dump

 the comic recommendation session was fun! and i learned a whole bunch of cool things. also, i encountered an art teacher from mr smear's previous school who was amused to put together two and two and get four regarding mr smear's artistic influences :)

i was up late playing around with kubernetes tooling, and watching news on iran, and just before bed my heart sank as i came across a photo of my old team dressed-to-impress and opening the TASE.

i should have been there, ringing the bell, and i should have been able to start looking to buy a home. instead, i'm anxiously avoiding getting started on looking for our next rental, and being confused about the pittance of unemployment that social security is sending me.

[and then, today when i pulled off my previous employer's sticker from the back of my phone, the entire back of the phone separated from the rest of the frame]

...

today started off alright, after mr smear left for school i dived in to my kubernetes tooling experiment and ending up publishing an article just before leaving to do some errands. we stopped by the baker to get feedback on the challah-peño - he liked the concept but wasn't happy with our execution of the actual challah - and he gave us some really constructive feedback which we're going to try to implement today.

the supermarket refused to accept a return that their customer support had told us they'd take, and now their customer support is assuring me that they're in the wrong and that we should be able to try again. then gd and i found a quiet corner to consult with our paediatrician cousin about mr smear, which was fine until halfway through when an obnoxiously loud family started dragging chairs and talking loudly and playing music right next to us.

and then, while we waited for mr smear to join us after school, the skies opened.

we went around the back of the mall to rescue him and his friend, arriving just as the skies cleared. both myself and mr smear's teacher had told him to bring his history book home for a test they have next week, which he assured me he had, and we walked and sploshed back home, with me complaining that gd has misled me into wearing sneakers instead of galoshes...

we arrived home, absolutely soaked, and peeled off our wet clothing and prepared for a quiet afternoon indoors with the air-conditioning on. that was when i opened mr smear's bag to remove all the wet items inside, and discovered that he'd brought home his empty history notebook instead of the textbook.

he can't be that dumb. 🤦

i very coolly lost my shit, and we redressed in the wet clothing, and i put on my massive galoshes, and we rushed out in an attempt to get to the school before they locked the gates for the weekend. 

it was a long, wet journey by bus and light rail, and mr smear left his phone behind so i also had to pay for four extra fares, but we arrived at the school to find the gates locked.

so we turned around and headed back home. it was on the second leg of our return that it began bucketing down, with high strength winds trying to rip our umbrellas from our hands and successfully (thankfully only momentarily) turning them inside out. we were thoroughly soaked by the time we got back home.

...

have i mentioned that i'm tired? i'm fucking tired.

ginger rum

 i didn't get any real work done last night. i did manage to get a lot of busywork done, upgrading my macbook and installing and configuring useful apps, and the macos upgrade was a great opportunity for me to lie down and catch forty winks.

and then i completed the installation and went to bed. i mostly slept through the night.

...

right until around 4am, when i woke up from an odd dream about having to have mr smear's bar mitzvah in a mosque, and then leaving over a large boulder next to a platform with a gap between them; i woke up in the act of trying to catch him just as he stepped off into the abyss while i was telling him that he needs to be conscious in his life.

...

at least the video for our kibbutz cousin's 70th birthday came out well. in general the morning went alright, i got some more onboarding work done before leaving for the office.

i was decidedly anxious going to work, feeling overwhelmed. i started my morning warming up in the sun on the balcony again; by the time i came inside i was overheating - as was my equipment - because it was a much hotter morning than we've had for a while. i had a few meetings, which went alright, and then i put together an update to my new boss/client informing him of my progress and of the issues i've encountered. i was a bit anxious about pulling the trigger, but i knew it was the right thing to do and hoped that it wouldn't be unwelcome.

the rest of the morning was studying / reviewing documents, and then i had an unpleasant experience with granola (i thought it was just granola, but then i had a couple of bites and realized it had dairy chocolate chips in it, and then i had the taste in my mouth while getting rid of the stuff without making a mess), and then i came home for lunch.

gd and mr smear were busy cleaning the apartment (we've realized we need him to be good at cleaning because that might be the best he can hope for, career-wise), so i ate quickly and scrambled back to the office, barely making my second meeting with one of my bulgarian teammates.

TWO... HOURS... LATER...

that was a hardcore intro to getting our environments set up and working with a whole suite of new tooling, and by the time we were done i felt much less stress overall, but also i felt like my brains were bleeding out my ears.

fortunately, i managed to write all the good stuff down.

i took a tea break on one of the balconies with an amazing view of the rush hour traffic, called gd to show her, and the two of us decided it would be hilarious to send my terrified-of-heights brother a video.

i hope he took the video in good humor 😈

i spent the next hour tidying up my notes, practicing what i'd learned and bringing some of it into team-friendlier tools, and then joined everyone upstairs for happy hour. happy hour was pleasant, nice people and good chit-chat, and i had a very nice rum and ginger beer that had more of an effect on me than i'd anticipated.

