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My phone is on quiet until 08:00, and at 08:05 a buzz for a WhatsApp message sort of woke me. A lecturer at the college wanted some help. He's my age, and the first thing he said was that he was sure that by 08:00 people our age are up. Since I was sort-of already up it was fine. Pretty much since then until noon I had various college related issues to deal with. When I was at the office yesterday things were quiet, and when I'm home ....
The preliminary siren of about 10:30 didn't materialize into a get-to-your-safe-room siren. Or at least it didn't by us. In the Tel Aviv area at least one person was killed and a couple of others are in serious condition. So "quiet" is a relative term determined by geography. Since I was busy with college related issues for most of the morning I wasn't tuned in to the news, and it was only relatively late that I became aware of what was happening. After lunch as well I was busy with campus work. A member of Hatzor teaches one course at the college and has to have a Zoom meeting with her class tomorrow afternoon. And she doesn't know how to do that (yes, there are still people like that). It was a bit more complicated than just showing her what to do because she doesn't have a Zoom account from the campus and has to use a "common" one which she then has to set herself as host. It's actually very easy, but I had to make sure that the common account was available tomorrow and that took a bit of work. And of course then I had to show her how to share her PowerPoint presentation. So instead of five minutes of sending a link it was about half an hour of explaining and then doing a run-through.
It's now 16:30, and I'm back home from bringing Tzippi to where she teaches in Gan Yavne and then picking Hila up at the road so that she can go with us tomorrow to tour Jerusalem ... and then picking Tzippi up on our way back because it turns out that there was a misunderstanding and the family whose girls she teaches didn't really wan a lesson today instead of tomorrow when we wouldn't be home. No great loss.
And as I write this we've just had a ten minute preliminary alert - the first since the morning, though it seems that if something is falling, it's not falling in our area.
It's now 00:15 and I'm off the shower. Tomorrow we're braving the roads to get to Jerusalem (though I don't expect missile problems, we really never know). Phil and Debbie haven't gotten there yet (and they were originally scheduled to leave tomorrow). I'm driving, so I'll try to get to sleep a bit earlier than usual. And to tell the truth, there's not much to report, so I can keep this report relatively short. Although in the mid-evening we again had a preliminary alert, and we even heard what seemed to be a nearby explosion, I'm quite sure that we haven't entered our safe room even once today. We're not complaining, though the earlier report of one fatality developed into two. There's still a war, and at present its end isn't really in sight.
I'm showered, and relatively written out. I spent much of the evening reading non-war-related materials, and the television was off most of the evening. Phil and Debbie don't understand the Hebrew and Hila thinks we watch too much news. She may be right, but then again she spent part of the evening catching up on articles in this past Shabbat's edition of HaAretz. But I'm relieved to report that there wasn't an alert while I was showering, meaning that I can comfortably (if that' the word) crawl into bed. Enough.
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