you gotta learn how to lie better

 what a weird ending to a long-ass week. or couple of weeks. i'm feeling a bit burned out, i've been having a hard time concentrating. not sure what's exhaustion (emotional more than physical), and what's the dental situation / antibiotics.

we're all very excited that my mom's flying to visit us tomorrow, though ^_^

i'm pretty relieved that tomorrow's mr smear's last day of second grade, and i'm looking forward to him enjoying a long holiday and having an opportunity to reset.

yesterday:

i don't recall much from the morning, but it was just another day in the office. the work itself was frustrating. i left early, did a very quick grocery shopping, and got home in time to head to the beach to meet my aunt. as i was telling everything to get ready, i received a call informing me that our new mattress would be delivered within twenty minutes. WTF?!

so i sent a message to our building's whatsapp group and one of our neighbours offered to help, gd was completely taken aback by the very idea of this "neighborliness" and i was stumped when they told me to just give them my key and let them handle it. i did, but not without weirdness.

anyway, it took gd and mr smear so long to get ready that we were only about 100m away when the mattress arrived, so i rushed back to thank our neighbor profusely and take care of it myself :P

we caught a bus and met my aunt and her boyfriend on banana beach. mr smear just wanted to head into the waves (we went in a couple of times, it was relatively heavy and he loved it), and i'm very glad i didn't let peer pressure get the best of me because i couldn't remember why antibiotics + alcohol is bad, and when i looked it up after we got home i was reminded that it's because it renders the antibiotics less effective.

we had a lovely evening, but it was very, very late by the time we eventually got home and got mr smear and ourselves into bed.

today:

we've been having pretty consistently good mornings lately.

i started filling out the forms for gd's cannabis license, then got stuck because they insist on being honest and none of the options made any sense. they don't answer their phones, so i had to request a call-back.

i spent a chunk of my morning battling with python imports. python imports (in particular, relative imports) seem like the kind of thing that would happen if a disparate bunch of devs from all around the world decided to compete to make the worst solution ever, and they all won.

i was supposed to be in the office between 2 and 4 pm to hand over our old router to a courier, and the courier called me about two hours before then to ask if he could pick it up in five minutes. i told him no, i'm not there yet, but that he was welcome to come to me (that was certainly more convenient for me). just as he called, i got another call - of course, the call-back. so then i had to request another call-back.

fortunately, they got back to me pretty quickly, and i asked the nice lady what i needed to fill in. she laughed as she explained that they're a legal organization and cannot possibly advise me on what to do.

oh.

so i went back to the form and filled it out "as best i could", and now we wait and see.

the rest of my workday was progress in fits and bursts, mixed up with slight disorientation and stress-snacking. i kind of felt good about how the day ended, although that feeling would be tarnished somewhat by a message from my italian coworker, but **** 'em.

gd was really sore today, so i took mr smear to his therapy session by myself. we arrived just in time on a new bus line (even though it arrived a few minutes late), and i grabbed an iced tea and milled around for a bit. in an obscure section of the shuk i found french presses that gd and i have been looking for for ages! and just as i put the phone down, i heard someone call my name: krybabie's widow and her kids just happened to decided to spend a day in tel aviv - that's ridiculous!

we chatted until i had to pick mr smear up, then mr smear and i rushed to catch the bus home (i'd missed my antibiotic). on the bus, a bunch of saffers sat down next to us, which wouldn't have been odd except for the previous encounter in the shuk.

shower, dinner, bedtime, titans, and pretty soon my final antibiotic for the day and hopefully some rest.

the battle pt 2

yesterday:

i dropped mr smear off at school, then headed to the dentist. old dentist, about to retire. examined my teeth, prescribed an antibiotic, then informed me that i need to get a root canal - and advised me to have both the bad tooth and its neighbor crowned.

the receptionist handed me the quote, and i had to make an effort to keep my jaw from hitting the floor. i sat there for a little while, stunned, trying to quantify how much money is worth me just being in pain and chewing on the other side of my mouth.

my mom and i used to laugh at my father about that - he was too cheap to get dental work done - but now i'm faced with the same choice and it's not so obvious how to proceed. in the best case, i wait until mid-august for my delayed insurance benefits to kick in before making an appointment.

