the salute

 good gods, i woke up this morning to find feeds flooded with musk's apparent nazi salute. here's a post on the topic for any of you who're freaking out about not much.

also: 

this morning started well, with mr smear getting up early and the two of us having a great chat before taking off for school - i taught him cursive writing, which he was excited about, and also had some ideas for that game i've been thinking about.

after dropping him off and returning home, i settled into a long conversation / pitch with swordschool, which was exciting and fascinating but by the end of it my brain was melting... as usual with our chats :P

the biggest things i've taken care of today: signing the severance contract with my boss, re-applying for gd's therapy authorization, transferring tooth fairy money to mr smear, sitting with gd as she called her OB/GYN's secretary (who claimed not to have received anything in writing, after she'd already responded in writing two weeks ago to confirm that she has gd's file), did the dishes while gd took care of the projector's annual cleaning, spent a lot of time on phone calls with the municipality about electronic recycling (the sites either don't exist, or aren't marked at all) and "school fees" (personal insurance for mr smear, whatever that means), and threading through all these items i played a great run of inscryption that completely bombed towards the end.

when i realized that i needed somewhere quiet for my interview, i then also realized that it was a half hour earlier than i'd thought it would be. so i quickly slugged down my coffee that i'd just warmed up, jumped on a bus and am currently sitting in my office building buzzing quietly, nervously, and felt the need to dump all of the day so far because i felt it was dragging on my consciousness.

it doesn't help that i've done nothing towards the exercise i'm supposed to be working on for the other company.

hopefully the interview will go well.

ritual insanity

yesterday the ceasefire went into effect. more psychological warfare, more terrorist propaganda, more anxiety. at least the first three hostages made it out alright, which was an enormous relief. i don't understand the schedule for the rest of the jesus-fucking-christ *third* of the hostages they're holding, but at this point i don't trust or believe anything to hold or make sense.

it's a relief that trump is now the american president. at least he's less likely to make things harder for us than the democrats have been...

...

i'm a bit tired, and sore. it's just past midnight, my brain's a bit fuzzy.

i dropped mr smear off at school, completely oblivious to the fact that it was a field trip day. and he'd left his phone at home. i came back, and then gd and i went off to our guidance session.

amongst other things, all three of us (the therapist, myself, and gd herself) learned that gd has been losing patience with the "play therapy" sessions. and i realized that we're going to have to be very careful about signing him up for the art school lottery...

we bussed home, i had breakfast, and then took off for the dermatologist. i had a list prepared, and was relieved to learn that most of the things that have been bothering me are just irritating getting-older-with-overly-sensitive-skin things, nothing dangerous or infectious (well, aside from one minor thing that i knew about, and now need to see a plastic surgeon for).

her exact description was "you have a ginger's skin" :P

on the way to pick mr smear up i saw photos from the field trip, and by then it was too late to cancel his hebrew tutor... fortunately, she was able and willing to make up the lesson in the evening.

a little later, while waiting for the kids to return, i had an awkward conversation with our hardcore-democrat friend's hardcore-democrat parent, and things got a bit uncomfortable.

mr smear got off the bus so grossed out that he wouldn't stop (literally) spitting, which was quite embarrassing. he claimed to be feeling sick, but i'm pretty confident it was psychological because he'd been sitting next to a sick, coughing kid the entire ride :/

on our way home, we purchased his next hebrew book: a translation of the first harry potter. i hope this goes well!

the next couple of hours were a mix of getting mr smear to do his homework, trying to read more about the exercise i'm doing, and then eventually taking my kindle to the couch and reading/napping for a while.

...

mona lisa overdrive: five stars for vision and depth, but it's hard to follow.

i recently re-read neuromancer, which has aged superbly and is nothing short of miraculous. i chased that with count zero, which takes a while to get warmed up and ends with a character abruptly tying up all the loose ends.

and then there's mona lisa overdrive. brilliant world-building, phenomenal ideas and a grand vision for bringing everything across the three novels together... but for the most part i found it incoherent. some scenes blew me away with how ingeniously and cleverly they were rendered, and some just left me feeling confused about who was doing what and why. i still enjoyed reading the book, but i feel like i missed a whole lot of stuff and i would need to go back and re-read it to put all the pieces together.

what i'd *really* like, though, is to see this adapted into a graphic novel or television series. i feel like gibson may just have been biting off a little more than even he could chew.

