Nature at Work

No, you are not lost in cyber-space. I was kicked off internet and phone service for an entire week by the avian vandal shown in the above photos. Can you see what he's done? He ripped the phone wires out of the junction box on the telephone pole in front of our house! It took 3 days for Verizon to respond to our request for a service call (our house is a dead-zone for cell phones, being we live in a valley so that was quite dangerous- no way to reach emergency services, if we needed any. Does Verizon care? Hah!). DH says the sparrow is telling the world what a great job he did. I'm inclined to agree.

My MIL passed away peacefully in her sleep at age 92. The vandalism happened while my husband was sitting shiva, that is, during the 7 day mourning period following a funeral as required by Jewish law. People too far to travel generally telephone to extend condolences.

While my husband was sitting shiva, I had to get the house ready for Passover sans help from DH, who switches the kitchen implements and puts the Passover supplies away the previous year. This year the D's and I (mostly I) did it. Leaving me to do the cooking solo. I cook nearly everything from scratch for Passover. OK, this year I wimped out and bought some cake mixes and prepared foods. And a kind neighbor brought us delicious cauliflower kugel, which is a kind of casserole.

My brother went into the hospital during Passover for fairly risky surgery to reinflate his lung and repair his paralyzed diaphragm. Thank G-d my brother's surgery went smoothly. According to his surgeon, he recovered full lung function, which is a perfect outcome. He told me he was feeling so poorly he did not want to wait for Passover to end before going in for surgery.

Right after Passover, I went down to Baltimore to give a lecture at the University of Maryland Dental School. It felt like being home. I wished I could have stayed longer. I brought back a souvenir to share with you: Natty Boh (the National Bohemian beer symbol) proposing to the Utz (potato chip) girl. You see this billboard next to Penn Station when you walk outside.



Instead of knitting this week, I made some more eye-candy. The turquoise is Sleeping Beauty turquoise from the famous Arizona mine, the center pearl is a really thick nacre coin pearl. I tried to give it an exotic south Asian look by using the vermeil Bali spacer beads.