Latest dumpster divers

Here in our neighborhood, there are several large dumpsters which serve the people who don't have their own garbage cans (as we DO). The feral cats (of which there are plenty) spend quite a bit of time in the dumpsters, which serve both as some protection from the elements (heat in the summer and cold and wet in the winter) and as a source of food, albeit not such a great diet for cats. But today, as I was leaving to go to the hospital (to see David), I saw some different beasts "dumpster diving". Two horses were standing there with their heads in one dumpster! They didn't even move when I drove by right behind them. It was quite a funny sight!

David's procedure at Rambam (in Haifa)

Everything went beautifully today. They sent David to Haifa by taxi (a drive of about an hour and a half). He said that the taxi driver (who didn't speak English) made sure that he got to his appointment and waited for him (a total of about 2 hours) to bring him back. All of this was paid for by the hospital (which is owned by the Ministry of Health). David described the people who did the procedure as "angels". When I first got over to see him (just before 3:30 this afternoon), he had a sore throat and a headache and was quite tired, but soon thereafter they hooked him up to an IV and said that he could eat and drink. After a short time on the IV and after drinking a Pepsi MAX, he felt a lot better. By the time I left (around 7:00 p.m.) he was quite chipper, having had a nice supper, and he was starting another book that I had brought him (he finished the previous one last night).

More hatching!

Yesterday evening (Monday evening), the first eggs in the 4th clutch began pipping. None of them have crawled out of their eggs yet. This clutch is from a male corn snake, Gavnoni, who is normal (although he has had a lot of weird bumps since he himself hatched, 4 years ago!) but heterozygous for amelanism and anerythrism, and a female amelanistic corn snake (D'vorah), whom we got from our friend, Golan, in trade for the snakes that we gave him. If D'vorah is het (heterozygous) for anerythrism, we should get some anerythristics and some snows (amelanistic AND anerythristic) from this clutch. If not, we'll get about half normals and half amelanistics. In another day, we should know.

One egg in the 5th clutched also pipped, and, in fact, the snakeling has already crawled out of that one. This clutch was laid 3 days after the 4th one by Y'hudit, an anerythristic corn snake that we also got from Golan in the same trade. The father is Yeled, our amber (hypomelanistic caramel) corn snake. Barring any unexpected hidden genes on either side, this clutch will be entirely normal, but they will ALL be het for hypomelanism, caramel, and anerythrism. So, when they are later bred to each other, it will be possible to get normals, normal hypos, caramels, anerythristics, ambers, and ghosts (hypomelanistic anerythristics).

Getting to the root of the problem

Another quick note to give you the latest on David. They did NOT do the procedure today, but it is now scheduled for tomorrow (Wednesday). They DID figure out something important, though: David has chronic pancreatitis, which probably explains most of the intermittent problems that he's been having for the last year or two. In fact, the doctor, who we think is the head doctor on the unit (פנימית א -- Internal Medicine Aleph), actually apologized to David that she had not found it when he was hospitalized there a year ago. Of course, the doctors at Rambam did not find it either when he was hospitalized there for 10 days last winter! Anyway, the important thing is that they have found finally found it. Now his treatment will be more focused, and he will probably be just generally feeling better for the long run.

David's Monday in the hospital

David skipped both breakfast and lunch today (Monday) because he thought that they were going to do the procedure to get rid of the stone in his bile duct. At lunch time, we even asked the doctor, and he said that David shouldn't eat. However, they were unable to schedule it for today.

We also found out that the procedure will actually be done at Rambam Medical Center, the teaching hospital in Haifa. David will be driven there (a ride of about an hour and a half), then he will undergo the procedure (via the mouth and esophagus, so there will be no incision!), and after that he will be driven back here to the Tsfat hospital. The uncertainty was finally removed this evening, and it is now scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday). Of course, nothing is written in stone (so to speak!) here in Israel (except ancient inscriptions, of course! LOL).

