Freaky

I was working on my curriculum vitae and suddenly it started displaying Hebrew when I typed. It was a little freaky. I forgot that I had both Hebrew and Spanish keyboards installed in addition to US English, mainly because I was doing both in Duolingo. Haven't worked on the Hebrew in a while, so I didn't even remember having it.

Sigh

It's been a long while. I've posted almost 12,000 times on this blog for over 20 years, but I haven't felt like writing for some time. That makes me sad. I've gotten caught up with life and I'd been relying mostly on my phone for Internet interaction, and it was just harder to do that, for one.  I have a laptop though now AND I just got a folding table big enough to write, read, do crafts, etc., on, rather than having a computer on a stool and being uncomfortable in my chair because I had to put a leg on either side.

I do post a lot on Facebook, and that's for people I'm friends with, and almost all of them are people I know personally, with the exception of a few librarians.  I guess I feel safer there in some ways than over-sharing to the great world beyond.  I know, that hasn't stopped me in the past. But I'm 55 now and a little wiser than when I started.

So let's see...I think I last wrote in February.  We got a puppy then and she was so tiny at 8 weeks that she could go between the slats of the picket fence.  Now she's nine months old, and she's nearly 50 lbs.  She finally has a big girl bark, is very tall and long and lanky, and generally is getting very big.  My roommate thinks she's part Lab (that part is obvious, as she has webbed toes and Labrador waterproofing) and part Doberman, much like the dog he had when I first met him over 30 years ago.  I'm leaning towards part Great Dane with her build, but he is probably right.  She's a joy, very enthusiastic, loving, and a good companion to the other dog, who is a Lab/Pit cross and now much smaller than her.

Healthwise I'm dealing with ageing.  I've lost 50 lbs. since early November and 28 of that was from late December on.  (I was put on a different diuretic in November and I swear 20 lbs. came off because I am a sponge.)  I'm on medicine now called Ozempic for my diabetes, but it helps with weight loss and I'm doing pretty well on it, despite early side effects.  I just went up to the maintenance dose.

I do need to lose weight because I have chondromalacia, which is a loss of cartilage in the joint.  My knees are to the point of being bone-on-bone and I need a bilateral knee replacement, but I need to lose another 40 or so pounds.  They'd like my BMI to be under 40, but 45 is a hard stop and I'm 48 now.  So I need to work harder because I'm in a lot of pain and it's very difficult to walk very far.  I do have an ADA placard for out in the community.  I had one at the university but they only gave me a temporary one as they couldn't read my GP's handwriting. I had him redo it and resubmitted it, but they denied my request.  I have a couple of weeks to submit records, which I've requested, and perhaps I can get one on appeal.  You can't just park in a spot on campus without their specific hangtag, you see...my state-issued placard doesn't do a thing.  And they're pretty tough.  One of my former co-workers used a prosthetic leg and they made him send over records, and he finally got it. I've had it all summer, though, and it's been a godsend.  Without it I'm going to have to walk probably a quarter of a mile from my car to the bus stop and back, and that is very difficult and painful.

I'm also most likely going to have my gall bladder out soon. I go to a surgery consult the first week of September.  They'd found gallstones on an MRI of my liver but I was asymptomatic until I had fried fish and was in extreme distress for a week.  I'm a little leery of this. Even with the weight loss, I weigh about 280 lbs., so lots of visceral fat and higher mortality chances with any abdominal surgery.  Hopefully, it will be laparoscopic, as I don't want to miss much work.

Next week will mark the five-year anniversary since I moved in with my roommate.  All in all it's gone very well, surprisingly well, actually. Neither of us were particularly sure about the move and living together.

At work, headquarters took over my surgery and outpatient visit authorisations, leaving me without a position, but my boss (who's only been here a few months) really went to bat for me, and they did a lateral move into a position I've had before that is technically a few rungs down, but because of the way they did it, I didn't lose my pay, although I'm on the high end of the scale for this one.  I'm back in checkout.  One day before I moved I had a panic attack, because when I did it before, I was alone for the better part of a year, did the phone and e-mails, and generally had trouble keeping up.  Now there are two people at checkout (although my work buddy, who is very bubbly, is moving to registration, so they're trying to hire someone for the checkout position that's open), and one person who's job is to schedule phone and e-mail requests, letting me focus on the patients and families for the most part.  So it's actually been nice.  Not as much pressure and I get to interact with families and see the improvements in patients' lives. I do, being an introvert, get drained by too much interaction, but I also find it satisfying in this case.  So everything's going much better than it could have.

