Seasonal Clothing Exchange

Perhaps I'm a week later than most years, but local weather has warmed sufficiently to wear short pants and short sleeves.  My warm weather duds spend the cold months in a duffle and two plastic bags, reasonably sorted by purpose.  Starting with shorts for cashmere yesterday, it struck me that I didn't wear anything of cashmere.  I hardly wore mock turtles either but mostly long sleeve tees to be replaced with short sleeve tees.  Short PJs came out of storage, flannels into a bag as I wash them.  Things hanging in the closet stay there as nearly all warm weather clothing is foldable.

I haven't taken inventory, though I doubt if I will need anything.  My weight has declined by 4kg, by omitting cookies, potato chips, squishy bread, and soda from my shopping cart, I think.  My shorts come in two sizes to accommodate weight when it was rising.  I assume either will fit.

Last summer Covid-19 hampered our activities, which may have had some impact on clothing, or at least the more chic stuff that comes out following social invitations or synagogue.  I don't know if I really want to return to synagogue, but it is reopening.  Otherwise it is pretty much wat I would wear at home or to the store, with perhaps two days at the beach and two short road trips.  Nothing elegant.  Mostly seasonal.

Focus on Recreation

Now into day 3 of no FB or twitter, I find myself not experiencing any withdrawal as some have suggested, nor any craving to resume that activity.  In its place, I planted my outdoor herb garden and completed the front container planting.  I extricated my Schwinn from amid garage clutter and unsuccessfully searched for golf balls to take to the local putting green.

Pandemic restrictions leaves me a bit recreationally deprived so it's time to direct some attention there. What do I like to do?  Made a list:

1. Crosswords
2. Take pictures
3. Bicycle
4. Cooking
5. Baking
6. Petty Golf
7. Harmonica
8. Violin
9. Watercolor
10. Writing
11. Fishing
12. Gardening
13. Beach
14. Deck

There really are no barriers to doing any of these.  Some have been ongoing, some long dormant.  I will need a few things, golf balls, tees, an air pump, a new or rehaired bow perhaps which I can get with the remaining stash of 5-dollar bills that I keep as change.  Wonder how many I can do this summer, and with what intensity.

 

What Might I Do Instead?

FB and Twitter and perhaps much of You Tube need to be put on hiatus. They have become too intrusive. I've done this before, permanently for Sermo, and our former President and a few others have been evicted from their favorite platforms.  I depart voluntarily for my own benefit.  

Doubt if I'll miss Twitter, it's not very interactive, which is what I seek.  FB has its merits which need better personal management than I provided myself, but the separation is only intended until the upcoming Mothers Day when the themes of the screens will change from stoking political beliefs to expressing appreciation.

That affords me about ten days without this distraction.  On day 1 I set out my herb garden, used the backyard hose for the first time this season, took my sketch pad and some pencils to a local park, made a disappointing tour of the Pennsylvania Walmart to see what they had in terms of fishing gear and herb seeds.  My OLLI class was approached with more focus.  I even took out my adult coloring book and pencils, which had been left untouched on my desk for maybe a year.  No FOMO at all, just opportunity.  No particular withdrawal symptoms thus far, either.

Looking at other things I haven't done: harmonica has not been studied in a while, my writing goals drag behind schedule, an afternoon at the putting green or driving range would offer some pleasure, as would an afternoon at a pond.  All neglected.  FB and Twitter were never neglected, yet less on fulfillment than those other things I've not done.  

Overdue Vacation Symptoms

 

About six months ago I had planned a few days touring the Everglades.  It didn't happen, as the risk of Covid-19 infection exceeded any realistic travel benefit.  I did not feel particularly deprived, more disappointed.  Moreover, I had fall, winter, and spring holidays in sight, events that usually restore my perspective.  Those have mostly come and gone.

I find myself back on Celexa after an extended drug holiday to tame my increasingly critical disposition.  It has helped.  I'm still ornery, having trouble focusing on tasks, deriving at best limited pleasure from what goes well and excessive irritation from the inevitable frustrations.

In my working years similar interludes cropped up.  They signaled time to request a week's vacation, generally overdue and a couple months in the future.  Having a firm date with a need to plan what I would like to do generally reframed my disposition adequately.  The set time always arrived.  People around me wished me a good time away.  That's how I feel now.  Need to set a time to escape and a place to travel to.

