six questions right, so I was assured of not losing the match, but it was nice to notch the win!

We took two bags of clothes, a couple of cordless drills, and an old Apple TV to Goodwill this afternoon and then went to Costco to pick up a few necessities; it took less time than I feared it would, and we hardly bought anything that wasn’t actually on our list (just some Balsamic Vinegar, which is a staple so it doesn’t count as an impulse buy, right?).

I made a lot of progress on the Home Assistant conversion. I still don’t know why it decided my keypads have only 6 buttons, but I found out how to tell it that there are 8. And I migrated some of the key behaviors I’d set up in Indigo (for example, turning off all the lights in the kitchen when I turn off the kitchen counter light) – it’s fairly straightforward, but tedious. So far, I’ve been able to do everything in their UI instead of having to edit control files, which is a great improvement over the last time I tried to convert.

Small wins make me happy.

The theme of the Silver Tongued Cats meeting today was “Preparation or Lack Thereof” (our Toastmaster had been drafted to present at a conference for her job and didn’t have time to work on the meeting until yesterday).

I was on the schedule to speak today and didn’t really have a good plan for my speech until I got the meeting theme, and realized that it had given me a handle for the mandatory “Introduction to Toastmasters Mentoring” project. I decided to talk about being mentored as I learned improv – not about the skills of improvising, but about the “Yes, and!” outlook that improv is built upon.

I’ve given more organized talks, but I think that the title gave fair warning: “Winging It”.

Late this afternoon, I got back to working on Home Assistant; I have the alarm system and the Insteon switches defined and more-or-less functional. For some reason, the system thinks all of the Insteon keypads have 6 buttons rather than 8, so I’ll have to convince it of the truth. But not tonight.

I posted early last night so that I could get off the computer and ignore the election news. It’s not that I wasn’t interested, it’s that I knew that the returns would trickle in all night, that there would be pundits filling the time with information-light prognostications, and that watching wouldn’t improve my sleep.

Instead, we watched some of our backlog of Young Sheldon and Call Me Kat – not the most intellectual shows on TV (especially the latter), but just what we needed.

Today, we got our windows cleaned for the first time in quite a while. I’d found Pioneer Services through Consumers’ Checkbook, and they lived up to their reviews. Our windows are so clean that we’ll have to use curtains again!

And this evening, I went to the Shir Hadash Mens’ Club annual dinner and saw a very interesting documentary: 9th Circuit Cowboy, about Harry Pregerson, who served on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for more than 40 years. He was a real mensch – someone who used the law for good.

Back on Halloween, I confessed that I’d accidentally spilled DEET on my Panasonic Lumix FZ-1000M2 while I was in Africa and that I’d sent it off to Lumix Pro Services to see if they could fix it.

They couldn’t. They described the camera as “Unrepairable per heavy liquid damage – caused parts to glue together” and offered me a choice:

• Pay $50 for the diagnosis and $15 for return shipping
• Pay two-thirds of the price of a new camera for an exchange unit

I took the second option, and FedEx says that the replacement camera should be here on Monday. I even have its serial number already!

I expect the learning curve to be pretty shallow.