Repairing the Driveway

Our house came with an impressive concrete driveway.  It provided a suitable surface to drive on, store a few items, easy to shovel snow off the surface.  But like most concrete, even sparsely traveled like a driveway, there are limits to the material.  It had been poured in several blocks with anticipated expansion cushions between blocks to allow for temperature changes.  It did not do as well with freezing water, vegetation roots finding their way to the ground beneath the concrete, and cracks that propagate.  By the time we felt forced to replace it several decades later, the blocks were no longer each at the same height and cracks created sharp edges.  Our highway departments pay mucho dinero to repair roads.  While a few neighbors replaced their concrete driveways, most opted for the less expensive asphalt.  So did we.

The paving company removed the old concrete, put new foundation, then poured a coating of asphalt.  It was harder to shovel but otherwise served its main purpose of low use driving more than adequately.  Like other materials, asphalt also has a limited life span.  Our driveway, whose age I do not recall, has started to crack, all petty gaps of less than 2cm across but needing repair.  The good news is that a not very experienced home owner can do the repair, as the overall surface has remained level.

The World Wide Web has absorbed a How to Repair of most anything, usually produced by somebody who does this professionally.  Asphalt driveway patch up, though not restoration seems within my capacity, though it may be a better two person job than one.  First identify the cracked areas.  I found one obvious one and two more trivial ones.  Wire brush them clean.  I think I have a wire brush, but could buy one if I can't find it.  Then hose the cracks.  I will need a front yard hose, which I might or might not have.  Let it dry for a day.  That means it will need two consecutive dry days, one for preparation and one to let the filler dry.  Put in filler with a caulking gun.  Bought both from Lowe's. Trowel of putty knife it even with the surface.  Let it dry.  Maybe put more filler if the surface is still not even after drying.  Check again in a month to see if the filler is still even with the surface and make revisions if needed.  I can do that.

Following a Productive Day

Yesterday brought more than average focus with more than an average number of check marks on my daily list of what I actually did.  Most tasks recur before long, many even the following day.  Exercise or sleep hygiene never reach a conclusion but a few things do.  I completed my assigned audiobook and Jewish themed work, a not very imaginative biography of Menachem Begin read by a narrator who did not work on pronunciation of foreign words in advance.  My weekly New England Journal quota of two articles has been completed, though there is no reason for not reading another.  BP taken, treadmill done.  Weight and Waist Circumference recorded for the week.  Fleishig dishes done and not to return until after next shabbos.  Went to Trader Joe's so no more supermarket forays this week.  Antagonized a few FB friends and their friends whose political hashkafas are more rigid than mine.  Edited a chapter of a manuscript for a close friend and offered what I hope will be helpful revisions.  Commented on a KevinMD essay and got a response from the author.  Registered for a seminar later in the week.  Did some writing of my own, though not as polished or focused as I had hoped.  It was a productive day, which I'm disappointed to acknowledge today brought me less satisfaction than I had hoped.

I never achieved flow, except maybe when editing and commenting on the manuscript.  I didn't upgrade my house in any way.  Supper satisfied, though prepared by my wife so I had no effort other than to choose and buy the main course from Trader Joe's freezer.

A number of years ago, I began a project of writing at the end of each day five things that went well into a marble notebook, a form of hakaras hatov, or appreciation of the good.  In hopes of finding my effort more satisfying, I've reconstructed a smaller variant.  three things and written on the back of my task list from that morning.  It's easy to get three.

Least Common Denominator

Covid-19's disruptions include cancellation of religious services.  In addition to shabbos, we missed Pesach, Shavuot, and Tisha B'Av in direct communal worship.  Some denominations allow streaming but it's really an invitation to participants to engage in a computer on days when computers are turned off.  The Conservative Rabbis would rule that it is possible to put the computer on before candle lighting and turn it off after havdalah, which it is, but a lot of halachic determination by Sages in the Talmud depend in great part on what those Sages would expect their constituencies to really do.  They will turn their computers on and off at their convenience.  The Rabbis have the Honor, the Congregants have the System. The Orthodox Rabbis seem to reason more like Sages.

Since our congregational rabbi has ruled against streaming, we've had some Hebrew school Junior Congregation adaptations with Kabbalat Shabbat, Yizkor and Hallel pre-recorded along with a sermon.  Not that it affects a lot of people.  The High Holy Days are a whole other matter.  American congregations center their years and their annual financial positions around those days.  It makes a lot of sense either to pre-record the service in its entirety or to have a minyan, however a Congregation defines it, of participants assemble with social distancing precautions, do the service live while streaming it to the homes of their worshippers.

That's not an option we have. Our shul has assembled a High Holiday Committee, which like other congregational committees I was not invited to.  I must say, what's come out leaves me unenthused. I was asked to repeat my annual Yom Kippur Torah reading, and went to the site attired in a suit and sneakers to record it.  When I asked the current and past Presidents to take a scroll out for me to read it, they immediately rebuffed the request.  I was to read it from the Machzor and announce the pages as I go.  Why would anyone want to watch this?  I did not ask them if they would also have a Bond Appeal and a Congregational Appeal for people to watch.  It wouldn't surprise me.  The HH of Rabbinical Junior College it seems.

There are some better options for Modern Orthodox synagogues that have to modify their assemblies to protect the health of their participants.  The Forward had an article outlining some of them.  https://forward.com/news/452226/no-streaming-no-singing-heres-how-high-holidays-will-work-in-modern/  Some look adaptable.  But our committees do not do a lot of exploration, discussion of options, or creative initiatives.  Which is probably why I've been blackballed from them.