Hospitalization

Last Wednesday night, David was having problems again with nausea, something which had been building slowly for about a week before that. What really got our attention, though, was his fever, which was significantly above normal. At one point, in was 39.5˚C (around 103˚F), which is really getting dangerously high. It was clear to both of us that we had better go to the ER to get it checked out. So, after I finished with my student at 9:30 p.m., we headed on down to the Tsfat hospital. Although he didn't have a fever by the time they checked it there, they took it seriously and examined him carefully. Finally, at about 2:00 a.m., they decided to admit him to the hospital. At that point, I headed home, because I had a class scheduled at 8:00 a.m.

Thursday and Friday, they did various tests, including a CT scan of his torso. Finally, this morning (Shabbat), they told us what they had found. He has a small gall-stone in his bile duct (his gallbladder had been removed about 15 or 16 years ago). So the next task is to figure out what they can do about this. Anyway, it's a relief that they've found the problem and that it's nothing that serious.

Through all of this, David has really not been feeling that bad, even when he had the high fever. For this reason, I haven't been worrying very much, either. I was completely sure from the very beginning that he was going to be okay. This is definitely NOT a repeat of what happened last winter, when he nearly died!

The Olympics in Hebrew

From time to time this past week, we did a fair amount of Olympics watching. The commentary is all in Hebrew, but it's generally not too hard to figure out what's happening, at least in general. The on-screen words (telling what the event is, the order in which runners finished, etc.) are in English. I do pick up some of the Hebrew, and I've learned a few new words, too, such as מקצה (miktzeh), which means "heat" (as in the 1st and 2nd heats of the 100 m dash) and משוכה (m'suchah), which means "hurdle". Really useful vocabulary, huh? :-) They have a relatively small set of 5-second commercials that they play in varying order, one right after the other, during short breaks. Since I keep seeing the same ones over and over and over (and most of them also include the written version of some of what they say), I've been able to decipher quite a bit of the Hebrew. The strangest one, I think, is the Office Depot slogan, which translates to "There are no surprises at the check-out." Seems like a pretty low standard to me! "What? You mean I'll actually pay the amount written on the box? Stunning!"

There have been a lot of exciting, interesting, and even emotional moments, too. The gymnastics have always been among my favorites. Some of the things that those gymnasts do just seem like impossible violations of the rules of physics and of the way the human body works, but there they are, anyway! And, of course, they have unbelievably muscular bodies! :-)

One of the runners caught our eye even before he became very famous. What we noticed first was his cool gold shoes! Before we could catch his name, we just referred to him as "Mr. Gold Shoes", but we finally learned that his name was Usain Bolt, and, of course, the rest is history. In case you haven't been following the Olympics, he won gold medals in both the 100 m and 200 m dashes, also setting new world records in both! Besides that, he and his team (from Jamaica, or, as the Hebrew announcers pronounce it "Jaw Mica") took the gold for the 4x100 m relay, where they also set a new record! We didn't actually see the relay, but we DID see his other 2 big wins, and both were really impressive. It's hard to believe how fast he can go!

The other thing that has been interesting for us is watching the Israeli athletes. American and Russian and British and Jamaican athletes are nearly everywhere, but there aren't that many Israelis, so we really notice when we do see one. Besides that, of course, the local TV naturally makes sure to show all of them and also includes quite a few of the others competing with them. So, we've seen synchronized swimmers, wind-surfers (where our guy won the bronze!), kayakers (where our guy won the 1st 2 heats in which we saw him but didn't managed to win any medal in the end), and some in events whose names I don't even know! For example, there's a women's gymnastic event where they do routines with a rope (like a jump-rope) and a hula-hoop (I'm not making this up!). The routines were amazing to watch, but probably one of the reasons that they showed so much of them was that there were 2 Israeli competitors! Cool!

Our outdoor cats

Recently (well, it's actually been more than a month ago), we have adopted some outdoor cats. First, there was a mother with 2 kittens that David began feeding. One of the kittens, a very skittish black one, seems to have disappeared, so we presume that he didn't make it. The other kitten looks like an almost exact duplicate of her (well, we think it's a female) mother, so we named her "Mini-Me". The mother's name is Beatrix.

