revelation

i'm too tired to write much down, and i'm driving a lot tomorrow. lemme just drop some notes.

yesterday:

mr smear's last day of school before the two week holidays. i finally remembered to move the furniture around so that gd could cut his hair in the afternoon before leaving for work. i struggled to make an appointment for her foot :/

i got to the office and took the opportunity to have coffee with someone, and he's doing what i think most people would describe as a dream job. (there're a few of those with us)

while i was explaining what i'm working on, we had a really exciting moment of inspiration (we're both into gaming and simulations) that chained into a podcast one of my bosses suggested and that led to a couple of really exciting conversations (with some other bosses). in addition to that, we had a retrospective during which i managed to connect a whole bunch of dots and received a literal "amen". and then, just before leaving the office but after managing to get something really tricky working, i overheard my lead grumbling (very loudly) and i literally took command of the situation and told him how we were going to handle it - in that moment it felt like a weird but significant shift in power took place.

i like working in an environment where our power structures are fluid, and i especially like being a part of an organization that might be making a sci-fi fantasy i've had since i was a teenager become a very real thing. and it's interesting to be feeling so aligned and in the right place when the beginning of this very week started off with me feeling frustrated and out-of-place.

i was super-excited by how the day had gone, but it wasn't over. after dinner chatting with gd and mr smear (they'd already eaten by the time i got home), i still had some work to do - it began with teaching one of my coworkers how to deploy something, but something went wrong. and then i learned that what i'd thought was working perfectly was missing an important piece of the puzzle.

today:

i slept rather poorly last night, mainly because the new pillows we bought suck.

it took me a while to get my day started. gd went to her sewing lesson and i left mr smear alone to go get my hair cut in a very fancy place. it's not an amazing haircut, but it's okay. gd's happy with the front but hates the back ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i didn't realize how much longer her lesson would be, so i sat around having coffee and listening to a podcast and reading random articles for a while, then rushed home when i couldn't get hold of mr smear (his phone was on silent) to pick him up and drag him out to join me and gd on a quick shopping mission... but to be honest, most of the time was spent in the harry potter pop-up store and with much enthusiasm on his part :P

we'd been trying to arrange a gift for our kibbutz cousin, who we're going to see tomorrow, and just as we left and were waiting on a bus i had an idea, said goodbye and rushed off to the sarona market where i found some south african sauces and spices, along with some of the saborito hot sauce range!

it was a great haul, albeit quite expensive.

the afternoon was spent eating delicious food, helping mr smear with his homework, and enjoying a glorious breakthrough with the work problem. i've handed over a working solution to my coworkers and in theory should be able to take sunday and monday's vacation without interruption ^_^

mr smear and i went to shul, and between the service itself and the walks there and back it's become a really nice way to close the week / start the weekend. after kiddush and a nice chat with my mom, we watched an episode of the simpsons, had a fun shower / teeth / bedtime ritual, and gd and i have been doing nothing ("parallel play" :P) since. but i think i'm going to go to bed very soon.

oh, look - i wrote a whole bunch of stuff.

sleep deficit

i certainly could have used some more sleep. i say that, but it's approaching midnight again... one of my bosses asked this afternoon if not sleeping could be making him stupid. i suggested that not getting sufficient REM sleep prevents our brains from processing information.

"so... you're saying i am stupid?"

aside from getting mr smear up and to school in good spirits (and reading my kindle instead of looking at screens), i managed to get some work done and have a meeting with my (direct) boss before gd and i headed out for our meeting.

the meeting went pretty well. gd had a couple of emotional moments, one positive (the new principal gave her a hug) and one negative (the old principal got a lambasting in absentia, with gd comparing her to a "hair on a soup"). we learned that mr smear's chief bully is on the spectrum and mr smear takes it personally when he makes faces and noises that - allegedly - are him self-regulating 🤦

we've agreed that mr smear's current shit class is probably the best place for him, primarily because they made the other classes sound even worse. i'm not sure how i feel about that.

i walked gd home, then continued on to work, completely forgetting to help her prepare to cut mr smear's hair after school. which in retrospect must have been a good thing, because the washing machine technician arrived a day early to examine it and decide that gd had simply been using too much soap 🤣

most of the work day - the bits that i was in the office for - were straightforward and productive, though i am a bit unsure as to whether what i'm doing really qualifies as meeting my deadlines. and i received my first full payslip today, which was less than i was expecting. i had to go over it earlier this evening and i'm hoping my insurance broker will agree with my assessment...

