the buzz

hah! sunday.

i woke up to two very strange dreams.

1. samuel l jackson is a megamind-like villain. i receive a clue but am too slow to figure it out and something bad happens. my team converges on his hideout and two of them who are particularly excited to discover that they have powers don't realize that they can't fly and launch themselves into a wall. i manage to sneak up on the villain, but suddenly, a few feet away from my target, i lose control of my bowels and i poop myself… thinking fast - i have to do something! - i reach down, grab a chunk of poop and rub it in that smug bastard's face, getting away just as he realizes what's happened.

2. i'm watching a youtube video of a teenager "recycling" AA batteries by swallowing them.

i woke up from the first worried that i'd actually pooped myself (i hadn't), and from the second feeling gagging from the mere *idea* of swallowing batteries.

...

gd took mr smear out early to a birthday party on a farm (what kind of a farm has lions?!?!), and i played hacknet for a bit before heading off to the "spiritual awakening" session gd signed me up for. my gods, i don't think there's any other game that gets my adrenaline so pumped up!

at first i was skeptical, but the dude pulled off quite a feat in a random room full of random people. about a third of the way through i realized two things, the first being that i was exactly where i needed to be, mentally and physically, for the third time this week. the second, that although i disagree with a fair amount of what he was saying, at the end of the day we're talking about the same thing but from different ideologies and with very different metaphors. i can deal with that. so i let myself go and did the exercise, which only took a split second because he used an expression that i understood immediately - the "life buzz" he was referring to is something i first became aware of on my very first lsd trip, while sitting in a tutorial about nuclear proliferation wearing an anti-asbestos suit and chewing on a fellow student's pen. it's a beautiful thing that once you tap into that sensation, you can easily share it with anyone around you who's paying attention - it's contagious and the room was full of that peaceful sensation that comes with being that present.

i returned home, got through half a cup of coffee when i realized i *really* didn't need another one, spent the next while doing meaningless things until my family returned home full of mud, emergency showered with mr smear, ate too much while he played on my computer and then watched two movies with him, rise of the guardians and the spiderwick chronicles, both of which made me a little emotional. on a related note, i'm amused to report that he's becoming a bit of a brony :D

i'm feeling a bit off, but happy with my weekend.

a good shabbos

we walked through the company gardens, we ran into someone who told us about a place nearby that makes vegan waffles, we returned home to pick up mr smear's epipen just in case, we had great waffles.

to be fair, though, he was considerably more interested in the sweet potato ice-cream.

he convinced me to go to the museum, but that turned out to be a ploy because he just wanted doritos from their cafeteria. he wasn't getting any, but we did end up having a fun tour in spite of his initial protests and he made a new friend,which was fun, funny and a touch embarrassing at times (he loudly insisted on the archaeopterix being "the king of the phoenix firebirds", for example)

i needed to lie down when we got home, and woke up later to make some good progress on a personal project before getting mr smear ready for bed. i was pleased when he insisted on picking a book and came back with a hebrew one ^_^

joining gd in watching a documentary about marilyn manson, then fiddling about with hackerrank. overall - a fantastic day!

serenity now!

the biggest lesson from this past week is "calm the f*** down". everything's super-stressful, we have tons of work and lots of time pressure and a million things interfering with me actually getting the job done. but i can only do so much, and sometimes - like yesterday - i need to find a quiet corner and stare out the window for a bit to gear up to do the thing.

also, my troublesome teammate finally informed us that she's pregnant, which validates my suspicions and explains why she's been so damned difficult over the last while.

wednesday and thursday were awful days at work. hours and hours of farting against the thunder, only to discover that every single issue i encountered had to do with broken dependencies - not with me doing things wrong. and then yesterday, i got some help with my dev environment that had been so thoroughly by monday's VPN outage, and the IT department resolved the issue that cost me two hours of my life being unable to connect to the network that i was already connected to.

it was that sort of a week. but it ended on a good note, with real progress along two vectors and a really interesting beer with a teammate.

mr smear was great at the temple service last night, although he made up for it with a quick pre-bedtime tantrum, and i went to bed early for an uncomfortable but long attempt to rest. today has begun as intended, installing gamemaker studio (of course, my free trial expired a month ago) and unity, with the intention of building simple games with mr smear and a less simple game that i woke up thinking about yesterday morning.

also, new ink on the horizon. also, it's looking like quite a nice day so maybe i'll take mr smear out for a walk now.

