happy brithday mrs. rock

Everyone wish a happy birthday to my dear wife, who has gotten one year older today. We will be celebrating the occasion tonight at Morganfelds Steak House in Moshav Liman, about 5 miles from the Lebanese border.

I heard that the rest of the country had a air raid drill this week. Apparently they decided that our systems had already been fully tested this summer and there was no reason to test them again. The girls school did have their own drill, but without any siren.

1 KG= 2.2 lbs

In honor of Pesach someone was selling 10 KG boxes of meat in various cuts, a fixed price no matter which cut you got. The boxes were supposed to contain 10 1 KG pieces of the different cuts. We wanted 2 boxes and some friends wanted a box, so we ordered 3 boxes. When we went to pick it up, the boxes were not 10 KG each, so we ended up taking a box of 18 KG and a box of 14 KG and we had to pay for the extra 2 kg. The first box my wife opened was pretty much what we expected. A variety of 7 different kinds of meat of various shapes and sizes. The second box we opened had 12 pieces of meat, but 7 of them were the same type. Then we had to divvy up the meat with our friends. This wasn't as simple as we thought it would be when we had planned on giving them a whole box. So he brought over a scale and we divided the pieces of meat accordign to type and then started weighing and figuring. It was a bit confusing because we were taking 2/3 and they were taking 1/3 but we didn't want to start cutting the meat. So we weighed and traded and tested and thought until finally our friends had 11 KG and we had 21 KG and everyone was happy.

In offices around the world there is a simcha tax, someone has a baby you give 20 shekel and buy a present from the whole office. I've seen this custom in all the various places I've worked. It comes around. When we had our baby we got a nice present from my co-workers. Today someone came into my office and said that I hadn't paid the simcha tax for International Russian Women's day from 2 weeks ago and he wanted 25 shekel. To be fair on International Russian Men's day, I received a chocolate bar from the Russian women. Obviously I paid because that is how you stay in good standing with the other people in the office, but I thought that maybe it was a bit much to be taxed for someone else's international day. Maybe I should go around collecting for Kwanza.