Midnight Musings

It's 3:30am. I have been lying awake for a while, since one of the damed cats knocked over a glass and it shattered on the floor with an enormous crash. There's a lot on my mind. The ultra orthodox are once again going mad in Jerusalem, they are burning the garbage in their own neghborhoods. Very civic minded. Not content with protesting the opening of a parking lot on Saturdays, they are now violently protesting the arrest of a Mea Sha'arim mother who was caught abusing her child on camera. Then there's the story of the man who was charged $23,148,855,308,184,500 for a pack of cigarettes in New Hampshire. I knew cigarettes were pricey in the US, but I had no idea the "sin" taxes were this high.

But mostly I was thinking how much damage tiled floors cause. Nearly all floors in Israel are made of some sort of stone. Tiles from high end marble, to the grimy old yellowing stone found in old apartments, are everywhere. It's for the heat, you know. The problem is that any glass dropped from any height shatters on contact. We are constantly buying drinking glasses. We used to have a dozen or so of these wonderfully thick liter sized beer glasses, they're all gone. Not to mention the perfectly large thin and tall beakers that were just perfect for the freezing water out of the machine. Even our new lot of Ikea specials (probably called gloösen or something) are breaking at an astounding rate. What can one do.

These are the sort of things that keep me up at night.