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I’ve been fairly busy the past couple of weeks.

The Beltway I picked up some books from a friend who lives in Beltsville and is clearing out some of his collection. The map function on my phone routed me through way too much construction, but I managed to get there fine. I did choose a different route home, but the radio suggested the outer loop of the Beltway was backed up, so I took the inner loop. which is more or less the same distance. So I drove more or less the entire way around the Beltway to run a 15 minute or so errand.

Yom Kippur: I went to a zoom service put on by Shirat HaNefesh, which was not ideal but was better than the other ones available over zoom. I do like their cantor and several things about their services, but nothing over zoom is going to be entirely satisfying. And I don’t really care for the use of musical instruments and some other less than traditional aspects. But at least they do a good job of showing a PDF of the service and have some interesting ideas to think about (in this case, having to do with how we address poverty).


Break the Fast: My chavurah had a breakfast gathering after Yom Kippur. There were standard foods like bagels with cream cheese and lox, as well as various salads. And desserts, including my contribution of tahini and halvah brownies, which were well received. (I did have some leftovers, which I wrapped individually and put in the freezer.)


Mama Tigre: I went out to dinner with a friend Friday night, largely because she said she needed some intelligent conversation to counter some issues at work. We went to Mama Tigre in Oakton, which is a newish Mexican fusion place. Most of the menu is pretty normal Mexican fare, but a few things have Indian touches. I got cauliflower tacos, which were quite tasty. It was good to see her, as she isn’t someone who I see often and we had a lot of conversation about things like travel and dancing and yarn and everybody’s lack of executive function in these days


Story Swap: The Voices in the Glen monthly story swap was Saturday night. I didn’t have anything I felt like telling, so I just listened. Jim had a particularly interesting story that had to do with the construction of the Pentagon.

The Flushies: Sunday was the Style Invitational Awards gathering, called the Flushes. It was at a lovely house in Potomac - a big enough property that 60 people in the backyard did not feel crowded. My food contribution was something called archaeologist’s cornbread, which has layers of white, blue, and yellow cornbread. That tasted fine, but the different colors of cornbread don’t taste all that different, so it’s really just a stupid culinary trick. There were songs to celebrate the Loser of the Year (actually plural, since we did last year as well as this year) and one of the major highlights was Jonathan Jensen’s acceptance speech in song. We also played a pub trivia game. My team was far ahead but blew it on the final question. It was still fun. And, of course, it was good to see people who I don’t see often and meet some people who I hadn’t met before.
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I had an overdue dental appointment on Wednesday. Technically, not overdue, since it had been scheduled 6 months ago, but I normally alternate between my general dentist and my periodontist and I’d missed the cleaning at my general dentist’s in April when everything was shut down. The protocols were fairly strict – mask until actually in the chair; hand sanitizer, symptom checklist, pulse oximeter, and temperature check before being allowed to go into the inner sanctum. This was mostly a routine cleaning but I also had to schedule removal of a broken splint on a front tooth. At any rate, it’s done with.

I took my car in for service on Thursday morning. This was, perhaps, less urgent, but it is coming up on a year since I bought Twain and, despite driving so little, I like to keep up on general maintenance. At any rate, it amounted to an oil change and replacing wiper blades (and doing an overdue state inspection, so I now have an up to date sticker). I was not very impressed with the COVID protocols there, however, as the seats in the waiting room could have been further apart and some of the staff were wearing their masks below the nose.

I took advantage of being in Manassas to stop by McKay’s used books, for the first time in well over a year. I am making more of a point of not building up a balance of trade credit after Hole in the Wall Books in Falls Church closed last year, leaving me with roughly $30 worth of unused credit. (Their system was annoying to begin with, since they only let you use credit for half the price of a book and some books were cash only. But they had a particularly good selection of genre fiction, i.e. mysteries and, especially, science fiction. By the way, they closed mostly because the owners were in their 70’s.) Anyway, McKay’s took 18 of the 33 books I’d brought in to trade. I came home with only 5 books in exchange and still have about $9 in credit. I have plenty more books to get rid of, but I need to find time to record them in my tracking system. The other bookstore I trade at is not accepting books now. And The Book Thing of Baltimore, where I used to donate the books the stores I frequent didn’t take, is completely closed. Someday, I should try Book Bank in Alexandria, but they are not taking books in yet. And, while there are several stores in the District, driving and parking in D.C. is too stressful for me. I will probably just drop a few things in some nearby Little Free Libraries.

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