the longest year

 in six and a half hours, it will have been one full year since the beginning of the october 7th attacks. it's hard to believe that it's been a year, that we still don't have our hostages back, that we've accomplished amazing things but suffered painful losses, that there are large numbers of people around the world calling for our destruction, and that includes pro-palestinian jews who have absolutely no understanding of the forces they're aligning with.

it's all insane.

...

this morning was alright. mr smear informed gd and me that in retrospect, pantheon isn't appropriate for him. after his initial enthusiasm died down, he found it disturbing. fair enough.

i sorted out some financial stuff - hopefully this month will be more stable, but who knows? - and then realized i couldn't find an important medical document of gd's. i walked to work past the hospital, where i got them to print it out and discovered that the previous receptionist i'd dealt with had entered something completely wrong (and seemingly incoherent) as gd's email address...

the work day was alright. i didn't feel like it, but it was productive nonetheless. i might have eaten too much - i finished off what remained of gd's challah, and that was most of it - and my biggest frustration of the day was that there wasn't any non-barista non-dairy milk alternative for me. so it wasn't a bad day.

i had a good chat with vfmp on my way home, and a short but meaningful talk with mr smear about the current war situation and what tomorrow means for us. the rest of the evening was pretty chilled, and my biggest issue right now is kinda the same as it's been for a few nights: i think i might be depressed, because i'm tired, but i can't sleep, and i don't feel like doing or watching anything.

i guess i'm just going to try stuff (like shadowrun) and see what i can do to run out the clock and go to bed as late as is reasonable.

nice

 it's the middle of the night, and i'm having trouble sleeping again. i've spent the last hour or so doom-scrolling, now i'm going to try writing this and maybe, possibly, going back to bed,

i went to bed early last night, again, and i mostly slept through the night. i started the day with the beginning of what i presume is the final shadowrun mission, saved (and double-checked my save) and got ready to go out with gd to pick up snacks for our guests.

it was at that point that we realized that mr smear's bag was missing, the one with his epipen and mobile phone 🤮

i was panicking that we'd left it in a park or something, but then i checked google family link and was (somewhat) relieved to see that it was at or near the ice-cream parlor we'd stopped at. so gd went to the store for snacks, and i rushed over to the ice-cream parlor. it was a huge relief to find the bag there, and find everything in the bag, but the experience had certainly elevated my heartrate.

the minecraft playdate was great, the kids really enjoyed themselves and the adults had a good chat too. overall, excellent.

at some point gd decided that we needed to go and find food, so we went our separate ways and took mr smear with us to cafe eva. the only seats available were the comfy sofas, and after we'd finished eating mr smear pulled out his kindle (he's voraciously reading dr block books) and i continued reading superman: escape from bizarro world which is far more interesting than i expected it to be.

but between the comfy chair, and the food, and the atmosphere, i spent most of the remaining time there passing in and out of consciousness :P

...

eventually, we returned home and settled in as a family to watch pantheon (horseman's recommendation). as far as age-appropriateness is concerned, it's mostly fine with a rare scene where we need to send mr smear out of the room for a minute and then explain what happened afterwards. as far as entertainment / intellectual stimulation / writing is concerned, it's phenomenal, and we're all in, all three of us!

...

the only unpleasantness of the evening was mr smear being upset that we weren't going to watch another episode when it was already getting late on a school night :P

in spite of that, and the subsequent 45 minutes of him not brushing his teeth and then complaining that he wasn't being given time to read, bedtime went smoothly. and then i passed out on the couch, eventually moving to the bedroom, and then eventually moving back to the couch again. now i don't know what i want to do, because i don't want to get into a game, but i don't want to doom-scroll either.

ooh! maybe i should try actually reading again. it worked this afternoon :P

...

this long weekend has been good for me. we're now entering a more-or-less regular work-week tomorrow, and then it'll be ten days off. i'm really looking forward to that.

shana tova 🙏

on wednesday morning we were preoccupied with making sure we were ready for the long weekend, and the afternoon was relatively relaxed. having said that, i must've eaten something bad or picked up a bug somewhere, but i spent a large part of the afternoon running to and from the toilet.

fortunately, that settled down the moment we left in the evening, and didn't return until the following morning.