another week down

jeebus.

i'm sore and tired from doing my exercises at night. i did a crossword puzzle this evening after being inspired by joining teammates for a cryptic crossword last week.

i brought work home with me last night, ran into something that drove me nuts, still had to waste two hours of my life on it this morning and until i figured it out it made me really angry and frustrated. but then i sorted it out and everything was great and i spent the rest of the day just wanting to be anywhere else.

taking mr smear to the museum on saturday was really cool, right until gd arrived and my body went "you should have been back home an hour ago", sunday insanity trying my coworker's car and then hosting a super-intense playdate while gd taught my cousin how to make some great vegan dishes.

mr smear has an incredible book collection. and movies and tv series. i'd be jealous if i wasn't enjoying them so much with him.

going to sleep now with a dehumidifier.

sunday through wednesday

holy shit.

1. our neighbour. from scaring my wife to this morning's 4.15 hammering that woke us all up*, we're hating him so much right now. we bought into his bullshit (to a degree), sympathised with him, tried to be helpful and good neighbours, but at the end of the day he's a man-child with zero interest in anything that doesn't generate massive drama. **** that guy.

*it cost me an hour to get mr smear back to bed, he'd been having bad dreams and it took a while to convince him that it wasn't his bed's fault

2. bell mobile. i spoke to them for a bit, they're a bunch of assholes. the people themselves are just another part of the problem.

3. a long day monday demonstrating that my changes were safe, half a day defending them, giving up and restrategizing. then getting a surprise assignment that took a *long* time to get a handle on, but i think i'm good now.

4. physio's happy, pleasantly surprised by some things and disappointed by others. these exercises are HARD. my knees been hurting on/off the last couple of days, too.

5. money's tight. it'd be really, really nice to get out of debt, but every month just gets crazier than the last.

6. reinforcing my echo chamber by unfollowing, unfriending and blocking people who refuse to distinguish between capitalism and industrial consumerism. i can't understand how we allowed ourselves to be kept so dumb that marxism is on the rise again. also, antivaxxers and anti-5gers are really pushing my buttons. i need to live in a sane world. if i can't live in a sane world, i'm going to do what i can to believe i'm in one.

cueille ta vie.

low to high

i got through my rage relatively quickly on thursday night, and woke up on the right side of bed on friday morning. aside from having to slip a letter under our neighbour's door, although it looks like that's taken care of for now.

mr smear needed to stay home, i arrived at work with a bee in my bonnet about the fun stuff i'd started fiddling with the evening before, and i spent my day thoroughly engrossed and left the office on a fantastic, very satisfied note.

i've never heard of findbugs before. findbugs is awesome.

a pleasant friday night dinner with my mom, playing full throttle until late. generally awesome game!

we started the day lazily, i jumped into bootstrap for the very first time. it took a few minutes to get everything i needed together, and i've spent a few hours applying its capabilities and i'm extremely happy with how my little side project's turning out!

we all went to the temple to pick up something that wasn't there, then to my mom's to use her kitchen but her cupboards were bare, we returned home with mr smear loving the rasta uber driver's reggae, then walked to plant for lunch with our cousins which was really, really nice.

gd went to bed when we got home, i lay down on the couch next to mr smear and put on alice in wonderland (1951)... i dozed off on multiple occasions, and every time i opened my eyes i found his transfixed with him humming along to the music. so that was awesome ^_^

later on we watched most of a bug's life, mr smear's behaviour was erratic once we began the bedtime procedure, and other than those details i spent my evening fiddling with code. and now it's about 1.45am, i've done my exercises, i'm happy with my output, and i'm definitely, definitely ready for bed.

nuclear

on a day when our schizophrenic neighbour harasseses my wife while i'm at work, and right after my wife undermines me while i'm trying to deal with mr smear being really naughty, bell's collections department gets hold of me to tell me i owe them money. after i thought we'd cleared that noise up a year ago. jesus, i'm angry.

over humpday

two mornings of enjoyable wakeups (mr smear's difficult to get out of bed in the morning, but we're making a game of it)

yesterday:

a good therapy session, ending on a great note because my therapist was interested in my extrapolation from the idea of willpower being a finite resource

for the first time, i picked up horrible script work and got it done within a few hours. i came home for a pleasant evening, drinks with my tgtbt's boyfriend, and an interesting writing exercise with gd after putting mr smear to bed

today:

maybe a little too much coffee. i spent hours diving deep into documentation that all turned out to be outdated and irrelevant. brilliant. two conversations inspired me to want to write two children's books, so that's cool, and we listened to an interesting talk by a VP and i sent him an email afterwards in spite of feeling awkward about the now-ingrained "chain of command" reflex.

the evening was mostly fun, but i'm now pretty much done; it's 10pm and i need to shower and get into bed.

neck

oh, and my neck's been in trouble since the weekend. it's been a while and i don't know what i'm doing wrong.

