6.30.2007
We've Made It!
The Brewers on not only on national TV (Fox) but I can watch them in HD?!? We've finally made it!
6.16.2007
Howie Goes Swimming
The other day, at dogfest, Howie took his first dip in the water. He wasn't hesitant to go in but immediately decided "this is a little weird" and came right out. After that we were really excited to get him to a dog park with water and we got a chance Thursday night at the Northport dog park.
They had a bit of a pier there that needed to be leaped from, instead of just being able to wade in, which made him a bit hesitant. So... I just threw him in a few times. There was some water swallowing and he didn't quite get that he was supposed to be swimming back to the ramp - not back to the pier, but after a few tries he got much more comfortable and really took to it.
Great fun and we're already looking forward to heading back there with him.
They had a bit of a pier there that needed to be leaped from, instead of just being able to wade in, which made him a bit hesitant. So... I just threw him in a few times. There was some water swallowing and he didn't quite get that he was supposed to be swimming back to the ramp - not back to the pier, but after a few tries he got much more comfortable and really took to it.
Great fun and we're already looking forward to heading back there with him.
6.11.2007
Back Home
We made it back home right on time Friday morning. Our transfer in Newark definitely cut it close (due mostly to a completely nonsensical security process), but... we made it - and even more remarkably, so did our luggage.
The only item that didn't make it back properly was my laptop powercord which was taken by security at Ben Gurion (Tel Aviv) who needed to do "more testing". I have no idea why that was necessary but at least it was going to be "on the next plane". So... here I am three days later and still no sign of it -- They (Continental) were supposed to receive it here on two separate occasions since then but it still hasn't come through. My next chance is today at 330PM so I guess we'll hope it comes in then. In the meantime, I haven't been able to use my laptop - which means I can't work. That may not sound like a bad thing... but, in this case, it really is - I'm getting way behind and it's quite annoying. Today I'll have to meet up with Rob to use his power cord...
The trip was great - a wonderful experience and great to meet the people I've been working with remotely up to now. This picture is from the office by the way... not a bad work environment!
One other thing my Mom pointed out to me regarding the size of Israel. I knew it was small but it's funny to see it compared to Lake Michigan like this:
6.06.2007
6/5 and 6/6 - Herziliya
After work yesterday we were treated to dinner by Koby (our CTO) and his girlfriend Chen. Really great to meet her and get the real facts on Koby!
I didn't get any pictures in the area around my hotel when I got here as I didn't have the camera yet, so I took care of that a bit this morning (set here -- all our pictures here). These are either from my hotel room or from the neighborhood within a few blocks of it...
I can't decide if this is "Flying Bicycle Angel Woman" or "Landing Bicycle Devil Man", but I am definitely sticking to my guns that it's a bicycle:
There's no shortage of seashells:
The beach itself:
And some stores near a turnabout (there are no shortage of turnabouts):
I didn't get any pictures in the area around my hotel when I got here as I didn't have the camera yet, so I took care of that a bit this morning (set here -- all our pictures here). These are either from my hotel room or from the neighborhood within a few blocks of it...
I can't decide if this is "Flying Bicycle Angel Woman" or "Landing Bicycle Devil Man", but I am definitely sticking to my guns that it's a bicycle:
There's no shortage of seashells:The beach itself:And some stores near a turnabout (there are no shortage of turnabouts):
6.05.2007
June 4
Happy Birthday Mike! Hope it's a good one! Looks like NYC was a great time!
Today was a normal workday here - nothing exciting to report. Just work, dinner, and sleep.
Today was a normal workday here - nothing exciting to report. Just work, dinner, and sleep.
6.03.2007
6/3 Workin on a Sunday
Back to work today as Sunday is a workday here in Israel (or at least much of it). Not a whole lot to report other than another great supper by the Sea - this time at the fanciest of the three offerings on the beach near our hotel.
Since I don't have much new to report... and since the sites/sights of the weekend are definitely still on my mind... just something I've been thinking about:
A few days ago I was going to talk about being in Israel and just generally near so many holy/historical sites... The closest thing I can compare it to (and this doesn't even come close) is being at Yankee Stadium and thinking about: Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig may have walked on this spot... or even: someone else watched history from this spot.
Now multiply that by a thousand - who has walked through Jerusalem? Who has walked within 30 feet of where I walked this weekend? ... incredible.
