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March 11th, 2019

12:46 am It was very very much A Weekend and I am starting the week the week fairly exhausted so that's great. But: Watched Captain Marvel on Thursday evening and enjoyed it - was a fun movie, above average in my own personal MCU ranking but not way up top. When I got home I was like, that was nice, but I remember Brie Larson can really really really pack an emotional punch when she wants to, let's rewatch the trailer for Room, which ended in me staying up until 3AM to rewatch the entirety of the movie Room, which remains amazing. On Friday I drove up to Haifa to meet a friend who is visiting from the US for a week. 70% of conversation was about babies, because this is where my Haifa friends are at, pregnant or with newborns. We met up on the Carmel, then drove down for a stroll on the beach - she lives in Boulder now, which is both inland and was apparently -16 degrees last week or something, and misses the Haifa beach a lot. It was lovely. The water was a beautiful shade of blue that day, sun shimmering on small tide pools between the rocks, and the rocks were all covered in algae that looked like a bright green muppet had exploded all over them but really you just wanted to lean down and pet the moss, it was so soft. After, we met another friend at a cafe, where I had cauliflower patties and the most delicious orange cider; I love apple cider, but man, orange cider is a serious level up. In the evening I went to friend #2's apt to hang out for a bit; her oldest kid knows me well enough that he remembers me now, and I think he likes me. There were strawberries and whipped cream, which were basically my pre-dinner snack, because for a late dinner, I met friend #3 and her husband at an Italian restaurant. It was great seeing them; I used to see them a lot in the center, but they had a (very) premature baby two months ago and spend every day at the hospital as he grows gram by gram; hopefully he'll be discharged in a few weeks. They are tired but in good spirits and seem to support each other very much, which is all I could hope for. I slept at friend #1's airbnb; it was really good to see her. We hadn't seen each other since August, which is longer than at any time since I've known her, but in a sense it was also the most time we've gotten to spend together recently, her visiting sans-family. In the morning, we went down the mountain to share coffee and breakfast in what is apparently the hipster neighborhood of Haifa; we found a small cafe/bar with low ceilings and bright sunlight, with walls painted desert and turquoise and soft jazz playing and dogs waiting outside. I was going to drive back south by the coast, but I'd heard there were flowers - and here is the important part - right by the parking lot of this park up on the mountain. Well, thought I. As long as it's, I mean, right there by the parking lot, might as well go up and check. So I drove up and parked and god, guys, the country is beautiful right now. Everything was green, and there were wildflowers everywhere - red, pink, orange, yellow, purple, white, the mountain overflowing with them, and grass and trees all around, and perfect cool-warm weather, and the view of the bay and the ocean below. After walking around for a bit, I found myself a tree and sat down with a notebook and brainstormed Purimgifts until I settled on an idea. Drove back down after that, stopping at McD's for lunch because it's the only thing with a drivethru. The flowers from earlier had made me want to get some new plants, so I stopped by the nursery at Ramat Hasharon to buy some, and since my grandmother lives nearby, I checked if she was free and she was, so I dropped by for a quick coffee and hi. Apparently her boyfriend had just been hospitalized, which is DDD: for me but she didn't seem worried. Ironically, my friends' two month old (but really still minus one month old) baby and my grandmother's 93 year old boyfriend are now on the same medication and have the same side effects. I got home around 5:30 PM, just in time to pot my new plants, burn a CD of In The Heights for the road, and leave to pick up sister and friends on our way to Jerusalem, where we had tickets for a local community theater production of In The Heights. Drove up to Jerusalem, got there in the nick of time, just managing to glimpse how pretty the walls are in between the traffic. I had such a fun time watching the show - both getting to learn the plot and story, but also being able to participate in that energy of live, non-profit community theather. There's something so raw and joyful there; it was closing night after a 6-show run, and I am very happy there was a large enough group of talented enough people to pull this off in English, in addition to everything. Got home after 1PM, and it was a wonderful weekend, truly, but also I feel like I need another weekend after that. Work, alas, does not work that way; today was rough. But now I will go to sleep, and hope I will not wake up to online conversations that will make me want to tear my hair out about Gal Gadot's politics. ( just a few picsCollapse ) comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: #1, #2, #3, israel, mcu, movies, photos, pics, safta, theater

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August 27th, 2017

12:33 am - Photobucket temp fix *hits figurative reblog button so fast, via monanotlisa, semyaza and wendelah1: This Chrome Extension restores Photobucket images as an embed fix for Chrome - works on Wordpress, Livejournal, Dreamwidth and AO3. There's also a photobucket embed fix for Firefox here. It's probably not too far fetched to guess that at some point photobucket may catch up and render these extensions useless, but it does let me see other people's and, importantly, my own posts properly. I plan on saving at least some of them as html files just so I have them somewhere that's not hosted online. Does anyone know if there's any offline backup equivalent to the old LJ-Archive tool? My posts are all backed up on DW but that still requires third party image hosting :/ :/ :/ Anyway, at least from desktops I'll be able to view photobucket pics for now... comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: pics