between my morning chat with my boss and an afternoon chat with our (unofficial) head of communications, i feel like that was the most productive part of my day.

i left the office early to meet gd at the orthopaedist's offices. we arrived early enough to buy new pillows and get a few groceries, and eventually found the clinic itself. the examination was brief, and now we're on to the next specialist (the one we knew from the beginning she needed to see).

we got home just as the play therapist was leaving, and after unpacking the groceries that had been delivered i sat down with mr smear to continue The Homework. but that took longer than anticipated, mainly because we had a couple of in-depth talks about All The Things.

the simpsons over dinner - gd's experiment with making vegan chopped liver for passover was a complete success - and then a fairly relaxed bedtime / finishing john wick (it's a well-executed 80's-style action film) / run on kaycee's mod / and now this before going to bed.

service with a _____

overall, i think it was a pretty good day. i didn't sleep enough but the sleep i got was good, and the morning started off well, albeit uneasily. i dropped mr smear off at school with a good feeling. i flipped our mattresses, and took care of some paperwork and other minor things... and then tried to book a technician for the washing machine.

...

i tried their whatsapp account first, but at some point - after gathering all the data i needed to get through the menu system - it seemed to freeze.

so i called. i was number ten in the queue. after about ten to fifteen minutes of muzak, with a tone every few seconds to make you think someone's about to answer you, there was a pause, a real tone, and then the sound of a call being hung up.

furious, i called again. this time number twenty in the queue. the number's seemed to be going down pretty quickly - one or two each minute - so it was only another ten to fifteen minutes of that muzak with the tone... when a woman's voice finally answered, i yelled just to make sure she had no excuse but to talk to me.

after all that, all she would say was "give me your number so we can call you back". i fought down the urge to yell at her to be ashamed and gave her my number.

later, i'd see a response to the whatsapp messages and learn that i needed to go through the process with a different service 🤦

...

on my way to work i noticed that the unicode code for the tiny heart fingers emoji (🫰) is FAF0. i'm not going to forget that in a hurry. i message an ex-coworker who loves that sign to share the weird discovery :P

it was my old boss' first day as my new boss, kind of. our roles and reporting aren't clear (intentionally), so i guess he's more like one of my bosses.

aside from trolling my team with an april fool's daily report, a very positive check-in with my boss (my direct boss), and a pleasant walk to grab lunch with one of our other bosses (oy) along with an interesting lunch time conversation about parenting and screens, i spent most of my work day getting an installation done over an unreliable network and when i eventually left the office, it was after much celebrating because i finally got the damned thing to work (i was actually starting to suspect a hardware failure).

pre-dinner was quiet, mr smear had apparently had a good day. and nystire and i spoke for a bit and might end up doing something interesting together.

dinner was nice, although we did get into The Discussion again about him accepting his reality - who he is, where he is, and what he has to do - which may or may not have had an impact, but i'm pretty happy with the metaphor i came up with: a heavy car is rolling inexorably down a narrow hill dragging an impassable wall behind it. you can try to stop it, but at some point you will get run over. you can try to go back up the hill, but you will be dragged painfully in the direction of gravity. or you can try to run alongside the car and try to direct it by pushing it to the left or the right.

(or maybe jumping in and steering is a better analogy. needs work)

...

then we had to do the homework page from yesterday that hadn't been completed, and what started off alright rapidly turned to shit. fortunately, we got out of the shit, but not without some serious feelings (and threats).

it took a few passes over the question, but then there was a magical moment where mr smear *clicked*, and he understood what he needed to do, and he enthusiastically Did The Thing. and he did it well.

i told him to hold on to that feeling, and understand what caused it. i pray he does.

even though it was a little after his bedtime, something inspired me to read a little the colour of magic to him before saying good night.

gd and i watched most of the rest of john wick, and i've spent most of the remaining evening updating my macbook, watching random youtube videos and playing inscryption.

holy shit, i didn't realize it was approaching 1am already and we have a meeting with the school in the morning.

rage against the machines (and little boys)

 i didn't sleep well, and a meaningful contributor to that was reading aethersmith's message that included the phrase "if someone came to with with the argument you are using re the israel / palestine conflict, would you feel the same way?" right before going to bed.

