There's a gallery show that is closing that I want to get to, and another one that just opened. Plus, I've got two of my own half-fished rolls of film in cameras that I need to work on. The last couple of times I went out I hadn't really been able to get into the zone, but there's nothing I can do except keep trying.

Hi, friends. Nothing new to report here. Today was a volunteer appreciation day of some sort to one of the two/three volunteer gigs I'm in. So for three hours we got a nice picnic and a short tour of YMCA in Jerusalem. We're operating from the grass visible in this picture: [link] and a few rooms in one of the buildings in it. Not that any of us had the time to lift our heads and observe the views until now, but today we could. It's a gorgeous building, with architectural elements from the Mamluks to Art Deco. That was nice.

My ~ma to those who need it.

Not staying on the computer for any longer than it takes to report that the animals are fed, Skinner walked, I am fed, about to take a shower and read till I drop to sleep. In somewhere VA, and will stop tomorrow in Savannah. The hotel has a (slow) Tesla charger so that is a time saver.

Zzzzz

Timelies all!

It’s quiet here. Gary is on a short business trip (left yesterday, gets back late tonight) and Mr. S is with the nanny. I’ll just enjoy it while it lasts.

My mom has now been chipped (heart monitor loop), and I spent the afternoon loafing and cuddling cats since I had to get up well before dawn for the hospital trip.

Plans include digging up the dead evergreen shrubs in front of my house, planting giant alliums in their place, and possibly painting a garage door with a second coat.

not sure about this weekend, but I cleaned out my closet today.

All of DOD and therefore we too are forced to use MS Office, and that includes Teams. One of the things I hate about it is that when someone IMs you, there is no easy way to identify who it is -- and often it's someone asking a question from a meeting you didn't attend! It's quite poorly designed from a UX perspective.

And they took away our landlines so now we're supposed to just use Teams to call people, but it pretty regularly crashes, so that's embarrassing to be still talking while the other person's line has gone dead. I do like the option for joining a meeting by making Teams call my cell phone, and then I can use my bluetooth headphones and wander the house.

I am at my wits end with IT problems. I seem to spend all my time wrestling bureaucracy and bitching about our admin staff, who are either incompetent or overburdened, and both of them are kind of abusive. Anytime you ask for any help, they berate you for your temerity to put something else on their plate. But if you ask to be allowed to do the thing yourself, they also berate you. It's really pretty awful, and I have 3 new staff members who are forced to deal with them (I spend a lot of time apologizing).

Anyway, my laptop crashed at 4pm, so I took the dog for a walk and now I'm going to watch ST:LD and then go to the climbing gym.

The company I'm at uses Slack for messaging, Linphone for calls, and Google Meet for, well, meetings. It's actually pretty stable, except everytime Slack updates it makes the window busier. Simplify!

Nilly, Shir, good to hear you're holding on. Shir, I've added your story(is there any more to it?) to my Oh No Parrots file

Why does the smoke detector's "low battery" chirp wait until 12:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning to activate?

It is definitely too loud and annoying to ignore. I suppose that means it is working as designed?

However, me (still half-asleep) wobbling as I stand on a kitchen chair to reach the cursed thing and fumble at trying to replace the battery...that was a risk to life and limb that I really didn't need. Now it could be hours before I manage to fall asleep again.

Oh no, dcp. May you br able to sleep soon.

Shir, I've added your story(is there any more to it?) to my Oh No Parrots file

There is a Oh No Parrots file? I'm listening. There's not much more to it - it's a nuisance when you try to be alert to sirens and turns out that it's a bloody parrot. Speeding motorcycles right now is something that all of us curse. There is a darker story related to parrot mimicking noises: if you're a parent of a soldier or a spouse of one, the worst fear is the knock on the door by the army's casualties unit announcing that they have died in action. One day, one parrot decided to mimic these knocks on the door at 6:30 am next to a family with a son fighting in Gaza.

If this war will last for a long while there might be a mass murder of parrots here.