a short week in review

to summarize, it's taken most of the week for my body to recalibrate after the shock of the weekend. and all i want to do is do it again.

---monday:

it took half an hour to get out of bed and try out my legs - usually the first pains go into another day of boarding, this time it would be into "the usual". really not as good.
i had a happy morning, but the rest of the day was a bit meh. i tried the salad counter for lunch but was taken by surprise by both dairy and chicken in otherwise vegetarian-looking dishes, and then messed about with a website in frustration because every bloody platform (this time it was android) has its own way of making the web not work for its users.

in the evening i was disappointed to receive positive news too late to act upon it. i spent that disappointment on a fun project and built a really cool little api.

i got home in time to catch the superintendent, who took one look at me, stopped, and said "i know, i know - you're mad at me." i didn't deny it, and he promised that come wednesday he'd sort things out.

i lazily spent my evening clearing email (i really didn't have the energy to actually think about anything), and went to bed early.

---tuesday:

on tuesday we had serious snow, and waking up was slowed down because i just wanted to lie there staring out the window. it was beautiful, a total white-out.

on the way to the metro hardea - mr f*cker came on and the appropriateness of the lyrics made me smile. well, some of the lyrics. the bit about people on the sidewalk. when i came out the other end, it was even better: dj vimo - arise, and it was all i could do not to stop and just dance in the middle of the street, so excited was i by the crazy snowfall and the beats accompanying "it's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me". because, well, in the grand scheme of things it really is.

weird: a connection between two cellphones was only half-duplex, and the other party was talking at length without pause. i tried to interrupt to clarify something, was ignored, got suspicious, and began yelling "hello? hello!" into the phone, and he just kept on going. when he finished i asked if he'd heard me; he hadn't. we switched to skype after the second time.

i hopped in the car with one of the guys on a delivery mission, and couldn't help but take a whole bunch of photos. a couple of them came out really well with instagram filters, demonstrating that one no longer requires any talent to capture something decent.

we drove a lot and didn't get very far: montreal's public transport system is great, but the infrastructure doesn't really support private car ownership too well. i see this as a huge advantage.

on the way, i learned that one can overheat wearing polyester blends indoors, and followed that discovery with wasted coffee. it wasn't a good hour. the rest of the afternoon was pleasant and relaxed, though.

...

sidewalk snow has a way of melting in the most fascinatingly inconvenient and sneaky fashion. no small irony in stomping through the slush to "i am the god of hellfire".

...

another mega-salad. i have reached a conclusion: the magic's in the dressing.

---wednesday:

i got a late start and added to it with a pre-key-handover tidy. after more banking woes with pg, i delivered my key to the superintendent and was on my way.

my bank, bank leumi, has taken customer service and consideration to its negative extreme. the next time i'm in israel - although i hope that's not soon - i'm going to withdraw every last cent and close my account. those bastards are either too stupid to handle my money, or too thieving, or both.

the first email of the day was about holidays; i was told that according to quebec labour law only certified christians get days off. i'm used to the idf's way of dealing with the different holidays, so that sounded legitimate to me. they laughed, and laughed, and i probably should consider getting revenge.

i began the day with a breakthrough, and working around the latest issues that ubuntu has with self-signed ssl certificates on the server side means no more headache on each of the clients. i celebrated with a big lunch with the art director; my spicy vegetable briyani was a grand idea. just as we were finishing the cto walked in, hurried over to our table and told me he'd like to see a certain proof-of-concept on an android device. i've never developed for android before.

excited, i paid for our meal and we returned to the office (discussing the mass allergy to snowstorms that quite a few quebecois have, and the treatment on ski slopes that justifies missing a day of work) and i began to play. it took a heck of a lot longer to get the damn thing built than it had to get the source code written, but eventually things came right and i was quite excited about my success, albeit a simple one.

after that i completed an interesting api design that i've had sitting in the back of my head, tweaked the in-house wiki a bit, and left the office on a high.

i picked up my keys from the superintendent's wife, and walked in to find... nothing had been done. was he making fun of me?! i left a message for him, and later he came up to explain that they'd taken the keys to make a copy of them for the locksmith, and that they'd do everything soon. fine.

---pg and i spoke briefly a couple of times today, and she left a short while ago for switzerland. she'll be back in a week and a day - and none too soon. as i've said before, i think: it's not hard to be a bachelor again, but it's undesirable. it has its advantages, but it's a bit surreal and it constantly feels like i've been transported to an alternate reality. i miss her.