a very happy hump day

 i went to bed reasonably early last night, i was exhausted... but i barely slept, and i don't even know *why* i was so uncomfortable. then i got up early to make up some hours.

work today was extremely satisfying. i've been working on a devops task for a week that's been dragging (mostly due to unexpectedly having to upgrade dependencies to support it), and this evening i finally merged and everything smoothly turned green. i really, really like it when infrastructure-as-code does what it's supposed to.

additionally, our team lead is on vacation and - as always - something broke. two things, actually, but in addition to us mitigating effectively we also uncovered a couple of ticking time-bombs that need to be defused.

that reminds me! after dropping mr smear off at school this morning it popped into my head that i should add "software entomologist" to my resume.

today's physio session was rough. i really need to get myself a pair of rollerblades.

is it only tuesday?

it's been a very, very, very long week. it's involved some strife, which has been a bit of a learning experience but also kinda confusing. yesterday had some hard moments with some difficult decisions.

on sunday, after mr smear and i watched dumbo together, we went with my mom to boulders to see the penguins, after watching the netflix series penguin town (which is surprisingly dramatic). it was a good day. last night we watched the muppets from 2011 and mr smear loved it as much as we did.

work has been good, pretty gratifying. i've reviewed an incomplete upcoming page for the comics and it's really, really good. i have an idea of what sonnet 20 would look like in tattoo form. we had a hackathon team meeting last night and we have a good strategy for the next couple of weeks. i've made great progress with an aspect of my side project.

the intermittent fasting is going well, i'm generally feeling better although my legs are giving me trouble again for the first time in a while.

mr smear is loving being back at school, which is a huge relief.

gd's document story is once again stalled because of issues with organizing police clearances.

something, something, i forget.

fast and furious

this has been one heck of a week.

work was pretty good, i made a reasonable amount of hours and for the large part enjoyed it. side project progress is slow and steady, and satisfying. all the hackathon winnings have been paid out. it looks like the next two pages of the comics are coming along nicely.

at the beginning of the week we learned some details about the aliyah process that made some of our previous decisions suboptimal, but gd got her fingerprints taken, so we're at least a step closer to her police clearance(s) which we need for what we're praying is the final phase.

mr smear and i have had some rough patches but we've been mostly good, and today was especially good.

i'm proud of him for starting to learn to dive in his swimming lessons, even prouder that he was brave enough to plunge in and swim a little in ice-cold water this afternoon after insisting that he wanted to get in the pool.

the intermittent fasting is going well, although for some reason i've been a bit dehydrated the last day or two. i'm amused by my weight fluctuations and i'm pretty confident i've been eating the same amount of calories overall... at the same time, i'm hoping against hope that it'll help me with my neck, this week in particular i've been having nerve pain in my hands and a couple of days ago i woke up in the middle of the night with an arm in pins and needles :(

we've been big into rayman: legends lately, and gd was convinced that origins is harder even though i've been trying to tell her that we've been getting better. so i tried an origins level this afternoon just to see... and i was absolutely right :P

our cousins are getting divorced (although one of them doesn't quite understand that yet, he's in denial), and we had friday night dinner with her last night. her son has invited me to join a sunday rollerblading group... and i'll be damned if i'm not ready to get back into it. i'll take it easy, of course, and i think it would be really cool to take mr smear and his bike along as well.

mr smear's fears seem to be slowly abating, gd made him a talisman that he wears in a pouch around his neck and it seems to be helping. it still blows my mind that this is the same kid who drew blood caverns at school a couple of weeks ago :P

oh, and thanks, mom: she took mr smear to his swimming lesson yesterday and this morning he explained that she said "fsck" and it was okay :/

alright, i'm tired and it's midnight, good night world.

vaccine news!

i almost forgot! gd and i are booked for our first jabs. 

lions, tiger and bear

 most of saturday was great. i got a haircut, and mr smear and i joined sailor for a good walk along the pipe track. unfortunately, mr smear was very busy acting out and the walk turned a bit sour, the evening did not end on a positive note.

most of sunday was fantastic. i got some side-project work done in the morning, as well as taking a couple of steps forward with the next pages of the graphic novel, then my mom picked us up and we drove out to the drakenstein lion park. it's a beautiful place where they give safe homes to abused lions (and a tiger, and a couple of caracals), and it was amazing being able to be outdoors in a large area with mr smear seeing the animals and feeling safe enough to tool around by himself. their rescue-chimpanzee park was also pretty cool.

we stopped by fairview to pick up coffee, see the goats (that reminds me - mr smear's first comment at the lion sanctuary: "i didn't know goats were real!"), visit our friends (gd made it clear that my godmother was not welcome to photos of our boy), play with the dogs and swap stories of bureaucratic insanity.

everything was great except that something wasn't, and gd and i had a blowout after mr smear went to bed that left us both with an ugly feeling (less angry than confused, communicating can be absurdly hard sometimes).

after watching veritasium's how to slow aging (and a week of feeling fat - the pics of my last tattoo shocked me - and finally slowing down on the processed food/snacks) i was inspired to give intermittent fasting a try. i'm now a day in on 16/8 and aside from realizing that i was doing it wrong (tea and coffee are mostly fine during fasting, but not with even a little bit of the soy milk) i'm finding it entirely manageable. i even got a good day's work in, and a good night's work as well.

 my only concern from today was with a team-lead who had been upset by an argument we had on friday. i feel like the conversation went pretty well, considering, but i really do need to be careful with our discussions...

