Archive for April, 2014
lights shine brightest when it’s dark
I wouldn’t have expected this, but it turns out that sometimes, going through hard times can give you a new respect for your family. One thing I know is that love brings fear – as Archie Fisher sings, “The more that you love, then the more there’s for losing.” In particular, every marriage ends, and […]
privacy? what privacy?
I mean, it’s not like I have any illusions about the privacy of anything I do or say online, but this one surprises me. Go head, put your street address into Google. (If you’ved moved recently, use the address of someone you know who has been in one place for a while. See what comes […]
Dad update
They moved him to hospice / palliative care yesterday. Thank God, the independent-living community my mom is planning to move to had an opening for him in one of their palliative-care rooms. I think trying to do hospice at home would have been an untenable burden on Mom (two-story rowhouse, only bathroom is upstairs – […]
Passover – interpreting and building on traditions
I’ve declared myself Sephardic for Pesach. I’m trying to keep the dietary rules this year, which makes it the first time at least since I left the US and probably for a while before that. It was way too hard in Taiwan, where there were no Passover foods at all, and in the Netherlands, where […]
how the world works
I’ve been taking a class in Operations Management (free course from Coursera; it’s taught by a Wharton professor and is pretty good). I’ve just realized that now I know the math behind something I learned from experience back in college: why it’s better to have 2 bathrooms for 8 people than 1 bathroom for 4 […]
a poem and some mental holiday prep
Trapped in the Office My body sits, desk-bound, eight hours a day; The paycheck, though, is meant to rent my brain To ponder on their problems, find a way Around, across or through, accomodate Opposing viewpoints, make the complex plain – And yet my body sits, eight hours a day. Who was it thought that […]