i took my time considering my response, discussing my thoughts with my family and my coworkers, and this evening sent this in response:

firstly, no. but that's because we're literally fighting against armies of genocidal maniacs who not only want to wipe out me and my family and my people, but have successfully infiltrated western media and academia and are convincing everyone that wiping us out is okay. let's contrast that to "you're stealing my art and hurting my livelihood".

nobody makes art without stealing art, and very few artists in the history of art have consented to their art being studied and practiced and cloned. if your art's good, people are going to want to copy it. up until now the only ways your artwork has been protected has been when the copies are clear attempts at forgery and are being passed off as authentic, and the barriers to entry in producing art being really high. 

you're upset because there's shit art. weren't you upset before?

you're upset because artists are losing work. that's fair, but everything's being disrupted lately, and that's not just because of AI or the current method of training models. and if anyone's livelihoods are being compromised, trust me - us software developers are the first in line for the chopping block.

am i worried about what's coming? honest answer: somewhat. but at the same time, we can choose to embrace and adapt or we can choose to fight.

i do NOT, in ANY way, condone you taking the fight to the users of the new technology and trying to coerce us into boycotting something we simply don't agree with you about. you think it's unethical? that's okay. we disagree. and that's okay too. your fight isn't with me, but maybe i'm just an easier target for you than the AI companies and people who are training their models without compensating artists. maybe you should fight with them about it.

and maybe you'd be more effective in getting people on your side if you showed a little bit of empathy, tried to understand that they're not evil scum because they're on the opposing side of a debate that you've decided shouldn't exist. sometimes it doesn't matter whether you're right as much as whether you're effective, and i promise you you're not helping your cause by gunning for individuals who aren't responsible for the things that are scaring you.

i'm not your enemy, and neither are any of the other end users of this incredible-but-highly-flawed technology.

...

this morning was okay, i walked mr smear to school and then continued on to the post office to return a bunch of stuff we bought that doesn't fit.

thoughts for the walk to and from the post office: the generative ai thing, and "real mean pick up after their dogs".

i cleaned out more crow poop from a windowsill 🤮, then gd and i did some grocery shopping, interrupted halfway by a visit from a friend. i ended up leaving for work a bit later than planned, but it was fine.

it was a busy day. my lead decided to pause the project i've been stressing over the past few work days, which doesn't feel very good but i understand it. a few of us walked to sumsum for lunch, which was nice. my lunch break, which usually lasts about twenty minutes, turned into an hour because someone got me talking about shakespeare's sonnets and someone from each subsequent lunch group caught the tail end of the conversation and then started a new one :P

we had a long presentation on "nonviolent communication", which wasn't very exciting, but had some interesting bits nonetheless. that triggered a political discussion with my lead that got a bit heated, but i think i managed to deescalate effectively.

i left early to pick up a handheld vacuum cleaner because ours finally died. they were out of stock, as was the closest store. [in retrospect, i could have tried their competitors across the road]

oh, yeah - and our washing machine's leaking. so i have to take care of that in the morning :/

i walked home, and tried to get through mr smear's homework with him.

that... did not go well. it went very badly. it went a lot worse than usual. he still doesn't get that this is home, and that he can't escape being jewish, and that refusing to integrate is only hurting him.

and this was all before we addressed the fact that his hebrew teacher sent me a report today informing me that he still hasn't been participating.

we had dinner, while gd simmered with rage.

we tried again with the homework. things got even worse. gd lost it. on the one hand, she was really, really harsh with him. on the other, i believe he needed it. he's developed a bizarrely warped view of how the world works and what's fair and what's not, and it's really not serving him.

hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

i played through inscryption, then responded to aethersmith, and then decided that i didn't have it in me to get any work done so i've been doing minesweeper.online quests while watching youtube videos. i'm starting to fall asleep now. maybe tonight will be the night 🤞

morals and dilemmas

 i'm quite upset right now, and the current upset is triggering an earlier upset and everything's getting mixed up in my head.