...

i took mr smear to his tutor and spent half an hour with a decaf coffee while studying the code, with a south african voice engaged in an intense conversation about investec nearby and an enormous flock of monk parakeets in the trees across the road erupting in a loud debate that lasted a few minutes and drew angry yells from someone in the building.

i picked up mr smear and we returned home, i helped him with his math homework and we watched the simpsons over dinner.

...

so far we're up to '92 (season 3), and there're two simpsons predictions nobody ever talks about:

1. with all my criminal buddies

2. otto the school bus driver not having a valid license. i'm not going to share it, but we have a video of mr smear's class stuck on a bus last year chanting "shame! shame!" at their bus driver after he arrived with an expired license 🤣

trade-offs (ceasefire?)

the psychological terror continues. now we pray each day for the (relative) well-being of the hostages that we're paying for in future blood as we release serial and mass murderers who have every intent on continuing to try to wipe us out.

i'm trying to not think about what we're doing and what it means but it's really hard, and there's no clear right course of action available to us. i hope our "leaders" have secured us more lives than we've already lost, and i pray we have a real plan for whenever this "ceasefire" falls apart.

...

if there's a silver lining to this shitstorm cloud, it's that otzma hayehudit has left the coalition. thank fuck.

yesterday:

it was a relaxed start to the day, but then there was another rocket attack by the houthis (who the fuck are these assholes?!) followed by a massive fight to get mr smear to come out with me for a ride, even though he'd already agreed.

what followed was gd sitting and talking him through things, for what felt like forever (probably about 20 minutes to half an hour), and then fifteen minutes of him calming down, and then...

... and then we were off. i pumped us his deflated front tire, we took a rather roundabout route to try and stay on reasonably good bike paths, and we stopped occasionally because he needed rest, but ultimately we ended up at givon square, where we stopped to have a bite - a very large bite - at schnitt.

not too far from the stabbing attack that took place in levontin :/

the food wasn't amazing, but mr smear was having such a good time that he actually - unsolicited, i might add - thanked me for taking him out on such a great day ^_^

the ride home was good too, including a long stop on a bench on rothschild to have a heart-to-heart.

the rest of the evening went really well, including a really fun session playing inscryption together, and bedtime was a riot.

then gd and i settled down to watch the end of the third venom movie. omg. the writing in the first part was weak, but by the end it felt like a parody of an eighties action flick and i turned over in disgust before passing out on the couch.

today:

i slept alright, for the most part. we had some trouble getting mr smear ready for school, but we left the apartment in good spirits anyway. when his friend and his friend's sister caught up with us crossing the road i hurriedly said goodbye so they could enjoy their walk together, then made my way to the clinic to try and figure out what they want in order to authorize gd's therapy sessions.

turns out... they don't really know. so they made me an appointment with our family doctor, who then sent me off to the hospital, where i had a bit of a back and forth before they sent me off. in the afternoon gd's therapist called and i explained to her what i'd understood, hopefully we'll get things right soon.

...

it's been a day full of distractions. i spent some of the morning working on the exercise, and managed to figure out how to get the thing running, and then some of the afternoon reading through their whitepaper to try and understand how all the pieces fit together. i spent a chunk of the day taking mr smear to his therapy session and handling him doing his homework. i've been made responsible for the keys to the bomb shelter for the building. i've been contacted by a company i interviewed for before taking my current (now-last) job.

it's been a day, so far. it's been a day.

the game

yesterday (thursday night's a blur):

i got up early and started configuring my company computer to be able to work on the job application (my ssh and git configurations were very specifically set up for work, and not compatible with personal stuff). that took a lot of effort.

once that was taken care of, i started following the instructions for getting set up with the exercise. of course i encountered hiccups along the way that took lots of time to resolve and had nothing to do with the exercise itself... and then i finally got everything looking like it was up and running, but it wasn't.

