west-bank wedding

wednesday:

i don't recall too much of the workday itself, but it certainly wasn't as rough as the previous too days. in the evening we had a company team-building exercise at eureka jaffa, which was a really fun experience! we then had dinner a short walk from there, and i got a ride home from a coworker who's a sudanese refugee and we had a really interesting conversion.

thursday:

it was a short workday for me, but very busy. i left my coworkers with instructions for how to proceed in the testing without me, and i was very excited to get an update later that everything seemed to be working. it's a piece of work that's a culmination of various efforts over the course of the past year, and it all seems to be coming together nicely :)

we managed to get out of the house on time, which was pretty impressive. the drive to the wedding took about three hours (i'm guessing traffic was worse than waze was expecting), i managed to fill up the tank on the way there (which was a big relief) and aside from being directed through a couple of dodgy areas we were fine. i was a little nervous when an agent called to inform me that we had absolutely no business going into areas A or B and that if we got stranded there they'd be unable to assist us, but fortunately (i found this out yesterday after examining some maps) we were nowhere near those areas.

the wedding itself was beautiful, in spite of a relentless, icy wind, and aside from an altercation when we arrived (gd and i have very different ideas of how we should have handled getting into our nice clothes) and one of the way back (a rehash of the earlier one), we had a great time with the family, and even mr smear got over his shyness at some point and busted out all his moves :)

for the first time ever, i'm now confident in recognizing and identifying all seven of my cousin's kids!

we got back to tel aviv just before midnight, relieved to be home safe after a really nice evening out in west-bank desert.

yesterday:

gd and i did some shopping in the morning, then picked up mr smear and went through to dizengoff center. we got heavily sidetracked trying to organize food, but we managed to achieve our primary goal and i'm very excited that we now have a hardcover copy of the complete maus. i've been trying to get gd to read it for years, and coming across the page that changed comics forever yesterday proved an excellent catalyst!

the rest of the day was napping and playing humanity, which we discovered yesterday and absolutely adore.

today so far:

i walked into the living to room to find mr smear trying to make a level for humanity. my back and neck are still threatening spasms, i'm trying to stretch them out and crossing fingers.