okay, this is going to be a combination of point form and whatever-the-fuck, but i have to start with the fact that i'm typing this looking out over a major intersection that's been under heavy downpour for an hour or so, after three days of unseasonably warm and dry weather that was absolutely perfect for our move. i'm also nursing a throat infection (that i've clearly been cooking since at least sunday morning) and i might be nursing an eye infection that could be caused by many things over the past day, but probably dirty sawdust from me and - i think i'm going to start calling our friend from upstairs "big data" - big data attempting to use a jigsaw to cut out the bottom from the hob space.
...
which i'd forgotten i'd asked our landlord permission for already, so that was an embarrassing conversation. but not as embarrassing as the guy who delivered the electric hob this morning. by 8.30 - key handover time - gd and i still had quite a bit to do, and while we were scrambling, exhausted and sans caffeine, i got a call from the delivery guy saying he'd arrived. i told him i should expect to be back at the new apartment within twenty minutes, but twenty minutes later i called him to say i'd need more time and he wasn't answering.
meanwhile, we'd handed over the keys, i'd warned the landlady that "airing out the cupboards" wasn't enough to prevent mold from coming in through the walls and that they'd need to remove them entirely, and i'd warned her to deal with the pipes which miraculously held even as we held our breaths for two years, and gd was staying in the apartment to finalize the packing and finish tidying up without letting the auto-close door lock us out.
so around 8.50 i hopped in the van with a load, and on my way got hold of the guy. this time he was upset, and i reminded him that he hadn't warned me he was coming and he hadn't contacted me at all to set a delivery time. this was where the argument went off the rails, because he claimed he did arrange with me to meet at 9am, and i don't remember this happening.
okay, shit, now it's my fault. then i realize, to my horror, that my wallet is empty and i need to pay him cash. so i'm panicking, he's freaking out, he's waited half an hour for me and he's not going to come back later to get paid... i suddenly remember that we now live near a gas station, so i drove there and ran inside the shop asking desperately for the ATM. they told me where to go, i went around the back, and... it wouldn't let me insert my card.
after a wasted minute with that, i came running back into the shop like a madman, begging them to let me buy something and give me a 100 shekel note as change. i don't know what they were thinking, but it was all very dramatic. the manager kindly explained that i could use their tills as ATMs, i went through an painstaking but brief identification process, got my hundred and ran out the door thanking them profusely.
i arrived at 9.05 - so technically only five minutes late, handed the miserably lug the money, took the plate, and thanked my stars he didn't want to fight me for yelling at him when i was at fault.
BUT.
later i checked my phone records, and i think he was gaslighting me. i don't think we ever spoke the day before.
...
when i picked up the van, it had a lot of recorded damage, the most shocking of which was that the side-mirror and window controls sections had been ripped out. during the haul, however, emergency icons started lighting up on the dashboard, and then this message:
i picked up coffee for me and gd, regaling our neighborhood coffee shop owner barista with our morning tale as if she was a bartender, and returned to carry down two more heavy sets of boxes and items.
gd made a video of the apartment before we stood together in the hallway and locked the door for the last time, having spent a week slowly-then-rapidly peeling back layers of our last four years and thanking the apartment for providing us safe haven from the storm of early '22.
...
we returned the van, complained about it's unroadworthy state, and demanded a refund and a small car to do our ikea run. they sent us a taxi, and after we arrived at the parking lot we walked to a coffee shop, used their facilities, and stopped for breakfast and coffee. then we drove to netanya, which didn't take too long.
but time dilates in ikea. we were pretty good, we didn't get distracted, we had a budget (the relief from getting our last two months' cheques from the landlady was palpable), but we also got turned around a couple of times and it was a while before we made it downstairs to the warehouse.
after everything we'd been through, that i'd put my body through, what followed was madness. three trolleys filled with HEAVY boxes, an insane workout even when i was in good shape. gd was worried i'd injure myself, or have a heart attack considering i was running exclusively on fumes and adrenaline.
