News

My campaign to produce Shakespeare's Sonnets: A Graphic Novel Adaptation needs your help! Please sign up at https://www.patreon.com/fisherking for access to exclusive content and the opportunity to be a part of the magic!

I'm also producing a podcast discussing the sonnets, available on
industrial curiosity, itunes, spotify, stitcher, tunein and youtube!
For those who prefer reading to listening, the first 25 sonnets have been compiled into a book that is available now on Amazon and the Google Play store.

Monday, March 18, 2024

hospitalization

 an hour or two being bounced between offices until we gave up and went to the clinic, where they took pity on a miserable-looking mr smear and sent us up to the nurse who gave us the referral.

we did the ER thing from about 11am until around 9pm, it took half the day to get the PCR results from thursday and for a professor of infectious diseases to come and take a look at him: the diagnoses did end up being herpes, and he hadn't been responding well to the meds we were giving him, so we took him through for another eye examination before he was hospitalized for a couple of days' infusion.

i was already very sore and tired by then. around noon i'd had to rush home and back for medication, in the evening i rushed home and back for a t-shirt and underwear for mr smear and to pick up dinner for all of us, which gd really didn't enjoy, and for most of the day we were either walking around or sitting on uncomfortable chairs.

once we got him settled, i went home to shower and brush my teeth and pick up a couple more things and returned to relieve gd and let her go home.

it's been seven years since our last hospitalization, and it's much easier this time around. if it wasn't for a night full of alarms for IV occlusions waking me up during REM sleep it might've been the most comfortable night's sleep i've had in years.

i was a wreck after being woken up this morning, but i'm feeling okay now. and mr smear is happy because he's hooked into a bed with a screen that lets him watch youtube...

... gd just arrived, it's coffee and breakfast time.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

continuation

 how does a saturday spent playing video games, watching movies and reading comics end with us feeling more exhausted than when it began?

while a lot of the day was nice (reading american splendor: our movie year, being mr smear's wingman in word factori, watching half of inu-oh, urchin's visit), it was constantly punctured by his suffering and it was capped off with him fighting with us about brushing his teeth.

*sigh*

gd and i managed to watch two more episodes of unchained before crashing, it's really, really good.

i'm the only one who got up "on time" this morning, i took out the trash and picked up some coffee and sat down to try and figure out how to get mr smear's PCR results, take care of a few little items, and watch some of the war on children. i've only managed to get through about twenty minutes of it, but so far it's all worrying stuff we're already aware of.

mr smear got up with an eye much more swollen, so we're now trying to get a referral to return the ER and it's proving really hard.

...

oh, and with everything else going on i just realized that neither of the recommended babysitters i reached out to responded to me, so between that and the eye situation we're going to have to cancel our tickets to watch my friend's documentary the shoshani riddle on tuesday :(

Saturday, March 16, 2024

outbreak

 thursday:

i don't remember if it was wednesday or thursday, but there were hours of work spent hunting down bugs that were introduced by copilot. copilot certainly helped me get the code written faster, but that's the first time i've had to deal with a real bug hunt for a mistake i would never have made had i written it all myself...

early in the afternoon, gd took mr smear to the clinic to get his eye checked out - he'd been suffering from an outbreak for a day or two, we initially thought it was just a scratch and by wednesday evening it was starting to look worrying. the doctor wasn't sure, but she thought it might be herpes and i immediately became anxious - i've been nervous about herpes keratitis since my officer's course teammate developed it.

i sent off some photos for an online consultation with a dermatologist, and in retrospect it's pretty amazing how quickly one got back to me. by 4.30 i was on my way to meeting gd and mr smear at the hospital with a referral for the children's ER in hand.

it took about an hour before we got to see the triage nurse. after another hour in the waiting area with the kid with a scary cough who refused to wear his mask and a row of vending machines with exactly zero products appropriate for children, i approached the receptionist and asked how long the average wait was post-triage - one hour? two hours? she was immediately offended that i would ask such a vulgar question, and of course it would be less than an hour...