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August 24th, 2016

06:13 pm - China pics ...a collection of photos from China, without explanations because if I try to write those I will probably never get to the point of posting at all /o\ ( Read more...Collapse ) comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: china, photos, pics, travel

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February 24th, 2015

11:30 pm - back! I am back! Had a wonderful trip this year. The best thing about it, honestly, was hanging out with my family; it was our first joint family vacation since 2002, all five of us together, and it was especially great to have baby sis join us from her current hometown of Brussels. But uh, the ski was great too :-) With occasionally challenging weather, and the occasional me completely breathless and aching cause I'm so out of shape, but overall, it was great. Things I need to do include: -catch up on tumblr -leave so many comments and reply to comments -read this hockey fic that I have been greatly awaiting for months -decide who to vote for (I mean, not tonight - not even this week - but gah it's only 3 weeks away god) -catch up on Oscars highlights -purimgifts -edit and post trip photos I will not do any of the above now, but I will share two small sets of photos. The first, photos from this one particular day which was just... absolutely breathtaking: So on Saturday the weather forecast was snow, and indeed we woke up in the morning to completely white-gray skies and air, and heavy snow falling and really just crappy weather to ski in; the kind where you’re basically in the cloud, and visibility is terrible and it’s windy and cold. Visibility improved a little about an hour after breakfast, so we set out, debating whether to ski to one of the lower villages where the fog might clear up a bit, or stay close in case we wanted to get back to the hotel. We decided to stay close, and took a gondola (cable car) lift that we'd never taken before. As the car climbed, the fog got thicker and thicker until basically the color merged entirely with the snow and when you looked outside the window it just looked like you were hanging in the middle of a great white void of emptiness ("feels like an escalator to heaven," said sis). And still the lift continued to climb, and THEN - all of a sudden - the sky was clear, a deep, beautiful blue, the sun was shining, and visibility was perfect. The lift had broken through the clouds, and when we reached the top, it was just - this gorgeous carpet of clouds stretching towards forever, with faraway mountaintops peeking through the fluff. There was a restaurant on the peak we were on as well, complete with people sunbathing on beach chairs set up in front. It was beautifully surreal. A few pics: ( under cutCollapse ) Second: so that same morning, while we were waiting for things to clear up a bit, the snow calmed down quite a lot, and for a while it was just snowing these beautiful, perfectly shaped fluttery snowflakes, which is a photo I've been dying to try to capture for, well. Let's say years. So we went outside, and I made my sisters model snowflakes for me, meaning duck and be still while I try to shoot snowflakes captures in their hair/hat. Of the 50 or so photos I took there are not too many successes BUT here are two I enjoy: ( snowflakes!Collapse ) * I also posted these photos to tumblr. Which... I previously only used for hockey? But then I got to know people there and I want to share and they're not on DW and gah, multiple social networks are hard, esp navigating this whole tumblr/DWLJ thing. I tried to make that post as... unrebloggable as I could, but now I fear it's just being kind of annoying :/ Sigh sigh. * ...I can't believe Parks and Rec is ending tonight. What will we do when it's gone? What will we do? ;____; comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: family, parks and rec, photos, pics, ski, travel

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February 13th, 2015

12:53 am I watched Jupiter Ascending this evening. My responses are as follow: 1. OSCARS. OSCARS FOR EVERYONE. 2. LOLOLOLOLOL. 3. No but seriously that script felt like I was reading it straight from Mibba. I'm not even talking ff.net, poeple. Mibba. 4. The only review I read about the movie beforehand feels to me like the best and only review one needs to read about this movie. It is from The Mary Sue, and titled Jupiter Ascending Is The Worst Movie Ever Go See It Immediately. 5. That said, overall, it was enjoyable. An extended facepalm, but enjoyable. We went to an early showing, which unfortunately meant that the the mall was open for another hour after the movie was over, which translated into me being 350 shekels down by the end of the evening: one book, and three lipsticks (rather, two lipsticks and a primer. Apparently primers are a thing.) I don't really do make up - I don't know how it works, I don't know how to choose it, and I literally had to ask the lady at the store how to try on the testers because I have never done that before. But I bought a lipstick a couple months ago - strong and red, which I wore to a couple weddings and liked, but nothing I felt comfortable in any way wearing on a day to day basis. But at the mall tonight I stumbled upon a Mac store, and there we go. The two I got are very mild and natural looking and I think I'll like them; it remains to be seen how much I'll use them, but so far I'm satisfied with the purchase. (I got the standard yearly raise last week, so I'm just gonna pretend I spent money in honor of that.) The saleswoman almost convinced me to buy mascara too, but I felt a little too anime-eyes with them, so, as the saying here goes, "cow-cow", or - one step at a time. * Because I mentioned the weather yesterday, here are a few photos I took (on my phone) just to demonstrate: the ocean starting to creep in on our car in the parking lot before and after wiping my windshield yesterday morning and a black car I saw parked in the street today, after yesterday's rain. Finally, I am sure many of you have seen this as it's been making the internet/tumblr rounds, but good grief, this choreography and dance performance of "Take Me to Church" is utterly breathtaking: As the ever clickable Buzzfeed article describes it, "so beautiful it hurts". comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: dance, movies, photos, pics, vids, weather