[takes about half an hour to trawl the interwebs to see if he's referred to aethersmith by "name" before or determine which to use]

so a couple of days ago i heard about the studio ghibli filter, and i ran our family photo through it. the result was gorgeous, and i'm really pleased with it. today, aethersmith post the following comment on my photo: "this is gross. and shits all over artists." and then tahoma reposted something about how miyazaki is deeply upset by the use of the filter, so we shouldn't use it. 

aethersmith and i have been arguing about generative ai since it became a thing, he's very upset that training models on artists' works without consent or compensation is unethical. he's not wrong.

having said that, though, the use of generative ai is - to my mind - not quite so cut-and-dried. art has been cannibalizing art since its invention, and the only real difference between what ai models are doing and what human artists have been doing is that they're commoditizing it and doing it at a scale that's making us a lot more sensitive to it. imagine banning the sale of painting equipment, or preventing people from reproducing others' artworks... that could never make sense.

i'm sad that miyazaki hates it, but whether he appreciates it or not i see this whole ghibli filter trend as a beautiful tribute to his works. i believe a lot of other people do too.

pandora's box is open, and it's not going to close any time soon. i hope that this is simply a growing pain and that we evolve to a place where we have amazing tools that work for everyone, not just consumers. i believe that we can get there, and i believe that we must get there.

...

and that triggered upset over the brief conversation horseman and i had earlier regarding the zombie apocalypse that's been rapidly emerging around the globe. the hysterical destruction of tesla vehicles and infrastructure by people who believe that climate change is an emergency is mind-boggling. the complete rejection of facts or any level of rationality and fair-mindedness with regards the war in israel is mind-boggling. everyone has finally lost their minds after decades of "active measures" and disinformation campaigns and enemies of the west infiltrating its media and its universities.

gd and i were discussing this morning how a hidden aspect of the trans agenda is self-sterilization, and that there's a sibling component to that in how the west is leaning more and more towards tolerating and encouraging people who don't have children, and in doing so opening the doors to enemies performing a "land and expand" conquest, while convincing themselves that tolerating their enemies' intolerance makes them morally superior and anything else is racist bigotry.

i hope we all wake up from this dystopian nightmare before it's too late.

...

i didn't sleep much last night, and i didn't sleep well. we had some unpleasantness getting up in the morning, but it passed quickly, and after mr smear left for school i took care of a couple of things and then accompanied gd to her dental imaging appointment.

we arrived on time, at the right place, but there was no appointment. i tried getting hold of our dental clinic but there was no answer, and we were in the middle of resigning ourselves to having to go there in person to make a new appointment when the technician (or dentist?) picked up the phone and intervened, taking no prisoners and making it clear to whoever was on the other end of the line that it's not fair that patients are blamed for receoptionists not doing their jobs.

he handed me his phone and my jaw dropped as the woman on the other end informed me that we had an appointment booked, but hadn't paid. when i translated for gd, her jaw dropped too. this is all very literal jaw-dropping, by the way, we stared at each other, mouths agape, because we both remember very clearly paying for the appointment.

regardless, we instructed her to deduct the payment and she released our booking, and five minutes later we were out of there, having thanked the man profusely for going to bat for us.

...

the workday began with a rocket attack, so i took my coffee down into the basement for the first time (previously i'd just hung out in the stairwell, but i was curious).

...

highlight of my day: i helped our security consultants secure authorization for a contract for an important tool. afterwards, i overheard one of them discussing password policies, and i
(respectfully) got into it with him. i was getting some support from his coworkers, but then their Big Boss arrived (he looked vaguely familiar) and he asked him to step in.

he didn't hesitate to agree with my assessment - that password policies should enforce complexity and be easy to remember, not check arbitrary industry-standard compliance boxes that only cause people to behave in counter-productive ways. and any developer will happily accept occasionally using a second-factor authentication method (like fingerprints) over having to regularly reset their password.

after another round or two, they were enthusiastically on the same page and i really hope they manage to figure out how to implement a policy accordingly. as i told them: if they can get this right, every player in the industry will have their backs and be excited to work with them.

...

a couple of us interviewed an applicant in the afternoon. i'd prepared pretty well - though i've learned a bunch of things through the experience - but the actual interview was a bit awkward and it was only when pressed (afterwards) that i was able to put my finger on what was bothering me.

...

i didn't accomplish what i'd set out to, but i did learn a lot. i came home and had barely enough time to get mr smear through a page of his math homework, but he did such a good job and with such a good attitude that i was happy to put on an episode of the simpsons (homer the vigilante) in spite of it being too late for screentime.

after mr smear went to sleep, gd and i resumed watching slow horses. this is because i mentioned to my coworker how disappointed we were with its politics, and he threw me a spoiler that made us want to give it another chance. so i guess we'll see.

