roughing it

it's saturday night, i had a bunch of stuff planned, and after taking mr smear on a morning hike (which was really cool), i came home feeling so terrible that the rest of the day was spent feeling miserable on the couch. my jaw has been hurting horribly for the last few days and is swollen to the point where gd's actually worrying, so i guess monday will be time to see the doc again only this time with cause to insist on getting whatever this is checked out.

i don't know where the week went, it felt like it flew by. i actually made coding progress at work for the first time since i started, and i'm now officially tenured with a month's experience. i still feel like i'm the new guy, though. and i feel like my constantly massaging my jaw while trying to keep my eyes open during meetings must have looked a bit weird but nobody's said anything.

tuesday night's dnd session was brilliant.

jesus, two birthday parties tomorrow.

overload

i'm keeping up, but barely. a rainy, windy day. worrying about mr smear possibly being exposed to dairy at holiday school (as usual). no time for stickers (but being super excited by the pages i intend to print), lots of manual labour, some crazy paired-programming with the other senior on my team, planning to write, tea with my mom and catching my nutty niece seeing me and disappearing, a big dinner, an on/off evening with mr smear which ended with me giving a bedtime lesson on what lies are (he called me a liar but didn't know what it meant), indulging gd with season 5 of hunter x hunter, a little more optimization in 7 billion humans, some progress with my podcast (but still not done), and now in desperate need of some sleep.

graves, brunch, skateboard

gd waking up hurting, managing to come with to my uncle's consecration but not the family brunch. mr smear being very relaxed in the cemetery, gd becoming upset with me for stepping past my father's grave without acknowledgement to show mr smear my great-grandfather's, reminding me that i should be grateful to him for my existence at least. by that token, if so many of us have a bit of genghis khan in our dna* so we should definitely all be grateful to him, too. also, mud skippers.

* there's no good science behind this theory

i took mr smear to our cousins' and we were there for a while, some interesting conversations and mr smear having a grand old time playing with my nephew's surprisingly sturdy pug.

mr smear passing out on the way home and napping for a while, me being mostly distracted and not really focused on my podcast episode, taking him out with his plastic bike and skateboard and re-learning how to skate a bit before assisting him to stand on the board... we had a lot of fun, and my heart rate hasn't been that elevated from physical exercise / fear in ages!

being sent off to the waterfront to pick up meds and some groceries, coming home to a great dinner and spongebob squarepants and then managing the shower  / bedtime for a bit. mr smear took a really long time to calm down, though, so maybe we need to interfere with his naps...

i've invested a lot of energy into 7 billion humans, today mostly in optimizations. it's a game that's both useful professional practice AND good for meditation! a couple of episodes of hunter x hunter with gd, some more work on the sonnets (book 10 of ovid's metamorphosis is awesome), and now one last level before a 1am bedtime...

on call on a saturday night

wednesday, thursday, friday:

lots of 7 billion humans. that's one heck of a game, and if you can get through half of it and you're not a software developer - you should be.

wednesday was purim, mr smear really enjoyed dressing up as a pirate! i got off work as soon as i could to take him to the carnival, but by the time we got through traffic it was over and he'd passed out :(

thursday was a public holiday; i discovered the hebrew translation of super wings, and i'm still really excited that mr smear couldn't get enough of it!

my first payday from my new job! after taxes it's a bit less than i was hoping for, but that's fine because at least from now i'm not going to be accumulating more scary debt. now i just have to deal with the existing scary debt.

my senior co-worker and i have been working a lot more closely the past few days, and we've had some intense interactions. nothing bad, at this point, and i have a feeling that it's going to be okay.

today:

gd left for her course, mr smear and i took the morning slowly. we walked to the tattoo parlour so i could make an appointment to meet my artist, then bumped into my artist on the way to pick up a cup of tea - mr smear got stuck into salt and vinegar seeds and i made the staff feel bad for giving him a babycino that would have scalded him - we walked back to pick up his optimus prime and then drove to the gym i've been working out of to downgrade my membership, then returned home to hit the pool. it was a bit cold, but fun, although i might've damaged my ear trying to get water out of it afterwards...