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February 4th, 2015

06:12 pm - Happy Tu Bishvat! This weekend - today too, actually, but man, this weekend - had possibly the perfectest winter weather to ever perfect. Beautiful day, optimal temperature, sunlight, clear skies. Theoretically I'm upset that this is winter because we could certainly use the rain, from agriculture to wildlife to, you know, drinking and showers, those are important - but it's hard to be upset in the face of beautiful days like the ones we're experiencing. Someone pointed out that the way the winter climate here has changed is that where once, winter was characterized by consistent gray skies and rain showers during the winter months, December-February - these days, winter is better described as easy, relatively warm weather periodically interrupted by heavy storms. (Which somehow always time themselves to happen over weekends.) So you'll have two beautiful weeks, and then a crazy rainstorm that the draining system can barely handle, and then it'll clear up again. It's weird to get used to, and not actually a positive trend because again, we need the rain, and also I'm rather fond of it personally, but... there's no denying pleasant weather is pleasant. (I have 2 friends coming from abroad in the next two weeks, so clearly I've just jinxed their visit dates to having horrible stormy weather, just like the weekend I spent with another US visitor two weeks ago. Sorry for that in advance.) This past Saturday, we visited my family up north. My cousins are all parents now to 1-11 year olds and every age in between, and for the first time I felt comfortable interacting with the kids, who somehow, miraculously, were just so open and welcoming and draped themselves all over me. I do not hang out with kids at all, at all, and though I want to be good with them, always feel super awkward trying to engage, especially when their parents are there, and kids need so much coaxing opening up to strangers anyway, and with me meeting these family members 2-3 times a year at best. But this weekend - the girls were set on showing me every single gymnastics trick that they knew, giving me dolls, singing Frozen songs (guess who's dressing up as Elsa for Purim this year? hint: EVERYONE), playing catch and soccer. I even hockey bonded with the oldest kid, who plays roller hockey in a local league. There's something very... gratifying about having little kids shower you with affection. It was fun. Afterwards, my parents and I drove to a nearby field in Megiddo (aka Armageddon) to see some winter wildflowers, in full bloom exactly in this time of year. Usually kalaniot (anemonies) bloom red - fields and fields of them in the south, pools of them sprinkled in fields and forests everywhere else - but every once in a while they'll be in different colors, pinks and purples and whites. Megiddo has a whole field of those - protected flowers, forbidden to pick as all kalaniot are. I actually think fields of red are prettier in general, in bulk, but seeing a full field of the "rare" colors was certainly breathtaking. ( Pics below cut, and also A PUPPYCollapse ) * Totally not in honor of Tu Bishvat, I have signed up to an 8-week musicals workshop, where... I will maybe learn how to sing like in musicals? I am a little wary since what I know of the last course is that the songs covered were more more... boring, when it comes to my musical taste (ie Memories), but at the very least it'll be a chance to meet more people who love musicals, so. First session's tonight, we'll see how it goes! comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: family, holidays, israel, jewish, photography, photos, pics