i left work in the afternoon to be with gd and mr smear for his first bjj class. it went really well! aside from the bit where he almost got his elbow dislocated / broken because he didn't "get" tapping (even though he's well-versed in tapping in a different context - tickle-fights with us :P). anyway, he enjoyed it, and we're very happy with the instruction, and we've registered him for next month.

this is good.

i worked late to compensate, and was pretty beat by the time i got home. after reading a bit more of the iron giant in hebrew (which is slow going because i'm translating phrase by phrase), i sat down with gd to watch the first episode of titans. it's really good.

today:

i began the day with recruitment stuff, then went off to work. it was a pretty successful day overall. in the afternoon i skipped out to accompany gd to the doctor and the pharmacy, and i helped carry groceries home while watching an all-hands over zoom. then i took mr smear to the park, where we practices back kicks and tooled around until dinnertime.

after bedtime, gd and i watched another episode of titans and since then i've been taking care of a random selection of things and reading tech news. i'm tired, and i'm a little stressed about all the things that i haven't been taking care of, and i have to take my antibiotic in half an hour... i guess a half an hour's not too big a deal?

the battle pt 1

 the most important thing today happened in a single, blood-curdling moment, mr smear enthusiastically began the warmup for his first mma class and then walked off, and we were all out of levers to pull. there was drama, there were negotiations (about there not being negotiations), there were tears. there were pep talks.

and then, after gd had left the building distraught, there was a single moment of me and him, with me putting one word after another and praying for a miracle.

and there was a miracle.

a tiny spark, for what feels like the first time in his life, and he spoke to the teacher (who said all the right things), and he went back out onto the mats and he did what he needed to do. he learned stuff, he had a great time, we sat on the sides giggling, being amazed, and trying (and failing) to get a photo or two.

he's still not convinced about tomorrow's jiujitsu class, but i'm now standing my ground on the mother of all threats (no training, no screen time AND no getting out of the afterschool programme). i feel bad about having to do that, but i know and he knows and he knows that i know that he would much rather be training than in afterschool. and i know what i saw when he got off the mats.

joy. and pride.

we're doing this.

...

this morning was weird. i managed to make another first-aid dental appointment for tomorrow morning, and had an interesting chat with a head-hunter. i dropped mr smear off at school and put the caption guide together for the final edition of the latest page of the graphic novel.

then gd and i headed out to get to tahoma's mother's funeral, and the morning fell apart. we got on the wrong train and ended up in herzeliya, and on the way gd began to feel faint and ill. after further train schedule stress we ended up just giving up and going back home.

i had a weird workday, trying to do basic things with the circleci platform what they don't want to be done (and that many users before me have requested), and worked straight through until it was time to take mr smear to the mma class.

the class was 45 minutes, but we were out for about three hours.

i worked a bit between shower and dinner times, and then after bedtime dived in to try and figure out a solution. i eventually got it right, "good enough" even if it wasn't what i was looking for, and then i stretched a bit and watched matt rife's walking red flag special which was definitely not as much fun as his usual stuff. i think it might have been the crowd.

...

i didn't try to eat anything on the left side of my mouth today, and it's definitely not hurting as much, but i still think i might have an infection. i guess i'll find out in the morning.

coming down soft

 *phew*

i slept relatively well last night, and started the day on a good footing: mr smear decided he didn't want to go to the beach, and i offered him some toodee and topdee time if he joined us in good spirits. it's still on special for another day or two, and it's BRILLIANT. not only is it fun, and the perfect amount of challenging, but it's fantastic co-op and it gave us the vocabulary to have a really good conversation this evening about strategy, about solving the "puzzle" he's been dealing with at school.

so we did get to the beach today, and it was in good spirits. we all had fun both in and out of the water, but we were all completely exhausted by the time we finally got home. mr smear and i watched the "STAKES!" season of adventure time in its entirety, although i did pass out for an episode and mr smear had to catch me up. it's really great and we both enjoyed it immensely.

...

mr cat sent me the final version of the latest page, and i was busy posting it when i realized there was something missing... i'm too tired to deal with that right now.