stuffing mr smear with leftover pizza, hummus sandwiches and a delicious vegan apple pie protein cookie, eventually being tagged by gd and heading to the tattoo parlour; i'd missed my window, so picked up some things at the wellness warehouse and delicious vegan ice cream on the way home, chilled for a bit and then returned to the tattoo parlour for an exciting strategy session (i left with a green arm, my artist's got some really cool ideas)

half an eye on pocahontas (meh), dinner and [shame on me, i don't remember], shower and bedtime and then a long mission to port our deezer playlists over to google play music (we've signed up for youtube premium, if their music service is functional we'll switch back), now planning on crashing soon as i'm on call and if there's a midnight issue i'm going to have to head in to the office :(

week 3 day 2

walking into work to find a coworker who desperately needed sleep, a long time entering interview feedback, a good lunch from our local canteen, a long video conference with some very higher-ups in the dreaded stuffy meeting room and actually passing out briefly, dropping our friend at home and picking up purim pirate gear for mr smear and then going home to read some of the hobbit graphic novel with him our neighbour paying us a "five minute" visit that stretched until mr smear's bedtime, spending a couple of hours sorting out my mom's computer and migrating her data to her new phone - samsung's direct-to-iphone usb connector and migration functionality is AMAZING.

7 billion humans until much later than intended (it's almost 1.30am)...

a good monday

the week began well, i was tired but satisfied after recording and publishing black magic woman and i slept pretty well. since i woke up my neck has been generally better than the past couple of days, although that's not saying much. dropping off mr smear at school was smooth, i spent my morning going through educational checkpoints, had a nice lunch with one of my teammates to establish rapport, struggled to get through a meeting that wasn't really aimed at me, enjoyed a great team-building moment after giving "the speech" i'd been thinking about, did some more studying while my dev environment set itself up and then got brought in to shadow an interview for the last hour of the day which was a great experience.

i met gd and mr smear at the pharmacy (i gave her such a freak she yelled, everyone thought it was hysterical), did an enormous grocery shopping, sat with my mom over chai and babycino, came home to unpack and enjoy a decent evening, even if it did include mr smear throwing a tantrum for getting in trouble for intentionally smacking me in the genitals.

hunter x hunter, housekeeping, and going to bed soon.

fully week / weak end

damn, today was grueling. but nice!

i finished the script for the podcast episode in the morning, which is a first, and i'm really excited about it and about to start recording. i also got through a lot of emails and tasks that have been piling up over the course of the last week or two.

for the first time with a specific group of friends we all managed to get together and spend the day together, even gd made it and these are people i've been friends with since before we met that she hadn't managed to meet yet.

the kids played beautifully, mr smear's master class in breakdancing for two bigger kids, mr smear blowing our minds by demonstrating basic subtraction skills. gd and i watched an episode and a half of hunter x hunter, and finally decided on a name for our next child if we're fortunate enough to have one.

our next door neighbour seems to be regressing, though, and aside from getting himself beaten up i've just had to go over and ask him, after 10pm, to chill with the household repairs...

halfway week / weak end

i'm really disappointed - i woke up this morning with a band of pain around my chest and breathing was painful. it relaxed for a couple of hours, enough for me to enjoy sitting with someone to ensure that i'm not referring a "special" and give mr smear some outside playtime, but then came back with a vengeance. gd's helped quite a bit, but i'm now convinced that it's a nerve pinching in my neck.

my mom came over to pick something up just before one of our cousins arrived to let us know she's leaving her husband. we all think she's doing the right thing, i'm sorry she's struggling but i'm happy she's doing something that will be good for her in the long run.

i've put a lot of effort into this week's podcast, it's too noisy outside for me to record but i'm quite satisfied with the script.

---

this morning, just before i left with mr smear, a huge cloud of cigarette smoke smothered us in our living room and i walked downstairs with mr smear to introduce the airbnb guests to him and explain that he's asthmatic. they've been uncooperative until now, but the guy seemed genuinely embarrassed and i think they finally got the message.

week two

damn, it's hard to keep track, but i guess it doesn't matter.

it was a tough week, i was struck by exhaustion on monday morning and it didn't really go away until yesterday, i've had a couple of rough nights (using some of it constructively), joined my late uncle's family for his memorial service, completed two half-day courses, learned a hell of a lot at work, got in some coding, successfully migrated my podcast to podcast garden (which significantly improved my itunes offering), got positive feedback on mr smear, survived a regression in his superhero identity, a date night listening to cape cultural collective at the daily music show

this afternoon when i left the office i said something so cringe-worthy to a recently-disabled employee that i wanted to send myself to sensitivity training, no matter how good my intentions may have been.

mr smear singing a bit at the temple again for the first time in ages, a lovely dinner with family at my mom's (although gd's back wasn't up for it), mr smear passing out on the way home, spending the evening catching up on doing my own thing purposelessly (and being upset with loud neighbours)

and now it's saturday morning, the week is over, and i'm calling it a night. i think. maybe there's a level of a game left in me.

another late start to a week

damn, and i NEED to sleep. i'm so over soundcloud, i finally managed to complete a podcast recording before midnight on a sunday and in order to avoid spending silly amounts of money when i'm trying to crowdfund i've been forced to explore alternative platforms. fortunately, two appear to be good so i'm waiting for registration responses from acast and podcast garden.

at least lightworks, as complicated as it can be, is pulling its weight and my latest episode is available on youtube.

