Wednesday

Alberta came back and she never even went anywhere. Jonny is just gonna have to step up and be a better father. All Angelina ever says is what are we gonna do about her. The answer is stay out of the way and let the dad do his work. She still looks up to him but this is a pivotal age.

Jonny had $4 in his pocket yesterday when he was chasing after Alberta, or running away from Angelina was more like what he was doing. Somehow by the end of the day the money vanished. At the end of the day Jonny went and picked up Lorraine at the sewing class. This is a regular Tuesday occurence. As regular as the way back Tuesday's. Please somebody, read these old diary entrys.

This is still the parsha of Shemi. The body of the priests were burnt but the body was untouched. The fire burnt them up. This is the parsha where Aaron's sons were killed by G-d. There were 12 different chet (sins) they might have. Hashem is very strict, the more kadeshim you are. These were great madregas (leaders). They had geyever. The layv (heart) is different. By eating trayf (unkosher) chazar (pig) looks kosher. He puts out his feet. But inside he is tumay (unclean). The days of sfera counting till receiving the Torah.

Alberta runs away

Today is way back Tuesday. Sunday July 3rd, 1994. Jonny's parents buy everything. Yet Angelina is still whining. What else is new?

Well today Alberta ran away. She ran to the Jewish equivalent of a convent. Now the latest that Jonny heard is that the people left a note in Angelina's kitchen. The note said she went to school. So actually she got exactly what she wanted. She probably went over to their house and took a nap. Then she went to school in the afternoon, after being well rested and well studied. She had a test today.

Jonny was pretty angry with Angelina. He told her that if she wants to kick Alberta out of the house, Wendell and Kristina would gladly, gladly, gladly take her.

At work, the rebuid didn't work. It took almost all day to get the rebuild to happen today. Jonny had to sit in his office with tech support to make it happen.

He is on page 149 of ZK and page 160 of DC.

baking for passover

Today is a fast day. Jonny is fasting for the fast of the firstborn. So his mood is a strange one today.

He is up to page 122 of ZK and page 160 of DC.

The people working for Rob still want Jonny to read boring stuff on the internet. They want him to learn how to use .NET to configure sharepoint.

Over the weekend Jonny talked to Wendell. They discussed passover cakes and how to make them. Jonny was sitting in the car waiting to pickup Jesse from a birthday party. He was carpooling with another child who lives two doors away. But Jonny was busy getting the baking tips and tricks from his father. And his father's father was a baker too. Wendell is an economist. But Jonny's dad loves to cook.

It was cold so today Jonny rode the bus instead of the bike. He has drifted off to sleep once or twice this is because, with no food there isn't much else to do.

Jesse and Jonny also went to the liquor store and bought some Slivowitz, that is Hungarian, kosher, plum brandy. While watching a Hallmark movie with Angelina, and the bottle sitting in the window of the living room. Angelina kept saying, come on I know you want to open that bottle. So eventually he did. Half an hour later she said it again. Come on I know you want to have another shot. He had a another shot while watching the news and reading DC.

Today Jonny listened to the chumash. This week's parsha is Shemini. This means something to do with the 8th day. Aaron accepted the blame. He learned to blame himself. Not blame other people. Animals are kosher. This is not because Hashem knows that an animal isn't good for us. It is simply because Hashem has decreed it. In the haft-torah, David put the Torah in a wagon instead of his shoulders. Why did Rabbi Akiva's disciples all die during this three week period?

Well time to get back to work. The automatic rebuild didn't work. So Jonny is supposed to kick it off when he leaves for the day.

Ice cream social

Today Jonny's department had an ice cream social. They had diet and regular ice cream. Also there was A & W brand root beer and another kind of root beer. Also there was Vernor's brand ginger ale.

Jonny watched an episode of Scrubs and deleted a few others. There wasn't a new episode on ABC this Wednesday.

Rob told Jonny to let tech support handle the reformat. So Jonny emailed them and it will happen tonight.

Jonny is on page 110 of The Zookeeper's Wife. He is on page 111 of The DaVinci Code.

