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.