...
after a long time in the line (making friends), we got hit with a new cashier. and an enormous bill, and i'm still embarrassed that i said the amount out loud to gd in front of other shoppers. and then both our credit cards were declined. twice. i called my visa service, and learned that it was simply a case of not having enough credit left, and what's infuriating is that in israel you can't just pay off a credit card even if you have the cash. and i was panicking, because mr smear was out of school already, we were in netanya, and it was the only day we had to do the shopping.
then i thought - cash! they had an ATM, so i withdrew my daily limit. then i thought, i wonder if gd can draw the same limit even though we share the same account? so she did, and it worked! just as i was being informed by the manager, after they'd carefully counted out a stack of bills, that over a certain amount ikea will only accept ten percent of the amount due in cash 🤦♂️
fortunately, after much drama, we could at least split the amounts so between gd's card, the ten percent cash, and my card, we managed to complete the purchase.
but then we had to run the customer service gauntlet.
on the one hand, if we'd had a van we could have just grabbed everything and left, on the other - there's no way i would have managed that without injuring myself, so it was a blessing in disguise that the van had been in such poor condition.
i was terrified, because i know that customer service can take forever. while we waited, we texted and called furiously between mr smear and our friends upstairs, and all of a sudden our number was called!! i jumped to the counter, and was informed that if we wanted delivery, we had to pay upfront and take whatever time slot was allotted to us. and if that didn't work for us, then we'd have no recourse.
i don't understand how that can be a thing.
but also, delivery in one to two days, but helping construct everything up to three weeks? never mind that part, then. so i paid for delivery, and after struggling to get the illiterate cashier to find our address wrote it down for her, and then we were off, just as the weather was beginning to turn.
...
at this point i was afraid of the traffic into tel aviv, which i see every evening from my client's offices, and i was surprised and unbelieving when waze told me it would take 38 minutes. we let mr smear and our friends know that we were on our way, and zoomed through to tel aviv, arriving at our apartment literally about one minute before mr smear arrived!
i took a break for twenty minutes to charge my phone (it was almost dead), and stumble around with gd with neither of us knowing what we were doing, and then driving the car back to the parking lot. it took longer to get to the parking lot than it had to get home from netanya, and i was having a hard time keeping my eyes open.
i felt like i was driving home on a come-down after a festival.
after a ridiculous series of chaotic events, obstructions and miracles, i made it safely to the parking lot, took a light rail and a bus home, and we'd officially (essentially) gotten through the move. our apartment is complete chaos, and everything is going to be hard and complicated for a while, but we're home.
after a good hummus dinner, making more noise than i'm comfortable with with big data and the jigsaw (i felt like he was parenting me, which was cool but weird, but the experience itself was fun), showering and climbing into bed, i finally got myself a decent amount of sleep.
nose, throat and eyes notwithstanding. my eyes seemed to have calmed down a bit since i got up earlier 🤞, i've managed to get all this down, i'm trying to get hold of a handyman to do the hob preparation for me (i'm amazed i managed to find my old post for a handyman on facebook), gd's gotten coffee made and mr smear has just left for school, and the sun's coming out.
i'm sore, i'm tired, and i'm in awe of gd who's been getting through the past week and today and arguably carrying a lot more of the can the me or mr smear.
i woke up this surprisingly summery morning and booked a car for the day, which was very useful. after breakfast we began round after round of scraping walls, priming walls, cleaning, packing, taking loads of awkward or sensitive stuff to the new apartment, removing the projector shelf, and stretching because my sciatica is flaring up again - not debilitating, thankfully, but it's making things uncomfortable...
i've managed to cut myself on the tips of two fingers so far. the plasters are getting in the way and without the plasters i have two pain / infection magnets :(
some additional good news to the guy taking over our last two months' rent is that he's also taking the couches.
i think i'm ready to go to bed. tomorrow's moving day.
i finished reading moon knight this morning, it is legitimately mind-boggling and brilliant. then mr smear went off to school after we'd had a very serious conversation invoked by the disappearance of the imagine channel - where we got synthknot from - which resulted in me posting the following:
a really amazing youtube channel got taken down, and it's almost guaranteed that it's due to unjust copyright strikes. watching content producers like rick beato fighting off lawfare trolls makes it clear that google/youtube really don't care, and that there're no humans in the loop...
and then my facebook marketplace experience earlier this week, also no humans in the loop...
and all the people who fled toxic twitter to make just-as-toxic mastodons and blueskys...
and china using discord and tiktok to spy on us and brainwash us (effectively)...
and roblox pushing kids into dark corners and actively preventing people from fighting off predators...
with everything else that's going on, i feel like the biggest, scariest, most dangerous issue of our time is social media. it's not just dangerous for kids and teens, it's dangerous for everyone. and most of us are just going with it because we don't have much choice. and all the good people who try to make alternatives are just creating more of the same, because we haven't figured out a model for connecting people that encourages good, healthy behavior.
