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🏆  In 1952 Stephen Potter (1900 -1969) published the infamous guides to Lifemanship and specifically One-upmanship. On holiday with a friend, we played several rounds of backgammon in the hotel lounge and I won. "You're very competitive," she observed, "I never realised that about you before." Say it with a smile and it's not an insult right? She lost at backgammon that night but she won at life. Another time a friend was telling me about a wonderful place she'd visited on her travels. It was the most spectacular scenery in the world. She ended her description with, "I don't care how many pictures or videos people see, you cannot understand the full beauty of it unless you've been there." What is there left to say after that? You've been to better places than boring old me so you win? Lifemanship is making yourself appear more accomplished or knowledgeable, or the better person. It's chatting with an accomplished writer and say

First day of 7th Grade. This is all I got. I only blogged once in August because there was little to say. We watched Netflix and You Tube, we had dinner a couple of times with friends, DD went to one Bat Mitzva party (a picnic in the Botanical Gardens), she had a friend over a couple of times, and we got fat. That was our summer. Reason 2B Cheerful - we didn't get corona.  Today is my birthday. I'm nearer 50 than 40 (and always will be). So that's one Reason 2B Cheerful. And another is that we're invited out to dinner tonight.  DD is back at school for four days a week for half days. This week she was in the second shift - 10.50 am till 2.20 pm. Next week she'll be in the 8 am till 10.20 group. The second shift isn't so good. They have more school hours but there's a lot of hanging around in the morning waiting to leave. It's only a 12 minute walk to her school.  Only on Fridays it's different because the school closes at 12.30 pm for the weekend. I

I've not blogged much for a couple of months because I didn't feel like it. We don't go anywhere and it's been over 30 deg C for the whole summer and the mercury's still up there. On the one hand, we're fed up at home (fed up in every sense of the words) but on the other hand, I'm thankful that I've not had to go out to work or anywhere in this heat.  Israel is entering its second lockdown starting tomorrow at 2 pm, the eve of Rosh Hashana - the Jewish New Year. We got the rules a few days ago and they were vague enough that, as someone wrote on fb, you can't leave your house unless you need to go somewhere.  The one clear directive was that we're not allowed farther than 500 m from our places of residence - except to go to work, shop for essentials, health care, exercise, to assist someone in distress, and various other caveats to do with prayers, children and special needs. Fine. We have friends who live very close by as do many people. So we a

I re-covered the sofa cushions at no expense. Time for a Reasons 2B Cheerful. No linky this week but it's time to look on the bright side of not being struck down so far and having all this extra free time.  1 DD's Remote Learning We've only had a couple of days of distance or remote learning but so far she's doing it responsibly and independently. I'm reading about families with lots of younger children who require constant supervision while the parents are supposed to be working from home. And how one family computer has to accommodate zoom lessons for four children all scheduled at the same time.  A friend wrote that the parents of her 1st grader told the teacher, "forget the zooms. Just give us the assignments and we'll do them with our kids when it's convenient during the day." I feel their pain and reward my one daughter with ice-cream.  2 The Cushions I had these four big sofa cushions that I bought because I got an unexpected voucher for 60

This is Mars with a crappy camera.  To my naked eye twas beautiful. And red. Late this afternoon DD's class teacher whatsapped a poster. In a nutshell, the planet Mars is usually 228 million km away from Earth. Tonight it is only 62 million km from Earth and is visible to the naked eye. The next time this will happen is in 2035.  The poster said to look to the south. I went onto the balcony soon after nightfall, and I looked west. I caught a sliver of the southern view but my balcony essentially faces west. When I bought this apartment 20 years ago, I had no idea that I was swapping a closeup view of Mars one night every few decades for a nightly full-on sunset. I was gong to give Mars a miss but I got involved in a whatsapp discussion which ignited my curiosity and motivated me to go down three flights of stairs to look for Mars. I looked south and saw two contenders but my whatsapp pals informed me that these are Jupiter and Saturn. I sort of remember seeing them before and they

I'd like to say, "trying to stay healthy," but I'm way beyond that and now into "trying to get healthy again."  This week, after receiving two messages from blog-friends about my absence,  I realised that you can't just disappear from the blogosphere with no word of explanation to your blog friends.  Apart from not having much to write about due to the current restrictions on going anywhere, seeing only a small circle of people, working from home, etc... I've been reluctant to write anything about how I'm organising the apartment, how we binge watch tv series together into the night, coping with zoom teaching, cooking and sewing, or any other pass-times that are keeping us contentedly jogging along during corona times.  Even mentioning sitting out on our balcony and enjoying the view with a cup of coffee in hand seems like a slap in the face to those who live in less comfortable domiciles and cannot go out. A Reasons 2B Cheerful post at his time

It wasn't what we had planned by a long shot. However, a series of intimate events, which by their size hardly warrant being called events, turned out to be fun and ticked most of the boxes. DD's class capsule (bubble) of half her class meet up in the school playground once a week for an activity. It's her first year in middle school and after two months of remote learning they realized that some students knew nobody in the class. The outdoor lessons, though educational, are primarily a social exercise to help them make friends.  I secretly arranged with the teacher to bring in cupcakes and chocolate milk for their mid-morning break. I was given permission providing all food items were individually wrapped. DD was horrified when I turned up with the treats on Wednesday morning, about an hour after she had left home. "What are you doing?! Stop!" I left them to it as their break wasn't until later. A very happy DD called me on her way home.  Cupcakes from Sweet

Tonight is the eighth and final night of Chanuka. It's the Jewish winter festival of lights. We added presents because everyone around us was doing presents at this time of year so why not? There's no law against giving presents.  Like every religious festival in every religion everywhere, there is an historical element, a religious or spiritual element, and a Pagan element connected to the natural world.  The Pagan element is obvious. It's the deep mid-winter, around the winter solstice, and a time when we desperately need uplifting with a festival of lights and stodgy comfort food like latkes and doughnuts. The traditional chanukiah (nine-branched candelabra) is a similar shape to the seven-branched menorah in the Temple. It's no co-incidence that they both resemble a tree. Maybe it was meant to be the tree of life or the tree of knowledge from the Garden of Eden? Either way, here it is at the traditional Pagan Yuletide along with the Christmas tree that never appeare