shabbat shalom 02.10.09

Hi everyone, This was a very short working week; Yom Kippur was on Monday, so Sunday (usually a working day here in Israel) was a kind of half-holiday "bridge" from the weekend.  OUr office was only functioning three days, Tuesday to Thursday.  Of course Murphy's Law was in full effect, and in that time I had to write two progress reports on our European work, submit an 18-month cost statement on the same project, help to write another grant proposal on monitoring in the Mediterranean, build and provide a database for the Israel Red Book of endangered plants,  and start a new team on building an information and database network for our Science Division.  I had hoped to do more last week but my car was in the shop after getting hit in the rear and I was hitchhiking to work.  Jeez, that takes up time; a 30 mintue commute became one and a half hours on average.  Exhausting. Anyway, I worked through Yom Kippur at home and then went to afterburners when I got to work on Tuesday.  Long days.  Got it all done, except the EU wants some bloody time sheets we never did before and we are going to have to work backward to fill them in......It amazes me how Brussels manages to make work more complicated every time I have to work with them.  Tragedy struck again yesterday.  I came home after work to find poor Hercules, my diabetic cat, dead on the doorstep.  He was the same cat who went into a diabetic coma two weeks ago and I had to race him to the vet to get glucose infusion.  I guess he never recovered from the shock of that; the next week he had a leg abscess and had to get antibiotics, and his glucose leves were all over the board.  I never managed to stabilize him again, and I would guess he went into another coma yesterday while I was at work.  Poor cat.  He wasn't old but he had a lot of health problems and it was not unexpected.  My consolation is that he had a few good years with me when he could live a normal life and get attention.  When I got him after his original owners threw him out (they couldn't cope with the work necessary for a diabetic cat), he was hostile to everyone.  He did calm down and become affectionate; it turned out he was actually very intelligent.  The only cat I ever had who knew his own name and would come when called. I meanwhile adopted a kitten who was blind and deaf, that nobody else would take.  He is a white male (deafness very common in white male cats for some reason) who had an eye infection that destroyed his sight.  But he doesn't know he is handicapped and bounces around like any other kitten, just moving his head more to use his available senses to figure out where he is and what is going on.  He is very affectionate and sleeps next to me.  But he will obviously have to be kept indoors all his life; no garden for this guy.  He seems happy with what he has..... Not that I'm oblivious to humans.  Friends from the Philippines are reporting to me by emaila about the disasters there, and how they are comping.  My old friend Father Giles, the Assumptionist monk who moved from Jerusalem to the Philippines a couple years ago, has found his niche.  He was always strong and athletic, and now he's swapped clerical garb for jeans and is helping with the rescue effort.  I have the feeling he's found the calling of his life there.  Better late than never. Sukkot is starting this evening and I have a one week holiday here at home.  That was another reason for gunning my engines to get work done this short week.  Our office is closed until 11 October.  I have a few excursions planned, one in the hills here, one on the coastal plain, and one by the sea.  The last one is a continuation of work on the grant proposal for marine monitoring in the Mediterranean.  Our marine biologist was supposed to meet me yesterday but she had an unexpected shot at using a submersible to photograph and sample our marine protected areas and couldn't pass that up, for sure.  So she was doing her Jaques Cousteau thing instead of working on a budget.....In compensation, I'll travel to Mikmoret and sit with her to work on it there by the sea.  It's really only half work, and then I'll go looking for Madonna lilies, which bloom this time of year. Sukkot is the Jewish Thansgiving holiday for autumn harvest and the themes are very harvest oriented.  Sometime this week I will stuff grape leaves, and tomorrow I'm making a North African tagine of chicken, dried apricots and prunes with spices, which is a recipe I noted down as perfect for this holiday.  We have the pomegranates and apples, the nuts and the pumpkins, and it is the season when grapes are harvested for wine and olives for olive oil.  So even in dusty Israel the autumn is still a special season.  Abu Gosh also holds its autumn music festival and I have concert tickets for the coming week.  So in fact with three field trips and a concert it should be as nice a break as the trip to Czechia, and a lot less expensive.  (By the way, I was worried about money after the overseas trip and the repairs on the car but found a big bonus in my paycheck yesterday.  Thought it was a mistake and went to personnel to be sure.  This pay rise starts after 15 years of service in the organization, and from now on I will be getting it every year.  