... mr smear's number finally got called another hour after that. the doctor examined him, and then sent us to an opthalmologist in a different building, where we waited again, but fortunately not for too long.

after the opthalmologist, we returned to the ER as instructed. after another half an hour of waiting, i approached the counter and asked if we'd been forgotten: "no, we're still waiting for the opthalmologist to enter the summary". holy shit, we could have waited until the next morning for that, and gd was starting to freak out because she wanted to get out of there in time to pick up whatever medication would be prescribed.

so they contacted the opthalmologist, who eventually did what he had to do, while i sat entertaining mr smear with random jokes from the internet and gd paced up and down. then we went around in circles between the doctors and nurses while they tried to figure out what to do about the four or five different possible diagnoses they'd come up with, and took a couple of samples.

it was just about 11pm when we finally left, all three of us completely exhausted.

yesterday:

we all needed to sleep in a little bit yesterday. mr smear woke up complaining that it was getting worse, and we were all in a shitty mood and totally over the day before it began. we (slowly) got moving and went to the clinic, where we were fortunate to find his paediatrician in her rooms. once we'd all figured out how we were proceeding, gd went to the pharmacy and mr smear and i went to get breakfast bagels.

i'd been talking to the guy at the counter for a minute when i turned around to find mr smear furiously rubbing his eye with the edge of his glasses, and while i want to say "it took everything i could not to freak out", the truth is i absolutely freaked out.

holy @#!$.

i rushed him off to gd, who thankfully had something to wipe his glasses and his face with, but it's been twenty four hours and i'm still not really over the horror.

i returned alone to apologize and pick up the bagels, then met up with them to eat breakfast. then pick up a treat for mr smear - the 14th diary of a wimpy kid book, the 13th wasn't available [though i just picked it up on kindle for him] - and then come home to try and get some rest.

by sundown i managed to put out the article i'd been fiddling with over the course of the week, so that was a relief.

today:

we're still trying to get some rest. we're just breathing into the day one moment at a time.

mr cat sent me the first draft of the dedication for the comics, and it's looking great, so today i'm going to try to get him the margin notes i promised i'd send "in a bit" yesterday :P

Thursday, March 14, 2024

located

 my mother did manage to find the song! i'm not just impressed by her getting her hands on the books, and relieved that one of the books was the right one, but i'm also proud of her for reading through both of them well enough to find what i was looking for ^_^

it's called "אני מחכה לאחי החייל" and i've no idea who wrote it, but i definitely got the first verse right. i also didn't expect it to hit me right in the feels, i tried reading it to gd this morning, but at some point just couldn't speak through the sobs.

אני מחכה לאחי החייל

יש לי אח גדול,
בן עשרים אולי,
הוא יכול לעשות הכל,
וקוראים לו שי.

אחי שי הוא חייל,
הנה הוא פה בתמונה.
שי הוא חייל גיבור
ושומר על המדינה.

אם שי הולך למלחמה -
אמא נורא דואגת;
אבא שומע רדיו כל שעה
וכולם יושבים בשקט.

והנה בא מכתב
משי שלנו - הטוב;
"אני בריא וחזק
להתראות בקרוב-בקרוב".

אלוהים, לך אני מתפלל -
לגמור את המלחמה ודי.
תן שלום לישראל.
שיבוא מהר הבייתה שי.

...

tuesday:

i'm struggling to recall tuesday. i vaguely remember that there were at least a couple of points of interest, but i'm at a loss right now.

one thing i do remember, though, is that at bathtime i explained to mr smear how our ears downsample and we only hear about a third of what's said to us, and that we complete what we hear with context and expectations. with the implication being that we literally can't hear what other people are saying when we're upset.

yesterday:

yesterday started off scary: i woke up fine at 5am to go to the toilet, but on my way back to bed my back began to spasm. with some help from gd i miraculously managed to stave off the full spasm and by the time i got to the office i was more or less okay. i'm still nervous about it, though.

also, it looks like i might well have psoriasis.

