quiet celebration

 very quiet. weirdly quiet. i'm not complaining.

we went out to pick up a bike chain and a shower head, on the way encountering a man behaving very strangely on the bus. when we got off he walked straight into gd, and it's really not clear if it was an intentional assault (which is what gd thinks) or just him being very high or somewhat brain-damaged. i literally don't know, and i watched things unfold right in front of me.

on the way back, we encountered a woman who was on the phone with the police while desperately trying to clear something from her eyes, some liquid which had been thrown two blocks down between a bunch of... i don't know who else, but we saw two arab men and one of them was also dealing with his eyes, so i expect that there were others involved that had disappeared already.

so it was a strange and tense there-and-back.

we spent the next couple of hours taking things easy, i messed around with unity while watching typescript origins: the documentary which was surprisingly interesting. my experience with trying to get a 2d mobile unity project to build? surprisingly frustrating:

My expectation was a project that would at least build out of the box for a mobile platform target. What I got was a missing configuration (no adaptive performance provider and frame timing stats not selected), a compilation warning of "unable to find player assembly" (with no suggestion of where to begin creating one, a tutorial / doc link would be nice), a very unclear build failure that appears to be related to my using an older version of Unity installed only a week ago, and then Gradle failures relating to version support in spite of the fact that I'm using the built-in SDKs.

The 2d platformer tutorial, on the other hand, built for Android and deployed to my phone with no hassle whatsoever.

and i'm still going on the attempts, and i still haven't figured out what's wrong...

i took mr smear out with his bike, we went to a park close by and this learning-to-ride-a-bike thing is a series of lessons for us both. i'm trying to keep things light and fun and it's difficult with a kid who gets angry easily when things aren't working how he expects. and i don't exactly know what i'm doing in getting him into it / supporting him while he gets the hang of it, even if i basically know how to ride a bike.

but that part of the experience was fine, overall. what killed the experience was that both of us were being bitten to shreds by mosquitoes, and we were harassed from the first park to a second, before being chased home.

sheesh.

we haven't made much progress with the yom kippur puzzle which is on the dining room table, so kiddush and dinner were on the coffee table and we finished the adventure time: stakes season with gd.

i've been continuing my attempts with unity since (mr smear went to bed after 10pm, i think) and i'm a bit shocked that it's midnight already...

the void

 the day started off on the right foot, i spoke to the recruiter and learned that she had, in fact, initiated with the salary requirements and that we were playing a negotiation game (which, after hearing from her about their situation, i totally get). then that metaphorical right foot's ankle was sprained when i tried to discuss the offer with my wife, who freaked out before understanding what was going on; that led to a ridiculous chain reaction which almost ended our marriage, and it would take a couple of hours to be able to reel things back in and deal with each other properly. regrettable things were said and done. absurd surreal moments were experienced.

we're okay now, but we're still processing.

what followed was an awkward, unfocused workday that was at least partially successful - great success - but which felt like it could certainly have been more productive overall.

i took mr smear to his second-last session with the current therapist - at least he seems to be doing okay - and went to work from a hotel lobby close by. i was so caught up in a conversation with my mother that i was surprised by a phone call from her asking whether i was coming to pick him up. fortunately i was close enough to un-abandon him within a couple of minutes (in spite of the forever that it took to pay for my drink), and the evening was relatively uneventful even if i did have to check in and out of work a couple of times.

so that was a day. an exhaustion of a day.

...

today's wake up was brought to me by the following:

holy @#!$. this is a one-two combination that clarifies how unprepared the west is for whatever's coming. it's hard not to be creeped out by the sheer scale of what the CCP is getting away with while we all (kind of) get on with our lives 

• Discord: The Most Evil Business In The World
• Sam Cooper: How the West Was Infiltrated by Its Enemies

bonus listen: The Daring Ruse That Exposed China’s Campaign to Steal American Secrets

ugh.

