Columbian

Good-bye coffee cup. As soon as I finish the coffee in you, you're going into the garbage. You served me well, but your time is up.

My nice Jerusalem coffee cup has to go. It is all crazed inside, and has a deep crack down one side. It used to sizzle around the handle where hot coffee seeped out, but that leak apparently sealed itself off. Dark blue paint is chipped off the rim. I don't know where the paint chips went to. I don't remember ever seeing them in the dishwater. Maybe I swallowed them.

I have another cup that is really good. But it is ugly. It will probably last forever. It doesn't crack, chip or craze. The only way to  break it is to drop into the ceramic sink, which is what I did with its mate.

Eight other cups, nice-looking red ones, that we have had in the last four years have lived and died. They just couldn't hold up to the heat.

It's fun to buy something that you really need. Then you don't feel any guilt. So somewhere out there is my next coffee cup, just waiting for me to come along and buy it.

And after that I will be looking for some good instant Columbian. Do they even make such a thing? Certainly not in Israel.

Killed it Dead

Two boys were quarreling about whose father was the stronger.
First boy: "Well, you know the Atlantic Ocean? My father's the one who dug the hole for it."
Second boy: "Ah, that's nothing. You know the Dead Sea? My father's the one who killed it."

Lisa Robbins -- Massachusetts

Have you read?

I have--had, red, reed, ridded, has been ridding.

See, not to hard to conjugate verbs in English.

But some people seem to have difficulty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3U22rkkWsk&feature=youtu.be

Coffee Pots

The coffee tasted a little off one day. After a couple sips I realized that I had left the coffee-cleaner solution in the pot and made coffee with it. Al drank a whole cup of it!

No after-effects were noticed.

Cook

Today I got hit with an urge to cook something different.

I frequently see interesting recipes I would like to try if I had the patience, but I don't, so I don't. So this time I looked soup recipes and ended making the simplest soup without following a recipe--tomato paste, water, green peppers, onions, salt--warmed it up and ate it while the vegetables were still crunchy. Nothing exciting, but it would be a good warmer-upper on a winter day.

Then I made some pancakes, again no recipe -- white flour, rice flour, egg, oil, water, lots of thyme, a speck of paprika, salt, baking soda. Not bad I guess.

Romanian

I love everything Romanian. After listening to a little Romanian gospel music, I'm starting to revive.

The past few weeks have been very depressing, due to my foot condition getting suddenly much worse. I tried to drown out depression by burying myself in studying Greek. It worked for a while. But at the back of my mind has been the feeling that I really need to do something else. I wish someone would hit me on the head and make me stop studying Greek and do something more useful. Like maybe sew or write some music -- which means I have to face reality, both the good and the bad. The bad is trying to drown me, but really it's a matter of perspective, and soon I hope I'll regain the right perspective.

So I checked a link to some Romanian music someone sent me, and immediately started getting ideas for tunes. I resisted most of them, because I really am too disorganized at present to do it right, but that's the direction I'm headed, anyway.

Ioan 3:30 Trebuie ca El să crească, iar eu să mă micşorez.
He must increase, but I must decrease.

Iona 1:14 ...Căci, Tu, Doamne, faci ce vrei!
...Thou, O LORD, hast done as it please thee.

Depression

How do you fight depression? There are many tips you can probably find somewhere but here are some of mine. First of all, don't try to be logical. There's already something messed up with your logic, so it isn't going to work. Instead, do something stupid or creative.
One way I get by is by writing stupid poetry. I mean as stupid as I can think of. I could probably win a prize for stupid poetry. Here comes one right now.

Conversation:

Me:    I am a bird but birds don't like me.
  Him:    "I'm a real bird, and humans affright me."
Me:    I'm not a human, I'm flying, see?
  Him:   "You're not! and it looks like you're grounded to me."
Me:     But you don't understand, no one ever does.
  Him:    "You don't have feathers, just a little head-fuzz."
Me:    But I have wings and I'm way up high.
  Him:    "Then the world's upside down and the grass is the sky."
Me:    I'm going someplace, I'm free, I'm wild!
  Him:   "Tch, tch! My poor little, poor little child!"