Right now he is listening to Tzav. Beverly doesn't seem to mind.

For Pesach, Jonny, Angelina, Lorraine, Alberta and Jesse are going to the house of Bill, Jennifer, Margo and William. Margo is in 7th grade, Alberta is in 8th grade and Lorraine is in 6th grade.

Jonny isn't in a working mood and now he hasn't even had lunch yet. He could walk to Red Hawk around 3:30 PM and read a book for an hour while sipping a beer. Happy hour begins at 4 PM probably. But he is too sleepy to even concentrate on the novel or the documentar.

Thursday

Passover is coming to Ann Arbor real soon.

Outside the Hotel Hilton it is very cloudy, gray and just down right nasty looking. Surprisingly enough it isn't snowing. The weather is supposed to be low 26.

Jonny has been doing data entry at work. He will graduate to even lower. Soon he will be installing software. To fix his office 2007 problem, he needs to reformat the hard drive. Jonny was waiting to see if the software would come back.

Jonny is on page 107 of both books he is reading.

Last night he watched Scrubs. The night before and the night before that Angelina and Jonny watched Cold Case. Now they are all caught up on Cold Case episode. Jonny didn't even realize, there is probably a new Scrubs episode to watch. The new season is on Wednesday nights.

He was really bored yesterday. So he wrote random notes on the parsha. They make no sense what so ever. They are just a bunch of Hebrew words written in transliteration.

Vayikra karbanas if you do a chet
Carbon of various times
Aaron's name yochud brings
kayin godol
comparison of vayikra to Tzav
An avera can't take away
Torah, limud of karbans
Halochas
Karbon ayla most kedusha
Whole karboin is burnt the claw is the more kadusha there is the greater the aytzhura
Review of what you learned is the most important thing you can do
Posix base mizbayach
ashes on side of mizbayach
Robe and underpants where his begodan
The mitzvah of taking the ashes out of the mizbayach
If you have bad thoughts bring the karbon aylah

too many meetings

Today is back in the day Tuesday. On Saturday July 2, 1994, Jonny was musing about the internet. Feel free to click on that link to the old diary entry. Alas no new characters were introduced. But there is more than a page now of old diary entries. It is amazing he wrote in that cramped 3 inch by 3 1/2 inch diary, knowing 16 years ago he would be copying it down in this blog.

Jonny just woke up from a drifting off. His lips were dry. He couldn't wait for Branden and Bevery's boss to leave. So he could sleep.

Right now the view out of Hotel Hilton is absolutely fantastic.

Tomorrow Jonny has a conference call for VASE governor's meeting in Death Valley. He chooses to stay in Hotel Hilton. This is because at 3PM he has another meeting in nearby Bee Hive. There is only a mile distance between those two sites, but Jonny can't come to work at 9:30, eat an expensive lunch and then go to the boring meeting in the Bee Hive at 3 PM. He wouldn't really be working at all.

Today he finished a book. He finished listening to The Cat Who Smelled A Rat. It was all right but, no need to check the reviews. It was a book on CD so he heard it on his PC. Jonny is on page 90 of The Zookeeper's Wife/u>. He is on page 64 of The DaVinci Code.

weird corned beef dream

Jonny had a dream about corned beef. Lyman's wife was making lunch for Jonny. She was going to make grilled bacon sandwiches. But Jonny had better ideas. He had just gone to Hiller's grocery and purchased a small 1/4 lb of Boar's Head corned beef. So he said, here take this for the lunch too. But leave me 3 or 4 slices for my lunch another time. Then he began to think, why didn't I buy 1/2 lb instead of a mere 1/4 lb of this delicious delicatessen meat.

Jesse and Jonny went to the hardware store.

Jonny spoke to Kristina.

Alberta and Jonny went to a double header soccer game in Wixom.

The weekend went by fast. It was all a blur.

At the Hotel Hilton, Jeremey turned down an full-time position. Beverly was given the option and she took it. the Two of them are in the hotel, but so quiet, Jonny almost feels alone at times.