...

physically, i've been feeling so much better since wednesday. like, feeling well, for the first time in ages.

we just did a big grocery shopping, and we're about to go out to sort out a couple of things before shabbat/sukkot. hopefully this will be a peaceful holiday, it helps that rosh yehudi's plans were cancelled by the city after the yom kippur debacle...

wriggling

 yesterday seemed to be ending on a reasonably good note, until mr smear went to the toilet before bedtime and we discovered pinworms. like, we actually saw one with our eyes.

and then the dragons arrived.

it's hard to console a child who's screaming in agony. we eventually convinced him that if he didn't stop the awful screaming our neighbors were going to call the police for sure, and we tried a few things to help him out but the effects were marginal. it took forever for him to be able to sleep, and then a while later he woke again for another round.

jesus h. christ.

once he finally managed to fall asleep again, it was my turn to keep myself up with the same messy weirdness in my head and physical discomfort, along with the freakish i-don't-have-a-fever-but-i'm-alternately-freezing-then-sweating-profusely of the past couple of nights. 

the morning began with learning about rosh yehudi, which absolutely changes *everything* about our local politics.

i rushed off to the pharmacy to pick up a treatment, arriving just in time for my appointment* to discover that gd's assumption that it would be prescription was correct. fortunately the receptionist was able to assist me in getting a script from mr smear's doctor, and one from someone else after we learned that my and gd's doctor was on vacation.

* i'm still impressed that i can make appointments for the pharmacy online, it's a game-changer!

it was educational.

anyway, we started the treatment, so that's good.

just as i was getting into work mode (i was feeling pretty good today, but still not confident enough to head to the office) i received a message about the contract i've been waiting on. i couldn't help myself, and i snuck a peek, and was immediately disappointed to learn that my sudden nagging suspicion was correct, that the recruiter hadn't informed then of my salary range.

*sigh*

the first thing that happened today was that my priorities got thrown out the window again for yet another new, urgent task :/

at least it's an interesting one, and i managed to get the first phase ready for review soon after putting mr smear to bed. it's been a long work day.

i spent some time playing around with tax and social security calculators, and i think i know what the numbers all mean now, but i think i'd better sleep on it before i craft a response.

holy crap it's after midnight already. fine. bedtime it is.

"rosh yehudi" - ראש יהודי

 לא משנה מה, אני חושב שלהפגין בערבי שבת ולהפריע לתפילת יום כיפור זה מגעיל, זה דוחה, וזה מזעזע.

באותה נשימה אני חייב להודות שבתור דתל"ש אורתודוקס, שבסוף חזר בתשובה שהבין שאורתודוקס זה לא היהדות היחידה, ובטח לא היהדות המקורית והאותנטית כמו שהרוב מאמין בעיניים סגורות, הסרטון הזה והארגון הזה מזעזעים אף יותר. עכשיו שראיתי אותו אני סוף סוף מבין שמה שמפחיד את השכנים שלי הוא לגיטימי לגמרי.

אל תגידו שאין מיסיונרים כאן, או שאין איום כאן. יש לנו בעיה אמיתית, והאנשים האלה הם לא יהודים טובים, מדובר על כת של אנשים חולים ומפחידים.

No matter what, I think that protesting on Shabbat evenings and disrupting the Yom Kippur prayer service is disgusting, it's repulsive, and it's shocking.

In the same breath, I have to admit that as an ex-religious orthodox, who finally returned to Jewish practice when I realized that orthodoxy is not the only kind of Judaism, and certainly not the original and authentic Judaism as the majority blindly believe, this video and this organization are even more shocking. Now that I have seen it, I finally understand that what's been scaring my neighbors is totally legitimate.

Don't say that there are no missionaries here, or that there is no threat here. We have a real problem, and these people are not good Jews, this is a cult of sick and scary people.

on my back

 i didn't mention it in my last post, which suggests that the trouble started on friday: i've been sick for five days now. i did a rapid antigen test for covid this morning and it was clearly negative, i've been feeling absolutely awful, dizzy and exhausted since friday and for the most part useless and needing to lie down perpetually.

friday and saturday were terrible, by sunday i was feeling marginally better and somehow convinced myself that it was caffeine withdrawl - i've been consuming a lot more lately than i'd realized - but it's definitely not caffeine withdrawal.

on sunday morning i managed to do the bike helmet run (we hadn't done that on friday), and on sunday evening i managed to get to our friends to indefinitely borrow a bike for mr smear. the walk back with the bike was hard.

yom kippur was unpleasant. partially because of how i felt, but mostly because of a series on incidents that left all of us having a miserable day. our "tradition" of building a puzzle was a lot less fun than it should have been, but it's a beautiful puzzle and it's slowly beginning to take shape.

