Part of moving in Israel is going to your local branch of the Ministry of the Interior (Misrad HaPnim) and giving them your new address. The rule of thumb in Israel is as follows: visiting government offices is always pretty terrible. Visiting the Misrad HaPnim is its own special little hell. Luckily, Rabbi Gold told us that we didn't need to go to the main Jerusalem branch of the Misrad HaPnim; we could go to a tiny town just past our local gas station (which is just past our Rami Levy supermarket), and there's a Misrad HaPnim representative who has an office there. So we did that, and it worked! Unfortunately, I forgot to bring a hard copy of our signed rental contract with us (urg! urg! urg!), but she had us fill out the "we moved!" form and give her our little ID addenda. Now we have to go to the secretary of Towna (seriously, I need a better pen name. Help!) and get her to fax the Misrad HaPnim, confirming that we live here. Of course, our secretary here is only open three days a week from 8-12, but I think she's also open tomorrow from 4-6. We'll see.
Also spoke with Landlady about where to order a new gas cylinder (their house isn't hooked up to the expensive natural gas infrastructure: instead they have 2 cylinders out back), and, as long as I was on the phone with her, asked how often we should water the garden. (They have lots of aromatic herbs for tea and an impressive number of fruit trees.) She said at least once a week, in this hot weather, so out I went to water the garden. When Husbinator told Ema2 what I was doing, it struck me how crazy this all is: I'm watering an olive tree! Who has olive trees that they need to water??? I'm used to watering tulips, or marigolds, or azaleas, or maybe peppers and cucumbers and tomatoes. But olive trees? How cool is that?
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