...

my tooth is impossibly sore, if i chew on it (which the dentist said i mustn't avoid) it's so bad that i'm dysfunctional and need to take tylenol. that can't be right, i'm going to give it a few more days but i think i'm ready for a root canal :(

tomorrow is going to be very busy, and i'm hoping that i'll wake up in a good space for it.

the trip

it has been a completely insane week, with both gd and myself upside down and inside out for a good chunk of it. wednesday seemed like a better day, but thursday was even worse than monday.

this time, though, i was pissed. i was absolutely raging at the bitch father who i'd spoken to on monday evening, who'd been condescending and to whom i'd avoided - in the interests of civility, which was a mistake - pointing out that they and their rotten kid bear plenty of the responsibility for putting my son through hell last year and him coming out swinging.

we don't approve of how mr smear is fighting back, predominantly because he's hurting himself far more than the kid in his sights.

fortunately, all the things blew up just before mr smear's visit to the therapist, and i stole a few minutes of their time to get counselled myself. what she said calmed me down in one sense, but enraged me even further in another: i realized that in my conversation with the kid's dad on monday night, i'd let my son down by not defending him sufficiently, and in a way given him license to feel like they're on moral high ground.

that made me sick.

really sick. gd and i were both fully engaged with our PTSD and in full fight mode, and we got to the school early this morning in the hopes that we would see these sons of bitches and give them a proper piece of our minds.

in retrospect, the universe did us an enormous solid and we didn't see them, because we sat down with mr smear's teacher for a long while, as she'd done a pretty thorough investigation into the goings-ons the day before and... it really does look like mr smear brought the bad stuff on himself... he's really struggling, and the more he does what he thinks he needs to do the more harm he brings to himself. it's very difficult as a parent to deal with this.

...

wednesday: i'm officially on a completely different project now as our company's in the middle of executing a pivot, and we've all been asked to warn our families that we'll be less available to them for a while.

it's a whole new thing, with broken tools and time pressure and my boss on my case. it's fantastic.

thursday: gd and i began the day with anxiety, calmed down somewhat, and then *WHAM* picked up mr smear from school and went straight into full-scale drama.

i went on the "i'm so anxious i can't eat" diet for most of a day :(

...

this morning was the worst. in spite of how we were feeling, we got mr smear to school and then paid the clinic a visit, then walked to the barber shop, on the way meeting up with an ex-coworker's sister and her partner who were kind and gave some good advice.

the barber shop experience would have been great if gd hadn't uttered the words "i don't want to insult you" when she tried to fix a mistake of his, i'm pretty sure that without that phrase it would have been fine. as it was, she still had more to correct when we got home, but it's okay now.

we had about ten minutes at home before heading out for the school pick up, including the aforementioned fix, and i was honestly such a mess that i was feeling dizzy and faint. thanks to all the gods that the universe threw us a bone and we didn't have that anticipated encounter.

we felt much better about things after the meeting with mr smear's teacher, and immediately rushed to catch a bus down to florentin, where we picked up a good mattress (or so it seems) which should be delivered in time for us to be able to host my mom comfortably from next week :)

i've also registered mr smear for a couple of trial classes of mma and jiujitsu next week.

mr smear started getting the hang of knock-knock jokes on the way home, and we had lunch and played some toodee and topdee, single and coop, and mr smear and i had a great time. then we got ready for the beach (or so we thought) and headed out to join the mongoose and his family.

we were about five minutes from the beach when i realized that i'd forgotten swimming trunks 🤦

anyway, we all had a great time at the beach, i even went in a little bit in my shorts, and it was about 8.30pm when mr smear and i finally arrived back home for a quick shower, kiddush, and dinner.

at toothbrushing time there was utter pandemonium, when two out of the three members of our household screamed and panicked due to a rather large cockroach appearing on mr smear's towel. i tried to get it with a paper towel, but wasn't quick enough and it disappeared under the washing machine. i tentatively bent down and put my face to the floor (partially expecting it to rush me) and spotted it hiding in a corner.

fortunately, we had bug spray, but hitting it with the bug spray was a mission. it ran this way and that, included right under me (i jumped over it), but i hit it enough times with the spray to slow it down and eventually caught up with the bugger and crushed it. gd began retching when she came to help me clean up the bathroom (she claims it was the smell of the bug spray), which combined with the whole ordeal triggered mr smear's gag reflex, and he threw up.

there was cleaning up to be done.

i did the dishes after putting mr smear to bed, and was thinking of crashing myself but wanted to get down as much of these bizarre, trippy days down as possible before doing so. i really hope we manage to sleep properly tonight.

the eyebrow combover (and a very sore tooth)

 let's start with the most important business: yesterday gd and i woke up in a really bad place, the therapist wasn't responding, and we felt that it was absolutely wrong of us not to say anything.