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December 6th, 2014

06:16 am - December, Day 5: giving up the charade Yes, it is time to admit it. I have not actually been posting December entries at 11:59PM each night, but have, in fact, been backdating entries posted a full 30-60 minutes later. Or in today's case, 6AM. Let's face it, there's virtually no way for me to actually manage posting coherent things by midnight, so I'm just going to post whenever I post and as long as it's before I've gone asleep for the night, I'll consider it today. (I mean, most of you not only don't care anyhow, but are also still living in yesterday, I know this. I'm just - clarifying the rules here.) I have no actual proof of this since I don't have a TARDIS, but I'm pretty convinced I helped prevent the Great Fire of Tel Aviv 2014. Two friends and I were walking around Kerem Hateymanim - a low housed, very crowded old neighborhood - at night when we noticed a junk mattress standing against two trash cans on the side of the street, a small flame licking outside its top right corner. The mattress was standing just below both a tree and an electricity pole. The flame was small enough that we thought we might be able to put it out with water. While one friend went to fetch a hose/bucket from her nearby apartment, I called the fire department, and my other friend pushed over the mattress so that it lay in the middle of the (pedestrian) street instead of standing up. By then, the fire was large enough that there was no way for us to put it out and we didn't want to breathe in any toxins so we stayed a few meters away. The fire spread so quickly, it was mesmerizing, and grew maybe 2-3 meters tall - definitely high enough that had the mattress still been standing, the tree would have caught fire for sure, and who knows what else; the tree was also hanging over a roof. There wasn't much left by the time the fire truck showed up - just a few lingering low flamed which they put out by spraying a shit ton of water, all over the mattress remains, the trash cans, the tree just in case. The whole thing just happened so fast. We don't know what caused the fire but probably just someone carelessly tossing a cigarette butt in the general trash area because people are idiots. In any case, disaster averted! I was pleased. Meanwhile, marina and I went to a Friday afternoon performance arts-themed pub quiz today. It was incredibly fun - I had so much fun going to pub quiz nights in NYC last year and searched and searched and searched for local equivalents, and finally there is one! There was a film round, theater round, musicals, music, Disney, red carpet... basically right up our alley, and we did excellently for a team of two if I may say so myself (I may), though we arrived 4th out of five. Our team name was The Mighty Ducks (though, retroactively, would have been better as The Mumpy Ducks), though actually actually would have been far better as something entirely different. Anyone have good ideas for team names? I have absolutely no problem stealing if it means getting a cool name. Finally, went to my folks for dinner, watched TV and cuddled with the dog who was basking in weekend attention and entirely too cute not to take a million photos of, oh my god look at her: ( Read more...Collapse ) * Day 5 rec, because bar quiz: Rattle The One Whose Shadow You're Standing In by jezziejay (Hockey RPF, Mature, 4700 words, Kane/Toews, fake dating) Summary: Jonny EMTs, captains a bar quiz team, and pines for NICU nurse Kaner. This is both a bar quiz AU and a fake dating AU and I cannot with how cute it is. jezziejay writes the most hilarious romcom-style fics, and this one has Jonny agreeing to play Kaner's boyfriend to make Kaner's crush, Doctor Do Me, notice him. Just fluffy, happymaking, and really fucking funny, with great banter and great mocking and great team. Note: it's posted in a collection of stories, so "Chapter 1" is actually the entirety of the fic and completely standalone. comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: doggie, hockey, photos, pics, recs

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December 1st, 2014

11:59 pm - December, Day 1: places I like to go on vacation Happy December! dine asked me to talk about/show places I like to go on vacation. I am treating vacation as "sequential days off work that are more than a weekend", which is something I can take pretty much twice a year, and in the past four years I've been working this job have included: (1) almost yearly ski trip with my dad and sisters - usually in France, always amazing (2) two weeks in the USA last summer (vacation), but I'm also including regular weekends in the USA from when I lived there last winter because being abroad = essentially as amazing as vacation, even while I was working (3) five days in Edinburgh this summer at the Fringe Theater Festival, which is one of my favorite places on this earth during the festival. Since I've been very remiss in posting photos in the past, let's be generous and call it just a year, some photos from all three trips: ( Ski - Val Thorens, FranceCollapse ) ( Winter in NYCCollapse ) ( Edinburgh FringeCollapse ) That was definitely less talking, more showing, but I'm glad for the chance to post some of these <3 * in addition to posting prompts, at least one rec a day for December, so: December recs, Day 1: A/S/L? by floss (12500 words, Hockey RPF, Explicit, Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews) Additional Tags: 90's AU, Internet Relationship, Webcam/Video Chat Sex Summary: The internet is a dangerous place, or: Patrick and Jonny meet, lie through their teeth, and fall in love. Mostly that last part. I'm starting things off with this rec because the even as I was reading it I thought of so many people here I think would enjoy it. Like the tags describe, it's a 90's AU about an internet relationship in an era before, well, high speed or mobile internet. It's a super cute, sweet, high school romance, and it's peppered with tiny nostalgic details about 90s internet culture or tech; every time I got to one of them I was hit with a sudden, oh, right, that's what it used to be like, wow. It certainly made me remember about the first time I'd ever met someone I met on the internet - on a Buffy fic discussion mailing list in my case. I remember the thrill of discovering another Israeli (identified through her email address domain), the first time we talked on the phone, and the end result - her agreeing to lend me her season 4 BtVS tapes which a friend had mailed her from the States, about a year before the season aired in Israel. My parents agreed to drive me over there, which feels so weird retroactively; these days, I tell my parents very little about anything I do online. Anyway - that tangent aside, it's a super cute fic that has dial up, yay <3 (I mean, very yay for not having dial up irl anymore thank god, but yay to revisit in fic.) comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: hockey, new york, photos, pics, recs, ski, travel, usa