Thank you, God.) shabbat shalom, Linda Hi everyone, This was a very short working week; Yom Kippur was on Monday, so Sunday (usually a working day here in Israel) was a kind of half-holiday "bridge" from the weekend.  OUr office was only functioning three days, Tuesday to Thursday.  Of course Murphy's Law was in full effect, and in that time I had to write two progress reports on our European work, submit an 18-month cost statement on the same project, help to write another grant proposal on monitoring in the Mediterranean, build and provide a database for the Israel Red Book of endangered plants,  and start a new team on building an information and database network for our Science Division.  I had hoped to do more last week but my car was in the shop after getting hit in the rear and I was hitchhiking to work.  Jeez, that takes up time; a 30 mintue commute became one and a half hours on average.  Exhausting. Anyway, I worked through Yom Kippur at home and then went to afterburners when I got to work on Tuesday.  Long days.  Got it all done, except the EU wants some bloody time sheets we never did before and we are going to have to work backward to fill them in......It amazes me how Brussels manages to make work more complicated every time I have to work with them.  Tragedy struck again yesterday.  I came home after work to find poor Hercules, my diabetic cat, dead on the doorstep.  He was the same cat who went into a diabetic coma two weeks ago and I had to race him to the vet to get glucose infusion.  I guess he never recovered from the shock of that; the next week he had a leg abscess and had to get antibiotics, and his glucose leves were all over the board.  I never managed to stabilize him again, and I would guess he went into another coma yesterday while I was at work.  Poor cat.  He wasn't old but he had a lot of health problems and it was not unexpected.  My consolation is that he had a few good years with me when he could live a normal life and get attention.  When I got him after his original owners threw him out (they couldn't cope with the work necessary for a diabetic cat), he was hostile to everyone.  He did calm down and become affectionate; it turned out he was actually very intelligent.  The only cat I ever had who knew his own name and would come when called. I meanwhile adopted a kitten who was blind and deaf, that nobody else would take.  He is a white male (deafness very common in white male cats for some reason) who had an eye infection that destroyed his sight.  But he doesn't know he is handicapped and bounces around like any other kitten, just moving his head more to use his available senses to figure out where he is and what is going on.  He is very affectionate and sleeps next to me.  But he will obviously have to be kept indoors all his life; no garden for this guy.  He seems happy with what he has..... Not that I'm oblivious to humans.  Friends from the Philippines are reporting to me by emaila about the disasters there, and how they are comping.  My old friend Father Giles, the Assumptionist monk who moved from Jerusalem to the Philippines a couple years ago, has found his niche.  He was always strong and athletic, and now he's swapped clerical garb for jeans and is helping with the rescue effort.  I have the feeling he's found the calling of his life there.  Better late than never. Sukkot is starting this evening and I have a one week holiday here at home.  That was another reason for gunning my engines to get work done this short week.  Our office is closed until 11 October.  I have a few excursions planned, one in the hills here, one on the coastal plain, and one by the sea.  The last one is a continuation of work on the grant proposal for marine monitoring in the Mediterranean.  Our marine biologist was supposed to meet me yesterday but she had an unexpected shot at using a submersible to photograph and sample our marine protected areas and couldn't pass that up, for sure.  So she was doing her Jaques Cousteau thing instead of working on a budget.....In compensation, I'll travel to Mikmoret and sit with her to work on it there by the sea.  It's really only half work, and then I'll go looking for Madonna lilies, which bloom this time of year. Sukkot is the Jewish Thansgiving holiday for autumn harvest and the themes are very harvest oriented.  Sometime this week I will stuff grape leaves, and tomorrow I'm making a North African tagine of chicken, dried apricots and prunes with spices, which is a recipe I noted down as perfect for this holiday.  We have the pomegranates and apples, the nuts and the pumpkins, and it is the season when grapes are harvested for wine and olives for olive oil.  So even in dusty Israel the autumn is still a special season.  Abu Gosh also holds its autumn music festival and I have concert tickets for the coming week.  So in fact with three field trips and a concert it should be as nice a break as the trip to Czechia, and a lot less expensive.  (By the way, I was worried about money after the overseas trip and the repairs on the car but found a big bonus in my paycheck yesterday.  Thought it was a mistake and went to personnel to be sure.  This pay rise starts after 15 years of service in the organization, and from now on I will be getting it every year.  Thank you, God.) shabbat shalom, Linda