The new washing machine that I ordered and which I was told would be delivered on last Wednesday finally arrived today. The shipping men had enough trouble merely figuring out how to get within the vicinity of my house, as they apparently hadn't any particular knowledge of the layout of Tzfat (and equipping delivery men with maps apparently hasn't yet occurred to the powers that be). By the time I reconnoitered with them several blocks away from my house, it had already become apparent to them that there was no feasible road access to any point directly next to my house and that the machine would have to be hauled by hand for quite a few blocks and up a few rather tall flights of stairs.

Needless to say, they were not pleased. Anger was vented. I let out an exasperated, "What do you want from me?" and one of the men explained that he wasn't angry at me, but they hadn't been properly informed by those higher on the chain about how much trouble it would be to deliver heavy equipment to the Old City of Tzfat. The bitching session ran its course quickly, and the task was presently underway. After a lot of grunting, hauling, and more than a few "are we there yet?" queries, the machine was deposited soundly in my day room.

After discarding the wrapping material, I found an instruction manual and a bag of little plastic parts within the drum of the washing machine. I deciphered enough of the Hebrew instructions to realize that installation would be more complicated than merely plugging the water and electricity into it. There were mysterious sets of screws that had to be removed before use, and the poorly printed pictures didn't seem to match up to the configuration of the actual washing machine in front of me. I decided that installation would just have to wait until the evening when I wouldn't be baked by the heat, and pressed to get to work, and depleted from the day's fasting.

Night fell, I ate some leftovers from Shabbos, and I played a round of video games to settle my nerves. Dictionary in hand, I returned to the task of decrypting the instructions. The annoying fact was that the words themselves weren't so hard to translate, but their relation to reality seemed tenuous at best. But a good investment of trial and error (with some worry that I'd take apart the wrong bit and the whole thing would fall to pieces) yielded success in applying the contents of the booklet with regard to the removal of the "transportation screws." Don't ask me how four large screws embedded in rubber stoppers in the back of a washing machine provide any assistance in its transportation, nor should you ask me to explain why their presense would damage the machine during operation. I'm just glad it's done. All that's left for tomorrow is poring over the instructions regarding height-balancing, electricity hook-up, and water supply to make sure there's nothing non-obvious to worry about. And then I'll be basking in laundry nirvana.

I know I'm a grammar nazi. This just seems to be my most recent pet peeve, so I might as well get it off my chest. The good news is that most English speakers seem to have broken their horrible habit of saying things like, "Jill and me were eaten by the alligator," instead of correctly saying, "Jill and I were eaten by the alligator." The bad news is that the price for this progress seems to be the fact that people who really should know better say maddening things like, "The alligator ate Jill and I," instead of correctly saying, "The alligator ate Jill and me."

The rule is really very simple, folks: in the subject of a sentence, use "I" as the first-person pronoun; within the predicate of a sentence, use "me" as the first-person pronoun. This can be completely intuitive to native Anglophones even if they don't want to be bothered with groking scary-sounding grammatical concepts like "objective case." The trick is to yank the other person out of the sentence (leaving only yourself) and see if still sounds right. This is what should have been taught to people who say, "Jill and me were eaten by the alligator." If you use this one tiny trick, you will always make the correct choice between "I" and "me". I suspect that most people who are not Tarzan would feel stupid saying things like, "Me was eaten by the alligator," and, "The alligator ate I."

I'm shocked at the kinds of people whom I've witnessed make this sort of mistake: well-educated people, professional editors (hi, jeff!), and self-styled amateur philologists (hi, Tycho!). The world is in a pretty sorry state if its denizens have been sufficiently terrorized by their grade-school teachers to excise the usage of phrases like "Jill and me" completely from their language even when such usage is the only correct one.

OK, fine. Maybe there are other, more significant reasons to feel sorry for the world. But still.

I made shepherd's pie, which turned out well, except for needing salt. I'm almost done with the book of sci-fi short stories that Seth got me for my birthday. It turns out that there are two stories in the book that I had read before (I had originally thought that they were all going to be new to me), but they were worth reading again.

Rebecca's in-laws came to town for Shabbos, and I spent shalosh suedos with them. Ashira was as adorable (and adored) as ever. Afterward, Avraham made havdalah in the square in front of the gallery for a group visiting with Yachad.

This week promises to be quite busy with work as both jeff and Ray ran away for little vacations, leaving only Joel and me to freshen the meat. I had feared encountering an awful overload in the submission queue after Shabbos ended, but it turns out that Joel worked his butt off and left me with a reasonable load. Go Joel.