Living in a partially non-cyber world

Still having DSL trouble at home. Amazing how dependent one can become on something like that. Dial-up now seems sooooo slloooooooowwww........[As I was typing this, I just got a phone call from the first person at Verizon to be helpful. Evidently, our old connection needs to be disconnected and a new connection made, for technical reasons I don't really get, which I found out on Tuesday from the supervisor I insisted on talking to -- and the disconnect, which was supposed to take 30 mins. to 3 hours, still hasn't gone through 3 days later, and won't until after 6pm today -- and the people who can reconnect us only work M-F 9-5.........]

Went to see Ushpizin again last night, as it was showing at the Colonial Theater, a non-profit theater about half an hour's drive away that often shows interesting/off-beat films. Ushpizin is definitely worth seeing. At the surface level, it is a very well-done movie. At a deeper level, the underlying message is very good (and I say that as someone who is not Hassidic/Breslover in outlook).

One advantage to DSL being down is that I've actually gotten some non-cyber things done, such as working on organizing/typing the contents of a cookbook I'm putting together with Mum's favorite/best recipes. With that recent phone call from Verizon, it looks like I'll get more of that done -- and maybe even start on entering more detailed genealogical data that has been sitting in a pile of photocopies way too long. At the rate things are going, I may even stoop to cleaning the apartment ;-)

I've also started attending a Hebrew class again. Need to get back into working on learning to read more comfortably. My goal is to be able to use a non-transliterated machzor for Rosh Hashana/Yom Kippur this year. I'd hoped to do it this last year (and pass my transliterated version on to someone else who could use it) but I was just too busy.

And adding to my current busy-ness, I've agreed (and volunteered Seth to agree) to do a presentation on basic graphics survival skills at the May meeting of a professional organization I belong to. [Note to self: check with Dad about best conditions for taking headshots.]

Ted emailed me yesterday that he's played around with the web version of one of Dad's photoessays. Looks good!

Voted at IMDB for my choices of best movies of 2005; for the first time in more than a decade, I'd seen enough films to actually have relatively valid opinions on the matter ;-)