Samain Bare Aspen Moon
Full day yesterday. Up at 4:45 though Kep had nudged Kate awake earlier and she’d already fed the dogs. Wrote, ate breakfast, came back to the loft and filed all my open tabs in Evernote. That took a while since I’m still fiddling with Firefox Quantum, too, changing zoom levels, color preferences, customizing the tool bar. Got to the new workout from On the Move Fitness about 9:30. Finished, after icing my knee, at 11:00.
After dressing and collecting the keys, I headed out for emissions testing and picking up my Rigel bitten hearing aid. The first emission’s place, Mountain Emissions, only did diesel emissions, not clear from their facebook page, and was closed. So, onto to the place I used three years ago after transferring plates and title to Colorado. While on the way there a thought occurred to me, how did it take so long to catch the VW folks software scam? I mean, the vehicle puts out emissions from the tail pipe. They’re measured in emissions testing. WTF?
So I asked the technician. Turns out the specific tests at drive through testing facilities like the one I visited yesterday use a very specific algorithm, putting the car on rollers and then simulating different traffic conditions. The VW scam depended on the very specific, and standard, testing algorithm. They taught their cars to blow clean during the exact kind of testing done at state and county testing facilities.
The same technician, a loyal employee of his contracted emissions testing employer, said his company caught the cheaters at roadside testing. Not sure exactly who caught it though the suspicions were aroused in California. In roadside testing, IRL rather than in a calibrated testing facility, the tests were not predictable and some diesels began to fail. An odd, odd circumstance. Makes me wonder how much similar mendacity there is in the corporate world.
The Rav4 passed, by the way.
After the emissions testing, it was over to Hearing Rehab Associates to pick up my repaired hearing aid. I’ve been without it a week. Thanks, Rigel. Closed for lunch. So, I went across the street to a sushi place and had ramen plus salmon sashimi.
Picked up my now undented hearing aid. It looked shiny and new. When I put it in my ear, its sound quality was better thanks to a new speaker and a new microphone. On the way back to the mountains, all this was in Littleton, a southern burb, gas for the car at Valero.
Nap-ish. Kate made a pasta dish with chard, yummy, for the Beth Evergreen potluck. A Hanukkah shabbat service. We all brought our family menorahs with four candles, put them on one table and lit them. Rabbi Jamie lit the much larger Synagogue menorah. We sang songs, including dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made it out of clay and others unfamiliar to me. There were tables in the sanctuary and we ate the meal there.
Finally, home. A long day.
I also recalled yesterday that I’ve had this end of year let down often. When I worked for the Presbytery, I noticed that no congregation wanted a church executive around during the run up to Christmas and the week after, through New Year’s. This may have been a post-school rationalization to give myself a winter break. Whatever it was I think the pattern is probably there, triggered this time by the end of kabbalah.
After writing the post below, about slowing down, I realized I need a vacation. Time off. A break. A pause. I need to vacate the life I love for just a bit, to clear out the schmuz in my pistons. Confess I don’t know how to do that right now. Money. Visitors. Holidays. I’m considering how to do it.
Afterward, kabbalah. Three presentations. One on the idea of the holy of holies. The temple looms large in Jewish thought, in many, many ways. One on the link between the ten sefirot and a Japanese inspired version of Chinese medicine, acupressure. One on the surprisingly pervasive influence of the kabbalists in the shabbat service. All were, in their own way, interesting. Having to come up with a presentation did cement the learning for each of us, that was clear. And, they led to interesting speculations.
The great wheel has turned again, moving Orion further down the southwestern horizon in the early morning. The air is cooler here. A Beth Evergreen friend, Alan, came in to the kabbalah class and announced, “Winter is really here. It’s so cold outside!” It was 22. Now in my fourth winter season here I’ve stopped commenting.
Those -40 degree nights at Valhelga during one Woolly retreat. Working out on my snowshoes in the woods behind the library in Anoka, -20 degrees. The moments of -50 degree wind chill. Days with the temperature below zero, many days in a row. Minnesota. Not a lot of snow, but pretty damned cold.