mostly sunshine and rainbows

 today wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, because there was some drama around washing the floor, but it was mostly sunshine and rainbows. whether it was starting the day quietly reading a canticle for leibowitz (i'm finally more than two-thirds in), or spending a couple of highly enjoyable* hours playing through there is no game: wrong dimension, or going to the beach with mr smear on a gorgeous day, enjoying late afternoon fries and beers**, all followed by a smooth dinner and bedtime***.

* although at one point - when we hit a credits screen - i found myself becoming increasingly agitated by a combination of the puzzles difficulty and mr smear's unwillingness to relinquish the mouse. but i was proud of him for how he stuck with me and the dastardly puzzles until we figured them out, and for how he solved a whole bunch of them faster than i could

** his was a malt beer

*** the houthi attack was just as mr smear was going to bed, any later and it would have been much more stressful. and the vibe in the bomb shelter was vibrant and there was lots of laughter

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i'm supposed to be reviewing a PR right now, but i don't know if i have it in me or if i'm going to put it off until tomorrow morning. one of my coworkers assured an external dev that i'll have it done by tomorrow and i don't really know what it deals with yet...

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the colorado attack. the recent washington attack. major news outlets should be helf accountable and there should be consequences for propagating libel and propaganda. they're literally making this happen.

the harvest

 i went to bed much later than i should have last night, mostly because i was making more progress with the language project. by the time i hit the hay i was done. and i feel like i slept pretty well.

this morning got off to a rocky start. it was going smoothly enough and then gd and i had an explosive argument about mr smear + screentime + friends. it definitely could've gone better.

work today was very quiet - two of the team in the office, one CEO, an ex-saffer visitor who turned out to be an investor and whose questions about my previous CTO made me uncomfortable (otherwise our interaction was cool), followed by a surprising and very short visit by said previous CTO.

oh, and another coworker came in for a bit, we literally just shared youtube videos and political discussion*. and i learned he and his partner have adopted a husky. i feel sad about any huskies in the desert, but he seems to know how to handle it.

* triggered by the news yesterday about iranian nuclear capabilities. why the fuck didn't we take out the regime last year??

otherwise, i was assured on thursday that the pashtida was vegan, so i had two slices for breakfast. only later did i notice that its cover said GF (for gluten free) but not vegan, so i double-checked and learned that it was not, in fact, vegan :/

psychosomatic or not, i felt gross, headachy, and even a little puky at the thought. i went home, trying to hurriedly pick up some juice and ending up getting into a whole thing with the markolet owners over a refund for a 50 shekel container of apricots. which reminds me, i tried to purchase jusant yesterday and my shitty dell xps can't run it, so i applied for a refund (and received it).

it pisses me off that i spent so much money on this machine and it's never really done what it needed to do without a fight. and i'm pretty confident i can't afford a new windows machine right now.

the rest of the afternoon was spent fighting with mr smear, progressively more aggressively, until he eventually got through two fucking math exercises that weren't even a real challenge for him. even he can't tell us what that was about, after he got through them he made a point of apologizing to both of us for the drama that basically cost everyone a half a day and gained nobody anything.

although at some point gd spilled a cup of juice as she angrily rounded the table to check on him, and i put my back out helping to clean up. so there's that.

chag sameach.

beats

 it was a big day, it had ups and downs. big ups, with a sprinkle of frustrating downs.

it started with me waking up with a sore shoulder, and it's ending with me either being eaten by a mosquito or just imagining it.

we left reasonably on time, with only a minor mr smear hiccup along the way. the drive there was longer than i'd anticipated, but we arrived relatively early in the day. it wasn't quite what we expected - the party took place in an amusement park - but for a family-friendly trance event it was a pretty good space.

immediately, mr smear decided he was struggling with sensory overload and wanted to go home. we tried to calm him down, and make him understand that we weren't leaving anytime soon, with varying degrees of success.

for round one, we hit the main floor while he sat outside drawing, but soon the wind came up and he went upstairs to lie on a bench and watch the floor from above.

in retrospect, i feel really dumb for not having brought him earplugs or ear protectors. i'm guessing roughly half the other parents remembered and/or cared :P

between rounds, we ate the packed lunch in the car and then played foosball before returning to the main floor. something bothered him (i found out later it was people eating at the table he was next to) and he went and sat outside (reading on his phone, i let it go for today), and gd and i continued having a really good time dancing, enjoying a beer or three (i only had one :P), and being both amused by all the families on the floor and proud of all of us for doing precisely what our people fight and die to be able to do: live.

on the way out, mr smear actually joined us for a final dance on the second stage (a dj with a didgeridoo, mr smear wisely thought it prudent to step away from the bass bin because he was feeling the beats in his chest), and the long ride back was (long, but) very pleasant. coming into the apartment, gd made a comment about how we need to do that more often and my heart lifted ^_^

the rest of the evening was good, with mr smear and i playing some there is no game together. eventually, he went to bed. everything seemed fine.

by the third time he called for gd, i went to go and see what was going on. i was surprised to find him in tears, and i pushed him to tell me why he was crying... to which he responded that they were joyful tears, because gd had sung him a lullaby and he'd felt truly at peace for the first time in years 😭

i've spent a little time working on the language project, but it's late and it's been a big day and i think i should probably go to bed soon.

encouragement

alright, i'm *really* happy about how today went. mr smear and i went to the pool, and my biggest regret about purchasing 10 entries is that i should've gone in for a membership (we'll do that when the ticket runs out). our main purpose was him learning crawl, and he worked hard and made huge progress.

and we had a good time.