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August 31st, 2014

05:27 pm Hello! I hope you are all having a glorious Sunday/Labor Day weekend. To start off your week (or interrupt your weekend, whatever): 1. Courtesy of mara, the first meeting between Captain Marvelous and Joe Gibken in Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger. I don't actually know anything about this show or canon or whatever, but wow, yes, this is indeed a challenger for slashiest moment ever, whoo boy. 2. When I was in Edinburgh, I bumped into what I can only assume is the dream job for many, many people in fandom: This lovely lady had a one-woman-play about her job as a phone sex operator, which I unfortunately did not get to see. In between, she had this booth - table and typewriter, providing an important service for people walking around the fest and waiting in between plays: interview people about what they want to read, then send them away; 15 minutes later they would come back to receive personalized erotica written to their taste. Humanity needs more people like this. 3. Again in Edinburgh, in the middle of one of the street performances, the singers noticed this dude in the crowd and pulled him onstage with them. He was all smiling and embarrassed and the ONLY REASON I doubted it was actually Harry Styles is that if it were, there would be more screaming in his general vicinity. Still, I obsessively checked twitter for real!Harry Styles' location all day long until I was reassured he wasn't in the UK, and that this was only a doppelganger: He was such a cutie, omg. Okay, and now that my coworkers have finished wrapping my officemate's entire work station in aluminium paper, I can go back to work. Uh. Make sure to click on the first video! Especially if you like collared space slave boys and dashing space pirates who rescue them :D comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: photos, pics, theater, travel

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August 22nd, 2013

09:31 pm - Photos: USA-Canada Maccabiah gold medal match The Maccabiah Games are an athletic tournament that takes place in Israel every four years, where Jewish athletes from all of the world come and compete for "Jewish Olympics" gold. This year, for the second time ever, ice hockey was incorporated as an event (the last and only other time they ice hockey in the past was in 1997). Five countries competed in this year's tournament: Israel, Canada, Russia, United States, and Ukraine. The games all took place in Metulah, the northernmost town in Israel, which sits right on the Lebanese border and is home to Israel's only Olympic-sized ice skating rink, in the appropriately named - and funded - Canada Center. The hockey tournament this tear was sponsored by 6 NHL team owners, who I'm just going to go ahead and guess are Jewish. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman was here for the opening ceremonies, which was the beginning of the total mindfuck which was seeing all these faraway fandom elements all of a sudden appearing right here (as well as the mindfuck of seeing Bettman pose with half-naked Jewish teens, but in hockey - except for the Jewish part - that's par for the course). I had been set on going ever since I'd realized about a year ago that this would essentially be the closest thing Israel ever got to a professional level hockey game, as some of the players would be minor leaguer players in the US/Canada, draft prospects, and even the occasional former NHLer (with a record of perhaps a handful of games). I'd originally planned to go with marina, but it didn't pan out logistically, and I was spending the weekend up north with my family anyway. So: four weeks ago, I drove up north my my family, ditched them at the crazy luxurious boutique spa hotel we were staying at, and continued the drive yet more north to the border, destination: hockey. The result was many, many photos. ( Wherein Team Canada battle Team USA for the goldCollapse ) Overall - it was a super awesome experience. There were actual Israelis there with hockey sweaters - I saw a Flyer, Panther, Canuck, Sabre, Penguin, Maple Leaf. There was a full crowd in the stands, most from the Metulah area, probably some of the only people in the country who have access to hockey schools in ice complex there. There was a lot of cross-borders fist bumping and smiles. There were "KEEP CALM AND STUDY TALMUD" (but too much for me lol) t-shirts beneath national hockey team sweaters. There were songs, and Brass Bonanza playing after goals, and Rocky music, and the horrific Maccabiah theme song, hockey moms and parents and families, and a whole bunch of people who loved hockey. It was great <3 comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: hockey, israel, photography, pics, picspam

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March 27th, 2013

02:31 am - Photos: Cranes, Herodium, Tel Aviv Bunch of photos from February and March below the cuts! ...Starting with photos of cranes I took on a trip up north in the beginning of February. It was an organized photography tour I joined with a friend, leaving Tel Aviv at 3AM with the hopes of arriving at the Hula Reservation (=pond and crane haven) in time for the sunrise. Unfortunately it ended up being a stormy weekend, and there was no real sunrise, just a cloudy sky growing lighter shades of gray and showering the occasional drizzle. But there were thousands and thousand of cranes and they were pretty: ( Cranes at the HulaCollapse ) A few weeks later I went to the Herodium, Herod's palace in the Judean desert. It's only 15 minutes from Jerusalem but technically in the territories, where I virtually never venture. It was interesting, more for the geography than for the actual site itself, which was a little disappointing. The guided tour was worse than bad - sometimes inaccurate, and painfully biased. But let's just focus on a few pics: ( HerodiumCollapse ) And finally, some Tel Aviv photos from two separate occasions: first, walking around the Yarkon river and peeking into the weird wildlife den in the middle of the park, and second, the Tel Aviv marathon two weeks ago, where I went to cheer on a friend and my dad who were running the half-marathon each. ( Tel Aviv picsCollapse ) comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: israel, photos, pics, tel aviv