I've been working every day on a series of exercises to help keep my mind sharp.  There's Wordle and Latin Wordle, plus I'm studying languages on Duolingo.  I'm trying to brush up on my rusty Spanish, German, and Latin, plus I'm taking Irish and Welsh.  I was going to try to learn Modern Hebrew (I've studied Biblical Hebrew), but that wasn't going well, as the characters were very small, and it just wasn't clicking. I'm going to take my Biblical Hebrew and do some work on that instead and then go back to the modern after I get a grip on the ancient language.  But I'm getting through the ones I've studied before pretty quickly and understand more than I thought.  My grammar is actually still pretty good, it's just the vocabulary that I'm having to pick up again.  German is extremely easy, even though I haven't had it since 1985.  Latin is my most-studied language (5 semesters, including Mediaeval as well as the normal Classical, plus a little Humanist), so it's going well, although there are a lot of angry parrots in this one. (To be fair, Hebrew had a dove that liked warm wine--you can see why I was having trouble).  I've already used a little Spanish to check a person out at work without having to use the video interpreter, and I asked one of the in-person interpreters what the word for 'stickers' is and put it on my bulletin board because the kids love those.

Okay, I guess I'll sign off for now. I'm on vacation. No plans, not going anywhere, but I took the week off between now and Labor Day.  I'm hoping to get some rest and work on some new hobbies and actually do some reading.

And for some reason my neighbours are setting off fireworks for no discernable reason.

I lament

Worked through a chapter in two cognitive behavioural therapy workbooks and read a chapter in a library book on orchids (the latter while I was at Tire Discounters). So that's three chapters of reading in one day, more than I've done in a while. Tomorrow I pick up a book from the library on soil amendments. I've got several psychology and gardening books out right now, and some CDs. My roommate insists I'm holding books hostage, but I do pretty well with the non-fiction. Unfortunately, fiction has been a struggle of late. I think my attention span has shrunk, and maybe my introvertism is not so strong as it once is. It's hard for me to choose to do things alone, like read, or watch something. I listen to music pretty readily, but that doesn't require much investment of effort. It's been like this for several years. They talk about writer's block, but I've heard of others who say they have reader's block. That's what it feels like. Even when it's a good story, I struggle. It's so bad for a librarian to struggle with reading. I feel strange because of it. I'm going to try to set a little time each night for reading, even if it's for half an hour, and maybe do some studying as well. My languages, for example, are so rusty, and I brought my Latin, Biblical Hebrew, and Ancient Greek books with me when I moved here. The Spanish and German may have to be something I work on with Duolingo or some such; those books are in storage.

I think the best description I've ever seen of what I'm going to can be found in the Stages of a Reader cartoon you may have seen on the Internet.

Tonight

I kept my friend company and helped out with onion chopping as he made the tomato sauce for tomorrow's lasagna and some apples and cabbage.  He wasn't feeling well and was in some pain, so he forgot to order the challah from the bakery, so I went to Kroger and found some brioche loaves that will work.  I also finally got around to getting various toiletries I needed, such as shampoo, toothpaste, and razors.

We talked about 'The Vicar of Dibley', along with ancient Carthage as a Phoenician colony, Latin, Hebrew, etc.  In other words, it was a fairly normal night.

I started out my day getting up early to go get gas, as the light was on, and it was payday. I'm still going to be behind on a couple of bills, but unfortunately, the next paycheque is probably going to go to car tyres.  The flat the other day is no doubt foreshadowing the doom that will happen if I don't. I'm very lucky the tyre went flat while sitting in a parking lot and not while I was driving.  I have to weigh being fiscally responsible and living to become more fiscally responsible another day.  I'm probably going to go to the same place I got the last ones six years ago as they offer a free alignment and I need that too, along with a cheaper synthetic oil change than Valvoline.  I'm hoping I can find a good deal on everything, but I'm figuring it to be about $600.  I'm just hoping the doughnut tyre and the others last till I can do it.  The doughnut is original to the car, which is 19 years old.  Granted, the car still only has 83,700 miles on it.  My grandmother and then mother didn't drive it much.  Six years ago when I bought it there were only 34,000 miles on it. :)  I'd like to keep it in good working order, as several people depend on it.

I'm finally becoming a bit sleepy.  I've been a bit tired (it was a very productive day at work) but I hadn't really been sleepy.  I took the trash to the kerb and did the litter boxes earlier, but YKWIA had already gone to bed when  I treated the animals to their nightly fare, cleaned up the dishes and counters, packed things for tomorrow's lunch and caffeine, straightened up a bit and played with the kitten till he sleepily went in to be with YKWIA.