Not Been Fishing

My interests tend to fluctuate over time.  When the carpet cleaners came to prepare for Passover, I removed quite a few fishing rods from our living room to the hall and still have another on the floor of my car's back seat.  I've been to Walmart and Dick's, not to the more distant but better supplied Cabela's where I add to my supply of hooks and lures.  The waders hang on a hall tree near my front door and the fishing vest in the hall closet.  All unused.  I've not learned any new fishing knots in about a year.  I haven't even ventured beyond Bellevue State Park, our closest pond.  I've also not actually hooked a fish since I began a few years ago.

Still, it's worth another try this spring.  Going to Lum's Pond, despite loss of rod, and to White Clay Creek provide me some quiet and some challenge at the same time.  Beck's Pond sits a little closer and there are usually other fisherman around trying their luck from the rocky banks.  Good outings.  I could use some good outings.

Scoring Scholarship Applications

This has been my third season scoring applications for scholarships through the Delaware Community Foundation, one of the eminent charitable agencies of our region.  Most come from high school seniors planning to enter college, though a few are assigned to medical students either already in medical school or accepted for the following year.  These are good kids, the people who make my generation optimistic for the trajectory that humanity will take.  Scholarships often have a need basis, but I try to fill out my scorecards blindly.  DCF went to a new format, one that sort of makes my process easier.  First I look at courses and grades, SAT scores, and the letter of recommendation which are separate from the application.  Then I look at non-scholastic activity, then finally the required essay, jotting notes and selecting a score for each category.  I don't even look at the finances as there is an adjudication committee that makes the final award determination which they weight in a substantial way.

Who gets the highest automated score, at least from me, is not necessarily the person I would deem most worthy of an award.  These applications taken as an N=33 may expose more about America's educational process than they do about individual candidates.  First, I see a fair amount of inflation, either of grades, which I assume are earned for each student, but also of course titles.  If AP means college level and all kids have three AP courses each year, then the folks are being pushed too hard or college isn't hard enough.  If AP courses are offered before senior year, then the known AP exam scores need to be part of the scholarship application too.  The arbiter to grade and course description inflation has generally been exam scores.  There are legitimate reasons for a mismatch and it is hard to tell if a mismatch reflects on the student or the school.  But if there is a serious interest in having schools accountable for student performance and grades that typically far exceed test scores, the problem lies with the school.  I saw a lot of that each of the three years I reviewed the data given to me, made more difficult by the increasingly optional nature of including standardized testing results in the application.  SAT scores may be less valuable perhaps than Achievement Test or SAT II results which can be more easily matched with specific grades.  Again, this may reflect more on the school and how the local teachers create their grades than with the students who receive those grades.  A few kids from my medical school class conducted such an experiment.  Since we had a note taking service, a few opted not to attend lectures but to study texts and the lecture notes.  They underperformed on class tests, overperformed on Board Exams.  But the scholarship applications with their divergences between grades and standard scores raise serious questions about either what is taught or how class performance is assessed.  

I also got the sense that some of these kids were aiming for an intermediate future below their capacity.  I didn't encounter any applying to the Ivies or related highly competitive colleges, though from performance they could have.  The geographic distribution of their choices also seemed a bit more restricted than I might have expected from their level talent.  Makes me wonder about the guidance they receive. 

And finally, some people write more effective letters of recommendations than others.  I like to read illustrative vignettes that move talent to performance.  I wonder if schools coach their faculty on how to convey performance effectively, or if DCF gives a heads up to the Recommendation writers, as many are not faculty, as to what types of comments catch attention from readers.  If not, this would be a useful addition to the process.

While interviews might be a tempting addition, for kids in their late teens this could be intimidating and perhaps even misleading as poise often develops as part of the college experience.  There is also a volume of applications and limited experience of interviewers that might make this addition unrealistic or even detract from the student's assessment.  Best to keep it all in writing on the screens for now.

Limits to My Tolerance

Two events of note.  I returned to the public library an interlibrary loan book that I finished a few days ago, Jewish in America by Richard Rubin, a professor emeritus from Swarthmore.  It was in my possession about four weeks, read at a paced level.  It gets a favorable review from me.  The second event was a decision to snooze my most prolific posting FB contact.  She posts a few times a day, not so much as to create screen clutter.  However, the comments have drifted across the line from racially insensitive to more overtly racist, the type you would not offer in a workplace.  