so we said something. we said a few things. and then i took mr smear to school. it was a bad feeling morning, but nobody was angry, just upset.

when i got home and had had some time to think, i proposed something to gd and - unlike the last time i proposed the exact same thing - she agreed. and, in my opinion, did something very impressive at the same time which it isn't really my business to go into (let's just say she "levelled up").

we agreed to "flip the script", and - not as a punishment - make screen time a reward instead of making lack of screen time a punishment. no good behavior, no chores, no screens. and then, after we'd planned for me to be available to explain the new situation to him after school, we realized that i had my emergency dental appointment at that time, so gd had to put her big girl panties on and take care of it alone.

...

my work day was pretty relaxed. i skipped early to get my filling sorted out, and ended up getting there a few minutes late. the procedure itself? not fun. the anesthetic administration was surprisingly comfortable, but everything else was not and at one point i felt stabbing pains on the tip of my tongue and under it. then, when she was done, i bit the plate and was certain that the filling wasn't fitting correctly, but when i told the dentist she assured me that it was just an effect of the anesthetic and that it was definitely fine.

the whole way home my tooth and gum hurt, and i was sure by the time i got in that i'd managed to damage the new filling. then i ate something (she'd told me i didn't need to wait), and immediately regretted it. then i googled new filling aftercare and regretting it even more.

...

i don't know how gd broke the news to mr smear, i'm not sure she does either, but whatever she told him she absolutely nailed it. by the time i got home he'd helped her with some chores, having had a reasonably good day at school, and had already earned himself an hour. after that - and with no reward on the line - he then volunteered to help gd in the kitchen with dinner!

...

we all went to bed early last night. i managed to sleep, to the sole credit of my gum guard. i had bizarre dreams about vampires.

today:

my mouth still felt wrong. i got mr smear to school in good spirits, and had a bit of a morning - my tooth was griefing me, and i wasn't operating at 100%. the workday began alright, but at lunchtime i joined one of my coworkers and had a bite to eat, and the pain was excruciating! as soon as it calmed down i called the dentists office again, i tried to get some work done but i literally couldn't see straight.

the therapist called me back, she questioned me in a way that made me kinda angry but she also said some things about mr smear's situation that really helped me to de-stress (in conjunction with yesterday's successes). we're going to see her tomorrow morning for more guidance.

then i left for an hour or two (it was supposed to be an hour, ended up being two) and met up with gd to go for an initial consultation with public health services. form filling nightmare. anyway, we sat with a therapist for an hour and threw a whole lot of our life stories at the poor guy, then i returned to the office for an hour or so which included a good one-on-one with my boss.

then i rushed off to the clinic for an emergency dental appointment. i had to wait a while, and i was a bit worried because the dentist on duty seemed a mite twitchy and irritable. fortunately, within a couple of minutes he'd assessed the filling and fixed it (i was totally right, that's two for two in two weeks), and confirmed that what the dentist told me yesterday about it taking a month to settle was correct. also, that i shouldn't avoid eating on the sore side. also, that my gum is properly wounded after yesterday's shenanigans.

good grief.

anyway, i had a catch-up chat with gd, then with my mother, then i did a quick emergency grocery run and came home. we've just (a little while ago) managed to get mr smear to bed after a welcome and pleasantly quick and proper toothbrush and shower experience, and i'm now trying to decide if i have the energy to execute on a great idea i had yesterday morning while talking to a colleague about the trouble with regular expressions.

...

oh! i keep forgetting. i had a revelation a few days ago, and it's a weird one: a while back i started trimming my eyebrows with a beard trimmer (not too short, just less shaggy), and i've been bothered a bit by the fact that some of my eyebrows haven't grown back properly (both eyebrows are symmetrical). the other day gd pointed out that the patches are bald spots. the revelation: that they've always been bald spots, but that my extra-long and shaggy eyebrow hairs were effectively serving as a natural combover.

so, yeah. eyebrow combover. it's a thing.

regress

today was a no good, lousy, ugly, shitty day.

i was totally wrong yesterday. completely, totally, utterly wrong about making progress with mr smear, because today he continued on with the awful behavior and properly alienated a bunch (if not most) of the kids in his class. his "nemesis"? the kid he's been bullying non-stop for months? i had to have a chat with one of his dads this evening. that was not a comfortable conversation.