we went to our friends for the chag, and for the most part it was a relaxed evening with the kids (mostly) being cool and the adults enjoying good food and good conversation, in spite of the fact that we were coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum. it's nice to have conversations with intelligent people.

we came home relatively early, and after putting mr smear to bed i settled in for some shadowrun: dragonfall. until... until pretty late.

yesterday:

i woke up with the middle of my back threatening to spasm, and it was painfully on the verge for pretty much the entire day.

in the morning, gd and i left mr smear to his devices (i think he was playing minecraft) and took a pleasant walk around the very quiet neighborhood. other than that, until 4pm i was mostly preoccupied with the apex mission in shadowrun. that mission was hard, and i needed a restart or two (i made some pretty big mistakes), and goddammit i earned the won't suffer an ai to live achievement. just decided how to handle that story required a few restarts and reading up online, i literally couldn't decide, as a player or as my character, whether it made sense to make a deal or not.

that's good writing.

i completed the mission, saved, and quit. still buzzing from how difficult the mission was and having completed it by the skin of my teeth, i closed my computer and went out with mr smear for a walk and some time chilling in the park.

it was nice. and my stomache was mostly okay by then.

so we had a good time, and i got a good break from the game. after we got back and showered, i decided to fire it up, just until dinner time. and that was when i learned that my save game - the one i saved after completing the mission - did not exist, and i was taken back to the very beginning of my last attempt.

i died inside. that really messed me up, and i'd stay messed up about it until this afternoon.

we had dinner, watching an episode of x-men and an episode of the fantastic four, and then everyone went to bed early.

today:

we didn't know if we'd have guests today or not, but either way our apartment was in dire need of a clean. so, for the first time, the three of us did it as a family. it took a while, but we did well, and we all rested nicely afterwards. (mr smear reading on his kindle, i've just been convinced to pay for kindle unlimited).

with an hour to go before we-need-to-go-outside time, i decided to give the apex mission another try. this time, i was doing alright when the game got stuck in the middle of the battle and wouldn't let me end my turn.

so that's a thing, too.

it's an old game, so nobody's going to fix it. but i did find a forum post mentioning debug mode, and debug mode has a "kil" button. so i reloaded, again, and quickly breezed through the mission using a big, fat cheat.

once i was clear, and out of the mission, i saved, verified that the save saved, and *then* closed the computer and went out with mr smear for a walk.

it was a good walk, and we stopped for ice cream on the way. this evening's been alright, we've just finished showering and are about to eat, and we've played some games together.

today was a good day.

new year 5785

last night was a huge attack on israel by iran, and we were stuck in the shelter for quite a while without signal, so everyone around the world knew more about what was happening than we did, while the sirens wailed and went silent and wailed again, on and off, and we heard massive explosions from near and far.

and right before the missile attack, there was an horrific terrorist attack in jaffa.

and with all the tension from outside, gd and i had a horrible fight last night, that only resolved around midnight. so between that, and worrying about whether we'd have to jump during the night, it was not the best night ever.

...

monday:

monday feels like an age ago, it's all a bit of a blur.

i woke up really tired (my own fault, i guess), and i had an uncomfortable stomache pretty much all day. i worked from home, took mr smear to his hebrew tutor and to jiujitsu. the work turned out more complicated than it should have been - as always, i ran into a wall of "how does this piece of software that everyone uses not do it's one job properly?" (a combination of fastapi and openapi tooling, with everything failing), but i essentially got the job done.

yesterday:

i really didn't sleep well at all, my lower back and hips were hurting. so i was quite tired.

the work day was interesting, i managed to get my task done as well as could be expected - using some quirky hacks, which of course we'll clean up later - and got a fun little side quest taken care of while avoiding working on my new task, which is another yucky frontend one.i was very happy to walk out of the office for the very long weekend, and i'm looking forward to the next few days being a bit of a break.

...

i've been fantasizing about us going all out against tehran for months, i keep thinking about how the US went into iraq in 2003 and how everyone was expecting it to be a serious war, and then the americans walked right through them. i have a feeling that if we hit tehran directly, we could be looking at a post-ayatollah iran which would immediately change the face of the entire region... so that's what i'm praying for.

may this new year be full of success, and relief, and reasons to celebrate 🙏