I Guess I Needed The Sleep

Last night, about two hours before my usual bedtime, I found myself unable to concentrate/stay awake.  I decided to take the hint and go to sleep.

My husband and father were still up.  They had been home all day, while I had gotten up well over an hour earlier than usual, tremped to the pool in Neve Yaakov, then met my friend downtown Jerusalem, walked around, shopped etc and then took the 4pm bus home.  Then I made dinner, washed the dishes and started to feel that I had had it for the day.

I guess I was right, since I slept all night and didn't feel the need to get up before my alarm went off.

Sometimes sleep is the best medicine.

There were some funny things that happened yesterday, like my bag buzzing all the stores for "stolen goods."  At Hamashbir Letzarchan they wouldn't let me go until I could prove that I hadn't shoplifted anything.  Golf and Fox didn't inspect or care.  The guilty party was a dvd I had bought for ns10 in Big Deal.  Luckily I thought of it and proved that it caused the alarm.  Because of that and/or other delays I missed the 3:30 by about five minutes. There were a number of stupid time-wasters.  But the 4pm was so empty that I felt that it should have had more riders, so I was glad to be on it.

Presidents' Daughters and Jewish Men

Chelsea Clinton isn't the first U.S. President's daughter to marry a Jew.  Caroline Kennedy did it years ago.

Other prominent non-Jewish families have welcomed Jews in recent years like the Trumps and Sarkozy's.  With Sarkozy, there are a few differences.  First, Sarkozy himself has a partially Jewish background and two that it's his son who has married a Jew, unlike the others.

There's also the suicidal daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley.  When I look at this miserable family, I'm reminded of when one of my cousins pointed to his WASPy non-Jewish wife and their daughters asking: "How can they have come from her?" 

When I  was growing up, it was rare for Jews to marry out.  The first time one of my cousins did, it was scandalous.  Then it became more common and there was no more talk of boycotting weddings.  There's hardly a branch of my family without non-Jews.

Some of the young Jews have no idea that they are Jewish, considering that they've been raised as cristians.  And some branches no longer have Jewish descendants, since male cousins' sons married non-Jews who didn't convert.

It's so sad for the Jewish People.

There Are Times I Just Don't Like To Interfere

I get a kick out of the conversations between those who comment on my blogs.  There are times, I just let them go at it without my interference.

Right now, some people are arguing over the facebook version of one of my Shiloh Musings posts.  I know them and have no doubt that this is an argument they've had before and it has nothing to do with what I wrote.  It's funny how the "social media" wakes up all sorts of things.

Yes, I'm on facebook, but I don't "do it."  I joined it and twitter just to try to get more people to read my blogs, especially Shiloh Musings.  So I guess people are reading the posts without visiting the blog.

Ken yirbu, let it all multiply.  Hmmm sounds better in Hebrew.

Something New for The JBlog Carnivals

Hopefully, you'll notice a new line, few words I've added to the sidebar,

• Info and Posting to JBlog Carnivals

The one and only Soccer Dad, the founder of Havel Havelim, has escaped his retirement from jblog carnivals and come to the rescue.  He's concerned that it's getting harder and harder to put together a blog carnival, since the site which had made it easier than easy isn't giving all those free services we had gotten used to.
 
Just click

• Info and Posting to JBlog Carnivals

 and you'll see what he has started now.

Havel Havelim, The Balagan!