Related events?  Indeed.  Prof. Rubin's book describes the Americanization of the Jewish population into a distinctly identifiable culture.  We take advantage of our political equality, if not our social equality, resulting in educational attainments that become either high income or wealth.  With appreciation for this largesse, we seem culturally highly tolerant of everyone else, if not overtly helpful.  In exchange for a live and let live approach to ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, physical capacity, and the like, there must also be a rebuff when this gets threatened.  America can be an honor system in a way, one with two parts.  Part 1: don't transgress goes pretty well.  When there are anti-Semitic, racial, or other events, the response in favor of the victims is uniformly overwhelming.  Part 2 in any honor system usually fails: don't tolerate improper conduct from anyone else.  Live and let live has a limit.  I snoozed my FB contact for 30 days.

Rough Start

My iTouch buzzed at its programmed 6:30AM but after a night's sleep interrupted at its midpoint by a rare nightmare, I pretended that the device had a snooze button, which it doesn't.  Some ughs for about ten minutes, then the rati
onal in me prevailed.  Electric toothbrush and Placker at least got me upright, and I don't feel overly tired once in motion.  Obligatory coffee starting second cup of the low priced kcup variety with some effect.  I've done about half the remaining Delaware Community Foundation scholarship applications, a task that has become more systematized than it should be.  The right candidate usually gets the money but my role is really to score the application with their computerized category scores.  It takes more impression than thought, which fits for this morning transition from wakefulness to fully functional higher CNS centers.  Most of what I aspire to doing today needs the full measure of my left brain at peak performance.  It probably also needs a timer to keep me on task.

So I still have a full day to fill in with some of the items on today's task list, many challenging, but I've taken the first step, even if a tentative one.

Waiting for the Buzz

For $30 I obtained a basic smart watch, an iTouch that coordinates with my smart phone.  Some things it does well, like keep time.  Some things it does poorly, like track sleep times.  And it has features that I've not used, either for lack of importance or not worth the trouble of learning how.  One very useful feature, probably worth the purchase price and the annoyance of fairly frequent recharging, has been the alarms. It offers three, all programmed via the coordinating smart phone.  One has been set to 6:30AM, my desired wake time, one to 9:05PM my daily reminder to count Omer, and the other left as a one time use, generally a prod to turn on Zoom for some event that day.

Now I will never forget, or if I don't arise at the time set by Sleep Hygiene efforts, it will be with some intent, or at least rationalization.  And it has been helpful for Omer.  But can I arise or count Omer before the reminder buzzes?  Perhaps it should get a penalty like beginning a race before the starter's pistol makes its bang.  Jumping the gun with my wake time has not gone well the rest of the days when I've done that.  Fixed times for arising may be the crux of sleep hygiene at both ends, separating sleep time to wake time with the purpose not of sleep but of optimal function the next day.  After my last misadventure arising before the signal, I decided not to try that again for a while.

Counting Omer is a little different.  There is a earliest time on the clock when the daily count may be done.  My reminder goes off well after that largely so I do not have to set it again before Shavuot.  But I know when the next shabbos ends so if I wait until that time, I should be able to count Omer even if before my set alarm.  Again, I opted not to do it early.  I want Omer counting to emerge as a daily habit, something best done with linkage, like Pavlov's Dog.  The vibration on my left wrist after dark means I must head downstairs for the daily Omer count. Computers having the capacity that they do, if I am at a screen with internet, I can get the daily count, blessing, and follow-up benediction from the screen, but going downstairs has set as part of the ritual, so the 9:05PM vibratory reminder is really to go downstairs.

While the iTouch can be used to create habits, and therefore expendable once the habit has established itself, sometimes it ingrains as part of the habit.  That's why I think it best not to act early but to wait for the buzz each morning and each night.

Total Body OOOH

A few challenges converges, some blend of financial, emotional, and physical.  While I'm ready to address each, not all at once.  A day following my 70th birthday and booster Covid immunization, the bodily effects become the squeakiest wheel.  I find myself a total body ache.  Not sick in any way but incapacitated enough to leave my scheduled treadmill session undone and set aside my personal commitment to staying upright during assigned waking hours.  While generalized achiness dominates, some subdivisions also emerge.  I feel tired, not fatigued so much as sleep deprived.  The injection site into my non-dominant deltoid has a small amount of pain and tenderness, though no swelling, warmth, or rubor.  Muscles ache, joints less so but resist active motion.  I experience slight chills, maybe just enough to add a fleece coverlet.  I don't have a headache.  My senses all remain intact.  While my musculoskeletal system sends me it could be better signal, I have no mobility limitations.  So this could be a lot worse.  Reaction to antigen runs its course.  The calendar does not but as the total body oooh subsides, I can move along to the other initiatives.  And not that far into the future.  

