powering into 2022

dec 26th: whatever else happened that day, hido and i met up for drinks with a couple of other people and had a jolly time, after which i picked up mr smear from my mom's.

during the course of the week between christmas and new year's, we tried to organize an aliyah interview but things became very complicated because the shlichim were all on holiday. however! after pleading with the local representative to find a solution - any solution - we were connected directly with the head of aliyah in south africa who happened to be holidaying in cape town! she agreed to interview us on sunday morning!

new year's eve 2022 was very quiet for us old people. we spent the following evening at "family playdate", with one of mr smear's friends - the kids were mostly good, but the adults enjoyed a delicious dinner and played exploding kittens.

of course, i didn't sleep a wink on saturday night, but on sunday morning we met with her for three hours, we had almost all the documentation she needed and she got to meet the three of us as human beings. although i subsequently spent the rest of the day locating and scanning missing documents, she'd already been convinced (officially) that gd is jewish and mr smear is my son, and on thursday morning we received an official letter to that effect so our rush now is to get them entered into the population registry and mr smear's passport produced. as soon as that's done, we can make travel arrangements!

shehecheyanu, v'kiy'manu, v'higiyanu laz'man hazeh.

the relief and excitement are both overwhelming.

work has been pretty great over the past couple of weeks, and by the end of the week our team was back together, bigger than ever (we've had two new hires in two months). i've made good hours in spite of many distractions, and i've actually managed to get some summer holiday time in with my family too.

so... things are good.

posting this was the first thing on my saturday to-do list, now i'm going to post something for my patreons, and then start rewatching Why Everyone Is Quitting Their Job To Play Call of Duty with an aim to provide subject start times and titles so that i can write a post about it. i've now seen 2.5 hours of it, and i'm convinced that it's the most important video ever uploaded to youtube.

happy new year!