...

today started off a bit rough, and didn't improve too much. i had an enjoyable encounter at my mom's coffee shop, we checked out the gym by my work and it's cheaper and better than where we've been for the past six months, we had an enjoyable afternoon at our friends while the kids ran around, and came home to a shower, some productive time, some tekken after bedtime, more productivity while gd watched hunter x hunter, a straightforward recording...

... and it's now almost 1am and i have GOT to go to bed.

sabbath survival

step 1: literally bash my neighbour's door in with my shoulder and foot. i don't know what mr smear made of it, but he found it very noisy and then tried to help me with the kicking. the old neighbour who came by to help was so busy giving me a run-down of the history the building managers that by the time he finally went off to call someone i'd pretty much gotten the job done.

step 2: mr smear playing at the temple with some bigger kids after refusing to join the group we'd gone for. seeing our first landlord and completely ignoring the prick (i couldn't tell if he wanted to greet me or not, but wasn't interested in finding out). the enormous spread and heavy press of people, giving it a miss and taking mr smear for a smoothie at the waterfront, followed by a visit to the aquarium which inspired the thought of the day: "the story of the human condition: this sucks, but you can f*** right off if you think i'm going to change something."

step 3: mr smear demolishing most of "our" lunch (he ate lots more than his fair share, and was still hungry afterwards), which included tofu, avocado, and edamame. someone sat across from us with his kid and the two of them were eating giant cupcakes. i can only presume that that was their lunch, because he made things really awkward by saying "that looks a lot healthier than what we're eating". i just didn't know what to say.

step 4: coming home for naps and general rest.

step 5: walking to the 24-hour pharmacy together. seeing some crazy people. one of them insisting on holding my hand as all three of us tried to keep as far away as possible without being offensive about it.

step 6: walking up to where the (concert?) was, mr smear loving the music and dancing on my shoulders. the disturbing woman shadowing us and giving me a strange look when i stopped so that she would walk past.

step 7: shower, toy story in french, a long and interesting chat with horseman.

step 8: bedtime, tekken, and trying out black mirror - bandersnatch on the ps3. thoroughly enjoying the experience and stopping halfway so that gd could join me.

step 9: making myself a cup of rooibos tea and trying to be productive, but an hour's gone by and i think i need to go to bed.

week one

i mean, it is, you see.

whoo hoo! the smoking saga has ended in resolve, we might still be dealing with smoke for the next week or two but the owners have agreed that the next tenants will not be allowed to smoke at all.

yesterday was rough, the day started well but halfway through a teammate briefing me on what he's working on i was suddenly overcome with exhaustion. otherwise, it was a good day and i got things off my plate, and at beer o'clock i sat down with a teammate and strategized about stuff i haven't thought much about since officer's course.

i rushed through to pick up challah, picked up mr smear and drove through to the temple - after all the physical exertion playing with some kids there i'm amazed that he didn't fall asleep on the way home! a really nice dinner with my mom, most of an episode of hunter x hunter before passing out.

it's been a slow morning, our neighbour locked himself into his apartment and i'm now about to get mr smear moving to the temple for a kids' morning.

achievements unlocked

the smoking saga:

> Your complaint was discussed last night at the trustees meeting and we have also looked for advice from a specialist sectional title schemes legal issues web site, Paddocks, to which we subscribe. The issue of smoking within one’s own section is a difficult one as a resident may do as they like to a great extent. While we do have a “nuisance” Conduct Rule, the comment from Paddocks is that to be a nuisance, “the actions must first be unreasonable according to standards of the ‘normal man of sound liberal tastes and habits’. The courts will not apply the standards of any perverse or over-scrupulous person”.

As a next step, we suggest that you approach the owner of the flat as you have got nowhere with his tenant. The owner is

> Thank you for investigating.

I'm fairly confident that in 2019 it would not be considered "perverse or over-scrupulous" to not want to be forced to ingest large quantities of cigarette smoke in our own home. This is not a case of us getting "an occasional whiff" but a significant amount of smoke that comes into our apartment; it's actually difficult to breathe and we have a small child, and I don't think it's reasonable to be forced to permanently keep our windows shut.