another aspect of yom kippur that was unpleasant was that some of our neighbors decided to "protest" the public orthodox services. that's such a malicious, ugly, disgusting act that no matter how relieved i am that non-orthodox/secular people are standing against it, the fact that there's a group of jews who think it's okay or "the right thing to do" is simply beyond comprehension.

one positive aspect, however, was that we've been introduced to a progressive synagogue very close by, one that seems to fit our sensibilities quite nicely. our mission this week is to get there for kabbalat shabbat, hopefully this will be a good experience.

each night of the past four days has been weirder and more difficult than the last, but i woke up this morning feeling loads better. still not great, though, so i put in for a sick day and pushed the work that i completed on thursday to unblock my coworkers. the rest of the day so far has been resting, and playing around with unity.

i need to lie down again.

back back

 my lower back and bum are really sore today, i'm having both muscular and nerve trouble and it's distracting. of course, it's friday morning and we're about to have a busy day doing groceries and shopping for a bike helmet (amongst other things)...

wednesday:

who is america rewatch: the first episode is just ridiculous.

a work day full of distractions, but successfully clearing the second stage by the end of it.

yesterday:

who is america rewatch: gd and i watched the second episode, it's nuts. 

yesterday was a struggle, but i managed to complete my task about two minutes before picking up mr smear from his therapy session. it was complicated. yesterday was the kind of day that made me appreciate home offices, it was tough working with the ambient noises and interruptions at home and it was tough working from mr smear's gym...

we had an incident with mr smear last night before bedtime, and that sucked. at least he woke up in good spirits, though, and we're going to fine-tune our approach accordingly...

...

i'm feeling inspired by the space shooter games to build my own, one that isn't all about milking money out of the users. i'm sad that unity is being ridiculous about their pricing model changes, but apparently they're listening.

some good news

 the private therapist has been getting weird since learning that we're switching to a public therapist... either way, she's apparently been doing a phenomenal job with mr smear, as evidenced by the report we received from his teacher this evening. not only has he been integrating well with the class, but the teachers have been "negotiating" his peculiarities and getting good deals in the process.

it apparently helps that his homeroom teacher is a bit OCD about hygiene, because it appears that if she's worrying about it then he doesn't feel that he has to :P

this final bit of news has blown us away - probably just as much as his sports teacher - is that after a year of him refusing to participate in anything relating to sports, he played soccer with a bunch of other kids this week, had fun, and then requested to be moved to sit near his new soccer friends.

when we told him that we'd heard that he played and were proud of him, he seemed embarrassed 🤦

...

i got into the office today to a new urgent task, so i had to put the previous urgent task on hold. which i'd only just resumed after the urgent tasks of the on-call duties, and which itself had disrupted another urgent task, and none of these tasks appear on the gantt chart we're supposedly working with.

i spent most of the day *bash*ing my head into virtual walls, but did end up with a good feeling as i figured out how to do something tricky with nox that i wasn't confident was even possible...

...

i'm heavier than i should be again. i was losing weight for a while, and it feels like a week of on-call anxiety and stress-eating set me back considerably :/

lost in space

 i've been playing a lot of crying suns lately. it's an exquisite evolution of ftl.

i've also been playing galaxy attack: shooting game again, as opposed to space shooter - galaxy attack that mr smear and i occasionally play together on the bus home from his training. all those games are pretty much the same, and the hardest (read: next to impossible) way to play it is without ads or purchases...

my nose is stuffy. we didn't go wall-climbing yesterday, as mr smear woke up struggling to breathe through the snottiness on saturday night. he completed bugsnax all by himself in the morning, and i kept an eye on him to make sure he was alright. he seemed to be, but the way the story ended was bothering him so he didn't feel much like celebrating. then we watched the rest of the live action one piece, which was fantastic.

in the evening, we had a big argument about shower time (i came up with a great analogy to explain how time works on the way to the school this morning, he's less argumentative about it now), and after a long stretched out period of time trying to calm him down before he went to sleep, i tried to bring up things to make him feel good.

bugsnax wasn't it. he thinks the developers are idiots for "messing up the story", and it doesn't help that i think the story was interesting and clever... anyway, i'm rather grateful that that's what was bothering him...

gd and i met the school's art therapist this morning, that seems like a good thing for mr smear.

i spoke to my mom this morning, and was concerned to learn that her car broke down while she was passing the cape town townships yesterday. fortunately she managed to push the thing to get her somewhere marginally safer, but "safer" is relative. i spoke to her again this evening, and she's made it clear that there's no reasoning with her about emigrating :/

the arab pharmacist i encountered on the way to the office was thorough. thorough is great, except when you're purchasing something sensitive with a line of people standing two feet away from you.