Is this the precise site of the crucifixion or the ascension or so many other events? and then coming to the realization that it happened within a few miles of where you are - being on the exact spot would be very special... but being very close - or even at the "best guess" or "traditional" spot is incredible.
Since I don't have much new to report... and since the sites/sights of the weekend are definitely still on my mind... just something I've been thinking about:
A few days ago I was going to talk about being in Israel and just generally near so many holy/historical sites... The closest thing I can compare it to (and this doesn't even come close) is being at Yankee Stadium and thinking about: Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig may have walked on this spot... or even: someone else watched history from this spot.
Now multiply that by a thousand - who has walked through Jerusalem? Who has walked within 30 feet of where I walked this weekend? ... incredible.
Is this the precise site of the crucifixion or the ascension or so many other events? and then coming to the realization that it happened within a few miles of where you are - being on the exact spot would be very special... but being very close - or even at the "best guess" or "traditional" spot is incredible.
6.02.2007
6/2 - Jerusalem
What we had seen yesterday at the Dead Sea and Massada was incredible but today's portion of the tour was absolutely fantastic. We took a tour of Jerusalem - primarily the Old City's four quarters.
Absolutely incredible to see such a quantity of things that have so much history and that you've heard about for so long in person - especially in such an incredibly short span of time.
I couldn't possibly describe - or take enough pictures - to explain it all but I'll provide several below. You can get all of them from today here - or all of them (ever) here.
An overview of the city:
Mt. Olive:
The location of The Last Supper (the room is completely different than it would have been then, but the location...):
A covered street in the Old City with shops:
The Wailing Wall and The Temple Site:
The Trinity:
Absolutely incredible to see such a quantity of things that have so much history and that you've heard about for so long in person - especially in such an incredibly short span of time.
I couldn't possibly describe - or take enough pictures - to explain it all but I'll provide several below. You can get all of them from today here - or all of them (ever) here.
An overview of the city:
Mt. Olive:The location of The Last Supper (the room is completely different than it would have been then, but the location...):A covered street in the Old City with shops:The Wailing Wall and The Temple Site:The Trinity:
6/1 Massada & The Dead Sea
pictures for today here. all of them here.
We woke up early today to catch our bus out of Herzliya for a tour of (today) the Dead Sea and Messada and (tomorrow) Jerusalem. We'll be staying overnight in Jerusalem as well - it'll be nice to see that city a bit more.
There ended up being a bit of miscommunication as we were told to be ready at 715 and they were actually expecting us at 7. Obviously it could have been much worse as the 15 minutes just meant we were really rushed and a bit late instead of completely missing things - still, not a great start though. After picking up a few others we were off to Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is a gorgeous city, built in the mountains (big hills anyway). The mountain is not very high but high enough that all of the available precipitation falls on it -- there's a ridge in town where you can look down at one side of town and see green and green in the area beyond, but if you look the other way you see the Arabian Desert.
On our way out of town (we weren't there long - just to pick people up) we saw some goat herders / nomads on the way out of town. These people, live life in as traditional a way as possible. They try to avoid almost everything modern but apparently have become much less nomadic lately as they now have water pipes coming to their settlements. They are in the dessert so I'm sure that at some point you might just have to accept something modern to improve your life by that much.
Shortly before we reached the Dead Sea we saw a city a bit in the distance: Jericho. We weren't headed in that direction (it's Palestinian at the moment) but it's incredible to see cities that you've heard so much about and have so much history. We also passed by the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found - another place that we weren't stopping at but again...wow.
The Dead Sea is a picturesque Desert Oasis. Although, maybe "oasis" isn't the right word when the water is incredibly undrinkable. Amazingly, the Dead Sea is 33% salt which makes floating in it incredibly easy (more on that later).
Our first stop wasn't actually at the Dead Sea - it was Massada. Read this for a bit of a refresher: click here (it's quite the story, you really should check it out).
Some original flooring:
Looking down the giant ramp the Romans built (if you don't know what I'm talking about - read that last link):
After Messada we were off to make a proper stop at the Dead Sea. The stop was something that I'm really glad we did - here are the three things to tell you about the trip:
1. I put the Dead Sea "black mud" on my skin which is just sitting on the bottom there... it was... something I needed to do. I can't say that I kept it on any longer than a minute though - I just wanted to have done it.
