Friday, 6 May 2016

I got up early this morning, spent a few minutes outside with Pascal, and then went for a fairly long walk around the Mitzpe Yam neighborhood. Before returning home, I stopped at the local bakery to buy challah for Shabbat. I took quite a few pictures, including a series of the sun as it rose over the Jordanian mountains. Today's pic of the day is one of them (they're all on Facebook):

I taught only 3 units of Berlitz lessons today: 9:00-9:45 and 12:00-1:30.

I did the weekly house cleaning tasks this morning, too.

Before lunch, I made a quick trip to the nearest market to buy a few items. Then I had cheese veggie burger sandwiches and a big salad with an added half of a deep red bell pepper for lunch at home.

I spent much of the afternoon watching lecture videos for my class on regression. It was generally interesting, although quite a bit of the rather elementary optimization that the instructor was presenting was VERY familiar to me from my optimization work in the mid-1980s. In most of those, I was tweaking the design parameters of silos for the Peacekeeper missiles that were being developed in order to maintain the survivability of the system against a nuclear attack while minimizing the overall system cost. I did the optimizations, but many other people were writing the actual FORTRAN code to assess both the survivability and the costs. It was really quite amazing work. Of course, in the end, NONE of the basing plans we were working on were ever actually implemented, mostly due to the end of the Cold War.

Later in the afternoon, I took another walk on which I photographed more flowers and views. I have also posted these on Facebook.

In the evening, I lit candles, drank some sweet red wine, and ate a bit of challah to welcome Shabbat. I always enjoy singing the beautiful blessings even though there's no one but Pascal to hear them.

I walked a total of 6.4 kilometers today.

I'll close this evening with the traditional blessing for lighting the Shabbat candles, for wine, and for bread (including, of course, challah):

ברוך אתה, יי אלוהינו, מלך העולם, אשר קידשנו במצוותיו וציבנו להדליק נר של שבת

Blessed are you, Adonai our God, ruler of the universe, who has made us holy with your commands and commanded us to light the Shabbat lights.

.ברוך אתה, יי אלוהינו, מלך העולם, בורא פרי הגפן

ברוך אתה, יי אלוהינו, מלך העולם, אשר קידשנו במצוותיו ורצה בנו, ושבת קדשו באהבה וברצון הנחילנו, זכרון למעשה בראשית. כי הוא יום תחילה למקראי קודש, זכר ליציאת מצריים. כי בנו בחרת ואותנו קידשת מכל העמים. ושבת קדשך באהבה וברצון הנחלתנו. ברוך אתה, יי, מקדש

השבת

Blessed are you, Adonai our God, ruler of the universe, creator of the fruit of the vine.

Blessed are you, Adonai our God, ruler of the universe, who has made us holy with your commandments and desired us, and bequeathed to us the Shabbat of your holiness with love and favor, a memorial of the works of creation. For it is the premier day of all the holidays of holiness, a remembrance of the exodus from Egypt. For you have chosen us from among all the peoples and made us holy and bequeathed to us the Shabbat of your holiness with love and favor. Blessed are you Adonai, who makes the Shabbat holy.

ברוך אתה, יי אלוהינו, מלך העולם, המוציא לחם מן הארץ

Blesses are you, Adonai our God, who brings bread forth from the earth.