No politics inside. No real knitting, either.

No politics, because I think Shoshi Greenfield said everything that needs to be said. We don't have enough sons to send them off to die in a war the government doesn't want to win.

Instead, a work rant.

I don't think I've ever talked about my work, even though I work over 40 hours a week. Suffice it to say that I love my work conditions, my work less so, because several of the topics I have to deal with are -- well, imagine Hassan Nasrallah working for Jewish National Fund.

But my work conditions--ah, what a joy. Even though I'm on call every day which isn't Sabbath or a holiday, from 6 am to 10:30 pm, weekends and legal holidays included. Even though I get no vacation. What other job in the world would allow me to go travelling with the Spouse for 3-4 months a year? At what other job would I be facing my current dillema--to go to Toronto with the Spouse in late October or go to Greece alone? (In truth, I'm giong to try to swing it so I can do both.)

But right now I'm doing trial management, and trying to get a protocol together. Two camps are involved, and I have to get one camp to approve the protocol, then go to the other, get a new version of the protocol approved, go back to the first group -- over and over.

Things that got settled on Monday were once again questioned on Tuesday. I answered everyone's objections, patiently, calmly, and got everyone to agree with me. Then on Wednesday the questions and objections came up again. I answered everyone's objections, patiently, calmly, and got everyone to agree with me. Who wants to place bets on what'll be in my inbox come Thursday morning?

I want my boss to change my job title to Mommy. This way I can set up an autoresponder reading

No.

Why not?

Because I'm the Mommy, and I said no.

I'm going to ask my boss to change my jo

A few links and some tests

Giyus.org has a Windows based desktop application which will make giving knee jerk support to the Israeli government's decisions easy.

Wait, wait, hold your fire. I know I'm sounding horribly Leftist. I don't automatically supoort the Israeli government's decisions in this war? Well, no, of course not. The soldiers killed yesterday died because the Israeli government decided not to bomb and to send in ground troops instead. Protect Leban civilians who have been told to get out (and who know the consequences for not getting out), who have been given adequate time to get out, and the Hezballah terrorists lurking among them or protect Israeli soldiers?

And the day before, with Olmert going to visit people kicked out of Gaza last year and telling them, "You think you should still be in Gaza. The government thinks not, and we're right, so we're going to screw the country by giving the West Bank to terrorists, too!" (OK, he didn't put it that way exactly, but come on. We left Lebanon and got more terror. We left Gaza and got more terror, You'd have to be an idiot not to think the same thing will happen out here. Even Ha'Aretz says so.)

But whether you approve of what the givernment is doing, the soldiers still need support. Send them a hug and Elite will send them some chocolate.

So, those tests the Teens took? The Middle Teen flunked her driving test, much to the relief of everyone but her. (Overconfident teenager + car = bad idea. A little humbling is a good thing.) The Oldest Teen won't know his results until September, but he thinks he did well and showed that he has leadership ability without being pushy. The Youngest Teen has been sent to the plastic surgeon to remove a beauty mark at the top of her chest (quoth the doctor: "You'll want a pretty scar for when you wear low cut blouses." Uh huh. Someone explain to me why the local doctors think the Russians are their only customers and learn nothing about their other market share, the religious settlers?) and the dietician wants her to live on diet soda, black bread, and radishes. I'm just surprised she wasn't given a daily vodka ration, too.

Yestarday we took the Middle Teen to interview in the school where she may be volunteering for 12th grade. She fell in love with the principal, and if she gets accepted there she will have private tutors for three subjects: chemistry (which is her major but is not offered--a Russian chemistry teacher working in Hadera as a lab tech tutored the Shelef volunteer girl last year), history (no one in the school is taking five units as she is) and math (her school does the 003 & 005 tests by the end of 11th grade, everyone else does the 003 & 004, so they'll all be learning for 005 and she needs to learn 005, but since tutoring goes more quickly than a classroom, she may even be able to do 5 units instead of her projected 4). She won't be able to do her Bible thesis, so she'll have to make up last year's work (Bible's an easy subject for her, though) and she's already finished English, so her classroom time will be limited. Works for me!

And--lookee here, no visualization exercises for you today. (Well, if you insist, you can keep visualizing that black stockinette sweater. By next week I may actually have something worth showing). But here's some spinning--2 ply, 14wpi. Not finished yet, because I still ahve to ply it with a strand of blue mettalic, but that'll be done once the whole kilo is spun up, and this stuff's a bitch to spin: full of VM and neps. Never, ever will I buy rovings off Ebay again.

Where's PETA when you need them?

Israeli TV channel 2 reported that dozens of cows were killed by a Katyusha attack. I'm expecting worldwide protests to begin shortly. Of course, it will all turn out to have been Israel's fault.

Knitting: Black, back, knit knit knit knit. Black, black, knit knit knit knit knit.

Happy Shiny People

Lisa Goldman has written an account of yesterday's anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv, contrasting the "sullen curiosity at best, or outright hostility at (frequent) worst" of the right wing with the "sincere, goodhearted people" of the Left.

Well, let me tell you a story about another anti-war demonstration, this one last Friday in Jerusalem. I wasn;t there, but my son was, and I'll trust the accuracy of his reporting.

