Thanks to an extremely helpful pointer from Mike, I was able to find and install a highly promising comment spam filter much sooner than I had hoped. So feel free to add comments again. Let's hope this is the last time I ever have to mention this nasty topic.

Sorry, but the spammers have struck back with fierce force. Spamassassin isn't strong enough to fend off the filthy hordes of robots hell-bent on inserting randomized obscenities into this space, so I'm closing the hole completely until I have time to put a more effective filter into place.

A while ago, I heard from Wiley that he had learned of the existence of a gay couple living in Tzfat, as they had recently been hired as coaches for his company. He didn't pass on their contact information to me because he didn't want to compromise their privacy. But when Moshe visited for Shabbos a few weeks ago, he mentioned that there was an article on glbtjews.org that mentioned a gay couple living in Tzfat, named David Fyffe and Arlan Wareham. I figured that it had to be the same couple that Wiley had mentioned, and some quick googling turned up Arlan's web site. I read a large chunk of their chronicle of their immigration to Israel, and thus discovered Arlan's Skype user-name, with which I sent him a quick message to say, "Hi, I thought you might be interested to know of another queer person in town." Just a few emails later, we'd set up last night as a date for Arlan and David to come over to my apartment for dinner.

The dinner was just lovely. I made my tried-and-true recipe for curried vegetables and tofu over brown rice, and we sat around eating and chatting for over two hours. David's quiet and sensitive, while Arlan's more bold and garrulous. Like most people, they were duly impressed by Dad's reaction to my coming out. I liked hearing their story of how they met and got together, and I also enjoyed discussing Arlan's recent ventures in musical composition for organ. Before they left, we made plans for me to visit them for Shabbos next week. I can't wait to meet their snakes.

As mentioned last time, I spent Shabbos dinner in Nachlaot, lunch in the German Colony, and the afternoon through the end of Shabbos back in Nachlaot. Jon and Dan (Siegel) made an appearance for third-meal, and spent most of the time gabbing about old Seinfeld episodes. I also got to gross out Seth and Rachel's friends with a gory detail or two regarding SRS. Hey, it's not my fault the conversation wandered onto that topic. But on that note, I did have a fun time after Shabbos watching Trans America back at Moshe's apartment.

On Sunday, I spent the morning working and then went out to town to do some shopping. First, I went to the camping store near Kikar Tzion to get some new hiking shoes, where I also picked up a copy of a guide/map book for hiking the Israel Trail, a trail that runs the entire length of the country. One of the guys I know from yeshiva is looking for a few people to join him in a hike of most (if not all) of the trail this spring, and I'm seriously considering taking him up on the offer.

After the hiking store, I went to the cell phone store to update my service plan and to get a new phone, since the old one was getting all kinds of worn out. The most important feature for me was being able to copy address book information back and forth between my computer and my phone, preferably with the wireless yumminess of Bluetooth. But I splurged and got a Nokia 6280, which has a lot of nice features in addition to that: a calendar, flexible alarms, a facility for jotting notes, an MP3 player, and an FM radio. However, the most interesting feature for you, gentle readers, is the 2-megapixel digital camera. It is true! I have finally, at long last, joined the age of digital photography. (Or, more accurately, the age of any sort of photograpy.) I'm finally able to document my adventures with visual accompaniment. Let us celebrate with a scary nostril-shot!

At the phone store, I met up with Avishai, and we went out for shwarma and then hung out at his apartment for a few hours, drinking tea, watching TV, and dozing a bit. I finished off my day with a meeting for English speakers at the Jerusalem Open House, where we watched the movie Jeffrey. I stayed for a while afterward to schmooze a bit, but soon had to catch the last bus back to Tzfat. And that's the end of that weekend.

The highlight of this week is a weekend trip to Jerusalem. I'm conveniently managing to pack plenty of social events into one weekend. The first was a wedding I attended last night in which the sister of one my yeshiva classmates got married. There were so many people from Tzfat who came to this wedding that approximately half of the passengers on my bus ride to Jerusalem were going to the same wedding.

I brought along my fire poi and related parapheralia and did three rounds of dancing, which was quite well received. And the wedding hall staff didn't even complain at all about this admittedly somewhat risky form of entertainment. I was far from the only specially-skilled performer to show off last night, though. There were also a couple break-dancers, just when I thought the art had been lost in the mists of the eighties. Particularly impressive to me was a graceful young man who has a talent for balancing things on his head and held in his mouth. He did the relatively cliché wine-bottle-on-the-head routine, but also presented more interesting feats, such as an upside-down chair held in his mouth with an identical chair perched atop it, its legs resting on the bottom of the upturned chair's legs. Especially impressive was how he balanced three one-liter Pepsi bottles on top of each other.

Last night I slept at the apartment of one of my older Nachlaot friends, Alex Margolin, whom I hadn't seen since his wedding a bit over a year ago. It's been nice catching up with him and his wife Lisa last night and this morning. Tonight, I'll be having dinner at Orit Gil's, and tomorrow I'll be eating lunch at Moshe's (this is the same Moshe I hosted a couple weeks ago). After lunch, I'll head over to visit with Seth and Rachel until the end of Shabbos. It's good to be making the rounds.