...
we rushed out to meet the window guy, who was "almost there" for about forty five minutes. but in addition to him proposing very satisfactory solutions, something made me ask him, on his way out, what it is exactly that he does for a living.
it turns out he's a contractor, and a carpenter.
gd and i looked at each other, and showed him one of the bigger issues we've been worried about, and which for him turned out to be null sweat ^_^
we then went to our new local hardware store to pick up a whole bunch of things - mostly to make sure we can fix and paint the walls in the old apartment properly - and stopped in at the nature store for hydration and snacks.
we measured the gas hob - the underside was revolting, and i cut my finger on it - and then rushed off to buy antiseptic ointment and an electric hob. they weren't in stock, so it'll only arrive on sunday, and it needs an electrician to install it, so it'll only be installed by tuesday or wednesday, and the hole in the counter isn't deep enough, so we'll either need a handyman to build up the area or, i realized later, to cut in a little deeper.
turns out we know a guy.
gd returned to our old place, i went to pick up mr smear from school and show him the "new" way to get home, and then we went to the new apartment to meet up with our new landlord and give him the cheques, and get the keys, and remove a couple of doors and the old oven and carry them down to his storage, and then our friend arrived to speak to him and was shocked to see that the electrician who installed the three-phase plug did something wrong (both from a regulations point of view, and ethically from a cheated-us point of view).
so that's another thing we need to deal with on sunday...
from there we returned to the old apartment, i had breakfast and mr smear and i took a bag of clothing to the donation bin, and the next while was spent fighting over how to proceed, and then proceeding. by the time the new tenant came by to examine our things more carefully, we had a load of sensitive stuff ready to go.
he might take our sofa, he might let us leave the big shelf up, he might take the curtains. but he's not taking the projector. and when i turned it on to demonstrate his response made me sad: we've gotten used to it not being able to focus properly, and not being particularly sharp to begin with. our little projector probably isn't worth much, and i don't think we really have place for it in the new apartment, but it's been with us for so long and we've had such good times with it 😭
i booked a car for an hour, and in that hour managed to pick it up, drive it home, load it with all the things while mr smear "stood guard", drive it to the new apartment, unload it, get everything upstairs and into the apartment, drive to the city market, pick up a bottle of wine, and get it back to its parking spot. and mr smear and i had a great time rocking out to slipknot and synthknot along the way 🤘
...
it's shabbat, and even though tomorrow's going to be tough, we made a point of stopping in the evening, lighting candles and making kiddush for the last time in this apartment, singing loudly and drinking wine and eating vegan burgers and reading the colour of magic (even before bedtime)...
the morning was pretty smooth, then we had a guy come over to look at the apartment, in a hurry to find a place to live by sunday and seemingly a decent dude. so with much enthusiasm, we all seem to be proceeding and i'm praying it "takes" and things go smoothly 🙏
not only would this relieve us of two months' costs, but he also might buy our sofa, which would make our lives easier.
the rest of the day was a back-and-forth between the new apartment, the current one, and the office; the electrician did a huge, really good job of installing a tri-phase plug underneath the hob (going over the entire cabinet to minimize drilling into it, and he sorted out a bunch of other things.
unfortunately, while he was working gd discovered a leak - unrelated to him, and apparently unrelated to the plumber. but the plumber had been in the day before, so it was a whole story getting him to come in again... at least it seems like he gave us a discount on the replacement tap (he keeps trying to upsell us, it's kinda unsettling).
i had a chat with the new landlord, and it was such a positive experience - in spite of the costs he's really grateful that we're taking care of his property, and he's shocked to learn what his previous tenants haven't been reporting. meanwhile, while the apartment still has a few things that need fixing up, it feels like all the urgent stuff has been taken care of.
tomorrow we're meeting there with the window guy (just for him to evaluate the situation), and then we're going to buy an electric hob, and then we're going to make sure we have all the primer/paint and equipment we need to ensure the (🤞) incoming tenant is happy, and then we're going to do an early handover with the landlord, which means we might even be able to get a chunk of the awkward-to-move stuff across over the weekend.