...

i've been playing inscryption again (tonight's the first night i've been feeling alright about taking things easy in days). i ended up doing a ridiculous run, with an unkillable geck (x2 thanks to goobert) and a reptile totem with an ant spawner sigil, and then an ouroboros that i was forced to sacrifice that was offered back to me, and then i put a morsel sigil on it, for completely OP combinations.

blame it on someone else

so the past couple of days have been all about imposter syndrome. i've been working very superficially with our tech stack, and i'm now knee-deep in shit with no idea where the shit is coming from. i did some studying today and i'm currently running scripts in the background, over and over, tweaking what chatgpt and claude have been giving me and praying that they're not running me in circles.

because today has not been a great day for AI for me. i tried making a simple game in the morning using claude - "vibe coding" - and all i got was a thorough waste of my time. i'm now repeating that attempt on base44.com, hopefully that'll be better.

thursday:

i slept poorly.

i went to work early, while gd went to get her foot x-rayed. it was a weird day, it included some really good conversations but not a lot of success. and by not a lot of success, i mean if i look back at the chats with my lead, i feel completely useless.

at least i managed to get something done before shabbat, though, and i seem to be understanding a lot more tonight.

happy hour was... happy. the big announcement was excellent news, but it's weird to me that we skipped another announcement that was just as big to me - my previous CEO has signed on with us, and if i understand correctly he's going to be my new CEO as well. that's pretty good news :)

yesterday:

i slept poorly again.

yesterday was exhausting. not only did i get up with a significant to-do list looming over my head (and it still is), but we had a couple of real issues with mr smear.

i walked him to school, talking him through which buildings to run to if a siren goes off and what to do if their doors are closed. then i picked up some snacks at the grocery store and came home, dropped them off and caught a bus to ramat aviv because that's where our clothing order ended up. so that burned an hour of my friday morning, and all the while i was stressed about how long it was taking because i expected mr smear to call me about his juggling class.

he called me *just* as i hopped off the bus next to our apartment. i grabbed a banana (to prevent hanger) and walked to the school.

he was sitting with his best friend and his little sister, and it was extremely difficult to convince mr smear to try a different class when the sister was doing her best to convince me that mr smear really likes being at home and i should take him with me 🙄

i eventually - magically, almost - managed to get him to try photography. he claims that he enjoyed it, but now that i think about it there's a good chance he might not have actually gone.

i say this because at the end of school, he called me to report that the kid who'd bullied him a couple of weeks ago had attacked him again. this time getting physical.

just before mr smear arrived home, he explained to me what happened and i sent a message to the boy's mother. she responded that it sounded like there had been an incident, but that it wasn't his instigation. his friend's dad dropped him off, so i scrambled downstairs and asked him if he could describe what happened... and the story came out, well, different.

family meeting.

it didn't take long to get the full story out of mr smear, at which point i was thoroughly embarrassed both by his behavior and by his lying to me about it and by having written what i wrote to the boy's mother. so we called them up, and mr smear apologized.

it wasn't the most authentic-sounding apology, but it was good enough.

...

the rest of the afternoon was alright, i guess. i managed to get him through a couple of pages of homework, and he came to shul without any fuss. the experience was pretty good, and the walks there and back were good. and we had a very pleasant evening.

today:

i slept a bit better, but not well.

it was a slow day, and it was another day of stomach issues. but we did re-watch the original rocky, and although most of it was too slow or adult-themed for mr smear's sensibilities, he did join us for the iconic training montages and the fight, and he really enjoyed those.

i took mr smear out for quite a walk this afternoon, it was almost all good and he agreed that the lotus cream and salted oreo ice cream was worth it :)

after getting mr smear into bed, gd finally watched the second half of the first slow horses episode (i've now seen the first half three times), and it's political angle that i'd successfully ignored on my first watch really got under gd's skin, and now it's under mine, and sonofabitch i'm out.

goddamnit.