i spent most of my morning running through the things i was going to tell my boss when i got to the office, and then i got to the office and read the room and decided that it really wasn't the right thing to do. i'm just going to shut my mouth and walk away as soon as possible.

it was a much better day (obviously, i went off-call), and it had some good moments. in the middle of the day i went to the dentist, where the guy replaced my filling surprisingly quickly and i'm still trying to figure out whether it's good or not.

i think it might be good.

i shopped and bussed home making a concerted effort to neither bite my mouth parts nor drool, and somehow succeeded in spite of running into mr smear's previous teacher on the bus. she asked about mr smear wearing glasses and was completely shocked by his prescription - i suggested that that offers a plausible explanation as to why he didn't dig reading exercises so much last year.

i got home to find him reading a hebrew book to gd, he's clearly a lot more comfortable now than he's ever been.

i'm kinda tired. it's half past midnight. here goes nothing...

a good day out

we had a really great time at our friends' place, including mr smear. he seemed to forget his aforementioned issues, and had a good time with all three siblings.

our only concern of the afternoon was the couple that came over with their small children who were obviously sick, when there's another round of covid happening and we're nervous about getting hit again.

i'm pretty sure we're going to get hit again.

assuming we're still okay by tomorrow evening, it looks like we might have company for wall climbing, which would be fun :)

we left rather late, and while mr smear ate dinner i got into celeste on the ps4. it's freakin' hard, and by the time i handed the controller over to mr smear for "just the first chapter" i'd already forgotten just how long that first chapter took me... fortunately he'd learned from a lot of my mistakes, but he still went to bed much later than planned :P

after he went to bed, gd and i watched a bunch of interesting ufc videos / fights, and now i'm enjoying my last cup of tea before bed.

hopefully i'll get a better night's sleep tonight.

...

as i typed that, some tiny, weird-looking little bug landed on me. i hope it's nothing interesting.

out with the old

wishing everyone celebrating the jewish new year a happy new year!

for me, i'm hoping and praying for a new gig and less awful on-call duties.

thursday:

gd and i dropped mr smear off at school together, then took a bus to his therapist for counselling. in addition to some really good feedback, his therapist also made it abundantly clear that she doesn't agree with us switching to a public therapist and that she expects a regression. unfortunately, we can't afford to stay with her, as we haven't been able to afford the cost of private therapy since the very beginning...

i guess we'll see how things go. i feel like it's going to be okay, though.

once we got home i was absolutely exhausted, and spent the chunks of my day that i wasn't busy hating my job (and some of my coworkers) doing everything i could to keep my shit together. my work day was a horrible no-good lousy day.

after mr smear's jiujitsu class i took him to his therapist, then parked myself in a really nice hotel coffee shop on allenby for the hour. it's quite an upgrade from the shuk, even if the shuk vibe is more fun.

my stomache was very uncomfortable the whole afternoon, i don't know what that was about.

yesterday:

after a slow start to the day which included us enjoying gsp vs koscheck 2 as a family, we all went to the mall and got a couple of different things sorted out, including making sure we have puzzles for our new yom kippur family tradition.

the rest of yesterday is a blur, but it definitely involved resting and video games.

today so far:

i had a rough night last night with my lower back and legs, but i did sleep a little. and i'm perpetually on edge about being on-call.

mr smear and i started the day by finished the empire strikes back, and i was surprised by how much detail i'd forgotten.

we're on our way to have lunch at friends, which is a big deal for mr smear because he's taken issue with his friend of late and his friend is the reason we're all friends... hopefully he'll be cool.

i'm tired.