...
even though i spent so much of my day juggling between the apartments and the office, i managed to evaluate the n-gram package against a much larger sample set and was ready to report high confidence just in time for the status meeting. the "customer" team lead asked me to try to make sure i'm not going to come back on tuesday to any big surprises, so i had a sync with one of my teammates and we came up with a strategy that we're both interested in seeing happen, and he agreed to "do me a favor" and run some tests in my absence.
i also had a really interesting conversation with the slipknot-not-synthknot guy, who i learned was actually a film student originally.
after putting mr smear to bed, i sat down to try and log my hours for my employer for the first time. i initially did it accurately, but it looks like i won't get paid fairly if i do, so i've normalized my days and i guess i'll find out if i did something wrong in the coming days.
...
the only real choice i got to make today was taking mr smear out for a laffa. not only did we both enjoy the walk and the meal, but we had some interesting conversations along the way. which led to an hilarious moment after we got home: he'd asked me about estrogen ("is estrogen real?"), and i'd ended up explaining to him how fetuses begin both male and female. but gd didn't know that we'd talked about this, and the look on her face when he suddenly yelled from the bathroom "DAD! I CAN FEEL WHERE MY VAGINA CLOSED UP!" was absolutely priceless 🤣
...
gd has been doing an inordinate amount of physical work, and it's worrying me. i understand that she's very sensitive regarding hygiene, and that she wants things to be "just right" when we move, but she's also been doing all the packing and sorting and i'm worrying about her back and pain levels... and she's been struggling for a while with some of the medications she's been on :(
there's so much stuff happening, i'm sure i'm forgetting important notes along the way.
today began peacefully, with dishes, and moon knight, and interesting conversation* with mr smear.
* although we did have a serious argument when he told me i'm a hypocrite. i'm a lot of things, but i'm pretty sure i'm not a hypocrite. and besides, i'd only just explained to him what a hypocrite is.
it ended peacefully, with mr smear laughing until he choked multiple times while i read some more of the colour of magic to him (i'm thinking he's finally ready for it), and completing my employer's onboarding, and dishes, and having gd wake up to my howl of distress to advise me to put a glove on to retrieve the sink filter that i dropped into a particularly gross bin situation.
...
we arrived at the new apartment just before the plumber's brother did. we walked through the work that needed doing, and he pointed out that three taps needed replacing, not just one. and then he and his brother quoted me for the work, and my jaw dropped.
the landlord agreed to him taking care of the pipes, but didn't want to replace the taps... "right now", he said. so i asked him if we could make an arrangement, that i'd pay for the taps now and he'd pay me back later. and he agreed, and i rejoiced.
our friend/neighbor came down (she brought coffee) and joined us for a while, and when i felt i wasn't needed any more i headed to the office. when the plumber's brother was done and they were all heading out, she noticed something wrong with one of the kitchen windows - it doesn't latch, and we're currently in the middle of a storm with high winds and plenty of wet.
the good news (to my mind) is that the landlord's acknowledged this issue, so i guess it's clearly (again, to my mind) his fault if the floors get damaged. in the meanwhile, i managed to get our window guy from a few months ago to come in tomorrow afternoon, hopefully he'll come up with a solution that makes everyone happy 🤞
at the same time, while i was in the apartment i managed to get the electrician we used a while back to agree to come in and install three-phase under the hot plates. the "under" part will be tricky, but that's a tomorrow problem...
also, the plumber's brother came up with a great suggestion that makes installing our water dispenser much less messy.
work was crazy today. i got in 45 productive minutes after i came in, but then immediately had to return to the apartment to help gd with the unpleasant woman who came to take another look. i arrived to a not-unpleasant vibe, and after she left gd informed me that of all the details of her life to come into play, this woman grew up in the same neighborhood in turkey that gd lived in for a year. apparently, that's a reason to play nice with us. or maybe it's just because she's desperate for the apartment...