Threescore and Ten

 

Acting Rammy

As much as I adhere to sleep hygiene recommendations, including a fixed waking and out of bed time, I found myself wide awake more than an hour earlier.  Not being the least bit tired, even eager to get on with my day, I arose, engaged in hygiene, planned my week as I do each Sunday, and hopped onto the treadmill at a faster speed that was prudent much earlier than usual.  I reduced  the treadmill speed by 0.2mph, went on with my most important task of opening the determination of my monthly social security benefit which fell beneath expectation, drank coffee, and moved onto the mental portion of my day. Whether distracted by my irritation and need to appeal the social security verdict, which will make a permanent impact on my discretionary spending options, I did not recover any semblance of attention span.  My half generated ideas from the previous week stare at me, unable to refine them.  I lack t he ability to create purposeful sentences let alone link them in sequence.  Physically I feel restless, rammy, maybe approaching a funk.  Setting the timer for finite down time has not restored me.  I feel a little impulsive, like I want to be in motion but not in thinking mode.

Rain hasn't helped.  This would have been a good planting day.  I did look up planting schedules and seed placement options for my front door pots.  Not a good camera day.  I'm too restless to read or even watch my DVD on electronics which requires some attention or to listen to a Modern Scholars topic in progress.

I know I will need to address the social security appeal, enlisting my financial advisor, but I will also need to recover documents that led me to think I would qualify for more than they offered.  Best to create a fixed time dedicated to this later in the week.  But for the rest of today, I need to be as finite and specific as I can be, working with a timer, doing some of the DVD, and isolating one partially written essay for completion. This may be a reminder that when I set out my weekly pill container, resuming half strength citalopram at mid-week was probably a wise choice.  Likely I saw this restlessness, often with an abruptness to my personality bringing me to the edge of sarcastic hostility, as something generating insidiously for a while but affecting me more now.  I will have to isolate and define activities in order to do them, though I've been in this circumstance before. Planning my time away with a defined date  can help.  By week's end, I will have a proposed time away.   Social Security payment has priority but it also allows me 60 days to assemble my case.  Some focus on my deteriorating disposition, even with some pharmaceutical assistance, looks like the best option for reversal of my current funk.

Expressing What I Think

Social Media's availability has certainly created its share of trolls.  That's not what I really wanted to say, because snarky people of limited intellect have been around since the early days of language.  What's different has been the expansion of the audience into cyberspace.  People's expressions of what they think has not changed. My own skill at articulating what I really mean has these ongoing faulty meanings which never get fully resolved.

Like everyone else, I have experiences, thoughts, positions, and reactions that need to be transformed from cerebral storage into written expression.  Sometimes I care if I have somebody else to receive those articulated ideas, sometimes not, or at least not right now.

As my semi-annual initiatives have moved along roughly halfway through this allotted calendar segment, my self-expression goals have lagged behind some of the others.  As I think of a topic I wish to develop, I jot it on a dedicated sheet of paper for storage in a dedicated folder.  I've accumulated fifteen subjects, written and sent to editors only two.  Partially written quite a few more.  It is that barrier from partially expressed to suitable for a reader which has stymied me this past quarter.

I currently struggle over two themes.  My Jewish experience over a lifetime has failed to reach it's potential.  In the world of machers, if I don't have a favorable experience with their organization there must be something inferior about me.  It's probably not true, and may underlie why the exit ramps of Jewish affiliation seem as congested as they are.  In no uncertain terms, whether my sense of being rebuffed is accurate, it is my conclusion.  And organizational attrition speaks for itself.  Putting this form of 2+2 into a few paragraphs has met many revisions, even though the concrete personal examples are plentiful and easy to describe.  I have been using real examples of exclusion, hoping to assemble them into a unifying principle with neglected but possible remedies, but the cohesiveness of expression has not been forthcoming.

Like many others, I find the political transformation from thought to enhance public outcome to sloganeering intended to create loyal tribes distressing.  But do I engage in that myself, though in a more dignified way?  And what intersectionalities do I have?  Where did they come from?  This essay, using the White Board in My Space, filled out with values on one side, implementation on the other, has gone better than the other, though not entirely coherent.

