anent

1. Oops, after the hassle replacing my driving license last summer I still have to renew the thing this year as well, don't I? Online appointment list not quite as long as last year; still, I decide to visit the office that opens at 7 AM. Lines not quite as long there as last year either. There's been much news recently about how they'd been asking for only one address-confirming document (utility bill, etc.) where the feds require two. One's what I'd given last year, so I bring along all my documentation again, because the web site implied I should, but nobody ever asks for it. At the last station when they tell me I'm done, I ask. Oh, there's another window for that. Give them my second document, they photocopy it, done.

2. Tybalt's most endearing flaw turns out to be that he loves to lick me. B. too, but especially me. Skin, hair. Raspy tongue, incessant, not a couple dabs. He'll only nestle quietly in my arms if I'm long-sleeved and no skin is within his reach, including my hands. When I get into bed, he gets off where he'd been sitting quietly atop B. and comes over to lick me, and he will not be dissuaded. Not only will this rub me raw, but I can't sleep with that going on. So I have to get up, pick him up, throw him out, and shut the door, every time.

2a. When he is resting in my arms, I notice another characteristic new to me: He purrs silently. You can feel it, but you can't hear it.

3. Diogenes' search for a non-spicy Indian restaurant continues. Place with the extremely tasty but perfectly mild lunch buffet turns out to be not nearly so restrained for dinner. Even if the menu doesn't mark it as spicy, even if you ask for mild. I try it too and it impresses even me: no surface burn, but an impressive dig underneath. Stop at ice cream parlor on the way home for something to cool the mouth. Who makes cookie-dough ice cream with no lumps in it? This place.

4. At work at the synagogue library, we've been wrestling with the problem of what to do with high-quality but superfluous (for our collection) donated books. Latest idea: Install a "take a book" box down by the classroom wing. Custodial staff put it up. Looks like a birdhouse on a pole. Our committee artist has painted it with the tree of life. Yesterday is the dedication. I need to stop by work anyway, so I show up. It's raining, but it looks like the books we've put inside this miniature shuk will stay dry. Rabbi thinks a bit. Despite the claims of Fiddler on the Roof, there isn't a special blessing for everything. Decides to have us sing the Shehecheyanu, the most all-purpose Jewish prayer, praising God for letting us experience whatever it is that's going on. Then we eat strawberries dipped in chocolate.

5. Andrew D. thinks the trailer for the Tolkien bio-pic is going to make a few people's heads explode. No, it only makes my head hurt. It looks agonizingly precious.