If I understand correctly, it is illegal to smoke in public places and within ten metres of entrances. Surely, if a court of law can find that behaviour to be problematic, it would not encourage what's going on here.

I'll take it up with the landlord, hopefully we'll be able to come to some kind of resolution. I'm sure there are many kinds of solutions that do not involve them giving up their habits or us our access to clean air.

> Please keep me updated on developments. If there’s no positive progress then there are a couple of further avenues to explore.

How very kind.

---

day 4: rain, picking up our friend on the way to school, more IT troubles, free breakfast intentions, giving UX advice to an intern, HR bureaucracy, being surprised by my 11am meeting (calendar issues), a good meeting, a long call with sailor over lunch, finally getting my computer sorted out, getting halfway through a 4am (his time) call with a superior before realizing that he's a higher station (i'm amused that i told him "i think we can be friends!" in response to something he said), setting up my workstation, an interesting chat with my team about documentation and then going into a much deeper conversation than intended

leaving later than planned, meeting my mom and gd and mr smear at my mom's coffee shop, grocery shopping and finally returning home around 8pm, a great late dinner and penn and teller - fool us, a quick shower, good bedtime, most of an episode of hunter x hunter, failing to find the beginning of liar liar amusing after gd went to bed, lots of housekeeping, a little 7 billion humans and now it's past 1am...

money for nothing or everything for free

imovie is AWFUL. it's been causing me endless frustration for months, there's no sane way to submit complaints, but it's free and, aside from rendering, easy to use. after finally giving up this evening, i gave filmora wondershare another chance. it's alright, but after a couple of renders i wasn't so sure that i wanted to pay so much to remove a watermark.

and then i tried lightworks. lightworks is a bit tricky to get the hang of, but not more than wondershare. and it's really free. and it renders SO MUCH FASTER than either of the others. so today's video editing experience kinda sucked, but next week's will be so much better!

now i just need to figure out where to host the audio, soundcloud's fees are highway robbery...

day two

starting my day trying to publish my podcast but imovie's unconfigurable automatic rendering making it impossible.

mr smear still coughing too much to go to school, gd needing to go to the chiropractor, me needing to go to work, our friend (and now my coworker) generously sending us the cleaning lady

IT troubles, lots of tedium with interesting sprinkles, a general sense of satisfaction. finally meeting my 10000 step goal for the first time in many months due to a walk to the pharmacy because it looks like gd and i are starting another summer cold (wtf?!)

day one

mr smear home with a cough, uber in the rain, a long half a day learning about health insurance and pension plans; chatting with the others in the orientation was fun. i really enjoyed meeting my team, and aside from an awkward faux pas about not working on the sabbath i think the day went really well.

walking home was nice, a quiet evening stuffing myself on good food, lego time, a nice shower-and-bedtime, completing the latest podcast episode, watching the season 3 finale of hunter x hunter, recording the podcast episode, and managing to go to bed before 1am!

bloody sunday

aside from the day ending with some drama triggered by me unfollowing a relative on instagram because she posts inappropriate pictures that i don't want to see, today was a long and draining one in spite of my best intentions to be productive (and i theoretically had buy-in from gd, which turned out to be worthless). instead of working on my podcast and preparing for my orientation day (which starts in seven hours), we spent forever shopping for a new bed (which stuffed up my mother's plans for the day, and hurt both my and gd's necks), picked up great indian curry for lunch, located our missing boxing equipment, spent a lot more tim "picking up a few things" at the waterfront mall than i could bear, picked up mr smear, then returned home to feel bloated and dizzy (probably nerve-pinching), finally managed to eat the great dinner that gd threw together while finishing hook, showered and got mr smear into bed, watched an episode of hunter x hunter, and sat down to work on the podcast but only got halfway through before realizing that omg it's almost 2am.

and as it is, i barely slept last night due to bad back pain and a late cup of tea :/

life inertia

during a conversation with our neighbor today, we discussed how to go about changing one's thought and behavior patterns. it occurred to me while we talked that because we are four-dimensional beings, our minds and bodies are like craft traveling through frictionless space with our consciousness at the helm. we traditionally think of ourselves as "stuck" in our patterns, but we're not stationary at all - once we're moving in a direction, we simply develop inertia that needs to be overcome if we decide that we want to change direction.

in order to change our thought patterns and behaviors, we need to do the following:

1. we need to see that we're heading in the wrong direction.