at that point i tried setting things up on my windows machine, but that was a complete wash. i think i'm going to try again in a docker container and see if that makes more sense.

i took a break to pick mr smear up from school with gd, then took a walk to the supermarket to pick up some healthy snacks for the weekend. then i did the dishes, and had a long chat with horseman that was mostly about ideology and narrative but concluded with a discussion about a game idea i've been brewing. by that point, i was pretty much all in on the weekend.

i took mr smear to the synagogue for the friday night service, which was a corrective experience for him - we both enjoyed the service itself, and none of the babies were screaming. the walks there and back were good, too.

the evening was pretty good in general, and after everyone else went to bed i settled in to try out the tribe must survive that nystire gifted me (thank you!!) - i played until my eyes refused to stay open, it feels very much like don't starve together, but i felt a lot less stressed playing it. i mean, it was a while ago that we tried the latter, so i now feel compelled to replay it so that i can make a fair comparison.

either way, the concept, artwork and atmosphere are great!

today:

i got up early (again) and put together a document for the game idea i spoke to horseman about that's been on the boil since thursday morning. it's a combination of a bunch of different ideas that have been simmering over the past couple of years, and i'm really excited to flesh it out!

unemployment vibe

 i got up early this morning and began looking over the job application exercise i've been given. it's interesting, and meaningful: they took my request seriously and i'm to contribute something real to their open source project. this is good.

the rest of my time at home was spent fighting mold blooms with gd. we had a little left to do this evening, and i'm hoping that we're going to be okay for a while.

we tried calling her OB/GYN, but there was no answer. we'll try again tomorrow.

...

i arrived at the office, our reservist was finally back after some months stationed in gaza. we filled him in on what we've been working on, and then it was time for our all-hands.

as this post's title suggests, it wasn't great. we're officially shutting our doors. we knew it was a possibility, but it doesn't stop it from being a sad surprise and a real bummer.

it's also a tiny bit scary, but intellectually i'm pretty sure we're all going to be okay.

we toasted the company, then headed out to catch a bus to a restaurant for our "last supper". there wasn't much for vegans, but one of the modified salads was nice and it was a great excuse not to break my diet. speaking of which - i'm down more than a kilo since i panicked over the weekend, which is encouraging.

after that, most of us went for coffee in the unseasonably warm afternoon, then returned to the office (well, there was a back and forth and an opportunity for me to sync with gd and my mom) and talked a bit more.

then i gathered all my belongings, including the m2 macbook i'm about to buy for about half price, and walked home.

...

i guess the most apt description for me today is "all over the place". i'm fine. but i'm not. i'm praying i do well with the exercise and get an offer, because that's the optimal path. i'm looking forward to investing some time in my side projects.

ultimately, i'm going to continue to take each day as it comes and hope for the best.

the not-so-good doctor

 once upon a time, in 2018, gd and i were trying for another baby. gd's OB/GYN prescribed a medication that was supposed to increase her fertility, but instead triggered early menopause and obliterated any chances of her having more children.

i recently spoke to someone who's working in menopause studies, and mentioned this story, and she asked me what the medication was - but gd has forgotten and i have no records of it. so i've requested her medical records from her OB/GYN.

after two ignored emails, i called him up this morning. he knew exactly who i was, had all the details in front of him, and not only refused to release her records but directly lied about having prescribed any medications at all.

i was fuming - i'm still fuming - at his revolting behavior. although it's very clear to me that he's attempting to protect his ass from a malpractice lawsuit, but after making a mistake and hurting a patient he's now doing intentionally doing something that could interfere with her new practitioner's history-taking, even though we're living in a different country.

this evening i read the following. i don't know where this is going, but now i *know* we need to get hold of her records:

The Promotion of Access to Information Act 2000 gives everyone the right of

access to records held by either public or private bodies for legitimate purposes.

In the latter case, people should be allowed access to “any information that is held

by another person and that is required for the exercise or protection of any rights”.9

This includes access to health records.

Either the patient him/herself, or someone authorised to act on the patient’s behalf,

can request access; ordinarily the request itself is made in writing and should be

responded to within 30 calendar days.

