I woke this morning to an email from Apple saying that they’d checked out the iPhone I sent them on Monday and they’d be crediting the full amount of the trade-in to my card. It was a much better experience than I had trading in my old computer last May (that one required many phone calls and tweets to Apple Support to complete the process). We sent Diane’s old phone in this afternoon; I hope they’ll be as quick dealing with hers!

I chaired the Shir Hadash Ritual Committee meeting tonight, and I’m giving a speech at my Toastmasters club early tomorrow morning; I have Zoom fatigue, keyboard fatigue, and screen fatigue, so I’m calling it a night.

I slept much better last night – it might have something to do with my having taken a double dose of Atarax before bedtime as preparation for my first allergy desensitization shot today.

The shot gave me no problems, though I am mildly annoyed that I have to carry a plastic card with a barcode printed on it to be able to check in every time I get a shot. They use a slot scanner, so I can’t put the barcode on my phone, either.

My trip to the clinic gave me a bit of a scare, though – I discovered who the new temporary tenant is at the old Fry’s Electronics in Campbell.

But I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised – Spirit specializes in finding large disused retail buildings and giving them a brief afterlife as popup Halloween stores, so the old Fry’s is a perfect fit. I wonder if they’ve taken over all of the old Fry’s locations – many of them would be thematically appropriate!

I didn’t sleep well last night, so I’ve been dragging all day. I’m going to blame it on the flu shot and hope that tonight is a bit more restful.

After surviving our hour with the trainer, we took a quick walk; one of our neighbors has some wonderful orange and pink roses, and they seemed like a good subject to try the new phone’s camera on.

I sent my old phone to a farm in the country Apple as a trade-in today; I also upgraded my T-Mobile plan to qualify for their best rebate on the new phone. I guess I’m committed!

And a follow-up from yesterday: unpairing, wiping, and resetting my Apple Watch brought the Mindfulness app back. And now that I have it on the phone, I’ve discovered it’s not terribly useful.

We got our flu shots today. It’s a bit earlier than we would usually get them, but we are planning to go to my 50th High School reunion soon, and it seemed like a good idea to prepare. We avoided the big drug stores (CVS and Walgreens) in favor of Pharmaca in downtown Los Gatos – there was no line and we each got a $5 gift certificate, which we immediately used to buy chocolate bars (they have a much better selection than CVS or Walgreens!).

While we were downtown, we popped into the Apple Store so I could look at the new iPad mini and show it to Diane. The store was surprisingly uncrowded for the Sunday after a phone release – so uncrowded that I was able to get some time with a tech to see if he could figure out why I couldn’t install the Mindfulness app on my watch. He couldn’t figure it out in the time we had available, which left me three choices:

• Ignore the Mindfulness app (probably the best choice)
• Do an on-line chat with tech support and see what they could figure out
• Reset the watch and set it up as a new watch to see if Mindfulness returns.

I’m trying option 3 – and it worked. Now I just have to recover everything else on the watch….

This evening, we had dinner and drinks in the Sukkah at Shir Hadash along with a couple of dozen other members – it was a very pleasant evening indeed.

Last year, I spent much of my birthday having my eyes examined, first in the ER at Good Samaritan Hospital and then at my ophthalmologist. All was well, but it was still a less-than-optimal way to spend a birthday (or any other day).

This year was more fun. I was the lay leader and board rep at Shabbat services this morning; Diane gave the d’var Torah, and we had enough people attend (via Zoom) to have a minyan. This afternoon, friends hosted an Open House in their sukkah. This evening, Diane and I went to La Pesca Blue for dinner, where I tried out the camera on my new phone again.

And on the way home, I stopped at Starbucks to collect my free birthday goodie (I usually miss out, since it’s only available on the one day, unlike most merchants who give you a week or two to increase the odds that you’ll come in).

A quiet birthday, yes, but that was just fine with me!