Cross-posted on Shiloh Musings   It's Wednesday morning as I begin writing this edition of the Jewish Blog Carnival, Havel Havelim #246,  I'm a nervous wreck.  Now, considering that I've probably hosted more Jewish Blog Carnivals than anyone else, when you add up the HH's to Kosher Cooking Carnival and JPIX, this should be a cinch.  Sorry, but there's a problem.  We've become very dependent on the services of blog carnival, and it hasn't been forwarding posts.  And it hasn't been sending receipts either.  Considering that new carnival editions are still being posted on its site, I may receive its instacarnival, the special cheating html for no effort carnival hosting.  But I can't wait until Friday.  So I'm composing this one on yahoo and saving it as a draft.   I can mail my posts to blogger, bli eyin haraa, so they'll go up that way.  If I do get the instacarnival, that too will get posted.  I received an email from someone who hosted a recent blog carnival that no instacarnival came to her, but she got listings of submitted posts.  I didn't even get those.  PS no instacarnival either! Why "Balagan?"  Simple, it means chaos, and this has been a chaotic week for even the most experienced blog carnival host. It's not only Havel Havelim which has challenged my sanity.  As you can see in the above picture, I had to run local elections on a windy bench late at night when we couldn't get into the school.  Later on we did get in, so I hope that this Havel Havelim will have a happy conclusion. Now for Havel Havelim # 246! Havel Havelim is the most veteran of the jblogger carnivals and probably one of the longest running blog carnivals there is. Blog carnivals are like "floating" internet magazines. They float from blog to blog, like "floating crap games," l'havdil. Havel Havelim, the international jblog carnival, was established by Soccer Dad, and is now run by Jack. The term "Havel Havelim" is from Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, which was written by King Solomon, who built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and later on got all bogged down in materialism and other "excesses" and finally realized that it was nothing but norishkeit, "havel" or in English "vanities." I think that King Solomon and his father King David were the original "bloggers." The books they wrote, when you take them chapter by chapter, can easily be described as blog posts. The stones they used to write on made them last, so that we can read them now. I doubt if today's technology will preserve our words for so long. To make my your great efforts worthwhile, please be sure to post about this edition and pass the link to everyone possible. Due to the chaotic and uncertain nature of this edition, I am going to welcome you into my panic state and present mysterious uncredited blog post titles for your reading pleasure.  This way there's a good chance that you'll become acquainted with new blogs.  That's the point of blog carnivals, meet and get met!  Think of it as a "costume party" where everyone's masked.  That's right.  I'll just post the titles, and you'll take a look at the post.  I hope this way you'll get to meet more and more blogs. Here goes: Murder charges for man who attacked terrorist I drove all night, to get to you… Jlembusmap.com Emotional Insanity Netanyahu: Settlement Freeze is Temporary, One Time Such a Treat! Coming together Street Art and Grafitti in Tel Aviv Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark Celebrating Gratitude Ray, If I Had A Vote, I Would Give It To You "I'm the Oldest Person I Know." Come to the Israeli Blogger's Night in Nes Tziona The Jewish Prisoner: Past, Present and Future Yelling on The Bus Change the Game Plan to Bring Gilad Shalit Home Oh, you don't work? and then there were none.... The Righteous Tale of Chiune Sugihara All the World's a Kitchen: Cantor Shares Music and Tradition "In Bubby's Kitchen" Getting Cold in Them Thar Hills Guest Post: Stop and go Seventy Paths Sourdough Bread with Cornmeal Sharing Spaces Flu Vaccine - Episode II No Need For Paul Revere When You Have Email Why Wasn't He "Yisrael?" Torah Portion of the Wee... Freedom of religion for all in Jerusalem – except women? Gantseh Megillah Nostalgia Sunday – JNF-KKL stamp club Listen to David Broza! Hijacking Victim Recalls: I Wanted to Go to Entebbe My first Israeli recipe ever: Ketzitzot! The city I live in isn't exactly jumping with exci... Is Attraction Important? Community Quilt Are Israelis rude? Is Judaism a Cult? הבטחתם יונה You Promised a Dove Loss of Innocence Why We (Still) Need Checkpoints What should be on the Rabbi's agenda? My Judaism Water saving measures actually save water! Young Voices no connection to Voices Magazine Technorati tags: haveil havalim, blog carnival. And don't forget: Please mail the HH link to all of your friends and put up a blurb on your blog to encourage your fans to visit Havel Havelim. Nobody seems to know why blog carnival has reduced its services.  I didn't hear from them at all, not as blog carnvial host, nor as blogger and they didn't even reply to my letter. This upcoming edition is now "closed."  The Israel Situation hosts next week's, and I suggest emailing them directly with your link, subject: HH. For the next Kosher Cooking Carnival, which will be at kosher.com, send your links to shilohmuse at gmail dot com with KCC as subject, and I'll forward it.  Use the same address if you'd like to volunteer as carnival host. If there are any correctable foul-ups/mistakes, please let me know, thanks.  Considering that nobody knows if bc will ever return the services we've become so dependent on, I'm willing to mentor/coach other blog carnival hosts in how to get a carnival done under today's conditions.  Just ask. Shavua Tov U'Mevorach—May You Have A Good and Blessed Week!