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November 23rd, 2012

04:21 am - things that are peaceful Things are quiet now; it's amazing how quickly you can shift between modes, normal vs national emergency. This entire week feels like it took dragged on forever, yesterday morning feels like a year ago, and at the same time I feel like I barely blinked and now it's over. It's thundering outside. Started this afternoon, and three people made the "sounds like a Fajr" joke at the same time, but it started raining, beautiful, strong rain, like it was washing this whole week away, although it's not fair that I can say that, living in Tel Aviv where everything that went on this week barely impacted the fringes of my life, and I have the luxury of being able to put it easily behind. I rushed home after work to pick up my camera and tried to make it back north to photograph some lightning - the sky was going crazy, a loud flashing storm I'm not used to - but by the time I made it back to the north of the city the storm had already escaped up the shore with all of its photo ops. After half an hour of stalking it from afar, I managed to catch a lone rod of baby lightening, and now that I'm back home I'm just going to dump a bunch of photos at you, collected between September and now. Happy American Thanksgiving. Lots of happymaking posts today. I haven't been commenting on LJ/DW much this -- year -- but I still read regularly and love you all and your posts make me happy. Thanks for being here ♥ ( Photos! It starts with a beach sunset, I know you're shocked.Collapse ) All week long, the weather's been perfect, teetering between late fall and early summer, and every day I've woken up in the perfect cozy temperature under my comforter and wished I could stay in bed another two hours, and that is exactly what I plan to do tomorrow morning. comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: israel, news, photography, photos, pics, tel aviv, war

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September 3rd, 2012

12:36 am Via minglingcrab lol whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat wtf wtf wtf I can't even what. To summarize the very brief content of the article: "Showtime is going into business with the creators of The Good Wife. The premium cable network is developing Girls With Guns, a female-led military drama from Robert and Michelle King. The working-titled drama revolves around two Los Angeles sisters whose family moves to the one place in the world where women are drafted into the military: Israel." ...excuse me while I spittake again. I think it's pretty needless to say that there is absolutely no chance that anything on this show, if it is picked up, will be done right, and I would say it anyway if my mind weren't still stuck on whaaaaaaaaaaat. * Friday's wedding was charming - the usual routine (appetizers --> chuppa --> food --> dancing), with a large crows of the bride and groom's friends who helped make the dancefloor happy. When the dancing started, the groom exchanged his button-down white shirt for this 'under new management' t-shirt, which was adorable. Friday night was my mother's birthday dinner, which we ate at a ~fancy~ restaurant overlooking the sunset. One of their dishes were "camelfish" which I am 90% sure is not actually a real fish, but feel free to correct me. Birthday festivities continued the next day when we cut up fruits, vegetables and I think ten different cheeses for brunch. My mom loves party games and nostalgia, so my sisters and I prepared a game that turned out pretty well: it was just a quote guessing game, "who said this to whom under what context", but all of the quotes were taken from old family letters and postcards and notebooks and documents, that I'd collected from each family member in advance (since this was a surprise, mom mom's portion was donated by my grandmother). Congratulations telegrams from when my mom was born; my dad's father writing to them in the 80's, welcoming my mother into the family after she and my dad got engaged; my sister's grade school diary, which it so funny it had me in actual tears. ("Dear Diary. You might be wondering how it is that my handwriting is so changed now. It is because I am in the third grade. You must be thinking that this is a dream. But it is not. This is real. Anyway I just wanted to let you know that I have decided that I shall no longer call you Dear Diary but a new name. Your new name will be: Didi." It is the CUTEST FREAKING DIARY oh my god.) Finally, we watched Paint Your Wagon, which was one of the first movies my mom ever saw, and she's been nostalgic for a while. However, watching it as a child in 1969 left her with a slightly altered version from the actual movie, which is really ALL OF THE CRACK. Here is the essence of my reaction while watching it: Yay western --> it's a musical? --? Clint Eastwood is singing? --> *checks wikipedia* CLINT EASTWOOD DOES HIS *OWN* SINGING? --> Mormon sells his wife to the highest bidder in the all-male mining town :/ :/ :/ --> wife falls in love with both husband who bought her and his partner Clint Eastwood --> wife suggests she shouldn't have to choose and they can both be her husbands just like she was a plural wife and they accept???? --> INTERMISSION HOW is this movie so long. And then we skipped to the end so I'm not sure what happened in the middle -- presumably threesomes and domestic bliss? -- and then rocks fell and the town caved in and one of the dudes left so she could be with the other. But oh, for a glorious moment in the middle there, I thought that movie was going to go somewhere interesting. * Any finally finally: today was our yearly Company Fun Day, which took place at a gorgeous beach about 40 minutes north of Tel Aviv. There was food, and games, and team activities which, ha, okay, and massage tables right there on the beach *___*. It was just a fifteen minute massage but god it was good, and it managed to crack my back where I have been failing for a month. And then there was a sunset. (and a baby!) ( 3 photosCollapse ) comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: family, israel, movies, photos, pics, work

(24 things | say something)

