I introduced my dad to ilovelocalcommercials.com tonight. I love it when I can find something that makes him genuinely laugh. He can be persnickety so finding something that makes him laugh but doesn't offend him is tricky.

*goes off to watch Butt Drugs commercial again*

Good for you, tommyrot!

I love that, with the exception of Dana White, who I had to Google to find out he is a wrestler, the most of the celebs with top bids are geeky favorites.

Jewel Staite and Felicia Day are kicking Kim Kardashian and Demi Moore's asses! Fillion is more popular that Beiber!

YAY GEEK CRED.

Something outside smells like a burning skunk. Gag.

Jewel Staite and Felicia Day are kicking Kim Kardashian and Demi Moore's asses! Fillion is more popular that Beiber!

That's excellent. Heh.

So, again in a skipping-lots-ignoring-ongoing-conversations-and-poking-my-head-for-a-short-time manner, it's that time of year again, and, yeah, still in a risk of sounding a bit strange:

On Friday evening (as most of you clever people probably already know) starts the Jewish holiday of 'Yom Kippur', which means 'Day of Atonement'.

This is a day of soul searching, of trying to better define to ourselves our faults, and try to accept it upon ourselves to become, at least a little, better people. A day of repenting past wrongs we did, looking and finding it in our hearts to forgive wrongs done to us, and trying to remember to learn from this process in the rest of the days of the year. The holiest day of the year for practicing Jews.

On a rough division, there are two kinds of wrongs people can do: against G-d, and hurting their fellow human beings. In Jewish tradition, if the person committing a sin against G-d is truly sorry for what they did, repenting and taking it upon themselves to try and avoid repeating it, G-d forgives those sins.

The deeds which hurt other people, though, are not so 'easily' and personally forgiven. If somebody did anything to harm another person, they would not be able to cleanse themselves from that deed, no matter how much they'd pray and be sorry and repent and try to do good in the future, unless they make amends with the person who was hurt by that deed. As long as peace between people is not achieved, the 'sin', so to speak, is not 'erased from the books'.

Regardless of the date in the year, I'd hate to think I'd offended somebody here (or everywhere else, for that matter). I don't think that the attempts of becoming a better person than one already is, is something that needs a date or a certain holiday for it, of course. It's just that, for me, having a certain day in the year to stop my daily runnings around, and think of nothing else but the really important things, is a good reminder of the order of priorities I'd like to have in my life.

So, since Saturday will be, for me, this day of soul-searching, of trying to create a new start in my on-going effort of 'becoming a good human being, or at least a slightly better one', I would like to ask all of you here, if I offended anybody, or hurt any of you lovely people, to tell me about it, and give me the opportunity to apologize, fix it if possible, and also learn from my mistakes, and try to not repeat them (there are so many new ones to practice, why repeat old ones, you know?).

In case I offended anybody, and can't communicate directly with them about it (for whatever reason, especially with my lately irregular internet connection), I can already say that I'm truly sorry. I can honestly say that I didn't mean to - you're all so considerate and thoughtful and generally all-around lovely, that there's absolutely no room for such a thing here. However, I might have had a slip of a keyboard, or mistaken somebody's intentions, or many other possible so forths. Y'all are so understanding, you probably didn't take offense anyway, but I want to make sure, all the same.

Please don't get me wrong - I'm definitely not trying to go around in a 'holier-than-thou' show off, or force my personal beliefs on others, or make statements which may be understood as criticizing anybody else's beliefs and way of living. If anything, being around here, among such a rich versatile group of kind and clever people, exposed me to a lot more ways of choosing to lead one's life than I've ever had a chance to see before, and showed me much more of the beauty and richness that is the world we live in.

[Edit: this is especially true this year, with my oh-so-short computer time and internet access, which gave so way too many opportunities to unintentionally miss stuff or seem to ignore (undeliberately!) people or their posts. While you guys are always so there-for-anybody-who-needs (including little me). Thank you.]

I vote twice, once at work and once at home.

I love that, with the exception of Dana White, who I had to Google to find out he is a wrestler

Dana White is not a wrestler; he is the head of UFC, the primary mixed martial arts organization in the US. He's a total crazy person megalomaniac but not related to professional wrestling.

Excellent squash recipe that actually is way more delicious than it sounds: [link]

I have had two questions tonight where if you Googled, the answer was the top hit. Stuff like, what was Professor X's PhD title (top hit: Professor X's CV). Kids today!

Bob told me today he so wished he could use "Let Me Google That For You" for his students. Like the one who emailed today to find out the email address of another professor. Who has a unique name. Whose email address is in the first google result.

Good to see your pixels, Nilly!

I almost wish you'd offend me one year so I'd get forgive you. Alas, yet again, it is not to be.

Dana White is not a wrestler; he is the head of UFC, the primary mixed martial arts organization in the US. He's a total crazy person megalomaniac but not related to professional wrestling.

See, I totally didn't know who he was.

It is really, really hard for me to imagine Nilly offending anyone. The only thing you need to atone for is not being around more, darling!

Hi Nilly!

bon, that sounds delicious.