While You're Waiting For Havel Havelim...

...I suggest that you dig into the latest edition of the Gantseh Megillah.  It's monthly internet magazine with a wide variety of posts on Jewish topics.  You'd be surprised for sure.

In a while, I'll go to the other computer and G-d willing finish my sans blog carnival Havel Havelim.

Still Nothing From Blog Carnival

I'll be producing a Havel Havelim, but without the help of blog carnival.  I worked out a way and will then edit after posting if necessary.  I've been working on it most of the week.

Nobody seems to know why blog carnival has reduced its services.  I didn't hear from them at all, not as blog carnvial host, nor as blogger and they didn't even reply to my letter.

This upcoming edition is now "closed."  The Israel Situation hosts next week's, and I suggest emailing them directly with your link, subject: HH.

For the next Kosher Cooking Carnival, which will be at kosher.com, send your link to shilohmuse at gmail dot com with KCC as subject, and I'll forward it.  Use the same address if you'd like to volunteer as carnival host.

I Ate Too Much

Yes, I ate too much fruit today.  My meals were fine, and at the kiddush I had some herring.  But my friend who "eats raw" brought the most delicious apple pie.  The crust was nuts and dates all soaked and chopped with some other stuff, and the filling was full of fresh apple slices and cinnamon.  It was a giant pie and I just finished it off.

And that wasn't the only fruit I ate. 

My weekly shiur, Bible Class, was in my house.  I cut up lots of fruit: two types of grapefruit, red and pink, an orange, apples and a banana.  We ate them with toothpicks on napkins.  It was a popular snack.  Nobody touched the cake!  It certainly is easy to entertain "healthy."

Before I changed my way of eating when I began the Start Fresh Diet a year ago, I didn't snack much and ate little fruit.  It was so hard for me to get used to enforced snacking.  Now it's all natural, and I'm over 35 lbs (16 kilo) less than I was when I started.  Losing weight was lots easier than I could imagine.  Of course, I hope to lose more, but if I stay what I presently weigh, that would be fine, too.

I've ended up on a modified low carbohydrate diet.  It suits me and my blood type.  There are weeks when I make vegetable soup and end up eating lots more carbs than usual, but it's not the end of the world, and modern diet experts say that you should vary calorie intake.

It's good that I've finished that pie, so I can stop thinking about it.

A New Job For My Father

It's probably gets pretty boring for my father here in my house in Shiloh.  He take a walk everyday with me, plays cards with a young friend and watches movies, but he doesn't have any "jobs," responsibilities.

When he lived at home in Great Neck, NY with my mother, he raked leaves and swept.  He also carried things for her when she couldn't.

There are limits to what he can do with his vision and memory problems.  He clears his plates and cups from the table, usually asking to which sink they go.  He makes his bed, a life-long habit.

Yesterday he spent hours outside on our merpeset, terrace, enjoying the unseasonable sun.  I also took advantage of it, having hung out lots of laundry.  It's certainly not the first time I've hung out the wash in the month and a half he has been living with us, but it's the first time I asked him to take in the wash.  Yes, that's what he did.  It was easier for him to take in the clothespins, too, rather than rehang them the way I do.  He was very proud that he didn't drop a single thing.  B"H, thank G-d, now I have help.

Everyone enjoys the feeling of satisfaction after a job well-done, and I'm glad that I finally discovered something my elderly, 89 year old, father can do.

Wholesome Wins The Day

The "experts" are trying to say that just prudish old fashioned alte kockes have been buying Susan Boyle's CD, but the stores and other marketing means all say it's not true.  Granted, it may be like the research that shows that the Beatles Anthology Collection was bought by young people for their parents, but still, the important thing is that there's money in clean-cut entertainment.  Isn't that the bottom line?  The bottom line, the profit.

