There are certain things that are meant to be done during daylight, or at least at a time when you aren’t asleep on your feet. Cleaning bathrooms, for example. First, I am not a person that likes to clean bathrooms (although there are people out there who enjoy this activity. Seriously! I met one!). Second, when I get tired, I forget things. Third, I always try to multi-task.

I was feeling very efficient after my dinner party tonight…washed all the dishes, bagged up the trash, put away the food, put away clothes in my room. I put toilet cleaner fluid in the toilet and let it sit, and did the same with the bathtub scrub.

This was at around 10 pm. Then I got distracted watching youtube clips at my next door neighbor’s flat, stopping by my aunt’s flat, etc. The usual fun times at the Blum.

At midnight I go to the bathroom to brush my teeth, and realize that I haven’t scrubbed out the cleaning stuff. So it is happily eating away at the tub and toilet. I promptly scrub them both out, taking away several layers of minerals (yay for calcium deposits in the water supply!). Trust me, I would have completely forgotten to clean it out if the smell hadn’t overpowered me.

Now it is 12:30 am. I think I drank too much tea. I am wide awake.

I just realized that I wrote an entire blog post about cleaning my bathroom. And it had no point except to illustrate that I am occasionally absent-minded and a little bit obsessive. Wow. I’m so sorry to have wasted your time! But hey, the everyday things give you a little glimpse into my life, right?

Do any of y’all have a story about forgetting things, bathrooms (I know I’m asking for trouble with this one!), or even a random anecdote that you always wanted to share, but never had the opportunity? Now is your chance!

Posted in Haifa, Personal | Comments (4)

“…as long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.”

-Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

I don’t have a lot to say right now, really. I had a fantastic day yesterday…we went hiking in a forest preserve, and I am really just happy that I survived since it was so hot and we were out there for 6 hours (pictures here).  Also, I read the latest Harry Potter book in a 24 hr span.  I am crazy.

I am quiet these days, happier to sit back and listen, or read, or be inside my head. I need social interaction, as I always have, but there is something wonderful in learning what it is to be on my own.  If it makes me more serious than usual, so be it.

It is interesting to step outside yourself, to analyze your actions and see where things are taking you.  It is also good to have friends/family that are honest with you, and who say what needs to be said, even though it isn’t always what you want to hear.

The reason I say all of these things is because there are a lot of people who read this blog, and I am pretty sure that I don’t know most of you very well.  There are parts of me that want to learn about everyone around me, to be a friend, to cherish them.  I also know that I don’t always have time for that, but if someone makes an effort, I am likely to do the same.  The way the world is these days, with people being “friends” at the drop of a hat (whatever happened to the word ‘acquaintance’?), it is hard for me to say that I need more “friends”.

But I really love knowing people’s stories and trying to understand who they are, and that will always be something I cherish.  So no matter how many lovely people are in my life, I will always welcome more.

Posted in Friends, Haifa, Thoughts | Comments (5)

I was browsing articles on msnbc.com when I saw this article about chickens increasingly being raised as pets (and for their eggs). It seemed like a fairly normal story…and then I started laughing out loud when I saw the following paragraph.

“Backyard Poultry magazine was resurrected about a year and a half ago after being halted in the 1980s. Readership in the Medford, Wis.-based publication has skyrocketed compared with its publisher’s other two animal magazines — sheep! Magazine and Dairy Goat Journal.”

toothpastefordinner.com

Posted in Humor, News | Comments (6)

I drove a car today for the first time in nearly 8 months.  (Well, to be completely honest I took a driving test here a few months ago, but I only drove a few blocks, so I don’t think it counts.)

It was wonderful.  I didn’t realize how much I missed driving until I got behind the wheel.  Driving in Israel wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and I was driving for work, so I had a specific destination. 

A business lunch at an outdoor restaurant, good conversation, and Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” playing on the radio as we drove back to work completed a fabulous day.

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Every morning about 10 of us take a sherut to work from our apartment building.  A sherut is like a mini-bus, and it arrives every day at 7:45 am.

Today it did not arrive.  8 of us stood outside our building, confused.  While we waited, another sherut came down the driveway.  He asked us where we needed to go, and when we informed him that we were trying to get to Golomb (where the Arc is), he drove away as if offended.

I called the sherut manager, who then informed me that he couldn’t reach his driver.

We decided to walk up to the street to catch a few cabs.  Taxis kept driving by, most of them empty, while 4 boys and 4 girls stood on the curb.  We got 4 people into a taxi, which then stopped 20 feet away and kicked everyone out: he wanted twice as much money as we should pay, and wouldn’t use the meter. 

Finally we got almost everyone into two taxis (that we called to come get us), leaving me and one of the guys left behind.  We flagged down a taxi, who then took 2 wrong turns, almost didn’t stop at our destination (I had to emphatically correct him!), and tried to charge us too much money.

 I arrived at work a 1/2 hour later than I should have. It would have been faster to go by horse-drawn carriage.

Posted in Haifa, Humor | Comments (6)

1.  I am eating a sandwich with an olive oil-based mayonnaise.  It tastes exactly the same as “regular” mayonnaise, except it has less fat and is slightly less thick.  Lovely.

2.  We watched a blue jellyfish float by at the beach on Friday.  This also means that going in the water is a risky endeavor.  I felt rather brave. 

3.  Everything here is a constant hello and goodbye.  Pilgrims, family visitors, and staff.  It makes my head spin sometimes.