"king bibi"

after many months of non-stop protests, i've come to the conclusion that all of these protestors chanting "democracy" are missing something fundamental about the situation we're in and about what the word "democracy" actually means.

firstly, no matter how loud and how consistent the protests have been, no matter how many people in raw numbers may have shown up, at the end of the day it's still a very small percentage of the population. most of the population? either doesn't feel affected, isn't concerned, or is happy for the government to proceed as it is.

secondly, unless you're the elected government's constituency, the government really doesn't care about your protests. they're only going to care if the respond to something that they're doing indicates that they won't get voted in next election.

thirdly, i think that our election system is thoroughly corrupt and getting in its own way. in order to achieve stability, we're demanding coalitions and forcing someone like bibi to align himself with minorities that he doesn't necessarily agree with, all in the interests of forming a "strong government". these minorities, over the course of two decades, have changed our country for the worse.

and bibi has demonstrated, time and again, that he will stop at nothing to stay in power and out of prison.

let's put this all together: we have "king bibi". he's in charge, but he's bowing to fringe extremists to stay that way. if it wasn't for those fringe extremists, he would only be beholden to his own constituency, which is the likudnikim. who are (for the most part) relatively moderate in their views.

i think it's time to put this farce of a democracy to bed. let's let bibi wear the crown, whether for a two-to-four year term or for good. whatever. hand him his get-out-of-jail-free card. let him do his thing, without having to answer to the extremists. at least that. if he's not on the defensive, he might actually do something good for the country, and we could avoid becoming the next iran / failed state with a civil war on its hands.

he has the mandate of the majority anyway, so what difference does it make? 

parallel opposing

personally: i feel pretty good. as much as i'm hating my job, things are pretty good.

work-wise: goddamn. i couldn't focus today because i was distracted by bullshit and anxiety and demoralizing passive-aggressive "conversations" with coworkers.

...

today started with rain. no, it started with me actually getting most of a night's sleep. then i woke up and it was raining. i took mr smear to school, while it was gently drizzling, but as soon as he got in the skies opened up and i was trapped outside the ridiculously posh foyer of a building near the school. gd came to rescue me with an umbrella, but she almost got trapped herself by the poor (practically non-existent) drainage.

i decided i wasn't going to brave the wet to go to the office today, and it's definitely better that i was home because it was much easier to handle some of the aforementioned "conversations" without anyone seeing the expressions on my face or reading the choice words i ultimately decided not to send.

in the afternoon i took mr smear to his mma class, dropped him off and traded in our old, broken ipad to the istore for zero shekels, then returned to work while mr smear did his thing.

this is the second time i've seen his instructor getting pissed off at him, and the second time witnessing the same frustrations i experience from a third-person perspective. for the most part, though, he was good, and i was particularly impressed by the fact that he went and showered by himself afterwards while i continued working :)

we waited almost an hour for the bus, discovering only just before it arrived that the previous buses had been trapped by protests...

then we did some basic grocery shopping, and walked home, and did the evening routine, except he got into bed quite late so there was no story. as i was saying good night, he told me he was afraid and i tried to reassure him.

i fucked up.

how? by repeating something that i've said many times before, starting with "even when i die one day", only this time he just burst into tears, which was both sweet and mortifying, and began saying things like "we should all die together" and then calculating how old i should be when i die so that he'll be the age he wants to be when we all pass on simultaneously. it got creepy and weird, and it took a while for me to get him to go to sleep in a more positive frame of mind...

so that happened. i spent the following three hours working, finally making some progress untangling the crazy-awful mess that some of my ex-coworkers left behind, and for the past half hour or so i've switched computers and have been alternating between writing this and doing random internet things.

...

i asked mr smear's teacher for a quick report on how he's doing, and while she didn't give me details it sounds like she's very excited by how good things are. this is very exciting!

#!$%

 i smashed by pinky toe into the tiled corner of a very solid wall this morning and it cut a nice slice into it, after bleeding a bit then being cleaned up by gd it didn't give me too much trouble... until a short while ago, when i managed to smack it into the floor, and just now, when i bashed it into the foot of my chair.

it's bleeding again. and it's sore.

it feels like the penultimate way to end a shitty day...

i'm on-call again, and i woke up tired. after dropping mr smear off at school, i came home to do the dishes - the pile was so huge it took gd and i about an hour to get through it, and that was double-teaming. then i went off to the office for a day full of shitty little surprises.

three work highlights of the day:

1. the toast for the jewish new year. the sheer awkwardness of it.

2. i don't recall quite what i did exactly, but i'm pretty sure that my response to one of my coworkers was inappropriate. i chased it with a heavy meal of humble pie, i think the outcome was okay.