*sigh*
1am. fine. g'nite already.

waking up slowly

 it's a pleasant saturday morning, i've slept late and am feeling a little bit better than i've been the whole week. a part of it was the lack of sleep, a part of it mourning, a part of it mr smear's constant terror that's only just begun subsiding over the past day or two, a part of it is trying to shift my diet from lots of processed snacks to more whole foods, a part of it is still living in a country that's falling apart at the seams (and the world is starting to take notice) while the israeli and canadian bureaucracies continue to force us through flaming hoops.

i don't like being overweight, i don't like that i'm not making / managing to make time to exercise.

i'm exhausted by it all. depressed? probably. and trying not to let it affect my relationships but it's really hard. there are a few things that have helped me maintain sanity this week. one of them is our hackathon team's interview, one of the guys said something that was truly heartwarming (about how obvious it had been to him that he should join our team), and one of them is rayman: legends driving us completely mental (there's a special place in hell reserved for those evil bastards + i can't believe it was made in 2013).

although i missed a day and a half of work at the beginning of the week, i made great progress on the project i've just been added to (we're trying to break the siloing, and so far the new team feels like we're winning). it's very gratifying to join a project knowing nothing and being able to contribute tangibly from the get-go.

plans for today: enjoy the saturday. i'm gratified that mr smear has picked up opus magnum again of his own volition - even if he is missing the point somewhat (he understands the mechanics, but he's very busy "making levels" for me to do :P)

the passing of a matriarch

my great-aunt passed away this afternoon, just a few weeks shy of her 96th birthday. she hadn't been in great health for the past few years but she enjoyed a reasonable quality of life and she certainly had her wits about her. i'm very glad we went to visit her a few weeks ago and we all got to enjoy each other's company.

... 

we tried watching a babysitter's guide to monster hunting last night, mr smear was so utterly terrified by the creepy hand in the intro sequence that he had to sleep in our bed, and so none of us got much rest (he sleeps horizontally when not in his own bed). he was still scared tonight but we managed to get him back in his room so i'm now writing this in bed and crashing early. 

...

i got very little work done on friday, i was mostly tired and distracted by trying to sort out my budgeting cloud app so i could try to get a handle on where our money's disappearing. i ended up figuring out how to convert my pdf bank statements to csv, so i'm feeling pretty pleased with myself.

yesterday's tattoo, no. 19, was directly on my sternum. it generally hurt less than we expected, certainly less than the previous two, but by the time he got to the shading my nervous system was done and the last (i'm guessing) 20 minutes were really difficult. the tattoo came out beautifully, though, but i'm too tired to post it now.

otherwise, i'm making pleasingly steady progress with my side project and the quality of our family game time is improving (we navigated some insanely challenging/evil rayman: legends levels this evening, one of which may have taken 500 to 1000 tries.

we watched maleficent yesterday (beautiful), and the black cauldron today (surprisingly good) .

we're really struggling with the physical exercise. as in, to get any. this is not good. 

time flies regardless of whether you're having fun

sheesh, talk about getting older faster. this week has been insane, full of distractions and excitement, gratitude and frustration and anxieties. hackathon and side project going forward nicely, work is really good (but lots of context switching, which is not so good), and this evening i read an article telling me that multitasking is damaging my brain and i'm feeling personally attacked. 

i think i need a personal assistant.

also, i took the car in for a service and learned i need to drop R10K on it. this afternoon i got a call to say that there's a broken part (i presume they broke it) and the car's now stuck on their lift for the next three weeks.

good grief. i was feeling like i was bleeding money before that news.

anyway, i've been thoroughly exhausted since wednesday and every evening i've intended to get to bed at a reasonable hour and then...

6 years married

 today was our anniversary! some of it was great, some of it not so much, but regardless we're doing fine in the grand scheme of things. we spent a large chunk of the day playing rayman: legends, we took a symbolic walk around the company gardens, watched astro boy and some of ice age 2, put mr smear to bed and have since been making slow but steady progress with my side project - the front end stuff has taken much longer to get right than i'd hoped, the backend refactor has taken longer than i'd like but not unreasonably long.

having said that, it *is* 1.30am already. good grief.

18 down

some of no. 18 hurt a lot, but it was mostly fine. definitely less difficult than no 17.

today was divided into three chunks: waking up early to practice leyning for the first time in weeks, alternating between playing rayman: legends and sorting out my hackathon "trophies", and getting tattooed for the first time in more than a month.

this evening has been all about freakazoid and takeout, posting about my tattoo and playing steamworld: heist. now i'm trying to decide whether to go straight to bed or to watch something first.

decisions.

...

i've been really, really hungry the past few weeks. i know it was triggered by some of the meds i was on, but it seems to be going strong and i'm still not getting any physical exercise. it's very frustrating that i'm either too busy to exercise, or i don't think about it until the timing is inappropriate...

paydirt

well. let me tell you, i was completely taken by surprise last night when they finally announced the hackathon winners, we had no idea and it's been a joyful scramble since to ensure that we're all in agreement as to the values of our contributions so that i can divvy up the prize money.

it's very nice, very welcome prize money, and we're all super excited by the validation and the prospects of taking this project to the next level ^_^

...

in similar news, my employer engaged a bunch of us in a three-day workshop this week to produce a proof-of-concept, and we were as excited by our technical achievement as we were by the fact that our colleagues and bosses have a newfound appreciation for the value of our projects. and then today we learned that as actively invested as we are in improving the security of our infrastructure and our products, we're already noticeably ahead of our competition. this is obviously good for us, but i do hope they follow our lead...

...

things with mr smear have generally been better, but today was a mixed bag and i think i need to step back again...

...

today was the first day since quitting iliadin that my nose, throat and chest have been in decent shape.

...

i watched jane mcgonigal's ted talk a while back, and it's excellent. but i'm reading her book reality is broken and i'm simply inspired by the relationship between gaming and positive psychology.