That brings me to yesterday's Movie Club movie, the Best of Times, with Robin Williams and some other great comedians.  Cut, edited differently it could have been a fantastic family movie, but there are some disturbing sex scenes, that even though they don't show skin are too "adult."  We, the club members, had a great time watching the movie.  The laughs are healthy, but we didn't need the other parts.  It's a shame.  Maybe our concept of "acceptable" is different from others.

I'm glad that  Susan Boyle has shown the  show business money people that clean pays. 

Best Salad Deal!

One of my friends had been bragging about the deal of the century for those of us trying to cut down on calories, fat and carbohydrates.

Would you believe a NS5- that's a dollar and change- salad?  And they even brought a generous supply of olive oil when requested, as a substitute for the cheap packet of "salad dressing!"

Finally, we accompanied her to the Kosher Cafe` Cafe` in the Pisgat Zeev Mall, Jerusalem.

Yes, that's it, photographed next to the fork and my sunglasses, so you can see that it's more than just a thimble-full.

I don't know if the other branches offer the same deal.

Getting Cold in Them Thar Hills

The wind is blowing.  I can hear it through the double windows.  Tree branches are in a hyper-frenzied dance.  So, I may not be able to take my father on a walk today.

I don't think he had one yesterday, since it took him ages to shower, dress and have breakfast.  Then my husband figured it would be a good idea to rush lunch, since my daughter was expected to pick him up and take him to see the great-grandchildren.  I spent the morning in Jerusalem with a friend.

After I got back home, he left and then I got ready for elections and also went to a neighbor for our weekly T'hilim, Psalms reading.

Today is also our Movie Club.  Earlier this week, I made a large, not enormous, batch of vegetable soup.  Maybe I'll serve some to the crowd.  This time I made it with a packaged mix of lentils and whatever.  It's never the same twice.  You could say that about all the stuff I cook.  I'm "allergic" to following recipes.  Maybe that's why I can eat the same basic meals every day.

I'm trying to figure out how to do Havel Havelim without all the posts coming in from Blog Carnival. I see new carnivals are posted on their site.  Is it something personal that I haven't been getting links?  Please mail me suitable links to shilohmuse at gmail dot com with HH as subject.   Thanks!

Oops! A Blooper!!

Not in my blog, but at the Arutz 7 news site.  They mixed up some wejew videos.  Instead of a news one about the Arab terrorist supporter  former Member of Knesset Azmi Bishara, they put up a comedy by the multi-talented Sharon Katz of Voices, Raise Your Spirits Theater and Dames of the Dance and a blogger, too.

Check out the A7 article before someone catches it and corrects it.  I had wanted to post the video, but it's copyright protected and it couldn't be copied.

Surprised and Disappointed

I blogged about it and sent notices to my jblogger lists about the problems with blog carnival.  I don't know how I'll get a decent Havel Havelim put together.  So far, I've gotten all of one post.

If you've written something that should be in it, or seen something that you think should be, then please email the link to shilohmuse at gmail dot com subject: hh  Deadline: Friday

And please blog about it.  I don't have much time for searches.  Certainly not in the next day.

Thanks

Bad News in Blog Carnival Land

For the past few years, we blog carnival hosts have become very dependent on blog carnival, at least once I got used to it after a previous service closed down.


Your ordinary blogger chooses a post to contribute to a blog carnival, clicks the appropriate bc form, fills it out in two easy steps, and then bc sends a receipt to the blogger and all the info to the carnival host, including a html sentence which can be copied straight into the blog carnival.  One the predetermined deadline passes, a link to its "instacarnival" is sent to the carnival owner and host.  With some minor editing, it's possible to turn the "instacarnival" into a respectable blog carnival.  I've done it myself.  It's so easy, that it has made me a very lazy blog carnival host.


In the olden days I would get links in the mail and have to check out and embed them myself.  That's why I feel that instacarnival is like cheating.


