Remember to bring a book for watiing for the bus

So today was one of those days that reeeeeaaly tries your patience. We decided to jump on the bus that takes a tour of the whole darn city before you get to your destination. Mainly because it’s that bus, or the bus that goes to the top of the hill, which, for a change, was not where we needed to go today.

After our lovely scenic ride, which at least took us exactly where we needed to go after all that, we visited a lovely Israeli/South African couple who are moving back to South Africa and selling some things. They have a beautiful dining room table that we’re going to buy. Their fridge is way too big, as is their washing machine, unfortunately, but the diningroom table, which is very big, is perfect for us.

Then we crossed the street to The Mall (tm). It’s the only one in town, so if you say The Maill, you can only mean this one. We wandered around, explored the Mega Ba’ir - a supermarket chain - (OMIG-D, you can get wine and vodka and Frangelico IN THE GROCERY STORE! Cheap!) and looked for a wireless router. The guy at the store was trying to convince us we had to get a mega powerful router, because we plan on using our computers mostly in the second bedroom. Our second bedroom is our Mamad. The Mamad is a safe room - I think I’ve mentioned this previously - all Israeli apartments built after a certain year have to have a Mamad. The Mamad has a metal door like a bank safe door, the walls are reinforced, the window is reinforced glass and there is a metal plate that slides across the window. All this is in the event of a bombing, war or another Sadam who threatens to disperse mustard gas. That’s also where we’ll keep our gas masks when the new ones are distributed in January.

Aaaanyway, for the signal to get through the walls of the Mamod, the salesman was saying the router has to be super duper strong. But we know people who have a regular ol’ router in their Mamad and it works just fine. We didn’t buy one yet, so it’s back on the list for tomorrow.

Then we walk up to the shopping centre where our health care service is so we can sign up. Except Morey didn’t bring the papers with him. He thought he gave them to me, which he didn’t (I have them now!). Then we walked up yet another hill to the next shopping centre to look for a non-intimidating muzzle for Maimo so we can take him on the bus so he can get microchipped (Israeli law) tomorrow morning. No luck on the muzzle (I will NOT put one of those cage things on Maimo), so we’re going to jerry-rig something tomorrow and b.s our way onto the bus.

After all that walking, my ankle was shot again. Just when it was doing better, and after I had planned our whole day so that we’d have to do a minimum of walking (we thought there’d be a pet store in The Mall). Thank G-d, another new Modi’in friend offered to drive us around tomorrow on all our errands. So tomorrow, we should be able to accomplish the last 4 things on our beaureaucratic list (instead of the one a day), and then it’s on to fun stuff like garbage cans and shower curtains.

Oh, and to mark the end of the fast, our neighbour blasted Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” It’s not our custom, but hey, they do all sorts of weird things here ;)