into 2018

happy new year! so far it's been an interesting start, with gd's first trance experience, a series of revelations regarding work and how and where we live, and we're almost through the school holidays and have mostly managed

tuesday 26th:

posting, watching a little bill burr before climbing into bed (a lot, actually, finally going to bed at 2.30am)

up early, toy story
family grocery shopping with my mom
a really nice lunch at my uncle's, made much easier with three people managing mr smear
mr smear passing out on the way to the beachfront
work
putting together an israeli rock playlist for an hour or so to burn a disc for the car and forgetting karolina because itunes hadn't let me purchase her album
crazy goat simulator (space?)
sunset park mission
the painful, bloody scratch of an excited puppy with a stupid owner

my first thought was "why did they feel the need to add another character to coraline?", but once i'd read about it it makes perfect sense

parenting differences in getting mr smear to sleep, getting settled at my workstation then suddenly being overwhelmed by exhaustion and crashing

wednesday 27th:

a good night's sleep, only marginally uncomfortable, getting up before mr smear and compiling an improved hebrew cd for the car, getting him ready and organizing an aquarium membership for the nanny and her children then going to my mom's to resume my struggle with azure credentials

home for lunch then back again, eventually napping for half an hour, finishing up a particularly frustrating piece of work then returning home

work and entertaining mr smear while gd cooked, wolfing down a bowl of chili and taking mr smear with to do some quick emergency grocery shopping before having dinner with my mom, ending the evening with brain it on and mr smear tumbling off his bed and cutting his lip

thursday 28th:

working through the usual exhaustion until 2.30am

taking mr smear to kirstenbosch: a very pleasant drive with my new hebrew cd, discovering a much easier entrance, waiting in line for half an hour in the hot sun to get to the entrance booth, arriving just as they opened a member's queue, mr smear immediately deciding that he wanted to go home, sitting in the shade for second breakfast and convincing him to join the other kids in a tadpole hunt, pulling him out when he began throwing rocks

[missing entry]

friday 29th:

sleeping nine hours for the first time in forever, waking up at 7am to run down to the boxing gym to complain about the noise, the promise of an uncomfortable month due to an unexpected exchange rate strengthening

slow but steady progress working at my mom's (another mystery infestation), picking up gd and delivering her to the chiropractor in holiday traffic, picking up homeless shelter vouchers
lunch, back to my mom's to work, home for a bit before taking mr smear for a walk on the promenade to a everything's-too-tall-for-you playground
fast walk home to get to the temple on time
a pleasant service (the rabbi really making an effort to sing the songs without the choir), mr smear playing nicely and recovering well from a tumble down some stairs
an interrupted kiddush, howl's moving castle after babe was banned (excellent film, but a little too graphic), a very easy bedtime, a noisy neighbour responding respectfully and mr smear crying out "daddy please help me!" in his sleep (then "mommy", too)
starting star wars vii followed by

saturday 30th:

bitcoin fiddling and educational youtubing (mostly jordan peterson) until 2am, up early again

a late morning spent at the company gardens with british cousins, a tough time getting mr smear to nap especially walking past particularly loud holiday traffic, napping a bit myself, meeting hido and friends at mojo market for a drink and then visiting my great aunt for a while before coming home for an amazing quesadilla dinner and littlebigplanet and the blue planet; putting mr smear to sleep really easily and passing out immediately after

sunday 31st:

nightmare: living in tel aviv when the city was bombed to the ground

toy story and the incredibles and trying to get a little work done, gd receiving a triggering happy new year's message from mr smear's best friend's nanny

a waterfront mission, some good playtime (mr smear negotiating a net by himself) and an uncomfortable moment seeing the parents of one of his classmates, getting him to sleep with the drive home

a short naptime, a second lunch, and eventually taking mr smear back to the aquarium; a nice visit, mr smear not caring when i tried to leave and pretended to go without him (at least five minutes before i had to step in and stop him from walking into a street), coming home for a relaxed dinner and bedtime; a lot of new year's eve tekken (finishing the scenario campaign in tekken 6) and dave chappelle - equanimity & the bird revelation which is brilliant

monday 1st january:

ushering in the new year by getting into aws lambda until 1.30am

new year's water mains bursting, the lego movie and getting ready for a date-day, leaving much later than planned and enjoying a much longer route than expected (waze suggested that driving through franshhoek was optimal)

gd's first time on a trance floor and my first in four years, tgtbt and her partner bumping into us within minutes of our arrival, a brilliant afternoon stomp in spite of the heavy dust and leaving at party's end

the surreal horror and relief of watching a clearly-high girl driving metres in front of us flipping her car over a hill and miraculously being pulled out unscathed, a nurse and a detective just happening to arrive on scene within minutes