Well, there's a problem.  Blog Carnival hasn't been fully functioning as of late.  I sent out a "send your links to Havel Havelim and the Kosher Cooking Carnival" notice yesterday to my mailing list.  Generally I start receiving them by Sunday night.  some Havel Havelim contributors do their best writing on Sundays.  Nothing came. So I experimented.  I sent one of my posts to myself.  No receipt and no bc notice.  I should have gotten two, as both the sender and host.  I tried again, and again zero.  I contacted Jack who said that the address is right, but if he had put up the  wrong address, I still would have gotten my receipt.  I sent a post to KCC, and still nothing. I sent a query to bc and still haven't heard from them. I asked my husband who's also a blogger to send in a post... nothing came to me, nor the receipt to him.


The bottom line:


Please send this week's deadline Friday Havel Havelim links to shilohmuse at gmail dot com  and please blog about it so more people will know.


Thank you!!

New Menu at Anna Ticho

A couple of weeks ago, I ended up having a wonderful meal in Jerusalem with good friends, Rosaly Evnine, Helen Freedman (AFSI), her daughter and Mina Fenton.

That combination was pure chance, as the best planning G-d could do for us.I hadn't eaten recently at the restaurant in the Anna Ticho House.  For the longest time it seemed to have the same boring menu, but no longer.There were lots of new things.  I can't remember exactly what we all ate, but we were all happy with the food.  I had a "root salad."  It was based on strips of raw root vegetables like carrots and beets.  Someone else had stuffed vegetables with quinoa.

Portions were very large, and many doggy bags were taken home.  A good idea for two people eating out together is for each to order soup and then share a main course.  I didn't touch the bread, but the reports were very favorable.

Downtown Jerusalem isn't the easiest place to navigate nowadays with all the lightrail construction, but if you're there, and want a treat, you can have a nice meal at Anna Ticho.

Getting Complicated, and...

...I don't like writing about it.  There are blogs which get intimate and personal, but I just don't go there.  I have my walls/barriers.

I used to yell a lot, and it was a good release.  Now I don't have one.  I don't even get much exercise.  today I was going to take an early walk, when someone came over to watch a movie with my father, but I had a few things to do first, then just when I was almost ready to go out, someone else came to see me.  And that was it.  So, now my husband is home.

I'll post this and then brush my teeth, yes I brush my teeth before leaving the house and so does my sister though we have no idea how we got into the habit, and get out to walk finally.

A Category Almost All My Own

Shmuel Sokol's תורת ישראל Torat Yisrael is hosting it's debut Havel Havelim.  He opened it a bit differently than most by mentioning that my husband and I had sent in so many posts that he's giving us our very own category/section.  Please don't get the wrong idea. There are many other posts included, not just from the Medad blogging couple.  And you should know that my husband and I blog about different things and different viewpoints.

Yes, there's plenty to read in this latest #245 Havel Havelim!  Please send the link around and remind everyone to take a look.

And by the way, I'll be hosting next week's, so please remember to send in your posts.  If you'd like to host one, contact Jack.  And if you'd like to host a Kosher Cooking Carnival, please let me know shilohmuse at gmail dot com .

Have a truly great week!

שבוע טוב

Shavua Tov

Busy Friday and Nice Shabbat

We had a full house Friday afternoon, all to see my father.  I worked hard in the morning, cooking the side dishes.  I only had one more thing to prepare after they left, and I only forgot to make one thing, nothing seriously important, my dessert, the compote, but I had lots of fresh fruit.

I got the floor washed and was no later nor more rushed than usual.  But I didn't go near the computer, or not more than a second to check something.

Shabbat we had two friends over Friday night and two more for Se'udat Shlishit, the third meal.

There wasn't enough rain this week, otherwise, no complaints.

Shavua Tov!  Have a Great Week!

Special Wedding

G-d willing the pictures will be posted next week.  It's Friday and I have lots to do.

Last night we went to a "second wedding."  The couple had married many years before in FSU.  Then they moved to the states, had kids, became religious and now they live in Shiloh.  Our local rabbi discovered that they had never had a proper Jewish wedding, so one was organized here in Shiloh, at Tel Shiloh.

It was a beautiful wedding, great music and food.

MAZAL TOV!