For the past five years, my parents have been taking all of us - me, my siblings, our spouses and children, now 16 people in total - to the holiday camp at Dor for a few days during Sukkoth. Traditionally, time is spent sunbathing, swimming and eating. My father gets up early to go fishing, and various children and adults accompany him. There is ( Read more... )

I suppose that if I've been insisting that A and S stay off their phones and off the internet over the past two weeks, it's not surprising that I have not updated my blog in that time ( Read more... )

The past ten days have been incredibly full. It was ADC's birthday, I got a lot of work (and paperwork) done, I visited the Old City in a dust storm, we have refurbished the kitchen somewhat, and preparations for Rosh Hashana are underway ( Read more... )

We've been back in Israel for a week now - and despite promises, we still don't have internet at home, so I am writing this from my parents-in-laws', where we are spending the weekend ( Read more... )

We're back from supper with J&L, with whom we spent much of the day. We got a relatively late start, as there were several errands that had to be done before we could go into San Francisco one last time - mailing books (it turns out that media rate does not apply to boxes, so that was $87 - but paying for overweight luggage and having to check both ( Read more... )

Much of Sunday and Monday have been spent with cousins. We essentially spent all of Sunday with ADC's cousins - as BART was not working, we stayed in Oakland. We walked around Lake Merritt, ate pizza from Arizmendi (the original of the pizza place that serves only one flavour in Inside Out), and visited the Oakland Museum of California, which is ( Read more... )

Today was a long day, which can be summed up in two words: driving and eating. As our motel did not include breakfast, we decided to eat a few remaining things that we had bought for hikes, and to stop after the Avenue of the Giants for brunch. We set off just before 9 a.m., stopped for brunch two and a half hours' later, and at 3 p.m. really ( Read more... )

Woohoo! I have just finished uploaded edited versions of the nine articles I had to read while at FHL, and send a summary of my comments to my co-editors. That was a marathon ten days, during which I edited another article (I'll be paid for that one, though), but now I'm done! ADC also finished writing his article, up to and including figure ( Read more... )

This has been an incredibly productive week - ADC even finished the first draft of his article, and only has the figures and drawings to do, so coming to Friday Harbor has been very worthwhile for him, and I have gone through half of the articles for the special issue on medicine that I am co-editing. While the two of us have been at work, the boys ( Read more... )

I last posted while we were waiting for the shippers to arrive. They arrived within the time slot they had promised and were done - inventorying, sealing and some re-packing - in under an hour. A few days later, we were told that the shipment had been containerised and came within 5 cubic feet of the estimate, so no need to adjust the payment. All ( Read more... )