a long but pleasant (and pleasantly uneventful) drive back to cape town, coming home filthy and hungry and hearing about mr smear's just-for-granny special moments ("change my nappy!", and shouting "he's real!" at the screen when watching bolt)

chinese takeout, a quick shower leaving the grey water literally grey from all the dust and discovering just how sunburned i was (shamefully and painfully), demolishing dinner frightfully fast, reading mr smear to sleep and hurting my neck in the process (which was sadly becoming normal, i've since learned to read sitting up)

tuesday 2nd:

sleeping in, getting up slowly and stiffly (gd was in bad shape, but for both of us it was a case of activating long-forgotten muscle groups)

a very late start, grocery shopping that began smoothly but we weren't managing mr smear well and my nerves were shot by the time we got out of the store

coming home thinking there'd be nap time, attempting to work and get mr smear to sleep in turns but eventually giving up shortly before we needed to go out anyway; a badly-timed poop, an amusing chiropractor session, and a blessed nap when we got home - i only lay down for about half an hour so i could get some work done, when mr smear did get up i took him to my mom's for an interesting discussion about our moving plans then to the promenade parks for a bit before coming home for dinner

(did he or did he not get stung by a bee?! probably not)

a long bedtime, then settling down for some work research

wednesday 3rd:

a lot of reading later plus infestation frustration, calling it a night around 2am and actually going to bed forty minutes later

up late, slow start, getting set up at my mom's only to have to take gd to the acupuncturist then working for an hour before picking her up; lunch break at home, returning to work and being demoralized by a combination of azure authentication obstacles and a lack of communication from SxS: palette cleansing with a little server maintenance and returning home to try to resuscitate gd's old phone (the nanny's broke) and chat with sailor before taking mr smear out for a long walk in the hot sun

gd's delicious pasta, shower and reading suddenly turning into a long and difficult bedtime, gd taking over while i dived deep into my work

thursday 4th:

until 1.15am

an easy start to a long, intense morning (finding gd's media on her old samsung s4 but being unable to do anything with it, then a massive internet slowdown, forty five minutes trying to leave for the gym, mr smear faking a tantrum on our way out when i couldn't find his gym card)

hitting the treadmill and troubleshooting my mom's internet while working out hard in preparation for swimming, only to realize by the pool that i didn't have swimming trunks

mr smear having enjoyed himself at the crèche (we suspected that by now it wouldn't really matter how incompetent the "carers" are) and learning that he'd been asking everyone who entered where his daddy was (^_^)

home for a nap, working, then taking mr smear to the green point park where he played really well in the big kids' area and made italian and indian friends in the little kids' one; the ratio of fun to stress was much higher than usual and i had a good time myself

back to watch wall-e and eat another delicious dinner, bedtime prep and my irritation over the story of jack and the beanstalk (bastard, that poor giant!), gd taking over once it was clear he wasn't going to sleep

work and an attack of the munchies

friday 5th:

making a lot of progress until 2.30am

mr smear up at 6.30am after only finally falling asleep around 10pm; laying on the couch not-resting while he watched word party and amused himself

self work, making slow progress but getting into the swing of using nginx and node.js - i need to migrate all my "quick win" websites so that my box can perform real work

rushing through to town to get a different tire repaired than the one intended

returning to my mom's, working well for an hour or two, returning home for a very awkward moment with the nanny (she asked me for an advance in the one month i'm having serious trouble)
taking mr smear to the park, an impatient older little girl actually pushing him when he was struggling to keep his balance

a much better bedtime and falling asleep myself waiting to make sure

saturday 6th:

a prescription run and giving away my first homeless shelter voucher, toy story, going to the temple, my first aliyah in forever with mr smear in my arms and being asked to lein, meeting an ethical vegan who was having lunch with the rabbi

seriously ripping my shorts

home, a long few hours with mr smear not napping, watching lady and the tramp instead, drinking coffee to take mr smear to kirstenbosch, but he fell asleep just before hitting the highway, giving away my second voucher, helping gd with her essay and playing a bit with nginx, mom joining me for a walk with mr smear to play on the water's edge and mosey about the park, delicious dinner, reasonably easy shower and bedtime

the IT reboot - wonderful characters, great story, superbly distressing

sunday 7th:

a long night of strange dreams (mostly crossovers with IT scenes)

making some personal progress in the morning before taking gd to see what life in town might be like, going to the jewish museum in an effort to feed mr smear before our scheduled lunch; a long, draining couple of hours chasing him around but surprisingly good vegan options available

trigger: gd and i realizing together that living in south africa might not be feasible, that i could have and should have been looking for israeli contracts, that financially the last year has not been a meaningful improvement over 2016 and that it's way overdue that i take steps to find funding for my projects or a better employer

surviving lunchtime, trying and failing to make change for a parking attendant, coming home to put mr smear to bed and try to get some more work done before he woke up

