Zev News – October and November 2007

The first weekend in October, Marc took that the boys on an overnight camping trip sponsored by the Temple men's club.  Jackie found herself alone in the house for the night, perhaps for the first time ever.  A good time was had by all!

Benjamin started going to Jr. Choir again, but then that had to end when daylight saving time ended and soccer practice moved to the same time slot as Choir practice.  We also resumed the speech lessons, something that we expect to continue for about 3 months.

October was so filled with every day events such as soccer practice, soccer games, piano practice, piano lessons, Religious school, Hebrew school, Hebrew High, speech, and Jr. Choir that there wasn’t much time for other things. 

For Halloween, Benjamin wanted to be the "Phantom of the Opera."  He had gotten the idea from a play we had seen in September called "the Phantom of the Soap Opera."  This play was a take-off of "Phantom of the Opera."  Jonathan wanted to be "a mysterious caped man with red glowing eyes."  So both boys dressed all in black with capes.  They trick-or-treated our neighborhood this year, which means they came home with an amazing stash (which was mostly chocolate) including more than one oversized candy bar and a dollar bill.  One of the houses was handing out water to the adults, which we thought was nice.

In November, Marc and Jackie dumped the kids and went to an art exhibition by a friend of ours.  All of her art is interesting – some more to our tastes, so not so much.  Afterwards, we went out to a restaurant for dinner.  It was fun to get dressed up and go out without the kids.  We don’t do that very much. 

The soccer season started out pretty good, but went downhill half way through the season.  Jonathan’s team didn’t even make the playoffs.  Benjamin’s team was eliminated in the first game.  Ah well, some years are winners, some are losers.  The boys play to have fun, not to win anyway.

Another Temple thing keeping Jackie busy is that she is trying to start a new group at the Temple for people who love to sing.  The plan is that once a month, Rick, the Temple’s songleader will lead us all in song.  The best day of the week for him is Saturday night.  In November, he had no Saturdays free so we decided to start in  December.  Between the Christmas holidays and Chanuka, the only free Saturday.  But that turned out to be Synaplex, a big event at the Temple, which (that month) involved a singing Saturday morning service.  So we decided to start in January.  But then Rick had a conflict for the first Saturday.  So we decided to hold the first one on the second Saturday, But the Temple was having another big event (the Alster event) on the second Saturday in January.  So we decided to switch the whole thing to the third Saturday.  We’ll see whether it actually happens or not!

Jackie spent most of the early weekends in November cleaning up the house in preparation for an AAUW event and Thanksgiving, which were both at our house 5 days apart.  The house looked great, partly due to Jackie’s efforts, and partly because over the last 6 months Jackie and Marc redid the living room, moving the TV and entertainment center down to the music room, replacing the furniture, buying new coffee tables, new display shelves, new lights, and moving the piano from the music room to the living room.  For awhile, the living room looked good, but the music room was a disaster.  But Jackie finally found places for everything and now the whole house looks great.  Jackie’s new year’s resolution it to keep it looking this good!

We hosted Jackie’s family’s Thanksgiving at our house this year.  This year, 29 people were able to participate.  We were thankful for many things.  It was wonderful to have the whole family together.  Although a number of people in the oldest generation are having health issues, right now, they are all doing well and are optimistic for the future.  We all escaped any serious effects from the Southern California fires, which were pretty bad this year.  We have a great family, where everyone gets along swimmingly. And, finally, the refrigerator waited until the day after Thanksgiving to die.

The refrigerator story is a real good news/bad news story.

The good news is that it waited until after Thanksgiving to die

The bad news was that the earliest appointment we could get with repair was Wednesday

The good news is that the repair guy came right at 8 for the 8-12 appointment.
The bad news was that it is the compressor (a $700 repair)
The good news is that it is under warranty (hurray!)
The bad news is that the new compressor had to be ordered,

Installation was scheduled for a week and a day later
The good news is that we have a refrigerator in the garage (hurray!)
The bad news is that the broken refrigerator is starting to smell (we fixed that!)

The good news is that the following Tuesday, a box arrived at our house
The bad news is that the compressor and the capacitor was not in the box
        The appointment was rescheduled for the following Monday 
The good news is that the compressor arrived on Friday (two weeks after it died)
The bad news is that the third part we need (a capacitor) has not yet arrived.
The good news is that, due to Chanuka, we haven't been eating at home much.

We capped off the year with two more pieces of good news.  The Wright Group’s math curriculum, which includes Marc’s invention, MathFlaps, was included in the State of California approved curricula.  In addition, the MathFlaps patent application was approved. With the granting of the patent, Marc officially added “inventor” to his resume.