...

today began with a fight over the toilet at around 5am (okay, it was more complicated than that), and i started my day with a headache and a neck-ache and a lot of shitty feelings.

i had a long day working from home, which wasn't fun but was at least somewhat successful, and then we went together to pick up mr smear.

i'm trying to be cool and follow the therapist's instructions, but it's fucking hard. i don't know if she understands what's actually going on, and we're going to have a talk in the morning. this evening was a right mess.

in addition to all that, my mother just got called out to sort out a generator in the middle of a winter's night and i just feel like that's a strong indicator of something being very wrong in this world.

i spent most of today just wanting it to end, and it kept getting progressively worse. i'm superstitiously nervous about typing anything about my hopes for tonight / tomorrow morning.

the good stuff

 today was good. although i woke up tired (i played tales of the neon sea until quite late), and then felt awfully tired for a good chunk of the day (after playing around with my cdk guide and playing a lot more tales of the neon sea, but it was mostly about my stomach being a bit iffy), i felt okay enough to accompany gd and mr smear to the beach and we had a really good time.

navigating these waters with mr smear isn't simple, but we seem to be muddling along and making progress.

i feel good about how today went.

whew!

today:

a good start, we managed to get our boy to school sort of on time in spite of the fact that he was convinced he was too sick (he really wasn't), and i managed to figure out where one of the issues that broke my thursday is even if i don't yet understand what the issue is. that freed up my soul to pack away my work machine for the weekend. then we workshopped the framework for a poem together that was inspired by me watching dead prez - hip hop, kanye west's def poetry jam recital of self-conscious, and the digging the greats video about all falls down. it's just a beginning, but it's a really good beginning.

we then went to the shops, where i picked up a decent charger for my laptop and we did the groceries. i had just enough time to eat a sandwich at home, then went to the dentist.

what an enormous relief! we worked together and figured out that i was absolutely right, that the previous dentist had just gotten things very wrong. it turns out i have at least one cracked filling, and the intense pain is caused by cold hitting the surface of the filling, then spreading deep until it hits the crack. it was a fair amount of investigating, and my teeth hurt for a while afterwards, but i have an appointment (for a few weeks' time) and while it's not clear whether it'll be new fillings or a root canal, i'll take whatever relief i can get.

on my way home i spoke to my mom, and for the first time *really* lost my cool and let her know exactly what her delaying leaving south africa means to us. i feel sad for her, but we're far beyond any point of no return and it's just not viable for anyone to live there any more.

i ate, flipped an avocado slice straight into my keyboard (panic! but it looks like i took care of it), washed dishes, snacked, washed more dishes, and played mr smear's variation of goodcritters. i suddenly felt drowsy when he started setting up, and i passed out while he was trying to explain the rules to me - that was embarrassing. i came round and got the hang of it, and while there were a couple of points that demanded a bit of debate it was overall a pretty fun game!

i needed to crash afterwards, though. i rushed off to lie down, and a bit later mr smear came to "punish" me for not helping tidy up by tickling me. the tickling became a pillow fight became me getting the hiccups and suddenly needing to throw up, which i did, and now i'm just feeling tired. in spite of that, though, i'm feeling pretty good about today.

yesterday:

mr smear was too sick to go to school, and i was working from home. for the most part it was okay, though, although i had a pretty frustrating and very long workday. mostly due to test flakiness, and my efforts didn't seem to help very much.

in the afternoon we went to a book fair (they're everywhere this month) and picked up four exciting books, so last night i decided to read the hebrew translation of "the giving tree" to mr smear at bed time. we got as far as the boy taking the branches before mr smear couldn't take it any more, he just broke down in tears and we couldn't finish the reading. so i held him tight (while fighting uncontrollable nervous giggling), conceded, and switched to the incredibly beautiful the iron man: a children's story in five nights.

i then spent the rest of the night (well, until 1am or so at any rate), entertaining myself online, watching wonderful and surprising things like big oxygen and playing tales of the neon sea (what a gorgeous game!).

wednesday:

mr smear woke up with a nasty cough, but it didn't seem like we should keep him home. at 9.05am the therapist called to find out where we were, and we - were - mortified. i don't know why it didn't occur to me to ask for a video chat, but we scrambled to catch a bus and made it there with ten minutes left on our clock. fortunately, she managed to move her next appointment by fifteen minutes and that gave us just enough space for a very productive and insightful meeting!

some of the advice she gave us was contradictory, but it's a lot of grey-area no-right-answers kind of stuff and in the two days since i feel like all three of us are doing better.

it was a constructive day at work. and a pleasant evening. i continued playing around with my new npm package and i'm really happy with it for now.

in general, i've been deliberately going to bed very late for the last week or so, and i've been sleeping much better as a result. i hope this lasts. 