Jonny is up to Chapter 7 of The DaVinci Code. He is up to Chapter 8 of The Zookeeper's Wife. Jonny is listening to The Cat Who Smelled A Rat, with headphones. He watched two episodes of Scrubs last night. Angelina and Jonny watched Without A Trace. She has been too busy with her class to watch much TV.

This week in the chumash, Jonny listened to Tzav. The question of the day is why not speak directly to Aaron?

Angelina called, one of many times. She got in trouble with Jesse's teacher. The teacher was upset with Angelina, because she read in the classroom incorrectly. Angelina was supposed to get in depth with the characters.

confused about the parsha

Things are a bit hectic here. Jonny was a bit confused about the parsha. Hw was listening to a bible lecture. But in Judiasim it is called the weekly torah parsha drash. The funny thing is he listens to it twice a week, so it sinks in one hour on Monday and then again on Wednesday. On Friday Jonny hears the chanting version in Hebrew. At the end of the chanting Jonny figured out that he was a week behind. So now he is listening to this week's called Vayikra again now.
This is the parsha where the alpha and the other letters according to midrash have a discussion. The alpeh in Vayirka is small too.

Jonny is only up to chapter 6 of The DaVinci Code. So he really on page 33 not page 50. But he really wanted to listen to The Cat Who Smelled a Rat. He is on CD 3 of that book.

Angelina called and her students are really giving her problems.

Jonny rode his bike today.

He is probably going to the Red Hawk again. Lucky pants, he found $3 in them. He only needs $5.60 plus tip for 2 milky stouts, in honor of March 17th of course.

Thursday

Today Jonny is listening to The Cat Who Smelled a Rat. He is up to chapter 6 of The Zookeepers Wife. He is still up to page 50 of The DaVinci Code. Earlier today the cat CD was listened to and Jonny fell asleep. So he put the CD in again.

Jonny forgot his handkerchief today. The weather is getting warmer. Angelina chided him for wearing such a warm jacket. So by switching to the black fleece he wears in this warmer weather he forgot to take his handkerchief. In the morning there is so much to do and remember to scramble to work.

Jonny listened to the parsha Pikudei twice this week.

Angelina called and complained that the Medicaid insurance for Jesse and Lorraine is getting messed up.

Jonny's students found the midterm test was difficult.

Tuesday

Jonny is up to page 18 of The DaVinci Code and page 50 of The Zookeeper's Wife.

Today Jesse brought a project to school for the special interest fair. He and Lorraine made a Wright Brothers project. It really is just a poster board with some facts on it.

It was so cold this morning. Now it is like 57 degrees in Ann Arbor.

Penny told another employee from Death Valley that Jonny would no longer be reporting to Rob. She said this while he was standing right there. She didn't speak directly to Jonny. She has no right to do that. This information is rightly supposed to be conveyed to Jonny from Rob not from Penny to another employee about Jonny while Jonny is standing right there, just inside of ear shot.

two books to read

Jonny finished listening to Nerve Damage. It is not recommended. Jonny is on page 49 of The Zookeeper's Wife. He is reading that for the Synagogue book club. Angelina was nice enough to pick up DaVinci Code for her husband at the library over the weekend. Lorraine had to go to services and Jonny heard the announcement about the reading group. So now he has two books to read.

Jesse and Jonny rode their bikes to the science olympiad, over the weekend. Also over the weekend, Jonny took Alberta to her soccer game in Wixom.

After work on Friday Jonny took the liberty of going to Red Hawk. He had two nice glasses of milky stout for the inflated price of $5.60. Luckily it was happy hour so that was the price for normally one glass was the price for two glasses.

Angelina was busy spending money. She had her handyman over. He was putting up crown molding in the living room. This amounted to about $300 maybe $400. The handyman was able to get another job out of her. They requested his services to remove the cap of a railing. The cap is about one foot wide flat board the goes in a angle for a total of 15 feet.

Saturday services

Jonny still hasn't started another book yet. He was hoping to start DaVinci Code. He only read one The Hunting Wind review so far.

