Good to hear you're OK Shir, and good luck on moving. Fingers crossed Nilly stays safe.

It's morning-ish here (11am). There was a second siren at night, and I woke up from interceptions/explosions sounds around 5am from another area, but other than that the night was as quiet here as I could hope for. Central Israel was hit in several locations and unlike missiles from Yemen, they cause extensive damage. I have a standing offer from a friend to come to a safer location, but that means to leave the cat behind/take him and his equipment with me to a house that already has another cat and a dog in it. So I'm giving it another day to see where it goes before making any decision.

I have no hopes or expectation from my government, of course. "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make" is kind of its motto, and doing things without thinking of long term consequences is its game. There were countless demonstrations against it every day but they were only stalling some actions, not preventing what's already going on or that have been done (I mean, there are protests, but there's now an emergency and leaving one's place to protest isn't recommended. On Thursday there were three just in the 5km radius from where I live).

tl;dr: I'm OK, I'll update here as much as I can, and I can't freaking believe we started another front in Iran.

Oh, Shir. I'm sorry the powers that be in our countries seem to want to outdo each other in madness. Thank you for popping in as often as you can. May cooler heads prevail all round.

In much brighter news, today is Javachik's birthday! I hope you have plans for an amazing day. May this year bring you an abundance of joy and laughter.

In other, Mother Nature rocks news, forecast is for pouring rain at the time of the parade. does rain dance

I'll light some extra candles for for thunder and lightening.

Happy Birthday, javachik! For you, I wish sunshine and fun and extra wigglebut snugs.

It's good to see you Shir. I wish I had something reassuring to say.

Happy birthday Java!

The demonstration here is one block from work and we're in tech today. I'm going to try to get out of the building to join for a few minutes. If turnout is as hoped, that may mean simply stepping out the front door.

{{{Shir}}}

Many happy returns, javachik (or, as autocorrect would like me to call you, hamachi)!

Today is also my uncle’s birthday and my parents’ wedding anniversary (61 years!), uncle was pretty mad at the wedding upstaging his birthday but that was the only day the church was available so here we are. Celebrating by waving signs at traffic.

Oh, goddamnit. Two Minnesota state legislators and their spouses shot in their homes by someone dressed as a cop.

This is gonna get worse before it gets better.

Very dangerous and scary world. Watching Gov. Walz speak just brings home what an opportunity was lost. He should be the VP.