My language skills being more than adequate, the gap between idea and expression may be in an uncertainty of what I want to convey.  I'll struggle with some drafts and editing, but I really seem to have the motivation to merge the conceptual to the articulate.  A struggle to be sure, but one that is gratifying once completed and submitted, no matter how much self-editing these projects entail.

Staying On Task

While wishing I felt somewhat better, though coping adequately, these have been a pretty decent past few days.  Pesach concluded and I transformed the house back to chametz consumption.  My tasks for doing this were a mixture of defined and paced.  Boxes went to the basement, chametz utensils came upstairs in roughly the urgency with which they would be used.  A trip to Trader Joe's accumulated favorite chametz items including their brand pumpernickel and bagels.  Lastly I toted to the garbage bin those plastic bags that had protected our Pesach supplies from a year in our basement and made the fleishig kitchen island functional.

Another day this week I isolated neglected writing to my day's priorities, taking an idea for a composition, writing a wandering set of paragraphs, then scratching half the essay in favor of something more coherent and worthy of sharing in a publication.

Yesterday I assigned to gardening.  Preparing outdoor beds took some work.  Each needed three types of soil upgrade, which also required me to find a spade, pitchfork, and rake amid the randomness of my garage.  But with some challenge to my breathing, muscles, and stamina, each 4x4 foot section now has a layer of soil conditioner, organic compost, and top soil ready for the herbs and vegetables that should flourish better this spring than in years past.  I learned that some gardening should be made easy.  If I want culinary herbs for meals, grow them outside my front door in containers.  My main earthenware pot broke but its pieces should enhance drainage in the remaining pots if I scatter them at the bottoms.  The pot of spearmint survived the winter, now with abundant tiny leaves that should grow to mint julep size by Kentucky Derby weekend.  The large broken pot has been replaced and prepped.  Yesterday I created zones for four different herbs and will use the fragments of the broken earthenware to define the zones.  Potting soil had run low so that got replaced.  And I spent some time reviewing the contents of my garden folder, deciding which herbs go in which containers, though it remains too cool to plant any other than parsley.

After three great efforts at focus, home transition, writing, and gardening, I now find myself without a unifying daily goal.  NEJM needs some catchup.  Have some Delaware Community Foundation Scholarship applications to review, and it's never wrong to have another focused writing day, but taking care not to let that devolve into expressing myself excessively on social media.  Despite having twelve semi-annual initiatives, the days seem to go best when I isolate one or two.  

Getting Outdoors

Pesach came and went a little earlier in the secular calendar than most years.  With a good deal of effort, and some pacing to adapt to my advancing years, our house has returned to chametz.  With this Festival comes spring, warmer weather, snowblower away but to be extricated in late fall so its function can be restored more effectively than this winter.  My outdoor rosemary and sage seeds, planted in transplantable cups before Pesach and placed outside have not germinated but the pots froze one day when I checked on them  Restoring sage and rosemary to my backyard herb garden has not yet reached a lost caused, though growing them from seed might have.

As Chol HaMoed reached its closing days, I afforded myself a few moments in my car and at my clipboard to anticipate what spring might enable.  First, I toured Dick's Sporting Goods store.  They had bicycles, fishing gear, golf clubs, and baseball bats.  I already have fishing gear, a putter and driver, a Schwinn that still functions sixty years after receiving it as a birthday gift updated with a safety helmet.  I had been nurturing my front door pots through the winter, mostly herbs.  One broke, replaced with another and the broken earthenware further fragmented as drainage stones for the other pots.  I went out to purchase all the seeds that I need.  My backyard beds need some layering.  Appropriate bags purchased and transported by hand truck to their sites of use.

Already I have walked a few trails in two state parks.  I photographed the outdoors using techniques I learned from this winter's Great Course on photography, purchasing a tripod to enable even more.  It's been a while since I've gone to see the Blue Rocks.  If the pandemic eases to allow stadium attendance, I could add that to this spring's outdoor activities.  Even a day at one of the State Park beaches could find its way as an outdoor activity before the summer solstice brings about the next season.

Getting outside has been an annually underperformed initiative, maybe best added to my daily task list in some form.  It can be better implemented, and should be.

