Even in Canada, I knew there were two ways of saying a person died: מת/ meit and נפטר/ niftar . In general, religious people use niftar, even when speaking English – it’s the more polite way of saying it, like “passed away.” But when my father died, eleven years ago tomorrow, and a taxi came to take me to the airport, I told the driver we were hurrying because I had to get back to Toronto because “ abba sheli meit .” There are lots of words you use in religious life that aren’t used so much in contemporary Israeli Hebrew, and so I was just taking a stab at the best possible way of saying it. But Israel being Israel, the cab driver decided it was time for a grammar lesson. “ Niftar . We say he was niftar .” Boy, did I know. (And also – is it my imagination, or only in Israel would a cab driver have the chutzpah correct someone who has just told you their father has died minutes before… ?!) These days, I have a habit that makes my 14-year-old daughter (“I’m basically 15”) cringe: tel...
Posts
Just shlumped down at the table late last night, procrastinating, and pressed a button – almost at random - on my Blackberry Playbook , only to discover… a kid!!! Elisheva has one too, and was sitting in the basement of her grandmother’s house in Calgary, chatting with her friends when I accidentally called her. That is a very cool thing, and gives me a lot of hope for the future of communicating with my family. I totally love the Playbook, by the way. Mine is 16gb, an older model, which I bought “used” but never opened on Craigslist back in January. I wanted something super-portable that I could take with us on our pilot trip and beyond. It came with this nifty little case which a) protects it, and b) includes a stupid little Bluetooth keyboard that turns it into the World’s Tiniest and Stupidest-Keyboarded Laptop. I don’t use the keyboard much, though I did for emailing the family and my blog while we were in Israel. It has WiFi and also built-in...
Are they trying to convert me???? Seriously, I’m wondering. I have given facebook absolutely no hint that I might be open to Islamic propaganda, yet it has totally started pestering me with ads like thee every time I go on there. These are just a few of the ads I’ve seen over the last few weeks. That’s all we need… Jews for Allah , out to win our souls for the prophet (pbuh). Sad thing is, I bet a lot of Jews would go for it. UPDATE! (two days later… three more!) What the heck is going on here??? Has anybody else observed this, or is it just something I’ve clicked on that’s triggered the “Muslim-curious” facebook setting?
Really, you don’t recognize the word Jewishness ? But would rather I typed “Jewfishes” or “Jadishness” instead??? (perhaps it would rather I used the noun “Yiddishkeit” instead?) Well, I for one am proud of my Jewishness… to heck with all the Jadishness! (this isn’t my writing, by the way; I’m just editing for somebody…)
In case anybody was wondering: cute, plastic, indeterminate race. Not so cute when you meet them online, though. There, they’re a niggling annoyance that get in the way of all the fun and happy stuff the Internet is supposed to be for. I won’t go into specifics here, but hugs and happy thoughts would be nice.
✡✡✡ As a Jewish homeschooler, I beg anyone who is studying the Holocaust today (Holocaust Remembrance Day) to not stop at the pictures and stories of horror, but also to talk about what Judaism is and continues to be. We mustn't forget the atrocities, but please emphasize that Jews lived and STILL live with an eternal Godly mission. Our covenant has never been broken or replaced. The Shoah is one of many terrible times in our very long history, but Am Yisrael Chai (the nation of Israel still lives). ✡✡✡ I don’t write much, here or anywhere else, about the Shoah (a term many Jews prefer for the Holocaust, in which more than 6000000 Jews and millions of others were killed by the Nazis). I got a lot of it as a kid – too much, too young. In order that we should never forget, we were shown movies, photos, newsreels that would horrify fully-grown adults – only we were 7 and 8 and 10 and 11 and indeed, I will never forget, but I never wanted to remember, either. So I resolved not to d...
These days, for every blog post, I receive dozens of spam comments. Some are an uninteresting blend of keywords – boh-ring! But others attempt to disguise themselves as legitimate comments… indeed, more than legitimate , they mask themselves as the most suck-up kind of grovelling, flattering comments, at least until the end when they ALL wrap up by saying something to the effect of, “come visit my blog!” Can anyone explain these type of comments to me??? I understand about search engines and keywords and spam, but what doesn’t make sense is that some of the URLs are totally nonsensical, so it’s difficult to imagine who is actually footing the bill for these spammers’ “services.” Anyway… however the heck they work, I thought I’d share with you the “cream” of the crop, spam-wise. Here are a few of my favourite comments currently awaiting moderation (links removed, of course!): Your means of explaining the whole thing in this piece of writing is truly ple...