i paid the plumber (who'd become antsy), i ate, and i returned to the office. i had a long meeting trying to explain to my bulgarian teammates what i was doing to fine-tune the model's guesses and enable them to share the workload, and then a shorter meeting with my local teammates (kind of), and during that meeting one of the guys (the slipknot-not-synthknot guy) confronted me about the n-gram detection. we agreed to work together to see if maybe i'd missed something.
by the end of the day - an hour and a half later, because i had to go home again for another viewing - we'd determined that while the "gold standard" n-gram detection that i was using was as shit as i'd remembered, that there's another one he'd used before that was much less shit. but more important than that, he'd revealed that the company officially supports a very specific set of languages, and his n-gram detector proved 100% accurate (on our small sample set) for all of them!
so that's very exciting news, and tomorrow's mission is now to test this detection on as many production samples as we can to establish its "good enough-ness".
...
gd's done an incredible amount of packing and cleaning (even if, in my opinion, she really doesn't need to invest so much in the cleaning) over the past few days, but we're now getting to a point where there's not a hell of a lot to eat or eat with :P
it's very strange seeing the layers of our lives that slowly built up over the last four years being rapidly peeled back to eventually reveal an empty apartment that shows practically no trace that we were ever here.
oh, right! and ozdoc messaged me last night, once again inviting us to flee the potential danger of an iranian attack.
the situation really is bizarre. nobody knows what's going on. tousi tv is the only reliable source of information. everyone has theories.
hopefully the iranians won't attack. if they do, hopefully we'll have time to get to the in-apartment bomb shelter in the new apartment, and not have to go huddle in the asthma-inducing dust-and-stale-air choke room downstairs.
it scares me that today's tuesday. and that this coming weekend is our last one in this apartment, and that there are so many unknowns, so many things i might have forgotten to take care of.
and there are knowns, now, too. gd went in to the new apartment today to take photos, and she called our friend down to verify that under the gas plate, the cupboard smells like gas. after a literal hour trying to get a technician to come and take a look (the first forty minutes were spent talking to the wrong gas company), the guy came in and confirmed that there's no leak, that the gas is off, and that the gas plates are probably broken 🤦♂️
there're water issues, too. blocked drains all round, and the toilets don't flush properly. and damage under the kitchen sink. and a whole story with the "jacuzzi". so we now have a plumber coming in - scratch that, he's busy, a plumber's brother coming in - first thing tomorrow morning.
and with all this noise in the background, i had to bail on a couple of hours' work this afternoon. i feel like i'm making good progress though - i've figured out a decent way to compare "my" model's results with what's in production - but it's a long, manual process and it's full of surprises.
oh, and at lunch today my boss/client and my team were having a very strange conversation about alcohol, drugs and chronic illness and i couldn't figure out if i was following what they were saying or not.
i didn't even talk about how my day began, yet - dishes, and reading moon knight: what a completely insane experience, and i mean reading it, it's properly destabilizing. i can't believe mr smear read it already.
oh, yes: i don't know what came over me, but i told him a really dumb but funny joke that could be potentially offensive to white saviors. he thought it was hilarious, and then i had to caution him about not re-telling it and now i'm wondering if i'm going to get in trouble for it :P
after he left for school, i took care of a bunch of things and then gd and i walked to the bank. it was a beautiful morning, and a good opportunity for some time to just walk and talk.
this time everything went quickly and smoothly, gd signed what she had to sign and i picked up the chequebook. we then went our separate ways, and when i arrived at the office *just* in time for my daily, i saw that she'd gotten home and received a message from the bank informing her that she'd left her ID there... so she had an additional experience on top of having to spend the day keeping house and packing for the move.
dinner was very late, but it was amazing. gd made a great ramen, with a yo egg on top with a runny yolk. it was glorious.
mr smear, in addition to doing his hebrew homework before i'd let him read in english (we're doing a weird thing since yesterday, hopefully it's not a bad call), decided that he's exhausted all the english stuff he wants to read and, entirely voluntarily, to both his parents shock and amazement, picked up the hebrew translation of kazu kibuishi's amulet (הקמע) and is devouring it.