 4.  We are going to see Harry Potter tonight.  By “we” I mean a group of 25 people or so.  This has become the “thing to do”.  One of the guys always organizes an expedition…and I do mean expedition.  We have instructions, synchronized times to meet at locations, ticket-buying, job titles, hiking through snow and over mountains, sacrificing members of the group to wolves howling outside the cave where we huddle for shelter…

So far we have seen Spiderman 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Die Hard, and Transformers.  Other movies I’ve seen in the theatre have been Fantastic Four and Ocean’s 13.   Sometimes it feels like I haven’t left the USA at all.

 5.  It is official: I have begun spelling in the British style (the BWC uses British spelling for the most part).  I knew it would happen eventually, but now I do it in MSN conversations.  I’ve also begun developing a bit of the “BWC accent” (which is basically a generic mixture taken from dozens of languages).  I am amused: this is the 4th accent I will have acquired in my lifetime.

6.  Summer slows down my pace of reading, mostly because I do not want to be indoors when it is so wonderfully warm outside.  (Yes, I AM enjoying the heat.  I know I am crazy.)  I finally finished all of the Jane Austen books, as well as a few fantasy novels, and am working on a few books simultaneously.

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I start writing, literally have paragraphs typed out and a subject line and something twists inside me and I stop. I keep trying to explain my life here, how much I love it, but I have the same words I did before, and a thesaurus does no good.

A weekend:
Friday is work-beach-Transformers.
Start Saturday with a trip to Bahji, delight in an engagement (congrats!), wander Akka with girlfriends, go to a dinner party where I laugh so hard it hurts.

I watched the Shrine of the Báb from a rooftop as the sun went down and we said prayers for someone who had left this world for the next one. I watched the perfect color of Persian tea reflect torchlight, and I began to understand that these are the times that things matter. I sat in a café and thought about everything and nothing.

This is my life, after 7 months.

Posted in Haifa, Thoughts | Comments (4)

I am surprised at the way eyes slide away when we know too much
there are a few things I wish I could list in an endless way…
maybe I am missing the pictures that go along with the captions
charcoal drawings are the only thing that I can see clearly sometimes
the smudges of gray on white paper catch my eye.

I never learned how to draw.
I never learned how to say anything in a straight line.

I say it all in words that accelerate and spill into open air
a never-ending fall.

My eyes are clouded over in six layers of the past, the one year of the future, the unknown, and every time I said something too soon.

When I prayed for the edges to be taken off the isolation
I became submerged, walking below the snowed-over pieces of the glass I fell through.
There is clarity in the forced silence, but my speech takes over in a avalanche of tumbling words.

I am still learning how to speak.

Posted in Poetry | Comments (3)

My feet had lost the feeling of ground underneath them, the constant digging in of sharp rocks and hidden stones
I forget what people are like, their little frailties and habits, the beautiful and ugly things they do.

I am hidden here, there is a plate glass window and my breath is fogging it beyond repair.

Final steps have no place here, and I find myself wondering why final moments keep coming in front of my eyes…the unwished-for images that are some kind of violation to admit.

I wonder when my capacity for chocolate chip cookies turned into sunlit afternoons, fire-warmed snowed-in evenings, and serving Persian tea on a Persian carpet in a home in any continent in the world (you pick). When did home become such a lost word?

Today I finally remembered a piece of home (did you know that I’d forgotten?). It is freshly cut grass with trees overhead and the faint hum of suburban life.

Or the sounds of ambulances for 4 hospitals mingled with music from everywhere, and the possibility of eating food from 15 different countries any time I want.

Or limestone buildings with grandmothers on balconies, young men in jeans and American t-shirts and the sea behind it all.

I can’t decide anymore.

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The first news is that my father’s newest book, Blueprint for a New World, has just been published from George Ronald, and I am reading it right now.  I helped type and proofread, but in random chapters, so it is nice to read all the way through.  His first book, On the Shoulders of Giants, is about the harmony of science and religion, and his second book, Thinking Strategically is about…well, the title is pretty self evident.

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The European Baha’i Business Forum (EBBF) has an excellent blog.  Resources, news, and networking, covering a wide range of subjects and fields.  Check it out!  Also, their annual conference is coming up at the end of September in the Netherlands.

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This article from the Jerusalem Post caught my eye:

“The site is part of diplomatic efforts to educate the Iranian people about the Jewish state, “who have been purposely distanced from information about Israel, and fed lies and hatred by the Iranian regime.” The site, called Hamdami (“clarity” in Persian), can be found at https://hamdami.com. “

Posted in Books, News | Comments (6)

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/070607/a-nerds-opinion-presented-a.gif

Look at the above link. Ok, so I admit that I use Wikipedia too, when I need a quick education on a subject. But really, I just get annoyed that it has become so accepted as a reference in some circles.

I love Skype, but my computer at home had a quarrel with my headset and now they aren’t talking to each other. It seems like the days get away from me recently, and I keep trying to get things fixed.

Ok, now for a few amusing links. How many of you watched “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” on TNT? I loved that show. My flatmate Sahar sent me this link to a little montage set to music.

Finally, if you haven’t seen Axis of Evil Comedy tour, you really should. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. Here is one video on YouTube, just do a search for other clips from them.

Posted in Technology | Comments (2)

1. Junk mail is just as bad here as in the USA. Walking into my apartment building, it was like an advertising blizzard had struck the foyer.

2. I’ve never had a taxi driver try to cheat me here…until the last two weeks. I was at the hotel a lot with my family, and sometimes I would catch a taxi by the hotel. Never again. I got into AT LEAST 3 shouting matches with taxi drivers…to the point of making them pull over and getting out.

3. I love that the girls are wearing these flowers in their hair…it feels so tropical.

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