CRISP!

Definitely a crisp!

Poking head (there's no internet yet in my - um, I mean, our - new place! There won't be any internet until October! The world is so strange when internet-less. Um, I mean, married)---

So, again in a skipping-lots-ignoring-ongoing-conversations-and-poking-my-head-for-a-short-time manner, and very last-minute, but still, it's that time of year again, and, yeah, still in a risk of sounding a bit strange:

On Sunday evening (as most of you clever people probably already know) starts the Jewish holiday of 'Yom Kippur', which means 'Day of Atonement'.

This is a day of soul searching, of trying to better define to ourselves our faults, and try to accept it upon ourselves to become, at least a little, better people. A day of repenting past wrongs we did, looking and finding it in our hearts to forgive wrongs done to us, and trying to remember to learn from this process in the rest of the days of the year. The holiest day of the year for practicing Jews.

On a rough division, there are two kinds of wrongs people can do: against G-d, and hurting their fellow human beings. In Jewish tradition, if the person committing a sin against G-d is truly sorry for what they did, repenting and taking it upon themselves to try and avoid repeating it, G-d forgives those sins.

The deeds which hurt other people, though, are not so 'easily' and personally forgiven. If somebody did anything to harm another person, they would not be able to cleanse themselves from that deed, no matter how much they'd pray and be sorry and repent and try to do good in the future, unless they make amends with the person who was hurt by that deed. As long as peace between people is not achieved, the 'sin', so to speak, is not 'erased from the books'.

Regardless of the date in the year, I'd hate to think I'd offended somebody here (or everywhere else, for that matter). I don't think that the attempts of becoming a better person than one already is, is something that needs a date or a certain holiday for it, of course. It's just that, for me, having a certain day in the year to stop my daily runnings around, and think of nothing else but the really important things, is a good reminder of the order of priorities I'd like to have in my life.

So, since Monday will be, for me, this day of soul-searching, of trying to create a new start in my on-going effort of 'becoming a good human being, or at least a slightly better one', I would like to ask all of you here, if I offended anybody, or hurt any of you lovely people, to tell me about it, and give me the opportunity to apologize, fix it if possible, and also learn from my mistakes, and try to not repeat them (there are so many new ones to practice, why repeat old ones, you know?).

In case I offended anybody, and can't communicate directly with them about it (for whatever reason), I can already say that I'm truly sorry. I can honestly say that I didn't mean to - you're all so considerate and thoughtful and generally all-around lovely, that there's absolutely no room for such a thing here. However, I might have had a slip of a keyboard, or mistaken somebody's intentions, or many other possible so forths. Y'all are so understanding, you probably didn't take offense anyway, but I want to make sure, all the same.

Please don't get me wrong - I'm definitely not trying to go around in a 'holier-than-thou' show off, or force my personal beliefs on others, or make statements which may be understood as criticizing anybody else's beliefs and way of living. If anything, being around here, among such a rich versatile group of kind and clever people, exposed me to a lot more ways of choosing to lead one's life than I've ever had a chance to see before, and showed me much more of the beauty and richness that is the world we live in.

[Edit: this is especially true this year, with all the things that happened to me during it, and how wonderful y'all were all throughout, even when I couldn't properly post at all, or hardly, or only when *I* needed it. Thank you.]

(hard to post after Nilly's heartfelt post with something frivolous): Crumble (but with peaches)

Also, if you scroll further down on the blog, there's peaches with wine sauce.

Nilly - I think the thing where Jewish people acknowledge that they have hurt people is fantastic. (My partner is Jewish - I only quite recently learnt about this.) I wish we had something similar, but Lent is more self-focused. I wish you a peaceful Yom Kipuur and a Happy New Year.

Edited for clarity.

New-married-place Nilly! Yeah, that's all I've got on that...

Do I need oats for a crisp? I'm trying not to buy too many things I won't use up before I move (yikes), and I don't have any in the house. Edit: Thanks for the non-oat recipe, Kat!

Roman Polanski arrested. [link]

Well, the article actually says this, which seems like somebody screwed up something somewhere:

OK, can you do some more probing? New York will want to know

frank's out today.

i checked already, and so did zurich. they say the question is irrelevant. he answered me with the quote i used, about we knew when he was coming this time. he's been here many times in the past, we think.

thx brad. aptn is aware, but unfortunately won't make it in time, but is hoping to catch tail end.

i'm pushing out another writethru with some more background details before press conference.

no surprise, new york is really hot on this.

they particularly want to know why now. (has he never set foot in switzerland before?) sheila, theorizes that's because they're under intense pressure over ubs and want to throw the U.S. a bone, but can yo ucheck with justice department sources there?

is frank around too, or are you alone?

u can tell aptn press conf 1700 (15 gmt) in bern at the parliament

i'll watch it live on internet

Echoing everybody else, may you be signed and sealed in the book of life, and have an easy fast.

shir, Nilly , hil and everyone else that I am forgetting ,easy fast and peaceful hearts for Yom Kippur.

Dogs in 'Star Wars' Costumes: A Gallery