First Weekend

It's Sunday afternoon and we're staying at the hotel, stranded by the strong winds (and future heavy rain) of tropical depression (formerly known as Hurricane) Ike. The strong winds blew down the power circuit and we are left with no power. This leads me to consider how dependent we have become, as a species, on the ubiquity of power. We're just so used to being able to generate everything with a turn of a switch: light, heat, food, entertainment, and so on. Now that electricity is gone we cannot heat water for coffee, we need flashlights to go to the bathroom, we're disconnected from the internet, and once the sun sets we'll have no light. Hopefully the power circuit will be fixed by then.

The day started much better. We went to the Levee on Newport, Kentucky to see the views. The weather was hot, humid, but relatively mild, and we had a good time strolling along the waterfront and watching the Cincinnati Downtown skyline over the Ohio River. I had a nice phone call from the department head, asking if she can help with anything. It's nice having someone looking after you, especially when you're new in town, and have so many things to do. I also head a talk over Skype with my former boss. It's funny to be able to talk for free with people and stay in touch with them when you're half a world apart. I think that I begin to miss my friends and family. I talked to my dad yesterday and he doesn't sound well. He sounds depressed, and I wish I could help him. It's hard to hear a man, who for all my life I have looked up to and considered to be as stable as a rock, becomes so weak. I fear for his health both mentally and physically. Skype is not useful in such situations. Perhaps we need a way of communicating physical gestures just as we're able to communicate sound and vision over the internet.

I also miss life in Israel. The main reason is that it was so much easier for me there, having a nice job, good pay, financial security, credit history (and no need to prove one), and my friends to help me. Now we are starting all over again, like being reborn, but without the parents support. Some small examples: we know that we are able financially to lease (or buy in credit) a car, but we don't have the credit history to do it. We have the money to pay for D's first term tuition in our bank accounts, but we cannot access it readily, nor do we have the means to pay for it electronically, nor will the "domestic partnership" thing be settled soon enough to avoid the need to pay for the tuition at all. Life here seems like a magic circle that we need to penetrate, but we still haven't figured out how. You need a positive credit history to be able to receive credit. It's the perfect Catch 22.

I wish we were two months from now. Hopefully things will be better than and we'll have our lives sorted out.