******* hostile

holy shit. my teammate, ms drama llama? we had a meeting this morning and she was openly hostile, combative, condescending, and actually rolled her eyes at me. i was really upset, but took the high road, and when i reported to my manager was informed that she's having some "personal issues".

jesus.

a large part of my day was spent in a virtual back-and-forth, and her passive-aggressive attitude will be clear to anyone who sees our messages (the whole team gets ticket updates).

at least it was a somewhat productive day. kind of. and the anesthetist from my knee surgery finally sent me my bill, so i can finally claim from GAP insurance! only two months later! how the f is this normal in south africa?!

my mom picked me up, took me home to switch computers and then dropped me at the temple, where i discovered that the email from last week was about this evening's meeting being postponed. wonderful. so back home again, playtime, dinner, shower, some chores, and then an attempt to watch the second episode of stranger things season 3. i had to stop most of the way through because i was bored. so gd and i watched awful auditions instead, which was way more shocking, and then i had to palate cleanse with a random golden buzzer. on my way to bed gd confronted me with a bit of rage as our new mattress is terrible and the manufacturers still haven't gotten back to us...

so now it's time to play something quickly, then do my exercises and crash.

not quite as planned

i had every intention of finally making some progress with my podcast today. i was feeling pretty good, my head was quite clear and i was all-in-all rather motivated. it's been a while.

instead, my morning was burned by taking care of finances, i ate too much lunch (gd's not-eggs for the first time in ages), and then decided that what we all needed was a walk across the street to the company gardens. great idea, only about five minutes in my foot started hurting again, just like yesterday at the mall, and by the time we turned around the pain had spread to my hip flexor and knee, at which point it took everything i had to be able to get myself home and horizontal.

i was in so much pain it made me feel faint and sick, i've been in bed for a few hours now and i'm still feeling terrible.

this sucks.

a long week that flew by

it was a long week. highlights included

a) mistakenly seeing my physio a week early and now being off crutches, which is difficult but is slowly becoming more comfortable.

b) finally coding for the first time in ages and pushing out something that i'm happy with, and that my team is also happy with

i was wiped out after taking mr smear to the temple, even though it was a mostly enjoyable experience.

mr smear came to snuggle with *me* this morning, which was surprising but nice! gd slept in, we started our day with some of the dumbo reboot (which is really good, and mr smear *cried* when they took his mother away), then samurai jack (which the whole family loves, now), and finally bridge to terebithia. i don't know if i'd be this emotional if i didn't have a kid, but jesus, i was still having trouble speaking without sobbing after the credits...

otherwise, it was a day of cleaning my desk and installing updates on all my devices. it was all very "sabbath".

my mom took us to the waterfront and i finally bought gd a winter jacket for me (yes, you read that correctly, she doesn't like what i've been wearing for the past decade). after all the dinner / shower / bedtime stuff and a little bit of ffviii, gd and i returned to stranger things and i'm now struggling with acid reflux and trying to be somewhat productive before crashing. which will be soon enough, i can tell.

routine

another 2am wake-up when i need the rest. this one began with physical discomfort and has now morphed into anxiety over how my day is going to go... i suspect that my day would be improved considerably by me not starting it with a sleep deficit.

i was going to finish this post saying that at least it's still raining, but i think it's just stopped. i hope it starts again soon.

raining

today:

soft rain to put us to sleep, but this weekend had some great moments i really need to share first.

greatest moment? saying goodnight to mr smear, careful to only hug him now that he's made it clear he doesn't like kisses, and he grabbed my face and kissed me anyway.

dancing with him during shower time.

watching spider-man: into the spider-verse with him and all of us loving it

a long playdate with our friends and taking them to the buffet at plant, the food was delicious and mr smear makes us SO proud

yesterday:

fiddling with my new app until late after sailor made some suggestions 

going to see toy story 4 as a family, having a great time in spite of mr smear taking off the 3d glasses twenty minutes in.