...

i just taught mr smear how to do a shift cypher, which was fun!

werd

 the workshop this morning was kinda alright, but also kinda sucked at the same time. we were in the very fancy AWS offices - it's been three and a half years since i was last in those, and walking in was a strange sensation - and both wifi networks weren't functional and the room we were in had terrible reception so our mobile tethering didn't work either.

added to that, the stuff we worked through yesterday in preparation had been fully customized to the point where our experience didn't help us, and the guys who ran the workshop only finished with the customization last night / this morning and it was somewhat buggy.

at least the last hour was interesting for the attendees, those of whom hadn't walked out at least. 

the vegan options at breakfast were okay, but by lunchtime i was really hungry and there was nothing but a couple of slices of chocolate banana bread.

*sigh*

the rest of the afternoon was smoother, and quite constructive. then i picked up my new power adaptor for my windows machine, which turned out to be the wrong adapter, picked up a couple of grocery items and came home for dinner.

i was planning on going rollerblading, but by the time mr smear was in bed i just didn't feel like it any more. i've spent a good chunk of the evening (a couple of hours) trying to set up windows -> ps4 streaming via twitch, which was a lot of work for some unimpressive results. then i spent an hour or two testing and improving a couple of my repositories (in particular the simple-recursive-checksum package i published this week), and i think i'm just about ready for bed.

cinnamon synonym

 "cinnamon synonym" - coincidence, or conspiracy?

...

in my previous post i failed to mention that for the past couple of days i've been struggling with hypersensitivity in at least one of my teeth (around where the evil root canal took place). i went to an emergency dental appointment this afternoon, only to be told by a sympathetic-looking dentist that with my receding gums there's really nothing to be done until the teeth fall out.

@#!$.

...

this morning i tried updating my aws-cdk-js-dev-guide and discovered that i couldn't run the build script on my windows machine, so i ended up putting simple-recursive-checksum together.

...

it was a long work day, mostly spent preparing for the workshop a couple of us are helping out with in the morning. it's a long, but interesting workshop and i feel like the day was well-spent. i took a break to do the grocery shopping and come home and play a little death squared with mr smear and have dinner and get him into bed, then finished up and decided to write up my morning's checksum experience on medium.

i was ready to publish it when something went wrong, i refreshed the page, and discovered that almost none of it had been saved.

...

it's now Very Late, and i'm going to head off to bed soon after finishing my final chamomile. i've been getting to bed Very Late for a few days now, and while my nights aren't perfect i am generally sleeping better than usual.

drama llama

 there were a couple of dramatic moments today that i need to get down before calling it a day.

1. a wheelchair-bound man who triggered gd because his situation was very similar to what she imagines her brother to be in

2. a fight breaking out in the grocery store between a different wheelchair-bound man who was yelling at one of the workers and calling them a thief because he didn't like the prices and the worker who only had so much patience for being yelled at rudely

3. a phone call from gd while i was paying for the groceries after mr smear had accidentally ingested dairy (his friend brought him an ice lolly that he thought was vegan), she managed to get him an allergex in time but it took a while to kick in and the symptoms were worrying all of us

otherwise, i'm kinda glad and kinda sad about today. i'm glad it's over, i'm sad that i'm glad it's over, and i hope that i manage to get a decent night's sleep and have a more encouraging day tomorrow.

maybe not the same direction

 let's start with the good stuff: the weekend. it was a good weekend. it was a quiet weekend, and although i had to have my laptop bag with me at all times, the pager never went off and i got to enjoy good times with my family.

on friday morning gd and i did some shopping and tried watching mad max beyond thunderdome. it was fun at the beginning but there was too much animal cruelty and gd had to walk away. same with an episode of adventure time we watched last night (angel face). we picked up mr smear from school - he hadn't been cooperative, but there were no serious incidents at least - and one of his friends, and then another one joined later. for the most part, the kids had a fun afternoon and i got back into tales of the neon sea, and now that i've poured a few hours into it i can say without any doubt that it is a phenomenally fun and beautiful game, with a great story and superb word-building so far. some of the puzzles are hard. the evidence gathering mechanism is really cute and elegant.