August 7th, 2012

12:04 am - Olympics (/pics) Olympics, oh man, how great is this event. Even more than the practicality, I love the idea of it so much; ten thousand athletes, the entire world coming together for three weeks of competition, celebrating such incredible individual achievement, indulging in national pride. I love how for these three weeks, my country is just as invested in female athletes as it is in men's sports. I love that every country in the world participates, that unlike other major international events and ratings machines that will get my f/rlist talking, from the World Cup to the Eurovision to the Academy Awards to wars and politics, this is something in which everyone can have a stake. There are few moments as clear cut as that precise moment of a person accomplishing their lifelong goal, and it's such a pleasure to be able to witness those moments hundreds of times in the span of a few weeks. And oh, the displays of magnificent skill, of people pushing themselves to unreal limits. As I'm writing this, Jenny Suhr just vaulted herself 4.75 meters in the air in a move that had comic book artists tried to make me believe was plausible, I wouldn't have bought it. AND TO TOP IT ALL OFF, TODAY WE LANDED ON MARS AGAIN. Basically Sam Seaborn has been rhapsodizing in my head all day, please excuse the sentimentality *__* * Here are some photos: ( Moonrise to sunset: picsCollapse ) * Pole vault's over, and I'm wrapping up the evening with US-Canada women's soccer overtime. Tomorrow our last Olympic hope, Lee Korzitz, will be participating in the windsurfing medal race. Fingers crossed. *fingerscrossed* comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: olympics, photos, pics, sports

(11 things | say something)

July 22nd, 2012

02:54 am To everyone who ganged up on me last week, I have now finally read Captive Prince and I hate you all. Which is to say that yes, you were right, it is everything I could have wanted in a narrative and thank god the story has progressed at least as far as it has, however, I really need to know what happens next, so, haha. While this was a more than adequate way to distract me from the soulbonding XM:FC WIP, it means that I now have two stories I'm desperately waiting on a next part for. Why do I even start WIPs, ugh, it is awful (and excellent). ETA: spoilers for Captive Prince in the comments sorry. If you don't want spoilers just skim over every comment where I capslock. Other than good fiction, this week has been pretty crap on many fronts. I was steeling myself up to dealing with the Burgas bombing weekend coverage when I heard about the attack in Colorado; not waking up to headlines like these is the kind of thing I forget to appreciate until something comes along again and sweeps away all other news in favor of body counts and perpetrators' motives. (By the way, you know that thing where you want to catch a flight to Tel Aviv and you arrive at the terminal on time and you walk towards your departure date and you keep walking and keep walking and keep walking and haha okay you've been walking for 15 minutes where is this gate you might actually miss your flight at this point and you keep walking until finally you reach the gate at the very very end of the last godforsaken corridor at the airport? Yeah, that's not gonna be changing anytime soon.) Work is fine but not exciting in any way, and for the past week or so I feel like stress at the office has been reaching critical mass with some girls and I find myself playing self-appointed shrink/den-mother to some of the girls, trying to get them to relax and ease some of their load and not allowing myself to express any feelings of being, well, bummed, so as not to contribute to the stressed atmosphere, especially since we also have some new girls whom I don't want to feel overwhelmed as well, but... being nice and soothing and containing can be a bit draining, and I think I'm gonna try and take a step back from that next week for the sake of my own mental health, since I found myself seriously getting upset over not being able to convince a coworker to take a break. Basically I'm afraid that if they get too unhappy they'll quit, but it's not like I want them to be unhappy and stay. I just want them to not be stressed and to continue working with me is that too much to ask /o\ Anyway, my weekend has been kind of a bummer, and then took a surprising turn for the better when I watched like four hours of live streaming panels from the Blackhawks Convention in Chicago /o\ /o\ /o\ (DID ANY OF YOU WATCH IT. Why did I. (It was kind of great.)) ( Some parts that made me lol I guessCollapse ) Ahem aaaaanyway. I have some photos from my phone. They are by no means of good photographic quality but they are snapshots from the past few months that I never took the time to upload, and now I am. They are without any instagrammy cool effects, sorry. ( Picspam: cameraphone goCollapse ) And now a few hours asleep before the new week begins (with a friend's mother's funeral)... *deep breath* comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: captive prince, hockey, photos, pics, picspam, work

(37 things | say something)

March 29th, 2012

01:02 am List of posts I want to make: infinite. Lists of pic posts I want to make: (a) LONDON (because haha remember when I went there almost two months ago? I still haven't talked about it wtf), (b) France/Geneva, because I have special snowflake photos of special snowflakes, and (c) this: ( It was a beautiful day on Saturday and a friend and I went for a mini-hike about a half hour from Jerusalem. Or: pics pics picsCollapse ) So that was Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon, or large portions of it, were spent reading 130k of Alexander Ovechkin/Sidney Crosby fic about hockey players falling in love and athletes coming out in the world of professional sports, so thanks for that, thefourthvine and marina, really, thanks. Actual recs will be the subject of a separate post. (The delightful thing about thinking about Sidney Crosby and Ryan Ross, which minglingcrab and I have, is that they would go really really well together. Like, they're both really talented at certain things but complete failboats at others; neither of them are out of the other's league.) (Well except for how Ryan is technically out of Sidney Crosby's League.) (haha aaaanyway.) One last aside: fun. are doing so well here, guys! ♥. It makes me so happy. I pimped them and pimped them and pimped them, and got like 2 people to listen to them, and then Glee happened and the album came out and suddenly everyone started listening to them, and now I get daily reports from folks at the office telling me they heard "We Are Young" on the radio again, and it seriously does just make me happy. So much. Tonight I'm sleeping with the window open again. Deep breath; happy spring. comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: hockey, photos, pics

