what stress?

wednesday:

on tuesday evening my wrist suddenly started hurting, and it hasn't gone away. on wednesday morning two of my left toes got all sensitive, and for a few minutes i thought i was going to keep limping for the rest of the day; then they got better. then they hurt a bit later on again, but again only for a few minutes.

what the hell??

i left a box of old cellphones outside, the last of the reminders of how much i've been screwed over during the last decade, both by cellphone companies and by two supposed "friends" who put me into uncomfortable situations.

lesson for the day: store all of the electronic recycling until winter. just the five-minute walk from azrieli to the recycling station in the summer's morning heat was too much.

i was so irritated by the idiots walking in front of me on the way to the bus stop that i missed the one i needed because i wasn't looking up, and promptly missed the bus. i still made it to campus before wordsworth, though, so it wasn't *my* fault that we only had ten minutes to discuss the proposal for the orientation course. fortunately, we didn't need any more than that :)

i expected our next meeting to take about ten minutes, but we sat with our poetry professor for almost an hour and i eventually had to take me leave of the surprisingly productive "what-if"s to get to work. there is a plan of action.

work: i gave up (for the moment) using linux because we're in such a hurry. everything works well except the nautilus / svn gui, and quite frankly i'm not interested in learning all the command line commands. my boss is shocked, nystire would be ashamed of me, but i don't care. i don't care enough to learn all that random shit by heart.

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we had lunch in the usual place. i sat down next to the window, looked outside at the group of girls on the other side of the glass, saw nothing of interest and turned back to my menu. that's when mmf tapped me on the shoulder and said, urgently, that i shouldn't look or she'll notice me.
of *course* i looked.
i *just* managed to recognize her from her one eye that i could see past the woman sitting next to her, a girl that we studied with (i taught her sql) and who married a friend of ours... i looked back at him, and he said "no! you're not supposed to look!" as if i had had any control. for some reason i found myself caught up in his attempt to not speak to her, which was a lot of crap anyway because she did notice me eventually and she came in to say hi, and it was good to see her and i don't have a clue what made me play along.

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on the way home i argued with mmf about parent licenses, and he released the quote of the day: "you're talking about interfering with the basic human right to make babies!"
yes, i am. you shouldn't have to be rich to take care of a child, but you should have to be a (relatively) psychologically healthy and contributing member of society. and if you're not, well, you can have as many kids as you want but you won't be raising them. i still believe that the best solution is to have well-monitored state-run orphanages.

...

on my way home i talked to my mother, who has finally found a job that should (hopefully) make her happy. after so many years of disappointment and worrying, i'm not only pleased and excited but also a bit nervous... i *really* want this to work out for her!

one of the guys from my unit is getting married soon, and he and his fiancée met with me to hand me their invitation personally. it's a very cool invitation, and carried with it a fun and interesting discussion at coffeeholic and the conclusion that i really like them, even if we weren't very close until i first went home.

pg made a great dinner, and then we walked to bar giora to hear seven perform. co-conspirator appears to be permantently pissed off at me after our last argument over bad strategies.
seven did a cover of one of john donne's poems, and it not only worked but really blew me away! and they have a song or two that reminded me of joydrop - beautiful (i don't know that the link's laughter contributes anything).

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thursday:

i had to wake up early to make up for it being a busy one. i went straight to work, struggled to turn on the air-conditioner and eventually gave up. i spent the morning working, composing a proposal for the poetry event, and wondering if google plus was really going to work if a great idea like wave failed.

the tough bit of the day was making some real progress and then discovering that, somewhere along the line, the code that solved last week's crazy problem simply disappeared into the ether. now i have to reconstruct it :'(

we had burgers for lunch, most of the time focused intently on our cellphones. i was reading the news, the others were doing things even more antisocial :P

on my way to the old office i wondered about how much the bus route changes will affect me. and they will. i also recorded myself singing along to a perfect circle, and arrived at the conclusion that my voice sucks. or, at the very least, requires some practice.

work: long, meaningless speeches punctuated by a ten minute knowledge transfer and a complex merge / code review. i decided that we're going to stop opening a branch for each issue, and rather work together on version branches. it's necessary because the merge functions so badly, but i can only hope that it's the right decision.

on the way back, i was forced to the front of the bus by the heavy urine reek of the homeless man who stood next to me... i kinda felt bad about such an obvious move, but i really couldn't handle such an aggressive smell.

pg had me in stitches while we walked around the "white night", tel aviv's yearly partying until the dawn. "you know me," she said, "i'm not an animal party".
hebrew adjectives always come after :P
the evening was kinda fun, we heard three good bands at the indie concert outside the museum, which we would have entered had the entrance fees for students not been so high (they're always high). we didn't get too close to the performances at the ozen bar because it was far too crowded, and by that time it was late and we were tired so we decided to be antisocial and go home to watch a movie.

the only other item of interest from the "white night" was the driving: holy shit. i'm used to seeing bad driving in this country, but that was extreme.

i finished a tub of ben & jerry's while we watched tank girl until 3am. i really shouldn't have, but chunky monkey is too good!

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yesterday:

i began writing this post in the morning, but got distracted by google plus and digitizing memories. then i went early to training to take the warm-up, but our instructor had made it anyway because she hadn't managed to get to jerusalem: she hadn't heard about the bus changes.

there were only three of us, so we had a quiet training of stretching and forms. my knees - both of them - hurt. and apparently i've lost five kilos since i last checked a couple of weeks ago. having said that, our instructor informed me that my target for summer is to lose the belly. not improve my technique, not get stronger and faster, but lose the belly. i'm embarrassed.

i continued to digitize, making an exam-stressed pg angry with photos of her when she insisted that i show her what i was dumping. she'd made me tense by repeating her insistence after i'd already told her that i had copies of everything, and i didn't hear her stipulate that she didn't want to see any photos of my ex-girlfriends.

*sigh*

i chatted with the mongoose for about half an hour, and in addition to making a date to see his new apartment (in two weeks' time - we're absurdly busy) he's informed me that he's transferred my cv to a new and exciting start-up that might be interested in me. the funny thing about his timing is that i'm going away in august, and there is a chance that my new employer will be forced to replace me, even partially; in that case, i will have absolutely no loyalty issues and this is a good opportunity to cover my ass.

i called up my tenant, having remembered suddenly that the first of the month had arrived, and he informed me that he's in, settled and comfortable and that the money is on the way. i can't be sure that he hasn't paid me until twenty four hours have passed, but i suspect it'll be fine. i'm really quite relieved that he's doing alright; i was a little worried that he hadn't moved in yet and that there would be some issues...

pg and i joined her parents and brother for dinner at etnachta, and it was there that i realized how absolutely exhausted i was. dinner was pleasant, but when we got home my nap on the couch didn't help and i dragged myself into bed early.

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today:

when i woke up this morning i got out of bed, only to find that i was still wiped out. i returned to lie in for an hour or so, but i wasn't actually sleepy so eventually i coffee'd myself up and began sorting / tidying. i did that for a lot longer than i'd intended... i've discovered that my old minidisc player does work, but only on battery power. and the earrings that i thought hadn't arrived for pg's birthday? they had arrived. early. i must have put them away during an absent-minded moment :$

i've got actual work to do.