 interrupted my new boss/client and one of my teammates to say goodbye, and i got a really good vibe from them both :)

now that i've come home, unloaded the day's stories on my wife, heard some good news about a cousin who might be able to help us with mr smear, and seen my son's lego helicopter that he built without instructions, and unloaded the day's stories here, i'm about to sit down for dinner, and then go to the monthly comic-book meetup to recommend the complete ballad of halo jones.

snapping

 i didn't sleep much last night, i was super uncomfortable. then i got up, did dishes, had coffee while updating my linkedin profile and email signature for my new employer - which turned out to be considerably more complicated than i expected - and then we did grocery shopping and then i left for work.

i was cold when i left the apartment, i was very cold by the time i arrived at the office. i found myself a gorgeous spot in the sun with a cup of vanilla coffee and a beautiful view over the city, and did some more onboarding (i counted, there're four different onboarding processes and a lot of the material is outdated or irrelevant, especially for a contractor), and then there was a presentation about a new AI integration, during which i struggled to keep my eyes open, and then it was noon and i was tired, and decided to go home for lunch.

...

i was waiting for the elevator when my phone rang. it was mr smear's teacher. he was okay, she said, but... they'd put him in this "social group" - a privilege and an attempt to help him acclimate - but he was so disruptive and disrespectful that they threw him out of it. but that wasn't enough, oh no... one of the girls brought a beautiful cloth banner for the class that said

"HOUSE RULES: 1. BE KIND 2. MAKE ART 3.  LAUGH HARD 4. DANCE 5. BE YOU"

and mr smear decided that it needed a finishing touch with his marker so that 2. became NAKED ART.

i'm so fucking ashamed.

and it's not the first time he's damaged someone else's art.

i contacted the girl's father and offered to try and fix it, he was very gentle in his response but hasn't responded to my insistence to try and make things right (and to get mr smear to make things right).

regardless, mr smear has been suspended from school - tomorrow - and he's going to be responsible for catching up any work he misses... which means we are going to be responsible. 

...

the rest of the afternoon was a mess. partially because i'm obviously distracted, but also because it's now day three and i'm on the back foot with my new job. i feel like i'm drowning, and it feels pretty clear that a) most of my first three days have been a waste of time and b) that their onboarding is a hot mess.

so now i'm entering desperation mode, which means i need to make some progress tonight.

and then i came home to have a "talk", or "family meeting", or whatever-the-fuck, and then help him with homework and get through the dinner and bedtime routine without strangling him.

...

i'm fucking tired, and fucking furiously disappointed in my child, and i've got to come up with a blessing for my kibbutz cousin's 70th birthday by tomorrow morning and we've got to start apartment hunting, and i guess i just wanna curl up and cry but i can't.

being an adult is basically just saying "i''ll get to it in a week or two when things calm down" until you die.

stretched

 i'm pretty tired. it was a good day, but very long.

after mr smear left for school, i made this (gd won't let me post it, i think she's being paranoid):

which reminds me that i thought of another one in the middle of the night, but didn't write it down and forgot it :(

first thing on arriving in the office, i apologized to our client on behalf of "my team" for making him wait for me yesterday.

a lot of learning stuff, still more onboarding (finally got the big stuff done with some help from IT).

it was nice to be able to pop back home for leftover lunch.

a few conversations getting to know people, a few very awkward moments (that i made awkward).

i came to find my son's hair cut (gd did it this afternoon), and his homework done, and then i shaved and showered and we watched some more a-team over dinner and i got a bit carried away with dessert (the jalapeño pretzels and dried mango), and i've got stuff to do and i'm too tired.

good night.

double onboarding

 i'm exhausted, psychologically as much as physically, but i have to get this out before i head to bed.

yesterday:

the mold treatment needed was much bigger than anticipated, the bloom was unexpectedly large.

i left for the session later than intended, arrived later than i should have, and struggled throughout because i kept distracting myself with my side project. the guy i'd partnered with the previous week told the boss he didn't want to work in pairs, and later the boss caught me out with a question while i was typing furiously at an AI agent...

we ended earlier than planned, and i came home in time to deliver the lovely flowers my new employer had sent me to our very sweet elderly neighbor, and discuss mr smear's new school with a single parent whose kid's apparently in a worse school than mr smear's old one.

mr smear had reading homework, it was really hard but i worked through it with him. i've only now discovered that the reading was only part of it :(

dinner was delicious, it was late but mr smear had helped prepare it. my shower was almost cold, because gd had turned off the boiler at the mains instead of putting it on the timer :/

i went to bed early last night in anticipation of the big day today.

today:

i got up alright, finished the epilogue of the ocean at the end of the lane with mr smear, and after seeing him off spent the rest of the early morning keeping an eye on the news and taking care of the dishes.

i arrived on time to my new office for a few hours of onboarding, very positive. then i raced home, dropped off my swag bag (and second-hand computer that apple won't let me use without a fight), pick up a sandwich (gd won the day with her black-salt avocado toast) and walk across the bridge to the new office.