3. we have an enthusiastic new product person who invited a whole bunch of us for interviews to figure out who we are and how we operate. smart. i gave her the low-down; i feel like she's slightly less enthusiastic now...

two real highlights of the day:

1. i received very positive feedback from one of phoenix's mma teachers (well, the jiujitsu teaching assistant)

2. the company i interviewed with yesterday wants to proceed! that's awesome news, although there are two uncomfortable addendums: the first, that they want a reference from someone from my current gig (fortunately i managed that, but it's a dicey thing to ask), and the second, that i realized this evening that i'm not sure if they know how much i'm asking.

i really hope that doesn't cause harm.

leaving the office was hampered by another incident, but i managed to get home in time to eat with my family. i've spent the following hours alternating between work and personal admin, and chatting with my mom, and i'm now very tired and contemplating crashing.

but i'm also very worried that the moment i start actually sleeping i'll be awoken by the damned pager.

hello, 1am, my old friend

 i got about 45 minutes respite before all hell broke loose, and after a short investigation it turned out that one of our service providers crashed and burned and took us down with them. i've spent the past two and a half hours monitoring the situation while occasionally nudging the test workflows i mentioned before, and wondering (as usual, when i'm on call) what i'm doing with my life.

i'm not quite sure i'm tired enough to go to bed yet, but i'm definitely getting there.

"they call me" drama

 i'm on-call again, and already hating it. my dinner time was spent trying to figure out what was wrong, it turned out the usual suspect had once again broken something and walked away...

...

i didn't give up on puffing before bed until this morning, two nights in a row that it didn't really help and both nights me suffering from a headache instead. so much for that idea.

yesterday:

yesterday was disappointing. things didn't work. and other things didn't work. i took mr smear to his mma class, and while things continued to not work i bore witness to him doing the same shit that drives me crazy to his poor teacher...

today:

i needed a lot of coffee today. after dropping mr smear off at school i took a bus straight to an interview. i think the interview went rather well, and i hope i'm the best candidate because i really like what they're doing and how they're doing it!

today was a mixed bag, some minor progress but mostly more brick walls. then i left early to pick mr smear up from jiujitsu, only to discover that he'd skipped his second class.

drama.

i managed to tone down my response and have a conversation with him, by the end of which he seemed pretty convinced that my rationale made sense. then we got home and things started breaking.

drama.

now i've got a huge pile of dishes to take care of, while i'm still keeping an eye on test workflows that i don't really believe will work. w00t.

the fix

 i took a puff on thursday night, and it helped. i took another puff last night, and it helped. i'm going to take another puff tonight, and hopefully my sleep clock will stabilize. i'm actually surprised by how little affected i was - aside from the sleeping itself - i didn't feel messed up going to sleep, nor waking up. this is good.

...

right now, my fingers and hands are sore. i'm really excited to report that i finally got on the climbing wall with mr smear this evening, and not only was it a great experience climbing together but i did way better than i thought i would after more than eight years. i had no trouble getting to the top, nor climbing a lot, and aside from the first attempt i made a point of only doing routes.

...

this post interrupted by yet another protest against our new neighbor. i complained about last night's one in the neighborhood facebook group and learned that i'm not alone in not appreciating their shenanigans. i'm actually surprised that mr smear hasn't woken up yet, but some of our neighbors haven't been so lucky :(

...

friday morning went much better than the previous week. gd and i did a quick grocery shopping as soon as mr smear was in school, then watched randy feltface - smug druggles (it's brilliant). then i picked up mr smear, brought him home, dragged him to the istore* and then rushed through to his therapist, picking up a delicious falafel along the way (he was very happy about that).

* where i learned that i cannot trade in or even submit for recycling our old ipad and my "old" macbook that i picked up from sailor

while he had his session i sat outside the coffee shop and worked on an article while three different places (including the coffee shop) competed for the loudest, most annoying music. it was lovely.

yesterday afternoon / evening was pretty chill, as was this morning. we started off the day with home alone, which was actually better and more interesting than i remembered. then, after a significant downtime, mr smear convinced gd to play goodcritters with us, and while the start was a bit rough we all ended up having a great time!

i agreed to give mr smear another chance and we watched some more of the live action one piece. it's just gorgeous!

mr smear and i had an unpleasant incident on the way to the wall this evening, but ultimately we got things figured out and i feel like i got through to him. the fact that we managed to have a great time after that feels like significant progress on both our parts.

the unsleep

 i don't recall how much i slept last night, i'm just sure it wasn't quite enough.

the work day was... disappointing. it began smoothly and ended with me down a rabbit-hole full of nonsense.

gd's been having a rough day or two with her neck, so i left the office early to take mr smear to his mma class. he's mostly doing well, my biggest concern is that the older group after him has a problem with not washing their gear and it's unbearably revolting. if it was my class there's no way i would let them on the mats in that state.

it's almost 2am. i crashed immediately after putting mr smear to bed, but then woke up about two hours later...