it was a busy morning. gd and mr smear were both upset because gd, tired and in pain, spends forty five minutes every morning preparing breakfast and lunch and mr smear doesn't want to eat what she puts in front of him. the conversation that we'd had the night before came in handy: i asked mr smear if he could make himself calm enough to hear what we were saying, and he said "no". so i stopped trying, and on the way to school we managed to talk everything out.

this morning went much better.

i spoke to my mom, who informed me that uncle hate has shuffled off his mortal coil and that she was asked not to fly to montreal right now, which i guess is a bit of a relief. i sent my aunt and her kids condolences, glad that gd's supportive of me playing nice in spite of how they treated us.

i managed to get an authorization sorted out at the clinic, then picked up my favorite onion bagel, then went through to one of the clinics at the hospital to find out if and when gd had an appointment, and went on a side-quest to explain to management that their signage is insufficient. they were shocked, disbelieving, and i'm not 100% convinced they're going to do anything about it.

the work day went well, it was long but had some good moments.

the south african foreign ministry appears to be serious in threatening south africans who've served in the idf. assholes.

in the evening i watched another episode of unchained with gd, then tried to write an article i'm been stewing over for days, then crashing.

today:

mr smear was good today, breakfast went well. gd's on a mission to gather her thoughts about our cape town community, i'm going to help her put out an article (on whatever medium) in her own voice because she's really upset about how woke jews around the world are behaving when they have no clue what's going on over here.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

a better day

 the bug from the sunday continued to drive me crazy until the early afternoon, when my boss told me to just do what the AWS representative advised. i didn't think it was the right thing to do, and i expressed my opinions, but i began implementing it as instructed.

just one last test.

fortunately, my tests were pretty solid and i finally had some real data to work with - and i discovered that the "fix" suggested by the professional would have opened a massive security hole! while i struggled to wrap my head around what was actually happening, i managed to find a solution that appears to be not only viable, but correct, and i'm now waiting to see the proof in the puddingproduction environment.

i was more shocked by how backwards the AWS implementation is than relieved that i've found a solution...

...

on sunday night, i scratched my head a bit, and a bit of my head came off. last night a dermatologist called me back and advised that i go see someone in person. gd (and dr google) think i may have developed psoriasis. i hope it's not psoriasis :(

mr smear had a much better day yesterday. the day started off awkwardly because we were both invited to talk with the school councillor; mr smear was in trouble for skipping classes on sunday (when we were having a tough morning), and i was in trouble for not warning his teacher that he was having a tough morning. gd managed to get him to his hebrew tutor and through his homework.

so: winning.

on sunday morning, i managed to install the ceiling attachment points for the shower curtain rail, but i accidentally pushed one of the screws through the ceiling and needed to wait 24 hours for the "putty" i used to fix it to dry. yesterday, when it was ready, i finally set about putting up the curtain rail... only to discover that in the month or two since i bought the damned thing and haven't been able to put it up, some of the parts went missing.

#$@!.

so now we have to wait for a handyman to swing by and see if he can help us out.

gd's really having a hard time psychologically, primarily with the war and the international response to it, on top of her daily struggle with pain which seems to have gotten worse since she's been coughing so much in the weeks we've been dealing with covid.

my mom managed to track down a couple of copies of the hebrew workbooks we had when i was a kid! it's been so long that apparently on one or two teachers even remembered the name (מדרגות or madregot), and i'm hoping that the song i still have stuck in my head is in one of them.

יש לי אח גדול
בן עשרים אולי
הוא יכול לעשות הכל
וקוראים לו שי

שי חייל והוא גיבור
אמא נורא דואגת

right, it's time to get moving.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

not really

 i didn't sleep well. again. i'm tired. apparently i need to learn to sleep on my back.

and then mr smear woke up inexplicably in fight mode. things got bad, and he crossed a few red lines. so we all had a shitty start to our day.

in the evening, i came home to find him still in fight mode, but less, and over dinner i think i managed to get through to him a little. the rest of the evening was mostly positive. he was very excited to be introduced to the idea of eating with chopsticks.