Didn't Miss Out

 Electronics shut down for shabbos and yom tov.  Facebook and Twitter shut down for dates divisible by 4.   These two coincided this week.  Technically I could have checked my email after Havdalah but opted to wait until the next morning for catch up.  Fear of Missing Out, acronym FOMO?  Not for a while.

So what did I miss?  Email, a couple of comments from a good friend on email but not urgent.  Some notifications that somebody sent me messages on FB.  The usual immediately deletable titles.  A few Endocrinology notices that I might get around to reading. But other than the two comments from my friend, nothing addressed exclusively to me.

Twitter had no notifications regarding anything I posted.  There were six messages regarding postings of the few people I still follow.  How the algorithm decides what to isolate for my attention I have no idea.  Looked at all six.  Pursued Zero.

FB had one message directed to me and a couple of Like or similar notifications.  I set the option on Most Recent and scrolled through.  Nearly all relatively predictable comments from relatively predictable sources expressing displeasure with the current President.  While I share the sentiment, it's been repeated enough times from the same sources that harvesting the posts now, or ever for that matter, rather than closer to their appearance could not be classified as deprivation.

I did learn from a comment that an old friend decided to relocate, but did not confirm where.  That might leave me as the only FB stalwart who maintains and Empty Nest, though empty of people, not of stuff.

Setting aside electronics as scheduled remains a good thing to do.

Sent Home

It was to be a periodic platelet donor morning.  Sleep was restless with one significant interruption, leaving me tired, though two hours in the Blood Bank's recliner, while not exactly snooze catch-up, usually got me to baseline function by my session's conclusion.  Alas, today's session never materialized.

My questionnaire looked good, BP under control, weight a little less than it had been, largely with some minor effort on my part.  The slight downtick on my home scale was probably accurate.  Then the fingerstick Hb.  12.9 g/dl with threshold being 13.0.  Repeat on a finger of the other hand by a different nurse who had rescued my eligibility once before.  11.7 g/dl.  That's probably not right but it's not close to 13 either, so my morning finished about two hours before planned.

I also defer treadmill after platelet donation sessions, so that's now back on tap for later today.  And I spent a little more time at Shop-Rite and got a few more things than I would have had I gone in the afternoon.

Since my Hb has been hovering just over or under their threshold for a few donor sessions, I anticipate that my volunteer days may be approaching the end.  I'll run out the clock a couple of weeks, try to offer another donation, and since I have an appointment with my new doctor at the end of the month, if there is still a concern about anemia, a formal lab CBC can be obtained,

Not Been Fishing

After a spring's anticipation and some misadventures like having a good rod and reel slip off the dock at Lums Pond, my quest of catching anything has deflated.  I devoted some effort to replacing and restoring equipment, made a few visits to Bellevue State Park's pond, but as the summer heat and humidity became more oppressive, my interest in casting for an hour or so largely disappeared.  I could have worked on some knots but didn't.  I might have expanded the adventure to one of Delaware's downstate angler destinations but haven't.

While I've yet to hook any of those wriggly critters, I have derived satisfaction from some of my skills and underlying efforts.  I can now cast competently with a spinning reel, tie a leader with a nail knot if I have an illustrated guide, replace a broken rod tip, spool an empty reel, and tie a hook with a clinch not, though not yet a palomar knot.  Some limits of near vision, finger dexterity and hand-eye coordination have become apparent but have enhanced my resolve to complete the tasks that require this.

What fishing may have given me is time alone, something amply replaced between my Man Cave and coronavirus limitations that have kept me more alone.  That element of escape, time to set my angling strategy, and patiently wait for a result now goes to my screens, either big screen TV where I can stream and watch laptop where I can escape to a Curiosity Stream experience not otherwise available to me.  Just me, my vision, and its cerebral connections.  All without humidity, safety masks, or tangle frustrations.  

Eventually as the outdoor environment returns to a more seasonably pleasant experience, I'll give the various ponds a second chance.

Reading the Psalms

This summer I successfully committed myself to reading the New Testament for the first time, starting with Matthew and continuing through Revelations at about four chapters daily.  My Gideon shirt pocket version follows with Psalms, so I proceeded onward to Psalm 1, finding a Messianic tone that I expected to be an adulteration of the classic Hebrew text.  I diverted to Sefaria's electronic version, pacing about five per session with one or two sessions daily.  I'm past 100, about 2/3 done, recognizing those that appear in our daily or shabbos liturgy though with a more pedestrian and probably literal translation than the editors of the Siddur assembled to sound more erudite or spiritual.

Those of the liturgy are selected for the occasion from the pool of 150.  Reading in sequence leaves a very different impression.  The poems are attributed to King David who repeatedly described himself as unfairly persecuted by evil men out to get him.  Only his Lord could extricate him from these recurrent travails, usually did, and got a few words of thanks for coming through in the clutch.  While monotheism was a core tenet, the poems read differently, not that there is only one God but that my One God is better than anyone else's, be they one God or part of a polytheistic team.  

He tended to see the world around him in black & white, you were either good and a follower of God, or you were evil and out to get him, with perhaps the exception of the references to Saul who also followed the same God but was still out to get him.  

One hundred psalms into the series, I do not have a sense of how the sequence was determined.  It's probably not random, as the earlier ones seemed more consistently persecutorial than the middle ones.  I still have the final third to read and think about, so maybe the answer will become more apparent.