Archive for 'Musings' Category
Happy Chanukah
Well, it’s Day 2 of Chanukah. Yesterday, we went to the Chabad of San Jose Menorah Lighting downtown. Rabbi Cunin had quite a shindig going. Music, dancing, etc. Tonight we made potato latkes for dinner and lit our Menorah. We had some nice Chanukah, and generic Jewish folk music CDs, and a very pleasant time [...]
Docked at the ISS
I’ve been playing around with “Orbiter” which is a simulator for orbital and interplanetary space operations. I just conducted my first two successful dockings at the International Space Station. This is an interesting psychomotor skill, like flying. It involves controlling the spacecraft in it’s three axes – pitch, roll and yaw, while also managing translation [...]
Booth Dwelling, in theory and practice
Well, we had a wonderful Wedndsday night (first night of Sukkos) dinner in the Sukkah. Like 90% of the Jewish population, we had chicken. The other ten percent had brisket. It is very cozy, with a Sukkah that is 5.5 feet (1.6 meters) on a side. A table in the corner, two chairs at right [...]
And Ye Shall Dwell in Booths
The Bible tells us that “You shall live in booths seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in booths, in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt (Lev. 23:42-43). This is a part of Succot, one [...]
I’ll see your challah…
… and raise you a challah. I’ve been wrestling with the consistency of my challah, and decided to make one by hand, rather than produce the dough from the bread machine. I am hoping for a softer “crumb.” Also, I discovered that, while it’s muscle intensive, making the dough by hand is not beyond me. [...]
I Haven’t Been to Boston, but I May Have Gotten Scrod
We had yet another disablement yesterday, calling into question whether I’m just unlucky, or whether I’m somehow doing damage to things. Anyway, we were in the Baskin-Robbins after dinner last night, and when we returned to the truck, it wouldn’t start. We got a ride home to the trailer, and I took a cab back [...]
Lots of stuff
First, a tip of the customer service hat to Sonny’s RV, which got me into the shop and fixed my jacks and my leak. Second, a doff of the hat to Bellew’s Hitch in Tacoma for a fine job on hitch and mirrors. In other news, we moved again… from Escapees Evergreen Coho Park over [...]
We moved today
One of the things I haven’t written about is that this trip has been a maintenance nightmare. So far we’ve done brakes, a new trailer hitch, and two water pumps. When the trailer hitch broke, in Puyallup, we were pretty much stuck in our site until we could get it replaced. We had electric, but [...]
The Eclipse
I went outside about an hour ago and watched the earth take a bite out of the moon. It started as a little darkening at the upper left of the moon. In about ten minutes, there was a noticeable shadow line across the moons surface By 2:30 AM (PDT) there was a half-moon showing, and [...]
Return to a long lost hobby
From 1993 to 2000, I spent lots of time photographic Masonic Lodges as we traveled by car and motorcycle. In 1995, when the World Wide Web was born, I started posting those photos on my site. At the last, I had over 600 photographs of over 100 lodges in about 20 states. Somewhere around the [...]