...
my brain is throbbing, it's past 10pm. i'm going to make myself a cup of tea, and attempt to complete my employer's onboarding. and hopefully, hopefully, get a reasonably good night's rest.
firstly, i'm tired, and i've just completed an hour and a half of my employer's onboarding because they're unhappy that i haven't done it yet, all the while feeling bitter that i started working for my client on the same day as my employer and i'm really overwhelmed. not to mention the fact that i'm completely ragged from all the moving things combined with handling mr smear.
to be fair, though, relative to this morning his behavior in the evening was great. he did only go to bed around 10pm, but that's because he had a lot of homework to do...
... it's amazing to us that once he was punished, he cooperated fully and had no issues with actually doing the work. i wish i could understand this.
...
the woman we were waiting for turned out to be a real piece of work. not only did she get pushy when i told her that 1pm was the cut-off, she then had the gall to start asking me why it was so important that go back to work on time!
my mom asked me why i didn't put the phone down on her at that point, to which i didn't have an immediate answer.
then she arrived literally a few minutes before 1pm. i asked her to remove her shoes, to which she responded that "it disgusts her". i explained that she's not coming into our home with her shoes on. she asked if we had animals, i said "no, but the landlords are okay with them".
"me too, but not in the house" she replied.
then she really pissed me off; she took one shoe off at the entrance, then took a step into the living room before taking off the other one. i asked her to move the shoe to the entrance, to which she rudely responded "what do you care?"
at this point, i should have kicked her out, possibly throwing her shoes out the front door and down the stairs first. but i didn't. she took a quick look around, asked a couple of questions, and then i told her it was time to go.
it was only later that i really thought about it; if it wasn't worth two months' rent to me, there's no way i would have tolerated that behavior, but in the current situation it really would be tantamount to saying "it's worth two month's rent to me to not have to deal with you."
i don't have two month's rent to burn.
anyway, later in the evening i agreed to talk to her again - i didn't want to hear her ugly, entitled, malignant-tumor-on-the-backside-of-humanity voice - and when she asked to see the apartment again, and i told her thursday morning between 8 and 9, she said that it's too difficult for her because she has to go to work...
... do you know that feeling, when you come up with the perfect response hours or days too late? that's not what happened to me. immediately, i wanted to fire back "what, do you have a meeting or something? why can't you just go later?" like she did to me.
i'm feeling extremely proud of myself for keeping my mouth shut. honestly, i hope she does want the apartment, and that our shitty landlords agree to sign her on. they all deserve each other. but at the same time, it would give me great pleasure to tell her that someone else has taken it.
but now that i think about it, it would give me even greater pleasure to wait until she and the landlords have signed, and i have our deposit in hand, to tell her "good luck, you're going to need it."
...
the rest of the work day went pretty positively, even though i was half an hour late to a half an hour meeting that i didn't realize was happening.
at 4pm i joined a meeting i'd been invited to with some guys from my employer, without understanding what it was or why i was invited. it turned out to be a game design session, and while it was an engaging meeting and they definitely appreciated my contributions, i really don't think this one in particular is for me. i also couldn't really afford the hour out of my day, especially not today.
home - homework - dinner - shower - toenail treatment (i hope i'm not imagining things, but i feel like there's some improvement) - homework - employer onboarding - posting - my brain hurts and i need to go to bed soon.
...
ran gvili's body has been recovered, his family (and the rest of us) can get a little bit of closure now that his body can be buried with dignity.
we had a rough start to the day today. mr smear regressed to being very uncooperative in doing his homework (due tomorrow) until we were furious and he lost his reading privileges again. we're all upset, and i don't understand why it's so hard for him to understand the english we're speaking to him.
anyway, no-one came for the first viewing session, and i'm now waiting for the woman who agreed to see the apartment between 12 and 1pm and just messaged to ask if it's okay if she comes at 1pm.
i don't understand why i have to explain to a grown adult that that's not what we agreed on.
the work day's been going alright so far, i guess. though it feels like the deeper i go into the world of language detection, the more pathetic the results.