Treating the Aches

In 2019 I developed an oligoarticular distal arthritis which lingered in some form until this day.  I took anti-inflammatories, splinted errant finger joints and tendons, squeezed the ball for platelet donations with my more functional left hand, and submitted to a variety of unrevealing testing conducted by a very capable personal physician.  It largely ran its course, though cycled, leaving me with no disability but a small residual discomfort in my right fingers.

Current aches are different, more consistent with the approach of threescore and ten years in just another week.  They distribute more axially, have not been migratory, persisted unchanged for months, and have more of a point focus in the part of my back least accessible to applying Ben Gay or similar atomic balm. I have a pleuritic component, my Hb has ebbed just enough for the blood bank to declare me ineligible to maintain my regular donations.  Other than being tired, which I attribute to disordered sleep, I do not feel systemically ill.  Other than a CBC, there has been no medical investigation, though I am due for periodic lab testing next month.  

As a more immediate pursuit, it would be better to have less discomfort, self-assessed at about a 2/5, more annoying by its persistence than its severity.  I took a naproxen, and plan to stay on a bid schedule this week.  I could ask my wife to goop my back with Ben Gay bid.  Not long ago I purchased a tube of Voltaren on sale, finding it useless on my hand though the suggested qid schedule could not be realistically maintained.  The current joint involvement, though mild, is widespread so internal therapy offers a better prospect than topical which may remain useful for the most bothersome areas.  Give it a go.  Stay on schedule.

Winding Down Pesach

Last few hours before yontiff. Not yet craving chametz but a day to wind down Pesach. Maybe package and return to basement Passover items that will not be used any more this Festival to save me some trips to the basement Sunday. Should take inventory on what I did or did not use. Can package the salt, dishwashing liquid, and coffee filters still in unopened boxes and keep the already open ones to use up during the year. Hardly consumed any Coca Cola, which is a good thing, but it only comes out as cane sugar based once a year, so buying a little extra has its benefit. Seemed more fond of club soda than in years past, though have not made myself a wine spritzer this holiday. Over purchased macaroons. Bought two packages of rather expensive and marginally edible Vita Lox. Goes on next years do not buy list. The upside of too much generosity at Shop-Rite was qualifying for a vegan turkey that I think I'll make for my upcoming birthday. Used about three boxes of matzoh. Usually I give one away but no kids visiting. Did not open the farfel at all, still have some from last year too. Make a kugel or two during the year, maybe stuffed chicken breasts for a couple of shabbatot, and treat myself to periodic matzoh brei.

It was a fine holiday from a culinary perspective which runs parallel to its logistical perspective. Made the right amount of brisket, converted some ordinary chicken breasts into a terrific stir fry that made three meals. Only one milchig supper, grand matzoh brei with Tabachnik's potato soup. Babanatza lasted each meal. Nusstorte provided a learning curve that will take effect next time I make it.

Shul remains closed. I didn't miss it. Our Rabbi declared Hallel and Yizkor as congregational destinations along with Tuesday afternoon mincha and a part kabbalat Shabbat with Cantor doing a Torah reading. This does not appeal to me at all. Our liturgy and festivals have Biblically prescribed times. Half-Hallel would be recited today. Yizkor would not. In defense, there is a Pesach Sheni for those indisposed at the appointed time, but it is a month later, not time shifted. But I think what's offered looks too much a blend of contrived, manipulated, and even phony for me to sign on. I'd rather respect the appointed times, do my best with them and skip those I cannot attend, but modifying my own activities as the specified times require. My wife feels differently. I'm more attached to Pesach from Coronavirus, less attached to my congregation.

As we ease past one Festival, we move with anticipation to the next. My iWatch has been set to buzz at 9PM nightly for Omer. I am attached to the Omer, a responsibility to be fulfilled irrespective of how I feel. Hair grows uncut until Lag B'Omer on day 33. It has its own culinary challenge, this one dairy, which can be rather elegant. It lacks the visual ritual though. People traditionally study long into the night, but again my congregation reminds me more of Hebrew School than Chavruta, so I've not been going. Perhaps shul will be open by then. I anticipate being a month past Covid immunization by then. If not my shul, than another. I think I am ready for formal live congregational assembly, with its ritual, its sounds, the sincere good will of those present. Emerge from Pesach now, emerge from isolation and cobbling together what has been a mostly unappealing Jewish experience perhaps to coincide with commemorating Torah.

