hebrew

we spent lunch today speaking only hebrew (except for ordering of course). it started when i wanted to say something nasty about someone who was in hearing range from us, and the conversation had a life of its own from there... it was a lot of fun!
we mostly told each other what we did this morning. ben thought it was hilarious that in hebrew we call all types of cereal "corenflex", and that if you ask for a "soda" in you get sparkling water.

his hebrew is improving a lot. he does his homework every night (well, sometimes he falls asleep during the boring lessons...), and can now say complete sentences! i'm so proud!

work stuff

i've been working on this problem for a while now (won't bore you with details, but it has to do with this pretty picture).

many people have tackled this problem in the past, and nobody came up with a very good solution so far.

this morning i read in the most recent paper that came out about this the following line:

"a detailed model of this system, including the... and... and... and a detailed understanding of the uncertainties will be a challenge.... The record of models for this system is discouraging."

sigh.

it's a girl!

and her name is Amit. i love this name.
she is wonderful (if you believe a dad to be unbiased ;)) and her coming to the world was as normal as a delivery can be. can't wait to see pictures!

i made her a little something and i will send it tomorrow. but for now, just a virtual hug from her doda and dod in america :)

weekend

we had a lot of fun this weekend. left the scroogim at home alone (doru came to see them once though), and drove to Cadillac. it was close enough to Halloween, so the dvd player showed scary movies most of the time. ben slept a lot on the floor, Sandy and Kevin brewed beer (i hope it will be ready for next time we go up there!), and we finished some projects that we had planned to do (a scrooge rack, and some sowing)... there was also enough time to play basketball with the grim reaper. all in all, it was great. we'll show pictures.
Gary and i started working on the israel vacation documentation. there are a ton of pics to sort through, and a lot of tails to tell. i sure hope we get help from everybody, otherwise it can be pretty dull...

although Sandy kept claiming that this year wasn't very good for colors, i thought the greens and yellows and reds of the trees were very pretty, and i think i want to make something in those colors. maybe a blanket, or something. we'll see. i still need to find a nice (and cheap) crafts store nearby. my other knitting project is finished, and i'll send it on its way tomorrow. will post pictures after it had reached its destination... don't want to ruin the surprise!

fall???

it's october, so according to the calendar it's supposed to be fall.
some trees started changing here (most of them to boring yellow, but there's one at the corner of the window, that's turning red), but for most of the past week it's been a gross summer weather. hot and humid. in 25 degrees (F) above average, chicago had to cancel the chicago marathon, it was too hot and humid to run.
one of my favorite things lately is watching the news in the morning while drinking my coffee and trying to wake up (you all know that i'm not a morning person), and i especially like the weather segment. today it finally colled down to "normal".
it's weird how there's weather here to speak of. temps can go up or down by 20 degrees from day to day, so not used to that!

p.s. i jsut looked at today's weather report, and it is: "47F, Dreary". i looked up dreary: Dismal; bleak. Boring; dull: ‮קודר, משעמם, מעציב

addendum

if it's not too late, we would like to add a line to our wedding vows.

on ben's part, right after "i shall be your best friend", we would like to insert: "i shall always install software for you for as long as we both shall live".

Scrooge at the office