 

we need to be aware that we're doing things that are not bringing us towards our goals. we need to determine what our goals are, and break them down into their most fundamental parts.

it is important to understand that seeing the need to change the direction that the ship is facing is not sufficient to change the direction.

2. we need to change the direction we're facing

 

we need to identify achievable steps towards our goals. if we've defined our goals properly there will be many paths to choose from.

it is important to understand that orienting ourselves to the direction we want to move in does not change the direction that the ship is heading.

3. we need to fire our engines for as long as it takes to change course

 

we need to take responsibility, hold ourselves accountable, and do the things we've set out to do. we need action plans, to-do lists, and reminders. we need support from friends and family, and if we can't get that then we need to find new friends and family.

the inertia of our established patterns will make it difficult for most of us to achieve immediate success, and we will most likely have to continue working hard until we overcome all of the elements in ourselves and our environments that have kept us going astray in the first place.

4. repeat if necessary

 

every action we take, whether we succeed or fail, affects us on some level, changes who and where we are. sometimes, or - for some people - often, we outgrow our own goals whether we've reached them or not. this means that we should regularly stop to evaluate our strategies, see what's working and what's not, examine whether the direction we've set our sights on is still desirable, and adjust accordingly.

if we're still on the right heading? then we need to keep pushing.

one of the most useful studies i've come across in recent years explains how willpower is a finite resource. if you're lacking the willpower to make changes in your life, start small. avoid mindless media and interactions, avoid negativity as much as you can, and make time and space to engage with things that inspire you. if you don't know what inspires you? heck, go on to youtube and search for "awesome inspiring amazing". i'm sure you'll find something.

remember: every constructive thought counts. every constructive action counts. every moment is a new opportunity for a fresh start.

one free day

i was tired. i've actually been really, remarkably, frustratingly tired the entire week. so has gd, so it's possible fallout from being so sick recently. most of the week was a blur, there's lots of stuff that happened that i didn't write down and while i'm a little disappointed to be missing some good stuff, i'm doing what i can with what i have.

monday 25th:

monday was hard, the first day of proper exhaustion. the start of a formal complaint against our downstairs neighbours who insist on blowing smoke into our apartment. we've been asked not to confront them and most of this week the smoke in our apartment has been nauseating. (i'm struggling right now, switching between closing the windows and trying to air the place out)

tuesday 26th:

another rough day. dnd night was fun, though.

wednesday 27th:

not having received my final payment yet, and stressing over a potential legal battle with a company i have no official details for, i contacted the guy in charge of payroll. in the late afternoon, he finally got back to me claiming there'd been "a mistake with our payroll system". sure, buddy. i re-issued the invoice as soon as i got home, which received zero response. fortunately my mother was able to help me out with my rent and paying the cleaning lady's salary,

thursday 28th:

because by the next morning's withdrawal cut-off time he still hadn't responded. by the evening, freaking out, i sent him yet another email and tried to get hold of him on the company's slack service, and when he didn't respond i finally sent a message to the big boss asking for a hand.

i received two responses from the guy in quick succession: the first rudely reminding me that invoices are only settled on thursdays (really, even when it's your damned fault that i hadn't been paid?) and the second message very sweetly explaining how he hadn't wanted to send it before in case i was sleeping (the #$%@?!?!?!)

anyway, i said farewell to my team in the morning, which went well, i did some housecleaning while waiting for gd to pick up her visa (finally!), we had a good lunch at plant, a surprise run-in with sagirl, a good haircut but unfortunately spending most of the time in the chair trying really hard to remain conscious and failing. i went to the gardens synagogue in the evening to say kaddish for my uncle, which led to a repeat discussion with gd about the inappropriateness of the orthodox separation of men and women during prayer services.












friday 1st:

my "spa" day, the first day of actually exercising at the gym in a month or two. poor cardio, doing a bit of bag work, stretching well, spending 10 to 15 minutes in the jacuzzi, and then fiddling with a java adaptation of my encryption tool

picking up mr smear and staying for a while as he played with a new friend whose mom i went to school with, picking up challah, resting for a bit and being too tired to go to the temple

a really nice friday night dinner with my mom, saying grace after meals for the first time in forever

today:

waking up early, taking gd to her class but she had a panic attack along the way (possibly triggered by an unexpectedly heavy spray of amber perfume which made us both feel sick), coming home for a lazy day, inviting our neighbour for lunch and a good chat

a little bit of willow, most of hook, bedtime, and hunter x hunter (uvogin's battle with kurapika, DEFINITELY not for kids)