Electronic Misadventures

Not being a Geek, I depend frequently depend on their expertise.  It's been an electronically difficult few weeks.  My laptop crumped, victim to a cup of spilled herb tea.  There remains a place for gratitude.  The experts at Best Buy were able to capture my data, including my Microsoft programs.  Moreover, while replacement poses an unexpected expense, I have the resources to meet it with no impact on my lifestyle.

The Amazon replacement came promptly.  Making it function went easily.  Being a modern version, it lacked a built in DVD drive that I use for my library CD's and for Great Courses.  No problem.  They only cost about $25 from a variety of online sources.  I picked one from Walmart, which turned out to be partially good fortune.  It came ahead of schedule.  Despite my best efforts, I could not get the computer to recognize it in the USB port, let alone get it to work. The device came with a small folded card of instructions, written by somebody who learned English as a second language or somebody who could send something to a printer for mass distribution without being hassled by an editor first.  My wife made some headway but in the process corrupted the Google Chrome access which started presenting Hide History as its search results.  I couldn't get rid of it.  A computer that fully functioned in cyberspace stopped functioning.  I installed, then uninstalled two Media Player programs. Fortunately, when I purchased the laptop I included a comprehensive warranty.  A phone call to the Amazon warranty carrier eventually got me to somebody who could get me back to Chrome as I was used to using it.  He could not get the DVD going. One final try.  Walmart contracts with an organization called WOW electronics to provide this product.  They had a customer service number which I called.  Nobody answered the phone.  Their automated menu offered to take me to customer service but the best I could do there was leave my phone number for a callback.  None over the next hour or so. Before going to Walmart, I needed to generate the receipt from the electronic purchase.  No problem, just print the email of the transaction.  Unfortunately, my printer didn't print, as the printer had not been installed on the new laptop.  I thought I could do this, following instructions for downloading.  I got our all-in-one ready for scanning but not for printing.  My wife, who has done this before and knows the side traps, got it done with some effort.  But a printed receipt got stuffed into the packing that came with the DVD drive.

Since I only had the device a couple of days, I checked out return policies, after slamming the product on Walmart's online review, though I was more than generous with Walmart itself which made the purchase easy and delivered ahead of schedule.  Apparently a product purchased at walmart.com could be returned to a local store, which I did.  I would have expected the young lady at Customer Service to have more familiarity with online returns but she got by.  My DVD which had no use to me went into a box, shipping label generated, and my credit card will get it's refund when the product arrives at the warehouse.

It's been at least months, probably early fishing season, or maybe during my visit to metro St. Louis for my son's wedding that I last entered a Walmart.  In person shopping has taken a big hit.  Aisles were cluttered, shelves had major merchandise gaps, staff was hanging on in the hope that they could move onto another place that pays more without acquiring skills that would make most of them worth more.  Might Walmart in person have another DVD?  Not only didn't I see one, every person I saw in their computer section worked in a different department.  They had a great price on a flash drive, which I needed, so I got that.  A trip to Walmart is never complete without a stop at the fishing aisle.  Saw some braid at a good price, but another time.  I stood on a not too fast moving line with a ten dollar bill extracted from my wallet to pay for the flash drive.  My turn came up, with the attendant motioning me to a scanner.  I scanned the flash drive, then inserted the $10.  Instead of giving me my change and a receipt it dispensed two five dollar bills.  Next I inserted my usual credit card in the usual way but the screen informed me it could not be read.  No better on the repeat.  It asked for another card or for cash.  I put in one of the $5 bills, took a single out of my wallet, inserted them, and watched the machine process my receipt and a few coins change.  Not a great shopping experience though I wonder if the shoppers, including me, really deserve any better.  Maybe not.  Or maybe that's why online shopping has begun to nudge out on-site retailers.  Touching a product pre-purchase has an advantage but My Space where I navigate through my laptop appears far more orderly and the people I encounter online when I need assistance seem to have gotten more out of their schooling than the people whose aid I seek in the local stores.

I still need a usable DVD player.  Amazon had one that I liked so I put it into the cart.  To get free shipping I need to spend another few dollars, so this may be an opportunity to buy a tripod or a kittel with the remaining $55 in five dollar bills that I harvested from cash change the second half of 2020.  Much to my surprise, amazon.com includes kittels in their inventory, exactly the $55 I have to spend, but I think the tripod would be a better way to get me past the free shipping shortfall this time.