(21 things | say something)

February 26th, 2012

06:23 am OKAY. I think it is time to make an actual post that is not just whining. SO. I will talk about three things and they will be, in the following order, (a) clone!Spencer, (b) fun., and (c) cows. (a) THE RETURN OF CLONE!SPENCER. As you may or may not recall, a few weeks ago I went to a show at a club in Tel Aviv and encountered Spencer Smith's clone. On Monday I went to a friend's birthday at the same club AND LO, who was manning the sound stand if not MR. CLONE HIMSELF. And the show was nice at all but so was getting to stare at that dude all evening. Again. And I WILL at some point figure out how to maybe in the future but in the meantime I'm just going at it research mode, all "oh, so this is how Spencer Smith moves" and "this is how SS drinks" and "this is how S flirts" and so on and so forth. And thn on Thursday evening marina and I went to see Antigone Rising playing at the same club, and they were a fucking awesome all-girl rock band (youtube channel here) and it was a great start to a pretty great weekend. And yes, clone!Spencer was working the sound again so I was basically just walking around like this *________* all night. If you are not in Bandom feel free to skip the next part because I am a creepy stalker; if you are in Bandom PHOTOS AND VIDEO OF CLONE!SPENCER BELOW: ( stalkerstalkerstalkerCollapse ) (b) there is this band called fun. and they have a new album. Man, I love fun. so much <3. So so much <3 <3 <3. So, if you do not know fun., here is a primer on who they are. They released their new album Some Nights this week, which you can stream here at ournameisfun.com (when the site isn't down, ha), and I have just been pimping this everywhere I can. To wit, one of the whiteboards at work which a neighboring office wiped clean so I would have room to draw them stuff: ( non-stop pimpingCollapse ) Here they are on Conan a few days ago: I saw this yesterday and I was just, this was my face: ♥___♥. Not many people actually sound GOOD on live TV but man, Nate's voice, it's MAGICAL how like the recording he is. And his hair <3! And I love that Jack is wearing the band's official “It’s all fun. and gay ’til someone loses their rights. LGBTQ Equality Now" t-shirt on the stage where it would get the most exposure, and that along with the album release promotions, and now that they've been getting (so I understand) more hype due to the Glee cover of their song, he also blogged for the Huffington Post: Straight Allies: The Importance and the Realities. In conclusion I love this band for many different reasons. I will say that the thing I don't like about this album is some of the auto-tuning, because I love Nate's voice and any auto-tuning just seems so unnecessary and in the way. But other than that: <3. (c) cows. We went to the hills outside town today! marina came over and we took the dog for a walk in new and exciting pastures. There were flowers and cows and sunlight. A+ weekend weather, would repeat again. ( A couple photos below the cut:Collapse ) That's it! I was going to link to/rec/mention some more stuff but I am nodding off in front of the laptop screen, so not atm. <---ETA wooow fail. I wrote that hours ago and then fell asleep before hitting send and then Windows Updates restarted my computer and closed all of my open files. Thank you, DW draft saver; you can all pretend I posted this at a normal hour instead of 6AM. comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: bandom, doggie, israel, music, photos, pics

(23 things | say something)

August 13th, 2011

02:36 am - Picspam: last weekend I happened by the coast Soooo last week loneraven & partner were in Israel! Which was so delightful, and I'm so glad I got a chance to meet them. I enjoy traveling, and I enjoy showing people around and seeing places I know from a fresh point of view, and all of my experiences with meeting people from online have been so comfortable and I love it. And I've gotten to meet so many people who visited from abroad this year -- thecityofdis and harriet_vane and now loneraven and they were all so wonderful (and not interchangeable like I'm making it seem that they are) -- and now there is no one new on the horizon and nothing to look forward to :( But I will focus on the good parts. Some photos from last weekend, 1-2 borderline NSFW: ( ocean and sunsets, I have missed you though I was not gone for longCollapse ) comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: israel, lj ppl, photos, pics, tel aviv

(16 things | say something)

July 30th, 2011

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July 23rd, 2011

11:20 pm - photodump: *everything* (almost) It has been a wonderfully calming weekend*, and so: photodump of stuff I've taken since May, in chronological order. Including: nature, mildly urban natury stuff, holidays and family, baby fruits growing on trees, and the Tel Aviv Pride Parade beach party. *other than the news, but - there is only so much I can let get to me at a time :( ( Enter via click; nearly 100 photos of a large-ish natureCollapse ) comments on Dreamwidth. Tags: doggie, family, holidays, israel, photography, photos, pics, tel aviv

(31 things | say something)