Shorts

[magid]

Query: how long before a restaurant's stated closing time do you assume the kitchen closes? (Does it depend on the kind of restaurant? If so, in what way(s)?)

Upcoming: the annual midnight ride (overnight architectural bike tour of Boston), August 18, meeting at 11:15 P.M. in Copley Square.

Update on the fire door incident in the Arlington T: the door that broke is still without glass, and both doors are tied open with rope. So much for that fire door thing.

Thing that should not be: a house with 36 bedrooms (but only 34 bathrooms. wah wah wah.), a 10-car garage (with 9 staff bedrooms above it), that is not for a school or some such thing, but a family (hopefully a rather extended one...). According to NPR last night, the price has now dropped to only $40 million. (And there are multiple homes on the market for over $100 million. Ouch.)

I saw a Cambridge Traffic and Parking vehicle yesterday, which started me thinking about why in this case grammatical parallelism doesn't work. Neither "Traffic and Park(s)" nor "Trafficking and Parking" cover the same areas of responsibility.

Most difficult fast day on the Jewish calendar today (for me, anyway). Breakfast after 8:55 tonight.

Comments

[queue.livejournal.com]

My feeling is that if you arrive before the stated closing time, they are obligated to serve you. I once heard someone claim that this obligation is legal, but I don't know about that.

Now, if it's a bar that also serves food, it is quite often the case that the kitchen closes earlier than the bar does, but that's a different situation altogether.

[alandd.livejournal.com]

I assume 30 minutes before the restaurant closes, but I don't really know...

Why is this the most difficult fast day? Because it's mid-summer and thus long?

[magid.livejournal.com]

It's midsummer, and a full day, not just dawn to dusk. The only other major fast day is Yom Kippur which (a) has Sabbath-like restrictions (making things easier, since there's not the issue of trying to get to work or not), and (b) has a concept that's easier for me (even if in practice it's more difficult). Yom Kippur has marathon davening, but it's all about personal choices and repentance and such, which can be a transcendent experience. Tisha B'Av has some fairly incomprehensible prayers (Kinot in complicated medieval Hebrew) and is all about mourning the bad things of the past (primarily the destruction of both Temples, but also pogroms, massacres, and other such horrible things). It's just harder for me to *poof* get into mournful mood, knowing that there's nothing I can change with it. I know, I should be able to mourn the nation's losses, but I find it more difficult.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a bar that does food also does seem rather different.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

house with 36 bedrooms

Are they sure they don't mean "hotel?" "Palace," maybe? Ugh.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

They went on to talk about places that are smaller (5, 6 bedrooms), but completely ready to move in (large flat screen TV in every room already!), just bring your toothbrush. Who are the people buying these places?

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

What was this program's theme? "Home-buying for the hopelessly rich?"

[magid.livejournal.com]

It was just a short piece on Marketplace last night. They also had a piece on the rising numbers of mortgage defaulters and subsequent auctions of property. Apparently houses are paralleling income (what a shock), with the rich getting wildly richer and everyone else scrambling hard to tread water.

aha!

[breedingimperf.livejournal.com]

Tag: http://breedingimperfection.blogspot.com/2007/07/tags-facts-and-leaps.html

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

Restaurant closing: I assume about 1/2 hour. Thing is, I think it also depends on how busy they've been. They may close the kitchen earlier if it's been a quiet night.

Arlington T: the door that broke is still without glass, and both doors are tied open with rope. So much for that fire door thing. Uh, yeah. I've been thinking that same thing, just about every day as I walk past them. One day, sure; not much you can do about it. But can they really not manage to replace them more quickly given that this really is a safety issue and probably violates some fire code.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I'm pondering sending an email to the T asking about the fire doors. I just submitted an inquiry. Interestingly, the comment form has particular categories for different kind of comments, and an "inquiry" doesn't allow one to ask about things other than particular areas. I should've made it a "complaint": that allows "other".