where i found my new boss waiting for me, having waited more than an hour for me because (i discovered this evening) our sales guy had forgotten to tell him i'd be in later than originally agreed 🤦

so not the greatest first impression, but the rest of the afternoon was pleasantly smooth. it's a massive corporate, though, so there's looooooooots of onboarding bullshit to wade through and i'm somehow expected to already be contributing on my first day 😩

i got home just in time to set mr smear up with his math (revision) homework while i jumped in the (hot) shower, then get through hebrew harry potter reading, eat dinner starting the third episode of the a-team (what happened to the second?!), a whole ordeal getting mr smear ready for bed and into bed, then (after some procrastination) dabbling in a bit more onboarding, and now drinking a final cup of tea before crashing and praying for a simpler tomorrow.

sleeping beauty and the last of the workday naps

i didn't sleep much on friday night, but i got up earlier than everyone and got to enjoy some "me time" catching up on newsy youtube videos over my first coffee. between the news coming out of iran and venezuela, these are insane, but insanely-exciting, times!

mr smear waking up, getting dressed, making his bed and brushing his teeth on a saturday morning because he wanted to go to the comics library

...

heading out to the library with him, giving me some focus time on my side project. oddly, the comics library was open but nobody was there, so mr smear initially sat down on a comfortable couch outside to wait for them to return. a bit later i checked on him and saw that he'd been using his phone, so i disabled his phone expecting him to come find me... i had been in the middle of updating something on my phone control solution, so i used a phone call to him to test that it was working. 

he initially told me that he was just sitting on the couch, then admitted that that was a lie and that he was in the unmanned library reading comics. i told him to at least turn the lights on :P

a little later, i dragged him out of there to go find lunch. he really didn't want to - he wasn't hungry, apparently - but it was a beautiful day. we walked to a couple of places, ending up at miznon. he still didn't want anything, so i thought i'd get myself something and let him try it.

i tasted their lavan. he tasted their lavan. he decided that he was hungry, after all. i let him have it and ordered myself another, and then spent the next far-too-long stalking up and down desperately waiting for it with its taste still on my lips.

omg it was delicious.

we returned to the library for another reading/focus session, eventually going home when they started closing down for the day.

we were almost home when mr smear thanked me for the awesome day, and told me he wanted to get me back - i didn't know what he meant at first, but then found myself explaining that he didn't owe me anything, because i'd really enjoyed my day with him too ^_^

...

finishing the first a-team episode over dinner, finishing the main story of the ocean at the end of the lane at bedtime, revisiting con man with gd and getting through six (very short) episodes before passing out.

a long night's sleep, though not a good one

starting the ocean at the end of the lane epilogue over breakfast.

discovering mold blooms (we've had a lot of rain the past week or two)

between taking care of a bunch of admin stuff, developing AI agent fatigue from my side project. it's discouraging. i was hoping to be ready to roll by tomorrow, but i'm not so confident any more...

general sleepiness and taking what might be my last workday nap for a while on the couch.

now i'm finishing my (only) second coffee, and then gd and i are going to do a mold treatment, and then i'm going to be off to our offices soon for the second session of our agentic course.

jalapeño-powered

 my knees are threatening every time i get up, and my lower back's sore, and my neck's been giving me trouble on and off today. hello, mid-forties.

...

i'm very excited to report that before leaving the apartment this morning, i was able to complete the work on my side project's auth flows, and i'm hoping to have the whole thing essentially ready to roll out before i begin my new job on monday!

our first stop was dropping off the first challah-peño at the bakery. we're looking forward to hearing their review, it seemed like the wife thought it was good :)

gd and i walked to the light rail and made our way to the school, where mr smear was waiting, alone, playing with one of the school cats.

i thought he was allergic to cats? i don't know anymore.

we walked to our cousins, with gd stopping by the pharmacy on the way and mr smear and i sitting down at a coffee shop so that i could have a coffee and he could eat his lunch, then show me some really funny drawings he's been working on.

lunch was long, and mostly really nice. our cousin appeared to be more restrained that usual regarding overriding our parenting, and i think a lot of what we said and did really pressed her buttons... but all-in-all it was a pleasant afternoon.

unfortunately, gd had been getting more and more uncomfortable because of the cold, so the beginning of our walk home (we couldn't catch a cab) was a bit rough until she warmed up a bit. mr smear and i discovered jalapeño pretzels on the way home, which are really good.

after we got home, it was time to bake another challah-peño for ourselves (that's a lot of carbs for one day), and while we waited for them i caught up with the class whatsapp group which had gone a bit off the rails over the course of the day, which led to some important-yet-fun family conversations.

over dinner and after, we watched most of the first episode of the a-team, which we apparently tried to watch with mr smear before (but i can't look up "a-team" on my blog) - mr smear was skeptical at first, but once it got going he was all in :)

after everyone else went to bed (around 11pm), i completed my (relative) speed run through botopia, and now i'm sitting with my chamomile getting ready for bed.