2. I floated in the Dead Sea - another "must do". It basically feels like you have a life preserver on - only it's covering your whole body. Almost like you're sitting in a recliner in the water - you go in a "seated" position and your chest stick out of the water along with your knees and feet. Pretty crazy!
3. It's easy to scrape yourself up at the Dead Sea + scraping yourself and adding salt water is not fun. While basically "crawling around" on top of the mud (if you try to walk you sink) I got some scrapes, but I guess that's the price of admission.
4. (wait, did I say there'd be only 3?) -- It's friggin hot in the Arabian Dessert. We were actually there on a "cold" day and it was easily 100F. Apparently it gets up as high as 130F... you may want to bring some sunscreen.
We were pleasantly surprised when we got to Jerusalem to find that we actually had a nice hotel - we weren't expecting much for the place "included with the 2 day tour". It was located in a pretty cool neighborhood to the West of the Old City. Not sure of the neighborhood name but Hillel Street was the area where we found dinner and a coffee shop. The action seems to pick up later here in general with people getting dinner in the 7-8 time slot on average so we were a bit early for the real action. I was ok with an earlier night though as we had had quite a bit of sun and walking and were in for more of the same tomorrow.
We woke up early today to catch our bus out of Herzliya for a tour of (today) the Dead Sea and Messada and (tomorrow) Jerusalem. We'll be staying overnight in Jerusalem as well - it'll be nice to see that city a bit more.
There ended up being a bit of miscommunication as we were told to be ready at 715 and they were actually expecting us at 7. Obviously it could have been much worse as the 15 minutes just meant we were really rushed and a bit late instead of completely missing things - still, not a great start though. After picking up a few others we were off to Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is a gorgeous city, built in the mountains (big hills anyway). The mountain is not very high but high enough that all of the available precipitation falls on it -- there's a ridge in town where you can look down at one side of town and see green and green in the area beyond, but if you look the other way you see the Arabian Desert.
On our way out of town (we weren't there long - just to pick people up) we saw some goat herders / nomads on the way out of town. These people, live life in as traditional a way as possible. They try to avoid almost everything modern but apparently have become much less nomadic lately as they now have water pipes coming to their settlements. They are in the dessert so I'm sure that at some point you might just have to accept something modern to improve your life by that much.
Shortly before we reached the Dead Sea we saw a city a bit in the distance: Jericho. We weren't headed in that direction (it's Palestinian at the moment) but it's incredible to see cities that you've heard so much about and have so much history. We also passed by the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found - another place that we weren't stopping at but again...wow.
The Dead Sea is a picturesque Desert Oasis. Although, maybe "oasis" isn't the right word when the water is incredibly undrinkable. Amazingly, the Dead Sea is 33% salt which makes floating in it incredibly easy (more on that later).
Our first stop wasn't actually at the Dead Sea - it was Massada. Read this for a bit of a refresher: click here (it's quite the story, you really should check it out).
Some original flooring:
Looking down the giant ramp the Romans built (if you don't know what I'm talking about - read that last link):
After Messada we were off to make a proper stop at the Dead Sea. The stop was something that I'm really glad we did - here are the three things to tell you about the trip:
1. I put the Dead Sea "black mud" on my skin which is just sitting on the bottom there... it was... something I needed to do. I can't say that I kept it on any longer than a minute though - I just wanted to have done it.
2. I floated in the Dead Sea - another "must do". It basically feels like you have a life preserver on - only it's covering your whole body. Almost like you're sitting in a recliner in the water - you go in a "seated" position and your chest stick out of the water along with your knees and feet. Pretty crazy!
3. It's easy to scrape yourself up at the Dead Sea + scraping yourself and adding salt water is not fun. While basically "crawling around" on top of the mud (if you try to walk you sink) I got some scrapes, but I guess that's the price of admission.
4. (wait, did I say there'd be only 3?) -- It's friggin hot in the Arabian Dessert. We were actually there on a "cold" day and it was easily 100F. Apparently it gets up as high as 130F... you may want to bring some sunscreen.
We were pleasantly surprised when we got to Jerusalem to find that we actually had a nice hotel - we weren't expecting much for the place "included with the 2 day tour". It was located in a pretty cool neighborhood to the West of the Old City. Not sure of the neighborhood name but Hillel Street was the area where we found dinner and a coffee shop. The action seems to pick up later here in general with people getting dinner in the 7-8 time slot on average so we were a bit early for the real action. I was ok with an earlier night though as we had had quite a bit of sun and walking and were in for more of the same tomorrow.
