On a different note, we took what is called "the tunnel road" to get from Jerusalem to the bris. It's an interesting road, and Husbinator started wondering if the tunnels were for security, or for ease (what with the hills and all). Then we saw a wall on the side of the road, and we had the same question: sound barrier or security device? Then I saw the extension on the top of the wall that leaned over the road, and I realized we were driving on a fortified highway.
This makes me angry. A fortified road in one of the fantasy books that I read is cool, and a good idea. A fortified road in my home is not okay. This is our home: we shouldn't need to fortify our own highways on our own land. We should take security for granted, travelling from room to room with confidence. I was additionally angered when I passed a sign on one of the tunnel road exits that said that this area is under control of the Palestinian Authority, and Israeli Citizens may not enter: those who do so put their lives at risk and are in defiance of the law. Are you kidding me? Yeah, I know that there are countries in the Middle East that Jews may not travel to, but IN MY OWN LAND? Why is this a one-way street? Make a barrier, maybe. Make it annoying for me to go, but to forbid it entirely? Is that how it goes in the other direction?
Afterwards we went to Talpiyot to look for a booster seat. We feel that it will make feeding BSM much easier if we don't have to chase him all over the floor when he gets bored after a few spoonfuls. (Our high chair is in storage in the USA. We'll bring it over with the rest of our stuff when we have a larger, more permanent place to live.) Naturally, we bought a bunch of other stuff, all of it very useful. Sippy cups! Meat baby spoons! A crib bumper so he stops slamming his head into the bars of his crib! Etc!
While we were gallivanting through one of the malls (yes, one of the malls), we passed a rav-kav station. As you may remember from yesterday's post, public transit becomes much more affordable if you have a refillable card ("rav-kav") rather than paying the driver with cash each time you get on the bus. The problem has been our complete lack of mobility/being far away from anything larger than Bet Shean has made it kind of hard to get a rav-kav. Last time we were in Yerushalayim, I saw a rav-kav room in the central bus station, but the wait looked worse than the wait at the bank. If I'm only in Yerushalayim for a few days, I don't really have half a day to spend getting a bus ticket... Well, the table at the mall took less than 10 minutes, and we now have our rav-kavs. So excited!!!
I celebrated afterwards by buying a Hebrew copy of The Name of the Wind. I was actually trying to buy a Hebrew copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, but they were out. So sad. When I asked the clerk about Mockingbird, and it was a perfectly normal social transaction: do you have it, yes let me show you, hm, I'll check another shelf, okay, I'll check the computer, whoops, we're out, can I order it for you, no thanks, I live far away.
I then asked if they had Rothfuss' book. The clerk checked the computer, said yes, then bit her lip and looked concerned. Clearly not wanting to disappoint me twice, she hesitantly asked if by any chance the book I wanted happened to be fantasy? "Why yes, in fact it is!" I told her, quite pleased that we were on track to get me a book I love. The clerk did a pretty good job of hiding her double-take, but now I'm wondering. In the last few years, speculative fiction has become very mainstream in America. Is fantasy considered a throwaway genre in Israel, or does it just have a very stereotypical fan-base which I don't match? I'm not willing to wade into Hebrew internet forums to find out, though. I'm curious, but I'm not that curious.
In other news, my sefiras ha-omer email alert that I set up last night worked like a charm. Happy third day of the omer, group!
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