bloodletting

the alarm clocks i tried downloading last night all sucked. and my phone's one is completely out of order. sucky to have to rely on the kid to wake me up; especially seeing as he's on holiday tomorrow (today), so i'm on my own :(

i slept with a duvet last night. comfortably. winter is on it's way :S

after waking up, spot and i played around with the dosbox settings, specifially cpu cycles. i don't understand how it works (it says that below 100 becomes a percentage):
6000 - choppy, but what i've been using for syndicate
30 - literally 30 cycles, bloody stupid ****s
12000 - decent
20000 - not good at all
15000 - weirdly unuseable

spot made two cups of double-espresso based coffee, and i couldn't have mine because of the blood test. so, like a brave soldier, he drank both of them. i'm still sniggering from the look in his eyes when i got to work later on.

anyway, i hopped a bus and went to the city officer. it was a bit shocking to get there and not see a crazy line and the place packed solidly with soldiers pushing and shoving, or sitting around bored having given up pushing and shoving. i walked straight in, and about 5 minutes later i walked in to the room: the room with a huge sign outside informing visitors that the people inside taking blood are AMAZING, it's the experience OF YOUR DREAMS, and so on.

hmmmm. not at all suspicious. highly amusing :)

i walked in fairly chirpy; no more wasted than is usual without coffee. the chair was occupied by a customer being pleasured, so i was offered the opportunity OF A LIFETIME, to lie down on the bed.

fat chance. i refused, and simply sat on the edge and held my arm out expectantly. the doctor was quite taken aback, and double-checked the vein (although he'd found it easily the first time), and quizzically asked if i'd had enough to drink.

of course, i said "of course".

he put the vials on the bed - five or six of them (suddenly i wasn't feeling as confident), inserted the needle and began vacuuming.

i hadn't had enough to drink, and the doctor got panicky when my blood came out practically black.
"you didn't drink enough!"
"what? i consumed the amount i'm used to drinking!"

now shaken, he checked my status continuously for the rest of the fill-up, getting all the assistants rattled in the process.

a fun moment was when he checked to see if i was shaking - and it turned out it was him. i kept my arm steady the entire time :P

"you like watching, huh?"
"umm... yeah..."

eventually he removed the needle, and registered that i'd gone completely white. i think all the attention could've contributed to that. i was actually feeling okay, aside from a little heated.

i got up, shooing off a small entourage aiming to catch me if i fainted (what drama!), and assured the doctor that i'd have something to drink when i got outside. as i walked through the curtain into the now-filled waiting room, he came running after me in a last attempt to get me to sit down with a glass of water.

"i'm fine! i'll get something outside!"
"don't you go causing me problems!"

everybody in the waiting room was instantly in WTF-mode. that kept me laughing all the way to azrieli center, by which stage the doctor's behaviour had made me sufficiently paranoid to *have* to get something solid in me.

spot laughed when i told him what that was: coffee and a brownie. to be fair, i *did* drink plenty of water at a cooler on the way :D

private pile (now piles, because he reminds me of them) has been very lucky, his code review has been moved to tomorrow, and he's nowhere near completion. because he's a bloody whiner, and needs a proper babysitter. i'm being replaced by a moron.

a friend of mine surreptitiously provided me with a wedding invitation; he's invited very few people so he doesn't want it spread around. i had to call smiler (the girl the kid and i ate with last week) outside for a "private chat" in order to give her hers; it's really weird sneaking around our own section like that.

i got tasked with replacing our recently broken-down printer, and i ran around the base carrying the printer, each section sending me off to another - in the end i returned with the same damn printer, and was informed that the guys i'd gone to in the first place were just messing with me >@

we had a surprisingly decent lunch. the food was okay, and there was enough. odd!

songbird's hugs are something i'm going to miss when i leave the section. i don't know if i'll be able to steal random hugs where-ever i move to next :'(

piles sucks piles. he was supremely irritating after lunch.

i met up with a really cute girl for a few minutes of really interesting conversation - a comparative look at the never-ending story and our opposing views on the matrix trilogy. i have her number, but she lives far away and has a boyfriend. too much of a headache!

my SC came into the office before we left for a little group talk about yitzchak rabin's memorial day coming up. i'd already signed up for the division trip to eilat before we spoke, he just wanted to make sure that i wasn't going to miss my "goodbye trip", as it were. it's really nice to know it's important to him that i say goodbye in style, which will involve two trips and a couple of ceremonies... i think they like me ^_^

in fact, the kid just informed me that just before i arrived for the meeting i was late for last week, he'd made a comment to the others about there not being many totalwastes and the kids, so they'd better make the best use of our time as possible :D

memories of a murdered hero - our SC and i had a short conversation aside towards the end of the talk (in english - his is improving, he's putting his money where his mouth is regarding using my time); it was a good talk, the material was interesting, but the girl (the bitch who claimed responsibility for our poster the other week) was really, REALLY boring.

piles' piles continued when we got back. he can moan like no other.

there's this cute little russian girl i've been flirting with in messenger: i stopped to say hi on my way back to the office. she was sitting with a couple of soldiers, and she asked me if, because of my age, i'm in the permanent force. everybody had a good laugh - i'm a sergeant, and aside from nystire, there's no such thing. plus my uniform's the wrong colour.

we played extremely pleasant volleyball - the weather was *just* right, and the teams were decent and well-balanced.

piles' piles continued after the game, and i walked out a little later than i should've (it costs me wages to leave after 17.30). piles.

once at work, i made a 20 minute coffee call to get my work-day started and have a fun chat with the cute girl working there. then it was upstairs for debugging, fun linux scripting (w00t! productivity +5 bonus!), and cool graphs - using php and my java application together - they finally work nicely =)

the kid called around 10pm to inform us that our couches had arrived... took long enough, but now that we've seen them and sat on them in our living room, it was totally worth it. *huge grin*

and mmf should be bringing the psOne to work tomorrow. then life will be good.

spot and i had to wait half an hour for the bus home :(
we had a really good supper (too much food!)
we met up with the kid at a bar to one side of kikar rabin. we walked home, and i've been typing / chilling since. i'm really glad that it takes me less than fifteen minutes to brush my teeth, shower, and get to bed, because i'm bloody wasted. the beer makes it more fluid, though.

sheesh. drinking in the middle of the week. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!