Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-04-01
Hi. I'm Joseph Zitt. I moved from the US to Israel in 2017. This is my newsletter about more-or-less daily life in my city in the shadow of war. You can select these links to subscribe or unsubscribe. There are more links at the bottom. You can also read this email online here. Here we go...
My laundry arrives this morning in two bags rather than one. That makes sense. When I sent it out, I had trouble closing the usual single bag. Now that winter is over, I had put my thick hoodie in with it. (I do feel uncomfortably bourgeois outsourcing my laundry, but my otherwise-wonderful apartment doesn't have a hookup for a washing machine.)
I pick up one bag with each hand and head down the steps. I regret that almost immediately. I dislike stairs. These are often slippery. With both hands full, I can't hold on to the banister.
I wobble gingerly down the steps, then open the screen door with one hand. I step inside and drop both bags on my bed. Mission accomplished. I quickly extract clothing for today and leave the rest for the evening.
I get out of the house efficiently, but I'm still later leaving for work than I would like to be. The battery ran down overnight on the spare phone that I use as an alarm clock. It didn't go off this morning. Since sunrise is an hour later than it had been for a while, it took the light a while to wake me up. I plugged the alarm phone in right away. It should behave tomorrow.
The work day is mundane. I order lunch, but it never arrives. It turns out that the person who puts in the orders has left the company. No one told me. Much later than usual, I get a salmon sandwich from the deli across from the supermarket.
I leave work early to get to my health plan's clinic for an appointment. An ambulance zooms past me on the way, sirens blaring. Once it has turned a corner, the audible sirens stop. Its lights continue to flash.
I get to the clinic a few minutes later. I take out my health plan card to swipe at the kiosk near the front door.
The kiosk is off. So is the one next to it. It's darker than usual in the lobby. I look up. Only the emergency lights are on.
The ambulance crew is standing around. From what I can tell, there was no emergency. There's been a power failure, which triggered an automatic alert. That makes some sense. If the power goes out at a clinic, there might be a strong chance of something else serious going wrong, too.
Other than the lack of power, everything and everyone's OK. It looks like the power for much of the street is out.
The crew and the receptionists chat. Doctors and nurses come down from upstairs. I stand at the edge of the space, oddly aware that I am the only person in the crowd not wearing white.
A box of chocolates appears from somewhere. They pass them around, but not to me. Someone else spots a bottle of wine on a desk against the wall. A receptionist got it a while back and keeps forgetting to bring it home. They don't pass that around.
I'm early for my appointment. I have to do one other thing while there.
Getting a referral to an outside specialist is complicated. First, the family doctor requests the referral. Then, the specialist schedules the appointment. They then contact the health plan's insurance department to get authorization. Once that happens, the patient has to get Form 17 from the health plan to present to the specialist, showing that the health plan insurance has agreed to pay for the appointment. For some specialists, this can be done electronically. In this case, it requires an actual piece of paper.
At least, I think that's how it works. These things confuse me easily.
My plan is to get my Form 17 for another appointment while there. It's not happening without power.
After a little while, the power comes back on. The computer network doesn't. Someone somewhere has to do something or other to get it to work. It's already after usual work hours. I'm the last appointment. It doesn't look like it will.
The dietitian is still seeing patients. I have my appointment on time. As usual, she had printed out a schedule early in the day, with a bit of information on each scheduled patient. I have put on a little more weight since the last time. She reprimands me and reminds me that Passover will have lots of temptations to eat stuff that I probably shouldn't.
When I leave her office, no one is in the lobby. It looks like the network never came back up. The receptionists have gone home. I'm not getting my Form 17 today.
I get supper at the chicken joint around the corner. The music there is loud. A younger worker plays Mizrachi religious popular music and sings along. When he leaves, the older work switches to bluesy guitar tracks. At first, I think we've come in partway through Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond." When the vocal starts, I hear that I'm wrong. Someone whose voice I can't place is singing "The Sky is Crying." There's too much background noise around me for my phone app to sort out who it is.
When I get home, my computer is off. The one clock not run by a computer is flashing, showing how much time has elapsed since it came back on. I do the math. The power outage had extended to my home, about a kilometer away from the clinic.
I power up my computer, log in, then shut it down and restart it. It never quite comes back right after a power failure. An intentional reboot sets it straight. I turn my new NAS1 unit back on. It emails me to let me know that it has restarted after a power failure, and that I really should hook up my UPS.2 So noted.
I settle in to my computer chair. I have to do a few things to set all the apps and windows up as I like them after the reboot. Then I can start writing.
Feel free to forward the newsletter to other people who might be interested.
Here’s an archive of past newsletters.
You can find me via email, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook, and, just out of inertia, X/Twitter. There's more about me and my books, music, and films at josephzitt.com.
The newsletter’s official mailing address is 304 S. Jones Blvd #3567, Las Vegas NV 89107. (I’m in Israel, but if physical mail comes to me at that Las Vegas address, it’ll get scanned and emailed. I don’t expect that to happen much. If you want to send me physical mail, ask me for a real address.)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
L'hitraot.