The Real 5/31
I didn't want to title all these posts with the date but with the time difference... maybe it's just easier if I try to throw it in there somewhere. Anyway, here's my day from 5/31 (Thursday).
Today was Rob and I's first full day off in Israel and we spent it in Tel Aviv. You've been hearing quite a bit about our trips to the beach where we're staying (in Herzliya Petuach, a Tel Aviv suburb) so I'm sure it will be no surprise that the beach in Tel Aviv is equally great.
The area we were in all day definitely had much more of a big city feel than in our suburb. The streets were bustling and shops lined the streets. Good news for those who have been pestering me in the comments :) -- I bought a digital camera! I actually think that I got a pretty good deal - I got a nice digital camera with a huge memory card for 1350 sheckles! How the heck much is that??? It's about 4:1 so it was $350 for the camera and case. That's not cheap, but I really needed a camera and ours is actually broken at home - so it's not like this is only for this one trip or something like that.
As always, all of our photos are here. The rest of the photos for this day in Tel Aviv (27 total) are here.
Anyway, the day was really great - very hot but a steady wind helped us out quite a bit. We did A LOT of walking around the beaches, shops, and other sights of Tel Aviv's harbor.
To end the night we met up with two of our co-workers: Adam and Shmueli for dinner before heading home. We also got to see where Shmueli lives, which was cool - his apartment is not unlike what you'd expect if you were to visit someone the same age in Chicago or another big American city. We also learned that (like Chicago) much of the neighborhood is made up of a very young population and that people typically move as they move into the next phases of life.
Speaking of "next phases of life" - the Israeli's our age seem quite shocked that both Rob and I are married already. Israeli's go from High School into a mandatory 3 year term in the military. After that they typically travel the world for a year before going on to work or more school or whatever else American kids would have been doing 3-5 years earlier... so, I guess it makes sense that most people here get married a bit later.
The bad part of the night was that I started feeling really bad just before dinner. Our dinner was great - so that definitely wasn't the problem, but I just seem to have a knot in my stomach that I can't shake. Maybe it's not a terrible thing though as tomorrow morning (715AM) we'll be heading out for a weekend tour of Israel that will take us through so many sites that I really want to see that I won't list them here... I'm sure you'll be hearing about them all soon enough!
Today was Rob and I's first full day off in Israel and we spent it in Tel Aviv. You've been hearing quite a bit about our trips to the beach where we're staying (in Herzliya Petuach, a Tel Aviv suburb) so I'm sure it will be no surprise that the beach in Tel Aviv is equally great.
The area we were in all day definitely had much more of a big city feel than in our suburb. The streets were bustling and shops lined the streets. Good news for those who have been pestering me in the comments :) -- I bought a digital camera! I actually think that I got a pretty good deal - I got a nice digital camera with a huge memory card for 1350 sheckles! How the heck much is that??? It's about 4:1 so it was $350 for the camera and case. That's not cheap, but I really needed a camera and ours is actually broken at home - so it's not like this is only for this one trip or something like that.
As always, all of our photos are here. The rest of the photos for this day in Tel Aviv (27 total) are here.
Anyway, the day was really great - very hot but a steady wind helped us out quite a bit. We did A LOT of walking around the beaches, shops, and other sights of Tel Aviv's harbor.
To end the night we met up with two of our co-workers: Adam and Shmueli for dinner before heading home. We also got to see where Shmueli lives, which was cool - his apartment is not unlike what you'd expect if you were to visit someone the same age in Chicago or another big American city. We also learned that (like Chicago) much of the neighborhood is made up of a very young population and that people typically move as they move into the next phases of life.
Speaking of "next phases of life" - the Israeli's our age seem quite shocked that both Rob and I are married already. Israeli's go from High School into a mandatory 3 year term in the military. After that they typically travel the world for a year before going on to work or more school or whatever else American kids would have been doing 3-5 years earlier... so, I guess it makes sense that most people here get married a bit later.
The bad part of the night was that I started feeling really bad just before dinner. Our dinner was great - so that definitely wasn't the problem, but I just seem to have a knot in my stomach that I can't shake. Maybe it's not a terrible thing though as tomorrow morning (715AM) we'll be heading out for a weekend tour of Israel that will take us through so many sites that I really want to see that I won't list them here... I'm sure you'll be hearing about them all soon enough!
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