This week was the Vayakhel parsha. The prohibition again fire is mentioned specifically in this parsha. Even though it says there are 39 things you can't do, this one thing is specified all by itself. If a person is lazy they only need look to the ant. The ant only lives in the middle floor. He has top floor that gets wet. The ant has a basement that gets middle. In the three floor house the ant lives only on the second floor.

Angelina called and said that Lucy pooped in her bed. This was in the middle of the morning after her walk. Angelina wants to skip the Saturday morning service. It is part of Lorraine's religious school training. But they didn't send a reminder. It involves not only going to the service at 10:45 but going at 9:25 AM. A full three hours of psalms, prayers, getting up, getting down, listening to announcments, lots of Hebrew that Jonny doesn't know. Lorraine doesn't even sit with him. Angelina doesn't go, Jesse is too young to sit that long. Alberta probably won't go either.

Jonny didn't watch any Scrubs episodes last night.

vayakhel

Today Jonny listened to parsha vayakhel. Moshe gathered and spoke. This is a big deal because he did both. Other times he just spoke to the Israelites. But this time he not only spoke to them, but also gathered them together first. This also happened on the day after Yom Kippur. This was right after the Moshe brought out the second set of ten commandments. There are 39 things that you can't do on Shabbos. These are learned from this parsha. This is because the they are related to the building of the Mishkan. Each of the items required to build the Mishkan is also a forbidden on Shabbos item. Mitzryam made the Jews work hard. This is remembered at the time of the sabbath. The 39 things are called the Lamed Tes Melochome. An ant needs 1 1/2 pieces of wheat to live. The ant lives for 6 months. Yet an ant gathers about 300 pieces of wheat. Why does he do that because just in case the almighty were to grant him the right to live, he would be ready. The men and the women came together to donate to the mishkan.

Earlier today Angelina called. She was complaining that Jesse was late for school. Jonny and Jesse had to walk to school. This was because Angelina was working and couldn't do the rushing him off to school task.

Over the weekend, Jesse had science olympics. He also had futsol, art class and swim class.

Jonny hasn't started a new book.

He went to the doctor on Monday for his annual physical checkup. He wasn't really in the mood to be there, because he just wanted to go back to sleep and take a super long nap. Well at first his blood pressure was 141 over 96. But after sitting in the cold quiet room in a gown for 15 minutes, it dropped. She took his reading and it was 115 over 73. During the science olympics his pulse was 48. But that was self taken. He might have missed a beat.

Friday

Jonny finished a book. He read 430 pages of Hollywood Crows.

Today he listened to the Torah chanting. This was parsha KiTisa.

It is almost time to start planning for Pesach.

Jonny has gotten back into doing situps at night.

He has some strange dreams again. But this time he woke up with a splitting headache. It hurt his head too much to remember the dreams.

Lorraine lost her cell phone. She is really scared of what Angelina will say.

Jonny finished a program to link primary diagnosis forms to consult forms and to link consult forms to treatment summary forms.

USB and wires

He did get lots of positive feedback from Dolly today. He got her patient referral report working more correctly. Lea had given him some bad information and that made the report really bad. This all caused some major coughing/lung collapsing spasms.

But now all is well.

Jonny is up to page 382 of his book.

Last night he and Angelina watched Criminal Minds on DVR.

Jonny listened to the parsha today. He saw and said Shalom to a chasid at the hotel california branch just for children. It was hopefully that he was there for a birth and not a tragedy. Jonny goes over to that building to get a drink of water sometimes.

