whew

tues/wed nights i barely slept, and i wasn't feeling "all there" for tuesday/wednesday, and i was only "mostly there" yesterday; on tuesday i actually had to rush home with a massive headache after hours of tummy troubles, wednesday i was okay but perpetually wondering when i'd fall aprt, and fortunately by yesterday i was mostly good (if still slightly out of it).

work-wise: wednesday was very successful, yesterday was very frustrating but ended with a small but palpable win. and i really, really like my teammates. we're a hilarious group of misfits having lots of fun together.

on a related note, one of my coworkers served in a position where he handled the other side of the polygraph story (not mine, but in general). we shared and cross-referenced stories, and i have a better idea now of what i *should* have done and what to do if i ever decide a job is worth going through it again. anyway, the experience was to some degree cathartic.

this week we learned about shibboleths. fascinating things.

and gd just asked me a question which led to a mini-revelation: possive contractions in hebrew, like "his brother"? instead of an apostrophe to denote the missing letters, we use a yod. amazing.

on tuesday morning i accompanied gd to the hospital for her allergist appointment. aside from having to defer the skin prick test, we learned that cannabis allergies *is* a known thing, and that it has to do with the amount of pollen one might be exposed to. we also managed to get her an MRI appointment for last night, which was amazing but stressful because we needed to get the authorizations sorted out.

the good news is that we managed to get it done, and gd had her MRI last night. we didn't expect it to take more than an hour and a half of waiting room time, though, so we arrived at the mongoose's 40th birthday party quite a bit later than expected. fortunately, gd had taken extra antihistamines and we were outside on a roof, so pleasant-but-awkward conversations notwithstanding she was able to enjoy the evening without needing to return to the hospital.

and mr smear was very happy to play with the switch the mongoose set him up with... of course he was.

we had a bit of an issue with the taxi home, but it worked out fine and we got mr smear into bed before midnight.

...

this morning wasn't easy for any of us. in a couple of hours mr smear is planning on bringing a friend of his home and they want to record a minecraft build, so i'm going to have to figure out how to get that set up...

oh, and we have mold coming through the walls, not from the windows. hopefully the landlords are going to start the process of taking care of this.

oh, and our mini-dryer arrived. it's more mini than we thought, hopefully it'll work as advertised.