by danya | Sep 14, 2006 | Blog
Aaargh. Starting a new chapter is always rough, and today is no exception. Yesterday’s activity was mostly about organizing all of the quotes for the rest of the book (I have this screwy system; yesterday mostly involved reading through all the notes I’ve...
by danya | Sep 12, 2006 | Blog
Holy cow, they have tons of Rechov SumSum (the Israeli Sesame Street) up on YouTube. Go here to see Moshe Oofnik (the Israeli Oscar the Grouch-type) get drunk at Shabbos dinner a Passover seder and here for one of the classic shticks from the show. (The last one is...
by danya | Sep 12, 2006 | Blog
And so the First Drafting continues. 34,142 / 80,000(42.7%) I am, as you can see, still way over count–I’ve written four chapters, and still need to write let’s-say-six more (it’s really five, plus an introduction and an afterword that’s...
by danya | Sep 11, 2006 | Blog
Well, I’m back from 3 days of R & R in the Red Sea. I’d never been to Eilat before, and it was pretty much what I expected: a lot of the trappings of Standard Resort-Type Place (cheezy boardwalk, rum company logos on awnings, lots and lots and oh lots...
by danya | Sep 7, 2006 | Blog
Only an hour at Misrad HaPnim, it was amazing. I filled out a form and paid a little money (140 NIS) to extend my visa (thank God I seem these days to always have an extra passport photo floating around my gigantic wallet somewhere), and they did it. Since I’m...
by danya | Sep 6, 2006 | Blog
I am not consoled by the fact that, according to this NYT story, Christian clergywomen are in the same lousy boat as female rabbis. There are the anecdotes: The Rev. Dottie Escobedo-Frank, pastor of Crossroads United Methodist Church in Phoenix, said that at every...
by danya | Sep 6, 2006 | Blog
According to this international salary calculator thingy, the cost of living in Jerusalem is significantly higher than in L.A. (It says that cost of living is lower in J’lem than San Francisco, of course, but not even by a lot). You really coulda fooled me. Even...
by danya | Sep 5, 2006 | Blog
Well, the contract for my book (with all signatures in place) arrived yesterday. Guess I really actually have to write this thing now, huh? In other news, I am going on a bit of a minication (really, just a long weekend) to Eilat in a couple of days. The Red Sea!...
by danya | Sep 3, 2006 | Blog
I think my method for writing this book is to write each chapter up to around 10,000 words, and then try to pare it down to the essentials, hopefully ending up at a relatively sane 7500 or so. Sometimes I write up to 10k, go down to 7k and then somehow back up to 9k...
by danya | Sep 3, 2006 | Blog
This NYT article on the economic implications of breastfeeding is worth a look. When a new mother returns to Starbucks’ corporate headquarters in Seattle after maternity leave, she learns what is behind the doors mysteriously marked “Lactation Room.†Whenever...