Today Jonny is barely working, sometimes. Jonny spent two hours searching for VHS to DVD solutions. The problems also partly, does the person have a DVD burner as well as the special VHS analog to digital adapter part. Another alternate technical solution is to buy a cam corder that can do some of the same features as in, it can take a RCA audio feed from a VCR and record to digital. Then boom you got your VHS tape on digital. Same idea with printers. Thus today's problem. What to do with the HP Laser printer that isn't wireless. One solution is to buy a wireless print server, another is a wireless router, or buy a wireless printer. Some routers will accept a USB input from a USB printer. It turns out that would work here in the Miller home if not for one obstacle. The desktop computer is already plugged into the USB port. This is because its network ethernet doesn't work. So there is another solution, buy a USB to ethernet wire. They cost as little as $25. The wireless USB adapter isn't the solution. That absolutely won't work. Then Jonny can get a long wire from the printer to the router. Then a short network wire from the ethernet adapter to the desktop. This frees up a USB cable. Unfortunately not the cable desired to free up. Jonny has a card reader that uses the square USB to flat USB connection. He has two of those, one for the reader and one for the printer. It would be nice to have the square USB extra for the reader when the reader is needed on the laptop. He has it set up so the reader is on the desk of the desktop and the wire snakes back behind. It is soley used for digital picture retrieval off the SD card. Of course the desktop's built in card reader doesn't work. The laptop doesn't have it. The other laptop surprise by DELL has a card reader.

working from home

It has been a very unrelaxing past 15 minutes for Jonny. And now blogger says unrelaxing isn't even a word. Jonny had to go home at 1 PM to take care of the dog Lucy. At 1:15 PM he was on his postage stamp size deck letting Lucy out and talking on his headset. The same headset that Jesse goes crazy over. There now his breathing is coming a little bit easier. He was all set to work at home for 30 minutes and then blog. But no he got emails asking for work from both Dolly Parton and Penny Fuller. So he hastily wrote emails, started choking, got emails, choked some more. His lungs getting tighter. All the while his relaxing candle burning about 1/20 of and inch high. It managed to stay lit and is now up to 1/4 inch. The recycled wax is starting to puddle up against the wax boulders on the rim. Jonny now has two laptops going. He has Leo the cat sitting on the kitchen table. He is purring loudly and is smart enough not to get burned by a candle. No RG KiTaso yet. Jonny already took his nap too. Yesterday he continued today's distraction streak. Yesterday it was looking up MC Hammer while listening to click 2 dance radio. Then he went to IMDB to lookup SNL quotes, memorable lines. The other laptop is purring louder than the cat. The dog is asleep again and Jonny is wearing sweats. He can't go back to Hotel California and see Dolly about the patient referral report that is wrong, broken and doesn't work. He can't look up the Unknown cancers report he gave to Penny's users, to see if they lied and got data for 2008 that they weren't authorized to get by IRB approval yet. The other laptop just got loaded with some VPN software and then promptly rebooted. With this new software, Jonny just might be able to remote connect for pinch days like today. In the meantime it is 2:09 and time to wrap this blog entry up. Jonny is past page 250 of Hollywood Crows. Time to listen to some Drash. That is Jewish talk for Torah lecture. Will the cats and dog like it?

very vivid dream finding long lost mail

The working title is weird dream. Jonny needs every available minute to come up with a description that does justice. Also Angelina is due to call any minute now.

Jonny had the strangest, most vivid dream last night. As the day has worn on the details are fading from memory. His home was built in the 40s. It has telephone wires in the back yard. What if the house was really built in the 1800's or even in the 18th century. And what if mail was delivered by wires and packages. This is what happened. He stumbled across a piece of never delivered mail. It was written in 1817. It had milk in the package. And it was addressed to a teacher from a student. They had been friends and written back and forth. The student finished his class several weeks after the semester was over. This package was delivered using some pony express type mail delivery system. No horses, just relay wires. Thick wires that were always moving like a factory assembly line, delivering mail packages that were 2 feet wide and 3 feet long. These were big fat padded manila colored envelopes. The one Jonny found contained endless amounts of correspondence. There was a thank you and the repayment of a debt. There was a six pack of mostly empty drunk milk cartons, the size of 14 ounce bottles. And there was a big huge one as well. He was repaying her, the teacher for her favors. He made some light hearted joke about here is the milk I owe you. The sick part, here was some fluid left in 6 mostly empty containers in an undelivered envelope to long ago forgotten recipients. Jonny wanted to donate this to a museum. But parts were dirty. Like the empty milk containers. So what to do with all this? Later he found a feed bag with a scholarship offer for the original woman of the house. It was with a 2 year expiration date. Historian would want to know if she took the classes. Why she didn't. Jonny just kept finding all this weird stuff. Undelivered mail. Plain vanilla packages. Donations to museums. Not all dreams are this weird, this vivid. There was all this gossip about people... cell phone....What was the point of that phone call?

