Tonight, I fell out of love – at least a little bit. Dinner tonight called for pasta, so I filled the pot with water, put it on the cooktop, hit “power” and “speed boost”, and then turned to weigh the pasta.

I expected to hear noises from the pot as the water bubbled and boiled – instead, I heard the cooktop beep as it turned itself off. And when I looked at it, there was an “E” on the display for the element I wanted to use. Trying it again didn’t help.

I brought up the “Home Control” app to see if it would tell me what was wrong – it said there was an error and that I should look for more information. Thanks!

Fortunately, the only thing I needed the cooktop for was the water, so I moved the pot to another element, which worked fine.

After dinner, I pulled out the manual and found the section about “fixing malfunctions”. It said that I should remove power for 30 seconds and try again – so I did, and everything seems to be working again, just as it had been at lunchtime.

Modern technology is wonderful until it isn’t.

This morning, Jeff was a guest on the “State of the States” show on SiriusXM Progress – if you’re a subscriber, you can hear the show on the SiriusXM app. He and the host talked about downballot races and redistricting – it was nice to hear him be referred to as an expert!

There was no Torah Study scheduled this morning, so Diane and I had time to take a longer walk than usual before services. The weather forecast called for rain off and on all day; we were lucky and took advantage of a mostly dry interval between 9 and 10am. We got sprinkled on a little bit, but we were also treated to a gorgeous rainbow.

The rain picked up soon after we got home – there were even some booms of thunder towards the end of the service, around 11:45am, which is unusual for this time of year. We had no plans to go anywhere, so we enjoyed the Shabbat quiet at home for the rest of the day.

I’ve always enjoyed seeing houses lit up with Christmas lights; my neighborhood doesn’t go overboard on decorations, but it’s still nice to see the lights go up after Thanksgiving, and I’m sorry to see them come down in January.

Shabbat Shalom! Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

My Toastmasters club doesn’t meet the last two weeks of the year, so I didn’t have a meeting this morning – instead, we went to the JCC and worked off the cookies we sampled yesterday to make sure they were OK to give to our neighbors.

We didn’t give all of the cookies to the neighbors, though; we had two left over. They didn’t survive the afternoon.

We also braved the crowds at the grocery store – we could have waited until tomorrow, I guess, but we found a parking spot and took our chances. We only had to wait behind one person to check out, so I think we won.

The weather forecast called for rain most of the day, but there was a nice long break during the late afternoon. We took advantage and got a walk in before things got messy again.

Happy Festivus!