this game has gotten completely into my head.

yesterday morning we all managed to get it together early and headed off to the beach to meet some friends. it was a hot day and we were surrounded by pride revellers (mostly fine, but there were a couple of disturbing conversations that one of the kids might have overheard and the guy who rocked up with a blow-up doll was a bit much), but we generally had an enjoyable morning and i even jogged for a bit with the other dad until i realized that i'd left my phone behind and was still on-call :P

we stopped for a bite on the way home, then spent a very lazy afternoon doing not much.

i didn't get much sleep last night, and i'm feeling it today (possibly also the jogging and the sun exposure etc.)... my work on thursday was very frustrating, but it paid off this morning as i got everything running and demonstrated that one of our customers was wrong to blame our software... i was disappointed to learn that the exciting breakthrough discovery i made isn't going to be reviewed, and i've spent half my day trying to build up motivation for a task that i couldn't care less about. and this feeling that i have has been mixed up with the feedback session from wednesday, and i'm thinking that maybe we're just not aligned and not going to be aligned. maybe i should be thinking about moving on.

i'm not unhappy like i was half a year ago, but i'm definitely not happy either.

...

i've only seen the first third of EMERGENCY EPISODE: Ex-Google Officer Finally Speaks Out On The Dangers Of AI! - Mo Gawdat | E252, but i can already say without a doubt that it's not merely "interesting", but should be considered mandatory viewing by everyone.

published!

 the podcast has been resurrected, after quite a few hours fixing the feed (which i forgot about when i migrated from server to cloud a few months ago, and didn't have any of the backups i thought i'd made), and quite a few hours reclaiming the various accounts that have, for one reason or another, decided that i'm not eligible to manage my own podcast (i'm still locked out of iTunes, with nobody to talk to).

anyway, it's all good now and i'm really happy with the result. i did end up making a change on tuesday morning, and that was re-recording the intro with mr smear ^_^

you can hear the results (or see them, if you go the youtube route) here!

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it's been a weird week so far, and i'm still waiting for the pager to go off when it's most inconvenient. i've at least enjoyed a fun achievement (i figured out a way to hack streaming response support for lambdas), and my annual feedback session with my boss this evening could definitely have gone worse. it wasn't stellar, but it's an alignment thing and every time we talk we both end up feeling like we're generally moving in the right direction.

gd's been having a couple of rough days. this week we've been working through the mad max series. she watched the first one without me and bailed about halfway through, and when i skipped through i realized that i'd never actually seen it myself. it's a milestone movie, but by today's standards not really watchable. the road warrior, on the other hand, is still great fun!

mr smear's had some good days and some not good days. we've talked a lot, hopefully some of it has landed.

my mom will be here in less than a month, and we're all excited! we're busy planning touristy things, i realized this evening that i don't think we're going to be able to do the winter vacation in montréal like we'd planned. c'est la vie.

fingers crossed

 it's just past 1am, and i've managed to splice together the new video for the podcast. using clipchamp and the sound recorder that comes with windows, i've managed to do it far more easily than using the macos tools! the quality's not perfect, but that's me and my not-studio conditions, and when i wanted to do something interesting with the audio i jumped back to garageband for its effects.

[this post was interrupted by a phone call, my heart started racing in anticipation for an on-call page. nope, it was a spam call. wonderful.]

the only thing left to do is review the completed video in the morning with my wife. i'm pretty happy to put the video out there, but i have a suspicion that there might be a couple of things that i should probably clean up... at least i know that if i do need to update something, it's really not going to be too big a deal.

my heart in a dumpster

 sunday was fine, right until i arrived at the school to pick up mr smear. the councilor informed me that he'd destroyed another kid's artwork, the same kid he'd thrown a rock at a month ago. that was bad enough. later, after putting him to bed, his teacher called, and dropped a whole bunch of horrible news items on us. he's been straight-up bullying these two kids non-stop, and while the first of them is understandable (he welcomed mr smear last year with non-stop griefing and made him miserable), the second is purely because he's an easy target.

bother those kids had a birthday party on the weekend which phoenix disinvited himself to, and we were mortified to learn that he'd been trying to convince the other kids not to go either. m*****f*****.

in addition to that side of the story, we wanted to know more about the kid who's purportedly been beating up mr smear regularly. he's autistic, and the kids with him are also in "special ed". and, it appears, mr smear insists on finding them during recess. a girl-friend of his joined / joins him (not clear if it was a once-off thing), and she ended up getting bashed in the face with a stick.

gods help us.

today the kids went on a hike, and apparently everything went fine and everyone had a good time. but there was a minor incident in the after-school program. minor, but ffs we need this shit to end.