There was this gossip about three generations of people. .... cell phone.... Guess who....

And Jonny was telling these people that he had this letter that was never sent and someone named Jessica who was someone else's great grand daughter was a friend of this other person. Weird stuff like that. All because the previous owners had left uncollected mail falling into cracks in the house.

broken window

Over the weekend Jesse and Alberta broke a window. First Angelina was screaming at them to get out of the house. Then Lucy the dog who will be 17 on April 1, 2010, got nervous and peed on the rug. So they really had to get out of the house. Jesse said he didn't think it would be acceptable to play soccer against the house. Jonny, however stupidly, reassured his young and innocent 8 year old that "the window can't break". This was because in the past a window had broke on the side of the house facing the driveway. The window in question, was a fixed window about 8 feet up. The reason for its early demise was a lack of clips to hold it to the house. The storm window could only stay up if no one decided to hit it with a soccer ball. It came down in a crash. Jonny replaced those two storm windows and they came with new clips. So Jonny thought his house was safe. Not two minutes passed when he heard crash boom. It sounded like an icicle was shattering. But it wasn't an icicle. It took Jonny a long time to finish sweeping up the basement. Then he started cutting the glass out. He got a brainstorm. He took the whole window with the metal out of the side of the house. This part was very rusty. So he needed a hammer to get it out. But it did work.

Enter the characters Annabella and Lyman. Where was Lorraine during this mess? As her usual weekend activity she was hanging with her peep Annabella. The two middle-schoolers didn't even have their weekend fun interrupted by Angelina's "home maintenance emergency". Jonny was dispatched to pick up the Dad, Lyman. Lyman looked as he usually did, dressed and ready to rip cars apart. Hands as black as an African America, jeans ripped as an earthquake in Haiti. Fresh from a break at Circle K to buy lottery tickets, he agreed to a two hour break from his leisure activities. Anything to help a damsel in distress right? Jonny had the boat, the disgusting 2006 Minivan. He also had the basement glass and casing in a paper bag. Earlier he secured the opening. He put pink itch producing insulation in the hole. He then duct taped an old retired shower curtain with pockets for bath accessories to the wall. It was warmer in there than with the original window. Unfortunately on a Sunday at 5 PM the local hardware stores were closed. Lyman owed the Miller family a little help with the broken doorbell as well.

Jonny hates to drive too. So then they drove all the long way to pittsfield township (about 4 more miles from Jonny and Lyman's respective houses). They went to Home Depot. As a famous economic principle this store was choosen, why? Because it was 2000 yards closer than it's nearest competitor, Lowes. Now that Jonny lives North of the green and white store he always goes to the orange and white store instead. The replacement glass at 10" by 12" was a standard size in cardboard and sold for roughly $3. The dynamic duo proceeded to the doorbell section. Even though the troublesome original 1941 chime can sing the hava nagila, it was broken after all. Lyman was curious, was the cell phone service broken? Well no, Angelina was obviously giving the men a few extra feet this afternoon. Lyman whipped out his cell. After a brief dialog with the SAHM he continued to help Jonny shop. They settled on a $50 model that played 65 songs, none of which were Jewish. Angelina had expressed her wishes "she was sorry to see it go". As a reference to the old hardware. She gave permission to do whatever. She is calling now.

It isn't even worth saying what she called about. Among other things, "hold for the number please". Well Jonny is running or ran of blog time for one day.

Jonny is up to page 122 of ....

" what were the last four digits?"

"ok I will call you back"

" Oh lucky me" he said to himself

Hollywood Crows

He listened to RG Ki Tisa. But his head has been aching really badly today. He slept and finally decided to do some real man programming work. Now he is deeply mired in PL/SQL and Oracle views.

Jonny likes to think his last literary round with Steve Hamilton (331 pages), Peter Straub (697 pages) is improving his writing....