Well, not taking a holiday; that’s for sure! We’ve been reading up a storm… here’s a selection of our current read-alouds… We’re also slowly making our way through our “ Winter Reading List ,” based on the Second Five in a Row unit study curriculum. You can get the printable wall chart for that reading list here . As with the First FIAR reading list we did last year, some of the books are wonderful; others are just so-so. Links to all the books we’re reading are over here in the Official MamaLand Amazon Homeschool Curriculum n’ More Store . So here's the big fat excuse for why I haven't been posting: our stupid !#$^ computer has been failing for a while, and when that happens, I end up spending 95% of my “relaxing” computer time just trying to make the thing work. Finally, 2 weeks ago, one of the hard drives quit entirely and I ordered a new computer – well, a $250 out-of-date refurbished computer that I could stick the working har...
No, not THAT one… Not THAT one, either… I have wanted a square logo for my blog for a while, for various sites, blog link-ups, etc. So I did a square variation on the header at the top of the page. For anyone who’s wondering what the symbols mean, it’s actually pretty self-explanatory. I just opened up the symbol/webdings/wingdings fonts and picked out a bunch that seemed to represent what goes on around here on a typical “day in the life.” I ended up with: a family, shouting, parking = shlepping around by car, bicycle (we love bikes), late nights, eating and Jewy-Jewishness. Anyway, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out, especially considering I was ready to pay someone on Fiverr for a logo design, and then I saw what they were turning out and figured I could come up with something equally bad for $5 less money… That said, Fiverr is my new obsession this weekend. I am on desperate to pay somebody $5 to do something … anything! Oh – I made...
YM: “How come there are no pictures here of child ambassadors?” Me: “Child ambassadors?” {I think his project has something to do with the UN something on rights of the child, but never mind that…} Me: “Well, I’ll make one for you – give me 5 minutes…” (children) + (ambassadors) equals… child ambassadors! Okay, weird. I wonder if I have helped him in his project?
Our little garden critters totally seem to love being around Gavriel Zev. The snails in particular just make themselves right at home on his fingers, arms, anywhere. And he responds with total adoration, whether it’s a worm or a bug or a snail he’s “adopting.” (p.s. and a pat on my OWN back for taking the great shot at the top, then realizing when I imported it onto the computer that his nose was totally snotty… so I fixed it!!!) (there is a slight powderiness to his nose that was there in real life as well, and I didn’t remove that)
Google made some changes this week which have made comment moderation even more of a pain. Previously, I just had to click a link in my email and it would automatically either publish or reject the comment. Now, I have to go through a whole rigmarole, which – practically speaking – is going to be very annoying to follow through on every single day. So I’m asking you to vote… would you prefer to: A) leave a comment the current way; it will not appear immediately and Jennifer has a hassle to approve whatever I have to say, OR B) leave a comment immediately (instant gratification!) but have to pass through one of those annoying CAPTCHA word-scrambles (which seem to get harder with every passing week) to verify that you are a human being and not a spammer. It’s your call – moderation or captcha??? (if nobody leaves a comment, that means you folks probably don’t care enough and I’ll just do whatever the heck I want and nobody will notice!)
We were supposed to go to another workshop at the NFB this morning, but I promised I’d do some work for somebody, so I had to tell the kids we weren’t going to the workshop. They weren’t all THAT crushed – we’ve done a couple already this year. But I felt so guilty that I told them at lunch that we could make our own animation instead. I decided it should be about Pesach in some way, since we haven’t done much so far, and came up with a basic plot, based on the life of Moshe, with a list of “sets” and characters, in about two minutes. The photography part is easy with our webcam, though unfortunately, the low webcam quality really shows in the final video. Here’s our sophisticated video setup: Naomi eagerly designed and drew three “sets” – a palace interior, Moshe’s family’s home, and a scene by the Nile River. Here’s our willing cast of (mismatched, sigh) mentschies! This was a particularly ambitious project because in our previous homemade animations ( he...
