family ties

 i scrambled to get some work done this morning before we left, but i'm not sure how much i achieved because at this point the morning seems very far away. i know i took care of some admin stuff, and mr smear built something cool in blockbench and we were all super excited by it.

then we headed out to herzeliya. the old age home was a bus and a short walk away, and we arrived in good time. it was sad to see the birthday boy (99!) and his wife so out of it, but it was really nice to spend time with some of the cousins and meet the newest addition (she was born three weeks ago). it was a good morning.

getting back to tel aviv was a bit of a story, a stark reminder of how good our public transport is compared to anywhere else in this country. and the train station we were planning on getting a rav-kav car from was closed for renovations, so we bailed on that plan and i went to the office.

i was only in the office for four or five hours, but it felt like a really long four or five hours. at least there was a nice leftovers-lunch of build-your-own falafel, apparently to celebrate the new quarter. i spent half my office time making an effort to not physically smash my own head into a wall, but eventually made some progress and walked out with two out of three of my goals achieved.

sadly, the third goal is the biggest and i'm still not sure where to begin :(

i also got good feedback from a coworker, who was pissed off that we'd both been instructed to work on the same thing and had duplicated efforts - he apparently preferred my solution, so he's co-opting it. that's nice.

i eventually left around 7pm and did some grocery shopping, then came home in time to sit with my family while they ate dinner. mr smear had a very successful day at his jiujitsu lesson, in spite of himself and his misgivings (he walked off the mats) he got a hold of himself and climbed back in. this is big stuff for him, and we're really feeling good about the whole thing.

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HUGE news! gd's just been granted her license for medical marijuana, so we're off tomorrow morning to try and figure out how to use it ^_^

this is great for a number of reasons, not least of which because we're struggling with the costs and this will bring them down considerably.

on a related note, though, and a troubling one - she's been developing a really bad cough the past few days. i hope it's going to pass...

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i was supposed to get some more done this evening, but i just can't. so we watched some more of the animatrix, and now i'm faffing around until antibiotics time. tomorrow's the last of the course, hopefully i'll stop feeling so shitty soon.