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i'm on-call since this morning. pray for me.

imperfections

 today was mostly great. a couple of points of friction, but mostly great. we all enjoyed raiders of the lost ark, we went out for a bit and hung out at a local park, we watched a bit more of wolfwalkers at dinner time (after a tricky negotiation to get mr smear showered before dinner), and after he went to sleep gd and i finished watching serenity which really was brilliant in spite of the rushed start.

it's just past 1am and i've just finished the recording for the podcast episode. during the week i'll try to stitch it together, along with the update of mr smear and me singing the chorus of the pretender (which we might have to re-record because as amazing as it is with everything else, clipchamp tends to clip the first sounds when recording... thank the gods they haven't broken the sound recorder. yet.

11th level of awesomeness

 i did it! i finally got the trophy i've been working towards, and it does feel good. it wasn't the only trophy for this week, either - yesterday marks the first day in about three and a half years that i've been able to put together the script for a new podcast episode. to be fair, it was half-complete this whole time, but i'm finally ready to record and i'm a bit nervous in anticipation.

thursday:

from a mr smear perspective, it wasn't a perfect day but there wasn't anything major. in the evening we took him to see the therapist, and were surprised to learn that his parents weren't invited. so we got a "date hour" milling around a cool area, and then had dinner at a hummusia close by. sitting at a table next to a bunch of south africans with thick joburg accents, trying very hard not to eavesdrop.

work-wise, it was a good day. i completed a hugely impactful task over the course of the day, and ended the day feeling pretty good about having a clear desk for next week's on-call. not that i'm excited about going on-call again, but it's better to not have additional pressure.

yesterday:

i'm glad i listened to gd and did a very early grocery run, it was about 40 degrees centigrade and the world was baking. one of mr smear's friends came over after school for a few hours of minecraft, and i managed to get the podcast script completed in spite of that noise. i'm also very pleased that mr smear's friend convinced him to (finally!) get into survival mode :)

last night gd and i watched quite a bit of serenity, it definitely gets better.

today so far:

mr smear and i got up early (as usual), and i played around some more with clipchamp. it's REALLY powerful, and intuitive, and i like it. a lot. i had a good chat with my mom, who's saturday morning golf was cancelled due to the opposite weather we're having. mr smear and i played a little bit of mr. robot, and so far it's a lot of fun!

the big plan for the day? we're going to watch indiana jones: raiders of the lost ark. it's time.

serenity

so... done but not so dusted. i was feeling antsy on tuesday night, and didn't go to sleep until late. even later than late, because i was up long enough to check on the results of the nightly cleanup code i'd committed and see that it had failed. others were online too because a bunch of other things broke, so midnight through 1am were pretty much "regular" work hours :(

i woke up at 7am most decidedly not refreshed.

yesterday was a long work day broken up briefly by getting mr smear to school, grocery shopping, and helping mr smear with his homework. that last part went well, and it's now been two days since his last incident. hopefully this will last... 🤞

we completed the firefly series last night, and it was an amazing finale. then we started watching the serenity movie; aside from the ridiculously rushed exposition, gd was too tired to follow what was happening so we stopped. i'm a mite bothered by some minor inconsistencies, but i remember loving the movie in spite of them.

i managed to get a good night's sleep last night, although i did wake up very tired. it's fine. this is fine.

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at the end of august last year, we restarted rayman: legends again. by october, we had completed the game entirely. since then, pretty regularly, i've been doing the weekly and daily challenges. i enjoy doing them - it's meditative, in a masochistic kind of way - but my primary motivation has been to collect as many of the trophies as possible. i need 6000 points to attain the highest level of awesomeness, and it looks like i'll be there within the next day or two. i'm so excited!

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my aunt's boyfriend arrived yesterday from cape town, and brought a month's worth of medication to tide gd over until my mom arrives. it looks like they've already helped in a big way, so 🤞a little more that this holds.

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mayce galoni is hilarious. video games vs the bible is amazing!