Not long after, another cat began hanging around. She has medium-length black hair with only a very few individual white hairs on her. At first, we thought she was a male, but we very soon realized that she was female. We called her "Blackie", and she is by far the least afraid of humans. She let us pet her from the beginning, and now she'll even let us pick her up. She purrs like crazy, and she likes to sit on the window sills and meow at us through the screens.

Beatrix and Mini-Me, on the other hand, are very short-haired gray and white tabbies with some white spots on them, but they won't even let us touch them. They're friendly otherwise, though, and they're both very elegant cats with beautiful, big, piercing eyes.

The last cat to join the group is a male yellow tabby named "Tz'hovi". He was so timid at first that he was afraid to even eat next to the others. To make matters worse for him, there is another male cat, whom we named "Spot", who comes around sometimes and cozies up readily to us humans but who is very mean to the other cats, especially to Tz'hovi. Now, whenever I see Spot, I shoo him away, which is not very easy to do. Sometimes, I have to physically push him with my feet, but he does eventually take off. Gradually, Tz'hovi has become less timid, and today he even let me pet him quite a bit. He's really a sweet cat!

Each morning, just before we eat breakfast, I take the sack of cheap cat food that we get at the supermarket and go out onto the front porch. I use a yogurt cup to measure, putting one cup in one area and a 2nd cup in another area a short distance away. Then I return to the 1st pile and add a 2nd cup to it, after which I also add a 2nd cup to the 2nd pile. All these aforementioned cats, of course, eat greedily, often alternating piles. Flying insects also show up immediately, probably some kind of wasps, and the ants also arrive before the cats even finish eating. By the time the cats are all satisfied, nearly every piece of remaining food has ants swarming all over it. But the cats really enjoy the food, and we enjoy watching them eat. We also keep an eye out to make sure that Spot and a dog from the neighborhood named Shawn don't come along, scare the cats away, and begin eating the food themselves.

Our new neighbors

This week, on Tuesday, we took a cake and walked over to meet our new next-door neighbors. They bought the house about the time that we bought ours, but they only made aliyah (immigrated to Israel) from England a month or 2 ago. They'd had been renting the house out, first to Zion, the builder, and then to another family (who have now rented another house in our complex of 5 houses here). They are Shimon and Patricia, and they are really nice people.

They had bought a ping-pong table that needed to be assembled, and Shimon asked us if we could help. We agreed, so, on Wednesday afternoon we went over there again and began work on it. It's quite complicated, but the directions (which are entirely in pictures) are not too difficult to follow, and we made pretty good process. We didn't have time to finish, though. We had planned to work on it more on Thursday, but David was not feeling too well (at least partly due to the physical work from the day before), so we'll work on it more on Monday (on Sunday, we have an appointment with David's psychiatrist at Rambam, in Haifa).

Old English organ music album

I have continued sequencing old English organ music this week, and I now have a little more than 52 minutes of music sequenced, enough to make an album. I think, though, that I may sequence a few more pieces and then decide which ones to leave out when I've recorded and listened to all of them. The music is really quite nice, and it's well-suited to the historic German organ (built by Silberman in the 18th century) that I'm using.

Hatching hiatus

The first 3 clutches are done hatching now, and there are 2 more yet to hatch. But the 4th clutch was laid 2 weeks after the 3rd one, so we're on a bit of a hiatus now. So, here are the current statistics: 19 babies from the 1st clutch, 7 from the 2nd, and 12 from the 3rd. We are particularly happy about the 3rd clutch because there are several lavenders and one "opal" (amelanistic and lavender, which makes it nearly white). This Sunday, I'll feed all the 2nd clutch babies for the 1st time. I'll also try to determine which ones in the 3rd clutch have shed their skin for the 1st time and are therefore ready to eat. It's not always so easy to tell, since the skin can be hidden somewhere in the folds of the paper towel in their deli cup.