No way, no how! Our new slogan here in MamaLand is, "You say goodbye... I say 'Hello, New Way of Connecting with Friends no thanks to Google's FriendConnect.'" ( seder or no seder) To be honest, I have no idea what the imminent demise of Google FriendConnect means to me, as a blogger, but the thought of a single one of you missing a post makes me ever so sad. Luckily, we have options! Oy, do we have options for you. Hmm... what are the options? Oh, yeah! 1. If you're reading this in a blog reader, you're already okay; I'm not going nowhere, as they say in my old 'hood (I was raised in a Greek and Italian neighbourhood, I swear!). 2. If you're reading this the old-fashioned way, in my blog itself, look way, WAY up to the top-left corner. Do you see the word "Follow"? Yeah, that one. Click it! Then click "Share" right next to it... just because you're nice. 3. You can subscribe by email! How sweet is ...
$100 birthday gift card that I can ONLY spend on books for my Kobo (plus assorted coupon codes here and here that get me 25-30% off – oh, I just noticed they have one right on the front page, too). What a challenge! If it was a real bookstore card, I might waste it on Melissa & Doug stuff, like the time I bought the magnetic skeleton play set – which wasn’t exactly a waste because they still love it…). This also comes at a good time, because I’m not really loving the Kobo, and I suspect that getting a few new books for it may be just the ticket, as they say. Warning: Some of the choices here are religious-freaky-weirdo stuff, because the library doesn’t carry those. It’s kind of funny; I don’t believe in conspiracies, but if it’s a book about atheism or science or psychology or being gay or trans or polyamourous or anything of a liberalish non-traditional kind of nature, they have it in spades. But if it’s about God, faith or the Bible (or – ...
Drooling over this Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue (which turns out to be an old one from last fall), I noticed ON THE VERY SAME PAGE ads for a “Portable Handheld Scanner” and a “Phototherapy Hairbrush.” Now, you can’t see it clearly, but the scanner costs $99.95 compared to the hairbrush’s $199.95. And for all the proven scientific effectiveness of the phototherapy hairbrush – which, by the way, uses the same laser technology found in scanners – well, I hope you can see where I’m going with this! That’s right: buy the scanner, use it on your hair!!! You’re very welcome. Reading this blog just saved you $100 on this must-buy gift item; consider making a donation – we can split the difference!
I’ve already mentioned this peeve: sites that make you create a high-security password to access such highly confidential information as PACKAGE TRACKING. Today’s medium-security site is Starbucks, where I went to register the nice gift card my sister Abigail thoughtfully picked out for me. (she knows how much I love green) Anyway, an attempt to use my usual password formula* produced this error message. Sheesh. * password formula: Instead of using the same password for every single site (very unwise), you can use the same BASE password for many sites, combined with a numeric code that varies with the name of the site. Base password can include two words, like beetle and fish , with a punctuation mark (maybe #) in between. Then, if the code number for the S in Starbucks is “27” then your password could be something like “beetle#fish27”. If you want to make sure it passes the HIGH STANDARDS of websites like Starbucks and Canada Post, h...
I caved. I upgraded. I am indeed a packrat, and I have been using DropBox to store the overage… except that the basic free account wasn’t enough and, well, after weeks of warnings that my DropBox was full – I upgraded. I use DropBox for all my school-related stuff, but I’ve been meaning to expand and use it for writing stuff as well. Now I can, and I’m thrilled about it. I’m hoping that the small amounts that are trickling in for selling lapbooks and stuff will fund this additional expansion in the name of improving the quality of homeschool printables I’m able to create and archive. PDFs and graphics thingies take up a lot of room. I have to say – though I don’t like most new things or most technical things (as my kids will tell you; for a techie, I have surprisingly Luddite inclinations) I enjoy DropBox very much. It has worked pretty much seamlessly, as promised. The free downloadable desktop application has worked completely s...
Thanks to my diligent and/or shameless shilling of wares for Amazon.com , both here and on various online fora (the proper plural of forums), I have earned a teeny-weeny gift card. Yay, me! But when I went on the site and the shipping charges to Canada are RIDICULOUS! I’m sure I’ve bought at least something there before and it wasn’t this ridiculous – like $8.99 shipping for a $5 paperback. My first thought was to find an MP3 instead, but I’m also not sure if they let me buy those here in Canada. Argh! I’m so frustrated… unlike B&N and every other eCommerce site, Amazon also has no way to show you a running total, including shipping, so you have to go back and forth, pretending you’re about to order, before it will reveal the actual shipping amount. Tres frustratundo. So here’s where you come in. Any ideas for how to spend this thing??? Any specific recommendations, or any workaround for the high shipping rates? I think next time, ...