...

yesterday:

another rocket attack in the middle of the night. it took forever for us to get out the apartment, and i honestly don't know why. when i got to the bottom of the stairs i saw mr smear and immediately yelled at him for not entering the shelter, then turned the corner and saw that everybody was outside the shelter because some asshole had locked it.

mr smear and i stopped to watch the demolition guys begin their work yesterday morning on the way to school, and he's decided that that's what he wants to do when he grows up.

i totally get it.

i was tired yesterday - my boss asked me if i was sleep-walking when he realized that i hadn't registered his existence while standing next to me in the elevator. it was a long work day, though by the time i left i felt like i'd made some good progress.

i knew on my way home that i was in no shape to go rollerblading.

on my way upstairs i checked the shelter and found it open. nobody's admitting to being responsible, and we still don't know who has the key :/

gd was at the dentist, so i took mr smear out for falafel. it was a really good experience.

i passed out pretty soon after putting mr smear to bed, and although some of the night was spent restlessly tossing and turning i mostly caught up on sleep.

today:

after dropping mr smear off at school, gd and i met with the guy who's going to do his psychological evaluation over the next few weeks. i feel it was a pretty good meeting.

gd and i had a small fight about something on the way to the bus stop, so that sucked, but we were fine shortly after. the work day was pretty good, minus my phone call to gd's OB/GYN and its aftermath, although the rude people from my cousin's office tried to crowd us out of the kitchen at lunchtime again and it makes things really unpleasant.

...

before dinner, i realized that mr smear hadn't completed his math homework (matific). when he completed it suspiciously quickly, i took a look and saw that he didn't quite do it in the requisite spirit of the thing. i made him do a time exercise because it's one his weaknesses, and where he was struggling i coached him through.

right until he threw an absolutely wobbly because, in his words, "it's IMPOSSIBLE!" even though he'd already done exactly the same thing successfully in the previous question. what followed was a tantrum of note, with much unpleasantness.

after his shower, and a very grumbly start to dinner, he cooled off. after dinner, i wrote out the question i remembered and he sat down and breezed through it (the IMPOSSIBLE question). he then begrudgingly apologized to me for the drama, and to gd, and finally to himself (he needed a bit of coercion to do that last apology out loud, but it's fine).

he then sat down to do the actual thing. the first few questions he breezed through, but then he got stuck again on a question where it was obvious to me why: he was overcomplicating things and confusing himself to the point where he was effectively guessing.

let me just say: there was a LOT of arguing. a LOT of me attempting different ways to get him to approach the question differently. a LOT of me pushing him to "think out loud" so that i could make sense of the weird leaps of logic he was performing.

but, goshdarnit, we got it in the end. and i witnessed what appeared to be a lightbulb moment, eyes wide and mouth agape, when he realized that he was confusing the numbers 0 and 60 because the minute of an hour is effectively both.

holy fucking shit.

the rest of the evening went swimmingly. emotions and strategic arguments with my mom and gd notwithstanding, and now that i've written this all down (has it been half an hour already?!) it's time to try watching venom again.

...

scratch that. after pausing for a twenty minute discussion with gd about the ceasefire agreement and the hostages being released, how every surviving hostage is as much a tragedy as every dead one, and how traumatized we all are, and how we can move forward as a people... i don't know what i'm doing or going to do.

disillusioned

 i think today was okay.

work-wise it was a bit of a wash, which was a combination of mixed messages from the boss and manager and a dramatic lack of enthusiasm on my part.

mr smear seems to have had a good day all round. he walked out of the school with his "girlfriend", as he'd been referring to his zipped-up jacket, and his antics had me in hysterics.

my credit card declined at the grocery store in the afternoon, after we thoroughly overloaded it with grocery shopping in the morning. having said that, we're financially in a better situation than we've been in a very long time and i feel like it's safe for gd to sign up for sewing classes again.

in related news, she had a difficult day today (nerve pain / headache) but seems to be doing better from the most recent cold/flu thing. so there's that.

in the afternoon i took mr smear for a follow up with the "australian" doctor, who turned out to be danish 🤣

it looks like we did hurt his foot removing his too-small rain boots a couple of weeks ago, and the thing that the doctor saw on the x-ray appears to be a sign of normal growing bones.