Current snake statistics

At this moment (6:05 p.m., Sunday, 10 August), a total of 30 babies are out of their eggs: 19 from the 1st clutch, 7 from the 2nd, and 4 from the 3rd. At least 5 more in the 3rd clutch have pipped but not yet crawled out.

Today, I fed the 19 first clutch babies for the 1st time. Fourteen of them ate, but the other 5 did not. We got quite lucky with the anerythristic babies, getting 9 out of the 19. The expected number is a quarter of the total, which would be about 5. Seven of these 9 anerythristic babies ate, 5 males and 2 females. The other 2 anerythristics did not eat. One is male and the other is female. From this clutch we hope to keep a trio (1 male and 2 females) of anerythristics, since they are all heterozygous for amelanism (because their father is amelanistic). This means that, when we are able to breed them, about a quarter of their babies should be snows (amelanistic and anerythristic), and the rest will be anerythristics.

We went down to Rosh Pinna this morning to pick up a young boa that we will be taking care of until his owner, Shaked, returns from New York (probably about a year). Shaked's mother and brother had been taking care of the snake, whose name is "Jin", but neither of them really liked him, and Shaked wanted someone who will be able to take better care of him.

So, the total number of snakes in our house at this moment is 77, two of which are actually not ours. Besides Jin, there are 15 adults, 3 that are 2 years old, 28 that are 1 year old, and 30 babies.

Like the title says, a lot of statistics! :-)

A pleasant Friday evening

Last night, we went to services as usual in Nahariya. During the service, David got the idea of inviting our friend, Cynthia, out to Aroma (a popular Israeli coffee shop) afterwards. He asked me, I readily agreed, and Cynthia also agreed.

So the 3 of us went over to Aroma. David and I each had a Diet Coke, Cynthia had orange juice, and we just enjoyed sitting there and talking for quite some time. We also watched some replays of the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing (from several hours earlier), which were very impressive.

All in all, it was a nice evening for all of us.

Music update

I have now sequenced a little more than 35 minutes of music (in 13 tracks) from my book of "Old English Organ Music for Manuals". So, if I sequence about 15 minutes more (probably about 5 or 6 more pieces), I'll have a full album. I haven't actually recorded any of the music yet, since I may still want to make some adjustments in tempos and in registration (the stops used) before I finalize it all and record the pieces. Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with this progress.

Another hatching update

Here's the current hatching situation, as of Shabbat morning, 9 August:

26 babies have hatched and crawled out of their eggs, 19 from the 1st clutch, and 7 from the 2nd. There are still 2 eggs in the 2nd clutch that have not even pipped. It seems likely that they simply may not hatch, something which does occasionally happen. But we'll have to wait several days to be sure. Meanwhile, 3 eggs from the 3rd clutch have pipped, but no babies have crawled out yet.

Making more music

The last few days, I've gotten back into making music. I had been on a little hiatus from it since I replaced my Windows machine (because the old one was running VERY slowly due to overheating). In order to load the samples of either of my 2 favorite organs, I need nearly 3 GB of memory. The new machine has plenty of memory, but, when I tried to set the /3GB switch, it crashed the new computer so badly that we had to start from scratch loading Windows and everything else. Either I made a mistake in how I did the switch or the new machine simply doesn't work with it (which seems a little unlikely). In any case, I've been afraid to try it again!

I missed making music, though, especially since I've had plenty of free time due to a rather light Berlitz teaching schedule (August is a holiday month for many people in Europe). Finally, a few days ago, I had a bright idea. I have a book of old English organ music (mostly from the 18th century) that I used to use a lot when I was playing for a church. Much of the music is quite easy to sight read, and, although it doesn't rank among the great works of art, it is pleasant music to listen to. So I thought that others might enjoy hearing this music, as well, and probably very little of it has ever been recorded. For this music, I do NOT need the resources of the larger organs. In fact, it's probably actually better on a couple of historic (18th century) Silberman organs that I also have. So, I started in sequencing the music, and so far I've completed 9 pieces and have started working on the tenth. Most are around 2 minutes in length or a little more. At this rate, I should have a full album of music before long!