...

it's past 1am and i'm still seeing red on my deployment attempts. i'm calling it a night. thanks for nothing, AI. or... thanks for not enough, AI. i should be grateful for all the assistance, but it would probably be better for me to just have struggled with documentation and tutorials instead of leaning on a perpetual sense of false hope.

gurgle splat (and a review of our son)

 i did get a (literal) couple of hours' sleep before my alarm went off this morning. most of them, anyway.

mr smear was great this morning. he was rewarded accordingly, with multiple reminders that it's a special treat. gods help us.

the skin under my fingernail is splitting again. this is the third or fourth time since winter started and i'm so over it.

gd is very much over her damaged toe, but she insisted on not going to the clinic and instead going to her sewing lesson ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the work day was a struggle and a half, it was very frustrating and a lot of what i had issues with made me feel rather dumb. otherwise, i had a couple of good syncs with coworkers, i finally got to sumsum for lunch (one of the syncs in question, fascinating talk), and my stomach gave me trouble pretty much the entire day. also, i'm regaining weight... i have definitely not been eating responsibly.

...

in the late afternoon gd and i met with the guy who did mr smear's psych evaluation for a feedback session. it was very comforting hearing that we've already got a good understanding of his abilities and his struggles, though it's heartbreaking that so much of his hardship is trauma response, primarily from immigrating and bullying (but also his fear of coming into contact with dairy).

we've been given some helpful recommendations and we'll continue doing what we can. and the school has absolutely no validation for medicating our child.

...

i left work pretty late, but got to enjoy some of my leftovers dinner (i avoided tonight's pizza) with gd and mr smear, and after we got mr smear into bed the two of us watched about half of john wick (neither of us have seen it before). and then i got back to working, after forty minutes deciding that i'd had enough.

i suspect that tomorrow's going to be a reckoning of sorts.

quiet

 i've been having trouble sleeping tonight, after crashing pretty early (i finished watching the first episode of slow horses, sonofabitch i'm in). after randomly scrolling through reddit threads* i lay quietly thinking about stuff.

quiet in mind, as much as in body.

i've been thinking a lot about having to face the polygraph, and as i said to gd earlier - i don't know how it'll go, and i don't expect going through this to magically resolve anything from the previous trauma, but in a way i feel like it's facing something big and that in itself would be an achievement. i'm psychologically ready to face the music, and i'm at a point in my life where what will be asked of me really isn't much of a price to pay.

i've been thinking a lot about alignment recently, and how long i've been operating professionally from a baseline misalignment, and while i'm certainly stressed about integrating well into my new role and impressing my employers and coworkers, i'm in a better place than i've been in what feels like an extraordinarily long time.

* why am i still looking at reddit? mainly for inscryption posts, and i added a few movies to my watch list.

...

our day could have started well, because gd's back finally relaxed a bit. but our day didn't start very well, and that's to say that it started off pretty badly... but by the time mr smear needed to leave for school we were all in a better place for it. it feels like the theme of the last week, to be honest. i accompanied him to school, and that served like a really pleasant reset to the day.

then gd and i hurried to misrad hapnim to continue renewing her passport. the clerk we were supposed to return to was on reception duty so it took a little while for us to get to him; while waiting in line, a lady told me how it was my "lucky day" because there were relatively few people waiting, and i turned to gd and said that after everything we've been through, i feel like any day that we're here in israel, that we're able to come to misrad hapnim and expect service, is a lucky day.

the clerk gave us a name and told us to tell them that we'd been there the day before, which made me pause, but i shut my mouth and did as i was told. we found the person - i think she's a manager - and when i told her what he'd told me to, she said "yes, i remember, i'm the one who signed it yesterday."

i couldn't stop myself from starting to say "huh, but we..." before realizing what was happening and shutting my mouth accordingly 🤣

she sat us down in front of another clerk, and we were out of there about five minutes later. great success!

...

my work day was alright. i ran into trouble with cdktf - it's documentation is arguably worse than AWS documentation, which is saying something - and just set up what my coworkers needed manually and left "the right way" for another day.

startup life.

i wanted to go find the closest sumsum salad bar, but then got diverted to the hummusia equivalent of a dive bar. the hummus was alright - not amazing - but the atmosphere was excellent 👌

it was a troubleshooting / headscratching sort of a day. i left the office at a reasonable time, got through a page of maths homework with mr smear without any bad feelings, we continued watching the fifth harry potter movie over dinner, and - aside from navigating an emotional outburst from gd* - the evening was relaxed.

* it was about not getting treatment for her foot, and i think we're going to need to visit the clinic tomorrow and try to get her an emergency appointment. we've been so concerned about her back the past few days we completely forgot about it.

...

i've been up for a few hours now, and i'm not sure if i'm going to be ready to go to bed anytime soon, but every time i think about sleeping i hear the sirens going off in my mind. fucking houthis.