Friday my son was hitching back to Jerusalem, to spend Shabbat at his yeshiva, and the car that stopped picked up not only him, but a former elementary school classmate name Assaf Gavish. It let them out in front of the Kings Hotel in Jerusalem, across from a small plaza where an anti-war demonstration was taking place, near the Prime Minister's residence.

The boys got out of the car and saw the demonstration. "My friend," the Oldest Teen reported, "went a little crazy." He waded into the small crowd, yelling "What do you know about terror? What do you know about death? Have any of you watched your parents being slaughtered before your eyes?" You see, Assaf's brother, grandfather, and both his parents were murdered in their own home, with Assaf and other family members present, a few years ago.

So what did the "sincere, goodhearted people" of the Left do when this victim of terror told them off? They assualted him, verbally ("murderer" "fanatic" "Jewish terrorist") and physically. My son started towards them to intervene, but Assaf managed to break free and run over to the Prime Minister's residence guards and ask to file a complaint. The guards talked him out of it by agreeing to break up the demonstration.

Points to note:
1. For a kid from this area to go running to cops is almost unheard of. Cops, out here, are usually seen as biased, ad not in our favor. Today, with all the rocket, Kassam, and Katyusha attacks, with abandoned homes in the north being looted, with terrorists caught in one place and suspected in others, and with the possible kidnapping of another soldier, the police found time to break into a yeshiva, tear gas the students, and rough up the rabbi over an old police file. This isn't the first time they've played Cold Case when there were better things they could be doing, so no one local really trusts the Israeli police; if they were the better alternative, you can imagine what the worse one was.

2. For the police to break up a demonstration of the Left is nearly unheard of.

In the comments on her post, Lisa writes:

I guess if a country cannot "withstand" a few hundred people peacefully demonstrating, then its democracy is not very strong.

Well, I guess if the "sincere, goodhearted people," the "friendly, relaxed and open" leftist demonstrators cannot "withstand" a single 18 year old victim of terror telling them they're full of [I won't say what, but George W. Bush was caught using that word today], then their committment to peaceful demonstrations is not very strong, is it?

Knitting to clear the mind. Black bulky weight. On size 10.5 needles. In the round. Stockinette. Pictures? You don't need a picture. Just close your eyes and you'll see something close enough.

The loveliest words to read

This just hit my mailbox:

You have submitted a proposal to the Electronic Proposal Submission System. Your proposal is now stored on the EPSS system with number XXXXXX for subsequent evaluation by the Commission.

Got it done in time!

Not that the boss made it easy on me. At 1:45 I get a phone call.

Boss: "You know that we need to get a hospital to sponsor us through the ethics board, right?"

Me: [suspicious already] "Right."

Boss: "Well, in exchange for sponsorship, they want us to do a sub-study."

Me: [after big sigh. There goes the proposal I've been working on since 9pm yesterday, with only 3 hours for sleep]: "Send it over and I'll incorporate it."

I wait for the email, get it, open it, and weep. What's unique in our study is that patients aren't the subjects, the practitioners are. The grant proposal makes a big deal of this, since the selling point has to be innovation. And, of course, the new sub-study is the same old same old bloodtests to see how the patients react.

I call the boss, nearly hysterical. I know we hardly have a chance in hell of getting any money, but adding in this sub-study will kill off even the little snowball of a chance which we do have. After arguing about it a half hour or so I finally hit on an excuse even he can't deny: this will cost extra money and there's no budget attached, so I can't ask for more money in the grant request. "I'm not saying not to do the sub-study," I whine and plead, "just not to include it in the grant proposal. Let the professional fundraiser get money for it."

Another half hour later he agrees. We work on the final tweak, and with overan hour to spare, the proposal was submitted.

In my sleep-deprived state this morning I made an impulse buy that I think I'm going to really enjoy. Cathy emailed ROAK that she wanted to sell off some ribbon yarn. The price was right, the timing was good, she's willing to wait to mail it out until my parents get back from doing Pesach in Miami, and I'm starting to think about my clothes for Rosh Hashana. It all came together; I bought the yarn and either I'll wear it as a tank-vest with a pink skirt, or my daughter will (she hates pink, but knows she looks good in it, so wears it on holidays).

While I waited for proposal pages to be converted and to upload I finally started a new knitting project: Lion brand Magic Stripes yarn socks. Pictures when there's more than a row or two...

*&^$#&*%*%^&(^ &@*(

For a year I've been working on a study proposal, and about 6 months ago I found a EU grant mechanism which sounded perfect for it. Worked on the proposal, begged my boss to hire a professional grant writer. Last month he finally agreed, so I stopped working on the proposal.

9 PM tonight: My boss casually mentions that he needs to get an update from the grant writer.

Me: You do remember that the deadline is tomorrow, right?

Boss: I thought tomorrow was our internal deadline, and the EU dealine was the 30th.

Me: No, it's 5 pm tomorrow.

Boss: Oh, I'll call the grant writer.

20 minutes later Boss lets me know that the grant writer doesn't think we'd get any money, so he hasn't started to work on the proposal, nor does he plan to.

Guess who has 23.5 hours to pull together a 2 million dollar grant proposal?

If you never see me again, I'm lost in the depths of EU paperwork--send help.