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.