...

i feel like my brain needs a reconfiguration. like, a refocus. a repurpose, even.

still not sure how to play it

 a month and a half later, the company i was interviewing with stopped the process because - allegedly - they believe i'd be better suited for a different role that they don't currently have. awesome.

i must admit, though, it was a kind of relief. when i wasn't sure if the call was going to be positive or negative, i started running scenarios in my head and i think i'd feel pretty bad telling my coworkers that i was leaving for the competition. that would probably be a tad demoralizing...

anyway, so that's not happening. 

the introduction call this morning was a bit awkward - i answered "the question" and regretted doing so the moment the honest answer had left my mouth. stfu, man! anyway, they want me to continue regardless so i guess it's not a dealbreaker :P

today was all about partial successes. i'll take it, but it was a bit tedious. i did manage to stay away from the oreos and the candy, though. that's good.

...

it sounds like mr smear's third grade is going a bit better than the second. still crossing fingers and waiting anxiously to see how each day pans out...

...

i'm starting to feel tired, but i don't want a repeat of last night's two and half hours out of bed. i wish i had some way of knowing what to do!

i'm tired of not sleeping

 i crashed pretty early, relatively speaking, and then about an hour ago i climbed out of bed after what was probably a while spent uncomfortable and hoping to be able to fall back to sleep.

i finally got a haircut today, the "usual" that's going to need to be fixed by my wife when he has the energy for it. in the meanwhile, at least it's better than it was?

i thought i was going to take it easy today after working until almost midnight last night, but then i started this morning by opening a pull request and immediately noticed a few points that needed tidying... then, when i got into the office i immediately got dragged back in to the frustrating stuff that i had to put on hold last week, and it feels rather sisyphean :(

...

mr smear had a third positive day. i hope they really are positive. he seems to be doing well. i hope he's doing well. i'm grateful that we got to give him a break over the holidays, and i hope he gives himself a break over the school year.

...

i've got yet another "introduction" call in the morning. i shouldn't be thinking "ugh".

the gauntlet

 this whole interviewing thing feels just a bit ridiculous at this point. i received an email today informing me that the people i spoke to on thursday morning aren't interested - to be fair, i wasn't interested either. it was a weird conversation. the other company i thought i was progressing with still hasn't gotten back to me. the interview this evening seemed to go well - kind of? and it's not the last. that's the... fourth one, so far. holy shit.

apparently mr smear had another good day at school today, i'm nervously hopeful this is a new trend. at least he seems to like the teacher...

today's work was a huge last-push effort, i hit a few snags and ended up so personally invested that it was only around 11.30pm when i finally pushed what i believe is ready to go. intellectually, i know that i need to move on; but for the first time since i signed on i'm actually enjoying what i'm doing.

i watched dan cummins: trying to get better while i worked (well, while waiting for tests to run) - refreshingly intelligent and funny!

and then i dived in to a long session of crying suns. i'm really enjoying it. i love the mechanics and i love the story so far (i don't actually know how far i am right now, somewhere between the middle and the end of chapter 2).

some relief

 i did get some sleep last night, even if it was plagued by weird nightmares. today was in large part a good saturday. i played through the first chapter of crying suns, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience (on easy). mr smear and i watched more one piece, which was great fun but he's having a hard time not repeating the adult language...

i had an interesting chat with horseman that went on far longer than planned, then rushed to take mr smear out. but mr smear didn't want to go out...

... most of our walk / playground time was enjoyable. two parts that weren't:

1. i was trying to explain statistics gathering, and the moment the example came out of my mouth i knew it was a mistake. he just couldn't wrap his head around the fact that i was using the example as illustration, and not literally asking him to do the survey. he *hates* his previous teacher, and i asked him how we would find out how his whole class feels about her without asking every single kid...