i do feel a bit bad for him that a part of his motivation is that he's worried about getting fat, but we've been explaining to him that the answer to that is doing sport and eating lots of good food. i mean, if that's what it takes to get him to stop hating sport on principle...

he also really enjoyed the shower there, i had to explain to him afterwards that there're certain enjoyment noises that one just doesn't make in a locker room 😂

we came home, switched clothing, and then headed out with gd to the mall. we had a delicious hummus (with vegan shuwarma) lunch, found him two types of swimming trunks (costumes as opposed to boardies), and picked up what seems to be a really good pair of sandals for me.

by the time we got home i was done. i showered, napped hard, and eventually got up to do the dishes so gd could make dinner.

then mr smear and i spent some time on MAZE (until he got bored / creeped out), which is completely insane (trying very hard to avoid any spoilers, but mapping out our paths in a text file). incredible artwork and concept!

kiddush and dinner, and watching the first two episodes of asterix & obelix - the big fight. so far? brilliant!

too - much - cake.

everyone else went to bed a while ago, i'm probably going to crash soon. we've got a BIG day tomorrow ^_^

buzz

 yesterday:

i felt better, at least. made more progress on the language project. waited twenty minutes at the store to pick up my "neon-nazi"s only to discover that i was supposed to wait for an sms update, but they sorted me out anyway. had a pretty productive day at work, with the biggest achievement being a coffee walk interview with someone we've been courting and who signed later in the afternoon. good for him (as a new oleh) and good for us! ate too much cake at the happy hour, brought home too much cake and nobody else wants to eat it. went through possible summer day-camps with mr smear (whose preferences surprised us) and tried to book it, but we're now waiting for them to get back to us :/

the bug zapper in mr smear's room is super bright and may have been a mistake.

a couple of hours work in the evening (to protect us from a mysterious bug that we encountered during the day), a little more of the language project, then finally passing out.

this morning so far:

getting up early, catching and crushing a fat, slow cockroach, being blown away by the dor brother's AI short film. fighting with mr smear (but winning, apparently) because i'm taking him swimming but he wants to go to his friday computer class. more progress on the language project. now getting ready to head out...

...

i hate the spice girls, abhor wannabe, but i've had it in my head the whole morning and am somehow enjoying the nostalgia of it 😶

deficit

 i didn't sleep enough, but that's normal. i was extra slow this morning, and then we had a "school team" meeting, which really took it out of me. by the time i arrived at my office i felt as if i'd already done a full day's work, and my throat was feeling scratchy, so i've been suspecting that i might have picked up a bug.

i can't right now.

i drank loads of coffee to compensate, but i still found myself passing out at my desk in the afternoon...

i got home at a reasonable hour, and i took mr smear (without any argument!) to the school to shoot some hoops, which was really fun :)

after getting mr smear into bed, i very excitedly managed to lock down a couple of mosquito zappers* inspired by the couple of nasty ones that flew in our window this evening.

* i love calling them "neon-nazis", but lipgirl called it a "little auschwitz" and that's definitely taking it

i had some wonderful breakthrough moments working on the language project, i've successfully completed today's minesweeper challenges, i watched some youtube, and i think i'm just about ready to go to bed.

...

there are two wars against israel right now (gaza is not one of them & israel is losing)

namaste

i went to bed late, but i got up way earlier than i wanted to. the day started off well, i spent the pre-school morning coaching mr smear through some last minute exam prep - he did really well! - and then rushed through an online grocery shopping so i could leave on time to get to our yoga class.

no buses for a while, i ended up arriving *just* in time.

it was a good class, not easy, with some highly amusing moments. i didn't hurt myself.

we got a good company breakfast and i showered before settling in to work; getting in and out of the shower wasn't amazing, but the shower itself is worth it!

it was a pretty successful day. but the most successful part wasn't me: i asked mr smear how his day went and i could hear how pleased he was with himself, because he's pretty confident he aced the test. i am too, but i'm more excited about him not only getting a handle on the math, but feeling good about it too ^_^

i left early to meet gd and mr smear at the pain clinic for her nerve block, but we arrived there to discover that we hadn't sorted out authorization and it costs thousands of shekels, so we rebooked, did some shopping and went home.

i got mr smear to work on cubase for a while, but to be fair a lot of the actual work was done by me. *we* put together a pretty cool beat, and i hope he learned as much as he claims he did :P

then he read a couple of pages of hebrew harry potter - well - we had an early dinner and a pleasant evening. i spent a couple of hours ironing out issues with the language project, where user registration and authentication is now good enough to move on to the interesting stuff.

it's late again. hopefully i'll sleep.

instruction unclear

 last night's sleep was relatively okay, i guess 🤷

[i just burned the tip of my tongue on my tea]

image of the day:

after leaving a big note, and directly telling two of my coworkers not to touch the server under any circumstances, i discovered it had been unplugged and the entire office was treated to my very loud, very not-amused "WHAT - THE - FUCK?!"

some of the team found the story amusing, and one of them posted the above to the entire company along with the message "instruction unclear: unplugged the cable" 😂

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i got mr smear through some basic math exercises this morning, and in the evening i worked with him on some of the matific exercises he'd been struggling with and which happened to provide great preparation for his math test tomorrow. and then he did some good hebrew reading before dinner, and all-in-all i'm relieved to see him not only improving his general attitude but gaining in math confidence as well.

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aside from the unplugging incident, work today was memorable for an unusual but mostly positive interview, and an unspeakably unpleasant bathroom incident.

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my wife is now bugging me about the language project, so i spent some time working on it this morning before leaving for the office and i'll probably do a little bit more now. tomorrow's a big day - gd's got another nerve block procedure in the afternoon - and i can't help feeling i'm forgetting something important...