Cougar Mountain Scouting Expedition 3/23/08

We went to scout out the Cougar Mountain area to plan a large gathering in May. We figured if Eitana (4 years old) could walk 3 miles so could the older kids.

Maddie met a younger doggie who was younger and faster. It was a ridge back / labrador mix. The two of them had a great time running and chasing each other through the woods. Maddie also jumped into the watering trough for horses and drank / swam for a while. Eitana was also very spirited, sprinting or splashing in puddles. She would not let us read the map, preferring to keep it to her self and tell us which way to go at trail intersections.

Here is a short movie clip of Maddie on-leash and Eitana:

cascade striders work out

The striders work out every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Today was the toughest work out yet. I am so happy when it is over! I shall be in Boston for a week and shall sorely miss the strider work outs.

Purim Musical 2008 at Herzel Ner-Tamid

Elisheva and I attended the awesome Purim “service” (musical theatre production) at our synagogue last night. It was amazing, outrageous, fun, fantastic, entertaining. When I see these people at any time but Purim they are in suits, formal, serious. Last night they were cross-dressed in shocking clothing, over-acting and singing (quite well). The camera phone does not do the scene justice.

King Ahashuarus was Elvis. Mordechai was James Brown. Haman was Mick Jagger. Esther was Aretha Franklin. The music and songs were wonderful. The audience was loud, bawdy, and fun as well.

Eitana and Pappa made a kite!

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Last night Eitana and I used newspaper, string, and some old dowels to build a huge kite. We still need to make the tail and then fly it.

Cycle of Distortion

The Jerusalem Post published a good editorial about the perception of Israel's struggle for existence. There is no "cycle of violence." Instead,

...What we have, rather, on the one hand, is a sovereign nation's desperate effort to live in its homeland, seek peace with those of its neighbors who will partner [with] it, and defend itself against those who seek its destruction. And, on the other, we have the forces of militant Islam, firing rockets across Israel's sovereign borders, murdering Israelis wherever they can be found vulnerable, indoctrinating their people with a vicious intolerance of Jewish historical rights in this region, and simultaneously spreading a perverted interpretation of Islam that purports to require each and every believer to carry out personal jihad in the name of God against the infidels - be they Jews, Christians or unbelieving Muslims.

Quick Trip to Philadelphia and Boston

My oldest three teenagers and I spent last weekend on jet planes and rental cars to honor my father for his 90th birthday. The party was near Philadelphia and was well-attended by my cousins. My aunt flew in from Jerusalem for the event. The party was fun. The speeches were moving and my slide show was well-accepted.

I grew up with my cousins as extended family; seeing them all again is always deeply nostalgic, warm, and wonderful.

My oldest, at Reed College in Portland, flew through Seattle to Boston. The three of us met briefly with her at the airport before we boarded our separate red-eye flights to Boston Logan. At Logan we rented a car and drove to Hanscom air field in Bedford where we boarded a private jet for NE Philadelphia airport. I was duly impressed with the “private jet” lifestyle – you drive up to the plane, board, and take off. When we landed 45 minutes later, rental cars greeted the plane as it taxied to the jet aviation building. That evening after the party and festivities, we unwound the same process, driving the rental cars back to the plane, flying to Hanscom, and taking the rentals to my sister's house. My sister fed us amazing foods (filet mignon, fresh fruit, fresh polenta) and my youngest niece crushed us at Wii games. All the kids did their homework around the table. The relaxed Sunday morning with family was even better than the party.

Eventually we headed back to Logan and flew home. I wish we could visit more frequently...

update:

Here are some more photos I just drained from the camera:

Photo Albums

At some point, real soon now, I shall add a 1 or 2 TB drive as a USB external device to our $25 "everything" home network server (an awesome linksys WRT54G) . Then I shall gather up and archive our music and photos there. Meanwhile, we have digital photos on lots of different services, machines, and media. Some of us prefer photoworks and we have lots of photos there now; they let you store the full resolution of the originals. We have not bumped into any storage limits; we order Kodak prints; they default crop better when they print and we are happy with their quality. I also have lots of photos on mw.spaces.live.com. I would like to put some of these albums on my phone to show to my relatives when I am there next week. So when I went to pull down some of the albums from live.com it said I needed to install "Windows Live Photo Gallery." If I did not work at Microsoft, I would immediately abandon live.com and run screaming for photoworks or some other competitor. Forcing me to install software in such a competitive space as photos is a bad scenario. However I saw the Windows Live Photo Gallery application demonstrated at work a while ago and it has some cool features and I know it is very trustworthy since I work in Trustworthy Computing, so I went for it. I like the album-at-a-time download feature as well as the integration with email. It's also pretty cool how it scans for photos and puts them in albums. So anyway I am making some slide shows now and shall put them on my phone to show them to relatives, just as Arnold did for me in the restaurant -- he showed me a large album of a recent field trip he took with his daughter's class.

Living the Windows Mobile Life Style

I went jogging at noon and had just made it up the hill where 40th St dead ends into bridle trails park

(the park was nice in the sun) when I got a call from the admin that I was supposed to present and facilitate a "human performance consultation" in half an hour.

I was listening to Bach, using my phone as an mp3 player and those groovy a2dp bluetooth stereo headphones. When the phone rang, I pushed the button on the headphone and it picked up the call; I had never used the headphones as a bluetooth headset before. The microphone apparantly sucks but we were able to communicate.

So I ran (quickly) back to work, prepared the hand-outs and questions, and went to the meeting. I love this phone. I plan to add home movies and slide shows to show relatives when I fly east next week.

I sometimes wish the phone had wifi or gps (or I had a data plan) but mostly I am thrilled about not paying the ridiculously high rates to the phone carriers.

Yofi bridges to boyscouts

The second year Webelos bridged into their boy scout troops last night. Entertainment was provided by an awesome jumprope dance troop.

Yofi received his arrow of light cub scout award. The blue & gold banquet was not as ceremonial as other such parties I have attended in the past but the low-key atmosphere and excellent facilities enabled more social networking among the parents.

Rockets kill another civilian in Israel

One of the 43 Qassam rockets fired into Israel from Gaza so far today killed a student. Other rockets wounded some kids. Homes and a factory were badly damaged by the barrage. A direct hit was scored on a cafeteria moments after people left.



In response to this brutal war crime targetting civilians, the Israeli government announced their commitment to peace and stepped up shipments of fuel, electricity, and food to the Iranian-sponsored terrorists firing rockets at civilians from Gaza. Yosi Beilin called on the government to enter serious peace talks with the Islamist terrorist group to discuss a long-term commitment by Israel to use no military action against terrorists.


Here the medical crew is trying unsuccessfully to resuscitate the dead student. Medical crews did rescue a kids arm from amputation, though.

The NYTimes and other US media area studiously ignoring the rocket fire and carnage. More than 800 rockets and mortar shells have been fired from Gaza into Israel since 1/1/08. About 2,300 were fired at Israel during all of 2007.

I can't imagine what the US response to Mexico would be if hundreds of rockets and shells rained down on San Diego from across the border.