2. both of us needed to pee, and the public restrooms were disgusting.

i'd been hoping to catch up with the mongoose, but he didn't pitch. when the sun began to go down we caught a bus home, by which time my legs were sore. i'm honestly not entirely sure why i've been so tired today...

we finished elemental, and it wasn't bad. it was very clumsy and formulaic, but overall i guess we kinda enjoyed it. we're still reading the wind in the willows. it's going well.

i passed out on the couch next the gd for a while, then got up to take care of some things. once those things had been taken care of, i got stuck playing sudoku - daily challenges that say "easy" but are definitely not easy. i'm used to doing hard/expert levels, and i'm finding myself stuck on easy/mediums for the first time...

the mixed bag

 this morning was a bit shit, really. i scrambled out of bed to grab clothing and a coffee and walk mr smear to school. he didn't want to be photographed.

we arrived just in time, found his new classroom, met his new teacher, and i left feeling like it was going to be okay.

then i rejoined gd and the two of us hopped on a bus to find fluorescent lighting. that part of the mission turned out to be surprisingly quick and painless. but then we tried to find something else, and ended up in a situation - it was with unhappy feelings that we finally found a bus to take us to dizengoff center.

which turned out not to be the place we needed to be.

the easy app is hands-down the worst app / search / navigation experience i've ever encountered.

we eventually gave up on finding a barber shop near the center, and bussed to where gd took mr smear a short while ago. as we were about to walk in someone else was coming out, so we stopped to give them space. at which point a very rude couple snuck around us and took the next (and only) available chair.

i was quite annoyed, on top of the general irritation of the morning, but i waited for the next opportunity, only someone else arrived and i knew immediately that that next chair was going to be hers. at that point i lost my cool and definitely didn't want to be there any more.

so we came back home - with my hair still looking very shaggy - i tossed back a coffee with ice-cream in it to calm down and then we left almost immediately to pick up mr smear. we were both a bit nervous, and also a little surprised when we picked him up to learn that he'd had a really good day! and that both he and his teacher thought so!

it's a good start, hopefully it'll continue in this vein.

we did half the grocery shopping, then returned home to find the other half outside our door, this time with no "gifts". i rested for a bit, then got up to put the old mattress outside (gd wrapped it nicely and put a sign on it), then attempted to replace the fluorescent lighting.

i think it's safe to say i failed. the first one works nicely, but still only fires up about half a minute after pushing the button. the second doesn't fire up, just hums annoyingly.

i suspect the fixtures are fucked. and my fiddling probably didn't improve matters.

and touching anything up there was gross.

...

mr smear and i watched two episodes of the live action reboot of one piece. it's... it's brilliant. just brilliant. mr smear has decided that he no longer cares for becoming a scientist, or a chef - now he wants to bring back old-school piracy.

that's my boy!

...

additionally, i played enough of the crying suns demo to decide that it was worth dropping $8 on the full game. it's FTL, but better.

we watched half of elemental this evening, so far there're a couple of annoying contrivances but the overall concept is good and it is enjoyable.

i've been making far too much effort to manipulate midjourney into producing something that i think is pretty straightforward, but apparently isn't...

...

i hope i'm able to sleep tonight.

the answer to the sleep question was no

 i slept horribly last night, and the majority of my day was pretty rough as a result. i did write that article, and i am pleased with it, but i think i finally felt ready to crash around 2/3am and even then i was just too uncomfortable and restless...

the day began with an alarm to remind us that we needed to take mr smear to the therapist in the morning this week, so it was a bit of a scramble to get everyone up and out on time. gd and i sat down for coffee on unbelievably uncomfortable chairs, and my back was sore by the time i joined our team's daily meeting.

i had a chat with another potential employer this morning, i don't think it went so well...

getting home was a bit of a story due to traffic and construction, and once i was home i really began to struggle with the tiredness.

like, really struggle.

and my lower back and legs were sore, too.

i was a bit of a mess.

my situation seemed to improve just about the time i needed to take mr smear to his jiujitsu class, and once there i managed to get a fair amount of work done. in spite of the fact that the usual instructor wasn't there and the kid who took over didn't have complete control over mr smear and his little motormouth friend :P

i continued to work once we got home, and managed to achieve a milestone just in time for dinner. we're rewatching gravity falls, which we all enjoy. bedtime was pretty smooth, and we're still going strong with wind in the willows :)

i went to bed shortly afterwards, then work up a couple of hours ago. i've primarily been occupied with trying to get a python lambda function working with layers, but i'm struggling inexplicably with dependencies and i'm hoping to be done before i eventually, finally feel ready to go to bed.

we have a busy morning this morning. back to school and a bunch of errands. whoo!