a fun aquarium visit, then home for dinner. too lazy to shower him, getting him to bed with a little struggle but not significant, falling asleep waiting to see if he was (becoming a trend)

monday 8th:

up 1.30am - 2.30am because my son's finally sleeping through so i'm not :P

an anonymous video making me realize i need to significantly reduce my time on social media

trying to go back to sleep, instead getting up and making keystone.js progress until 4.40am

a phone call from the nanny at 7.30 informing us that the trains weren't running, and something about jumping... it turned out the trains stopped with them on it, and they literally had to jump off the train to take taxis and nobody would help them

mr smear asking to be changed a couple of times during the day

spending the morning migrating my mother's business wordpress site from private hosting to wordpress.com, then going to town to get the new tire put on (and all of the existing ones rotated) and passing out while waiting; dreaming big until the guy woke me up to tell me that the job was done

back to my mom's to finish the migration, then taking gd to the chiropractor

mr smear when we returned home: "hello mommy. and daddy. i thought i lost you."

heavy grocery shopping, being bullshitted by one of godaddy's tech support agents: i was asked to complete a satisfaction survey, to which i responded "i think the reason i keep using godaddy for domain registration and maintenance is a deep-seated subconscious need to hurt myself."
beginning a long series of trial-and-error attempts to get service fabric to its expected behaviour

an indoor afternoon, a couple of wins during shower and bedtime (peeing in a helpful place in the shower, learning about soap), optimistically believing we were having a one-squishy night but bedtime taking far longer (9.30-ish)

working into the night with some success

tuesday 9th:

jesus, microsoft, if your code was good experienced devs wouldn't feel like they deserved a medal for getting it to perform as advertised... finally, after two hours of repeating the exact same tedious steps over and over again, i managed to create a new service fabric application that actually compiled and ran - i was super nervous until it was pushed remotely because that's not a process i look forward to repeating

7am loud wakeup from mr smear

irrational fight is irrational

gd vacuuming my mom's apartment pre-spray, taking mr smear to baby city when the exterminators arrived but coming right back because there was no parking

nap time and depression, afternoon work and realizing that the previous night's struggle might have been in vain

an enjoyable trip to the beach, playing in the water, a good time at the park until he stole a kid's bike and raced away with no sign of turning around once he hit the promenade

more work, dinner and hotel transylvania 2(awesome), a quick and efficient shower even with shampooing both of us, finally getting him to go to sleep at 9.30pm (the average recently with the sun setting so late) and then realizing we'd forgotten to brush his teeth (@&$#!)

researching blockchain tech...

wednesday 10th:

... until late, finally crashing around 1.30am

sleepwalking mr smear to the couch, forgetting to organize his breakfast and gd waking up in a panic late for her acupuncture appointment, eventually postponing it a couple of hours during which i went to work at my mom's

a sore neck and back (mild spasm)

job hunt feelers, taking the vacuum cleaner home and rebooting the router and grabbing some fruit then returning to work, strategizing with sailor

spending all day trying to figure out why my azure app suddenly stopped working but in a very particular way, a long process of upgrading framework and packages interrupted by taking mr smear to the gym with my mom and visiting our friends until dinner

another great new gd dinner (vegan bolognaise-ish), a quick shower, mr smear singing along to weird al's talk soup (so proud), falling asleep reading to him and handing the rest of bedtime over to gd while i continued working

a break for tekken 6 scenario achievements (unlocking yoshimitsu), watching more star wars vii while installing a framework patch

thursday 11th:

going until 1.30am, six hours of dreams that i wish i could have recorded

hotel transylvania 2 again, gd trying to teach mr smear to say "don't pick me up" instead of "don't piss me off", mr smear showing off his boxing gloves to the instructor downstairs

walking about town: a very pleasant experience overall, excellent myog vegan frozen yoghurt, a walk through gardens to find royale, stopping at plant until royale opened and ordering quesadillas for mr smear that he wasn't interested in (but everyone thoroughly enjoyed the superhuman green smoothie), royale for a great vegan burger and milkshake

the lifestyle centre no longer accepting credit cards for parking payment?!

a big nap, baby city shopping then purchasing my first myciti bus pass - which i now realize i should've done ages ago for all the times i take mr smear to the waterfront alone - then going to the harbour for a nautical playdate but arriving too late so having a cider at a waterfront bar and chatting with the owner while mr smear's friend's mother chased the two of them around

rushing home to hand mr smear over to my mom, gd and i meeting friends and overeating delicious chinese while talking non-stop, coming home to take over bedtime (relatively quick success!), finishing star wars vii (it was fun, but a bit disappointing), beginning to work and needing to install even more things to get the same code running (target framework migration is a pain in the ass)


friday 12th:

a little tekken, posting this and installing (or failing to install), i'm going to drink this cup of tea and see if i can make any progress before bed