Speaking of the kitten, the only succulents left in the house are the big aloe and a bit of red velvet Echevarria that is struggling to come back out after he gnawed on it.  But at least he's been leaving the orchids alone.

Okay, time for bed. It's after midnight, and I get up about 6:30 am.  Hope you have a good day tomorrow.

How to surprise a customer - read Hebrew

I was at work today and a young woman came in talking on a cell phone. Her shirt was in Hebrew. I looked at it for a moment and asked her, 'Ramah?' She was startled and told me yes, then told her friend that someone had just read her Ramah shirt. Now mind you, I could read the sounds, but I didn't recall right off the top of my head what Ramah meant. I'd guessed at the vowels because in modern Hebrew they're not written. What I studied was Biblical Hebrew. She didn't have time to explain, paying for her gas and then walking on out. I guess she just assumed I was Jewish, too. No. Just a pagan who happens to have a Judaic Studies minor. So I had to look it up. Turns out:

Camp Ramah (Hebrew: מחנה רמה) is a network of Jewish summer camps operating in the United States, Canada, and Israel. The first camp opened in Conover, Wisconsin, in 1947, under the aegis of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the academic hub of Conservative Judaism. The program was drawn up by Moshe Davis and Sylvia Ettenberg of the JTS Teachers' Institute.

: (ramah) רמה
nf. level, standard, degree, echelon
nf. height; highland, high place, upland, elevation, eminence; plateau, tableland

So her shirt tells me she's probably a member or has been a member of the Ohavay Zion congregation here in Lexington, which is the Conservative synagogue here. (Temple Adath Israel is the Reform one. We don't have an Orthodox synagogue in Lexington.)

Nice to know my Hebrew, whilst terribly lacking, is not completely out of my head, plus I learnt something today. :) Hopefully my teacher, who was a Conservative rabbi, would be amused.

Actually, hers is not the first Hebrew-containing shirt I've seen at the store. There's a dojo somewhere here that teaches Krav Maga, an Israeli form of martial art, so I've seen a couple of people who had that on and were surprised that I 1) could read it and 2) knew what it was. It helps to have a friend to serve as a guide to all things Jewish. :)

Okay, I have actually been watching 'The Universe' on the History Channel, but it's 2 am and time to go to bed. (I did nod off somewhere when they were talking about black holes...that's a bad time to nod off--you might be sucked up unawares.) Good night.

A convergence of observances

Thursday is the first full moon after the vernal equinox, so naturally tonight was the beginning of Pesach (Passover), the Jewish holiday commemorating the deliverance of the Hebrews from slavery in Aegypt under the leadership of Moses (Jewish holidays begin at sunset). Observant Jews celebrate with a seder, or ritual dinner, that includes a narrative of the Exodus story, amongst other traditions.

Coincidentally, this year there was another rite to be observed today--one that only happens once every 28 years. The Birkat Hachamah is a Hebrew blessing of the sun, a prayer to G-d as thanks for creating the Sun (many Jews do not pronounce the name of G-d, YHWH, preferring 'Adonai' ('my Lord') or 'ha Shem' ('the Name'). In English, 'G-d' is a way to reflect this taboo.) The blessing, in my understanding, is recited in years when the sun is thought to come back around to the position it held at Creation, a cycle of 28 years.

Here is the text of the blessing:

"ברוך אתה ה' אלהינו מלך העולם עושה מעשה בראשית"
'Blessed are You, LORD, our G-d, King of the Universe who makes the works of Creation.'

According to Wikipedia, the 'same blessing is recited upon experiencing various natural phenomena, including lightning, comets, and meteor showers; as well as upon witnessing wondrous natural topography, such as great mountains, rivers and vast wilderness.'

See more at: Jews observe sun ritual for first time since 1981: Worshippers around the world pay homage to God with rare blessing

My favourite part of the article was the relation of a story from the 19th century where hundreds of Jews collected in a park for the ritual without a permit in New York City, and two rabbis tried to explain things to a policeman:

'The attempt of a foreign citizen to explain to an American Irishman an astronomical situation and a tradition of the Talmud was a dismal failure,' the Times reported, adding that the officer, wondering 'whether some new infection of lunacy had broken out ... seized the rabbi by the neck and took him to Essex Market Police Court.'

Ah, the years before diversity awareness classes. :)

[photo of the seder table by Gila Brand, used under the GNU Free Documentation and Creative Commons licences]

I wish my Hebrew was better (but then I only learnt Biblical Hebrew, and that was years ago)

'Pop Goes the Weasel' by Alon Chitayat