i'm feeling alright. mr smear went to bed without a fuss, which is amazing. i don't know if i'm tired enough for bed yet, but i think i'm going to get off screens in a minute.

speaking of which:

between two sleeps

 i recently watched thoughty2's video on biphasic sleep. well, it's past 3am and i've just gone through the training in system shock 2, and i don't even feel like i'm doing it wrong :P

yesterday wasn't a bad day. the weather was alright, and i published and babysat a new release at work that went relatively smoothly.

my team decided to go to tamir, which is a terrible idea of you're trying not too eat too much, even if you're vegan and only ever go for their falafel. to avoid the pita i ordered a plate, which was heaped with food, in addition to a large plate of fries :P

in the evening i sent a message to the CTO i met with a couple of weeks ago, and it looks like my timing was appreciated 🤞

we're continuing to watch the simpsons, we're deep into the third season ("homer alone"). and at bedtime, mr smear has me reading calvin & hobbes. there's something magical and fascinating about re-imprinting nostalgia in a next generation.

i passed out watching the latest venom movie soon after mr smear fell asleep. i haven't been sleeping well at all, and it's mostly been due to "the usual" physical pain in my lower back and legs :(

out of it

 the weekend has come and gone, and i'm... tired. and feeling dramatically overweight - i have gained a couple of kilos, but it's less about that and more about how i've been consciously eating too much in general, and generally too much stuff i shouldn't be eating in the first place.

yesterday:

mr smear seemed pretty much fine by the morning. while he was at school, i strapped on my rollerblades and skated across the city to pick up his new rain boots, which happened to be at a place that makes great shakes. my coffee shake was excellent, and i enjoyed just sitting with it in the sun on the sidewalk.

gd hurt her back in the morning, and her cough is getting worse. it would be really nice if things could be boring for once.

after picking him up from school, we did a grocery run, and i was definitely ready for a nap by the time we returned home... only i was sent to the pharmacy to pick up something urgent. that took forever, but in addition to the meds i also picked up a couple of graphic novels translated into hebrew: spider-man: quantum quest! and amulet #1.

and some edamame, which looked really good but turned out to be bland and yucky. and a bagel, which turned out to be really heavy and didn't taste so great. and then, after finishing the bagel on the way home, i discovered that gd had made ramen that mr smear didn't want, so i garbage-bin-dadded and felt awful.

after an unsurprisingly urgent nap, i coffee'd up and did the dishes and helped gd clean the apartment. after that i read through spider-man: quantum quest!, then we had dinner, got mr smear into bed - just as the massive thunderstorm began - and then i passed out on the couch.

today:

i eventually managed to crawl into bed, with the thunderstorm still raging on, but i slept rather poorly.

in the morning, when the world had calmed down a bit, i got up and completed what remains of edith finch:

the mechanics are excitingly clever... the story is tragic. the game does an incredible job of making the experiences wonderfully vivid and disconcertingly real.

this is a masterpiece.

mr smear saw a couple of scenes over my shoulder, and he wants to play some of the stories, but avoid the really sad ones. i think that's fair.

i read some more mona lisa overdrive, then fell asleep on the couch for a while. after i got up, we all settled in to watch thor: ragnarok. we have now seen all of the great MCU movies together (minus guardians of the galaxy, that's for when he's older), and it was a great experience.

i did, however, eat too much popcorn on top of the pastry on top of the definitely over-the-top challah with peanut butter and chocolate spread that i'd had for breakfast. i'm now officially on a reduced carb diet - not low carb, but just avoiding all the obviously unnecessary ones.

i took mr smear out for a walk, which ended up a very pleasant three hours past the museum (mr smear walked into the replica terror tunnel, then immediately bolted out), sat outside habima, walked up rothschild to legenda where he had a sorbet (i'm starting on the right foot), then walked all the way back home without barely any complaining and lots of good conversation.

we arrived just in time for dinner - gd had a squash alternative to the pasta for me, which was good - and mr smear has just gone to bed after a slow but mostly pleasant bedtime ritual.

i have no idea what tomorrow will bring, but i'm once again grateful for the weekend pause.