Shabbat Shalom!

Please note that on Friday afternoons until Saturday evening, the author of this blog is unavailable, in observance of the Jewish Sabbath.

Comments made during this time will be held in a queue, to be moderated afterward.

Thank you for your patience.

We made hand-shaped cookies (tracing the kids' hands from gingerbread cookie dough) in honor of the way Yaakov (Jacob) crossed his hands when he blessed his grandsons, Ephraim and Menashe, in this week's parsha. They are in the oven, so I won't get a chance to snap a picture in time for this post. Sorry! Stay warm and Shabbat Shalom!

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Some LINKS that made me smile, some that made me think, and a few that made me want to share...

• Boston's French Toast Indicator indicator has been glowing of late. Being a bit snowed-in and house-bound, it seems a great time to find ways to tighten our electricity budget. I just ordered this device. I'm planning to go on a rampage wild goose chase treasure hunt, looking for lost energy (= wasted money) around our house when it arrives.


• David Seah's compact calendar has been updated for 2008. I love the clean, compact design.


• David of the Lake's point is particularly appropriate this week, when we read in parshat Vayechi, about the rise of the Pharoh who knew not Joseph, who enslaved us while voicing similarly worded concerns (that echo throughout Jewish history) May the (benign) stranger always be welcome in our midst.


• This person requested and received more advice that you can shake a stick (wag an index finger?) at, proving that the best advice is solicited advice. Or course, with advice, the getting is easy; it's the following that's tricky. (via lifehacker's mefi roundup)


• After reading this hack for using one of those nifty eye-fi cards, I wonder if it would work with one of those new chumby devices? Not a bad set-up for under $250.


• Craftzine's animation of how a sewing machine bobbin works is clear enough to have explained it to my daughters. "So THAT's how it works," said my nine year old. (They recently were given a sewing machine to share, and are busy planning projects with it.)



• Leora explores the Jewish themes in Lemony Snicket novels. His Series of Unfortunate Events is a family favorite for us.



• I enjoyed this thread on chowhound about "Which shortcuts to you take, which make you cringe ?"



• Is that an apology in your pocket, or do you just plan to e-mail me? (via swissmiss) (Maybe RWAC should submit his Mad Libs Eulogy to that site?)



• How to figure out which tasks you can ignore shows how Penelope Trunk achieves excellence by resigning herself to imperfection.



• I'm going to have to try to make the sprinkler toy from Make's PVC collection this Summer. I have made similar flashlights, using a cardboard toilet paper tube instead of PVC, both with my kids, and with a classroom of fifth graders.



• Many thanks to Jaffer, who sent this link as an alternative to onion goggles for those of us who wear prescription glasses.



• Lifehacker's excellent practicing simplified GTD was very good.



• Tie-dyed tissue paper is going on our Winter Vacation activity list!



• Foregone conclusions are like magnets to a moral compass, making it hard to navigate to the truth. Of course, that assumes Truth is the goal.



• Are Jews the only ones who measure time from a reference point other than a person's life? There must be others, but I can't think of any off-hand. Please let me know if you have other examples.



• Know someone who knits? Ask him to try his hand at marzipan knit cupcakes.



• I loved this "take a seat" concept!



• Don't forget to check out Batya's latest Kosher Cooking Carnival, dubbed "the Great Green one".



• It was a thrill to see my draft-dodger post on Lifehacker, which is one of my all-time favorite blogs. Lifehacker is syndicated everywhere, so it's hard to track links. I've seen these: eaforums, lathefamily.org, hownow.brownpau, and biggreenme, but others got lost in the (temporary but intense) traffic tsunami.



• I think ubertechnica liked my GTD system. I've never been called a dude before!

Shabbat Shalom!