Floods, Talkers, and Other Annoyances

Well, I learned my lesson last night: it doesn’t matter if the ringer is off, the buzzing when someone calls can still wake me if I’m dozing. For some reason, I’m getting calls in the middle of the night from numbers I don’t recognize in Southern California. The last one was from Temecula. Tonight, I’m just turning the phone off.

Mixed results for research today. While I found a lot of small stuff that I need that will help round out the picture for my research, the most important book that I still need is missing from the stacks. Of course, the stacks were in a bit of an uproar today as they had a small flood and were busy drying books. The librarian recommended I try again next week.

Just to be on the safe side, I did a global search of Israeli libraries for another copy. Unfortunately, the only other one that’s easily accessible is in the Tel-Aviv Public Library. It looks like that’s where I’m going on Monday.

By the way, this is one of the places I end up spending a lot of time when I do research: standing over the photocopy machine. It’s a better use of my time just to copy everything I might need and read it back in the States.

I went back to Aroma for my daily afternoon coffee. I asked the worker bee behind the register to please put a “chupchik” – basically an apostrophe – over my name so the baristo pronounces it right. She keeps writing “Jeff” as “gimel fey sofit,” so they call out “Gaff.” An apostrophe over the “gimel” makes it into a “J.”

Thursday night in Israel is basically like Friday night in the States: the start of the weekend. I decided to see a new movie. Unfortunately, the selection is extremely limited. I walked to the mall and saw “Prometheus.” As soon as I walked into the lobby, I remembered that the last time I was here, spring 1999, I saw “Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace.” “Prometheus” wasn’t as bad as that film, but it wasn’t great either.

In Israel, movie seats are assigned. They don’t ask you where you want to sit; you just find out when you get your ticket. Unfortunately, I had an American couple behind me that didn’t stop talking. I imagine they talk like this when they watch movies at home on tv, and don’t ever think that a theater isn’t just a really large screen tv. If it had been a better movie, I might have been more annoyed.

Tomorrow all the archives are closed, so I’m going to use the time to visit the Israel Museum. They’re only open a half day, but it’s really my one chance to visit.