Signs in the Golan

Okay, I guess I've kept you all waiting long enough. It's time to reveal the meaning of the signs in the Golan that I talked about a couple of weeks ago. First, here's the Hebrew (the only writing on the signs):

זהירות
מעבר טנקים

Here my transliteration:

Z'hirut
Ma'avar tankim

And, finally, the moment you've all been waiting for ....

dramatic pause

... the English translation:

Caution
Tank crossing

Israel keeps a lot of tanks and other forces in the Golan to prevent a re-occurrence of what happened in the Yom Kippur War, when Syrian forces swept through the Golan, and Israel was very nearly destroyed entirely, something that was only prevented by some very brave and exhausting fighting.

Tank treads, however, are hard on paved roads, so the tanks mostly travel on dirt roads and tank trails (well, at least in peace time!). The signs, of course, indicate where these trails cross the regular roads, which are reinforced with concrete at those points.

So, there you have it: the meaning of the signs, and a little background on why they are there.

Hatching update

Sure enough, the 2nd clutch began pipping before all of the 1st clutch babies were even out of their eggs! All 19 of the 1st clutch eggs are now hatched, and all of the babies are safely in the Hovabator. So far, 2 babies from the 2nd clutch have crawled out of their eggs, and at least 3 more have pipped but not emerged yet.

The 2nd clutch babies are from a pair of our "project" snakes from last year's project. We have only 2 clutches (the 2nd and 3rd ones) from "project" snakes this year. Last year, we had 5 "project" clutches, I think, but some of the parents have died since then. The project parents are actually all brothers and sisters from a single clutch that we produced in 2004, while we were still in California, which we brought with us. They were the result of us breeding a male amelanistic Emory rat snake to a female lavender corn snake. The first generation is uninteresting in itself, but when we mated them last year, we got normals, amelanistics, lavenders, and "opals" (both amelanistic AND lavender). Besides that, we got a 2 or 3 individuals who were totally unique and unlike any of the others. This indicates that some other genes are involved that we did not know about but which must have been hidden in the original pair. We're hoping to get some more interesting ones this year, but the 2 who have hatched so far are, I think, just regular normals. Of course, ALL of these are, like their parents, half Emory rat snake and half corn snake (really 2 different subspecies of the same species, which, however, apparently do NOT mate in the wild even though their ranges overlap).

Hatching season has begun!

Hatching season at our house has begun! Yesterday, before going to bed, I took 6 snakelings who had already crawled out of their eggs down to the Hovabator (incubator) in the basement. I had turned it on earlier. This morning, there were 3 more out of their eggs, and just a few minutes ago I checked, and there were still 2 more. Also, all 19 of the eggs in this first clutch have at least pipped (the snakelings have cut the initial slit with their "egg tooth"). So, by tomorrow if not tonight, we should have 19 new babies!

We have a little surprise, however, and it's not such a good one. Apparently, when we kept N'omi, the snake who laid this 1st clutch, we got a little confused about which parents she was from. I say this because we had believed that she was heterozygous (carrying one copy of the recessive gene) for both amelanism (snakes with no melanin and therefore no black or brown color in them) and anerythrism (snakes with only black and white coloration). We mated her to Gur, an amelanistic snake who is het (short for "heterozygous") for anerythrism. However, we have gotten not a single amelanistic or snow (amelanistic AND anerythristic, and therefore nearly all white) baby, so now it's almost certain that she, in fact, is NOT het for amelanism. We have, however, gotten several anerythristic babies, so this definitely proves that both she and Gur are indeed het for anerythrism.

The second clutch we have was laid 5 days after this 1st one, so it won't be long until those start hatching, too. And the 3rd clutch was laid 5 days after the 2nd... :-)