the morning's work was a bit stressful, but with a bit of help i got the job done. then three of us went off to the schnitzel place, where to accompany my usual falafel and chips i picked up a bottle of vinegar. i regret nothing.

in the afternoon i started working on a bizarre bug that seems impossible to reproduce and that doesn't make any sense. i left the office a bit late, irritated by the potential problem and hoping that somehow i'll wake up with some kind of direction...

quiet

 it was a peaceful shabbat. after so many hours invested in bloons adventure time, i decided to pick up the three characters that unlock all the levels and i regret nothing. while mr smear playing human fall flat, gd and i started watching unchained last night, and we watched another episode today, and it's really good so far.

my favorite parts of the day were

1. getting sandwiches at our local vegan cafe with mr smear reading a book at a different table while we just enjoyed being there and doing nothing

2. mr smear and me putting together the free warhammer figure that he received yesterday

3. getting the original dedication pages to the illustrator and putting out the latest pages, only a month and a half after receiving them

4. mr smear and me playing rain world, first taking turns and then vs in the arena mode

i've spent most of the last few hours watching random youtube videos, overall not the greatest use of my time. now i'm regretting starting a macos update on my work computer because it's taking much longer to get to some kind of checkpoint than i was expecting...

...

my back's been hurting me a lot the past few days. i hope i manage to sleep better tonight.

Friday, March 08, 2024

define success?

 today's tom nash report is both encouraging and discouraging. it seems militarily sound, but what about the hostages? we leave them there for another month? that's just insane. though no less insane that any of the events that have brought us to this point.

i'm very glad i'm not in a position where i need to make these kinds of decisions.

...

as evidence by my last post, i didn't sleep very well last night. getting up this morning was hard. i'm grateful that mr smear eventually got himself sorted out because i had zero energy available to deal with the usual morning stuff.

gd and i began the day watching the secrets, which i just realized i've seen twice before. i recalled the scene that i'd been uncomfortable seeing while sitting in a movie theatre with my mother (not as bad as i remembered), and i recalled the ending, but everything else was like a nice surprise seeing old friends :)

during a break (one of the main reasons i like seeing movies at home... i know, imma gettin' old and cranky) i managed to bend the shower curtain rails and it looks like i did a good job. i'd planned on putting them up, too, but i was too tired by the time we eventually got back from our errands so i'll try again on sunday.

we picked up mr smear, dropped his school bag off at home, then jumped on a bus to dizengoff center. we got most of the new lens prescription story taken care of (we just have to go back early next week), we managed to pick up an inoffensive purim costume he's excited about (a non-threatening knight's helm and a sword and shield), i got some cool anime stickers for my work computer, and we had a really good lunch from our favorite vegan food stall.

i napped on contact with our couch, then later got mr smear through a page of hebrew reading, spent a good chunk of the afternoon / evening doing not much (doomscrolling, watching random things on youtube, and purchasing a volume of american splendor), and now i've done all the dishes and posted this and we're about to say kiddush.

thursday

 the day started pretty well. on the way to dropping mr smear off at school i recounted a story about a bunch of my officer's course platoon laughing in the bathroom, and i'm praying that i wrote down what initially triggered that laughter and that i'm able to find it. [was it this? that can't have been it, surely?]

the work day was very relaxed, my boss and coworker returned from their trip and had lots of stories to share. my yemenite coworker unwittingly putting loads of carolina reaper hot sauce on his food right after i started calming down from my own intense experience with it.

a video chat with our community rep and gd, and offering to meet with the rest of the leadership and the offending parties. just offering set off my anxiety, and i'm now writing this after getting up in the middle of the night - an hour or more ago - and tossing and turning while imagining addressing them.

the CEO forgetting me when ordering sweets for our "happy hour" and feeling really bad about it.

my nostrils hurting - both of them - because i can't clean them properly while working on repairing the tear. my stomach doing a number on me all day.

dropping my gear off at home after work and walking to mr smear's best friend's for a sushi night, which was both social and delicious. eventually getting home with a very full belly and getting mr smear into bed around 10.30pm...