the night owls

 as i begin writing this post, it's 2.20am and everyone's awake. me, because i woke up an hour or two ago with indigestion (we had pizza for dinner, and every day since wednesday has been a celebratory cheat-day), mr smear because he woke up thirsty and coughing, and gd because i went to pee and him calling for me woke her up...

anyway. it's been a crazy couple of days, now seems as good an hour as any to get it down.

wednesday:

i walked home, furiously messages everyone who needed to be updated with my news. on my way, i picked up some rum. well, i picked up a bacardi mojito, to be precise, and the cashier expressed her disgust which reminded me that gd had asked for whiskey. but the whiskeys there were way overpriced, so i ended up taking the bacardi while she muttered "disgusting" under her breath 😂

gd had ordered from our favorite vegan burger joint, and i ate my entire meal which was twice as much as i should have :P

as part of my celebration, i also picked up a copy of final fantasy vi (pixel remaster) and car mechanic simulator 2021, but unfortunately the latter proved unplayable after mr smear and i enthusiastically gave it a go this evening after talking about it for almost two days :/

thursday:

i dropped mr smear off at school and then continued on to our clinic, where i finally received the authorization that gd's been waiting on. i walked through to the hospital compound to deliver it, then returned home.

by the time i entered the office i realized that i hadn't received any sign of my contract, so i signed in to the signing app and found it waiting for me - it had been sent immediately after i'd approved it the evening before, and gmail had filed its notification as spam :/

i immediately skimmed through it to ensure everything was as expected, signed it, and it was done.

HOORAY!!

nystire called and we had a quick chat, which began with us trying to remember the name of the ultra-orthodox guy we'd served with that i bumped into on my way to the office, and resulted in him suggesting something that bolstered my confidence that i was making the right decision.

for a while i had a live-stream open of the hostage release, though eventually i realized that it wasn't constructive and i just waited on occasional live updates instead.

everything about how hamas is behaving with the hostage release just seems completely unhinged. who is their footage aimed at, and what kind of bizarre narrative are they trying to convince people of? what the hell do the goodie bags and framed certificates even mean?!

and how does it help them to show such cruelty to an old man while releasing him?? make it make sense

two of my coworkers came in, and one of them is interviewing for the same company. i enjoy working with him, but he's a particularly quirky developer so i'm intrigued.

[half an hour later and mr smear's really struggling, gd's taking care of him but it's unsettling]

...

i received a dramatic message from mr smear's homeroom teacher informing me that the kid mr smear hit with a rock, and whose artwork he's torn up on a couple of occasions, was very upset because mr smear had insulted his mother by calling her fat and saying she was unable to move. made worse by the fact that those statements are true 🤦

he claims that he and this kid were playing a game that involved generating drama, and that he immediately recognized and regretted his going to far. considering the fact that his teacher told me she had to give him a talk and ask him to apologize, i have my suspicions.

to add insult to... insult, he took a pack of oreos to school today to give to the poor kid as an additional apology, and then ate them himself :/

...

while i'd already signed the new contract, i put a lot of effort into making sure that i rejected my other offer in as constructive (or, non-destructive) a way as possible. while it was true that i'd made up my mind before i got the one i signed, it was surprisingly easy to honestly express the aspects that i'd had to weigh (especially as it wasn't an apples-to-apples comparison) and how much i valued their offer and would enjoy working with them. 

it was a relief to get back warm, sympathetic responses from the three people i emailed my letter to and it feels like they're keeping the door open too, which is comforting.

...

i'd intended to get my chair and monitor home before taking mr smear to the second part of his evaluation, but it proved too tricky, so i walked home, fired off the aforementioned email i'd been preparing, and the bussed him to the evaluation. i enjoyed a decaf coffee while waiting for him, resuming learning about the dangers of localStorage and coming up with a potential mechanism for using it securely. 

while there, gd went to the dentist and finally got her first crown sorted out! it's a huge relief.

i picked mr smear up, we grabbed hummus at a hummusia close by, i showed him the building i'm about to start working in and we took the light rail home.

i didn't need to eat so much of the pita, but it was delicious.

...

it having been unseasonably warm the whole day, i left the apartment after dinner without a sweater and barely regretted it. i took the train to the office (i'd been misled by a bus stop display to believe that there was a protest causing traffic), picked up my chair and wheeled it out, then called a taxi. fortunately, the taxi driver not only had no issue with transporting a chair, but was able to jimmy it into the front seat in a way that i definitely wasn't capable of.

i'd originally intended to use an hourly rental, and i think i would have deeply regretted it.

yesterday/today (friday):

i got mr smear to school, and from there caught a bus to the office to pick up my monitor and drop off my key and keycard.

i was amused by my reflection in the elevator mirror when i realized i was taking office equipment out the building wearing a hoodie that says "pirate king" on the front 😅

i took the train home, and set up my workstation, which i'm happily using now and it makes an ENORMOUS difference to the experience of using my shitty windows machine!

i kinda regret not setting something like this up before.

i picked mr smear up from school, came home, helped a woman pick up a whole bunch of mr smear's unwanted books and toys, then walked with mr smear to one of ze germans' son's street exhibit on ben gurion, which was simply astonishing. what's just as astonishing to my mind is that most of his artwork was sold by the end of the afternoon!

amazing kid. even mr smear found his work riveting, and at some point told him "i'm good, but you're waaay better than me" 😅

...

we were supposed to meet up with the mongoose but hadn't heard from him, so we walked around until we discovered market vegan and stopped for lunch. i had a thai curry soup that came with glass noodles, mr smear wasn't a fan of the soup but enjoyed the noodles, then decided to try adding soup to the noodles, and at that point decided he could enjoy it properly :)

we also picked up one of their desserts, which was delicious, but mr smear looked like a chocolate version of heath ledger's joker so we stopped in at a bar/restaurant to clean up. on our way out, we stepped on broken glass that had simply been abandoned while whoever dropped it went to get something to sweep it with, and we were about twenty meters away when i realized that mr smear's shoes had a massive glass spike in it that almost went through to his foot :/

...

we met up with the mongoose and co. (wife/daughter/some friends), his daughter's really starting to speak! and i just realized that i never put her birthday in my calendar and we just missed her 2nd birthday 🤦

it was nice seeing them, but mr smear really got in my face and wouldn't let me talk, which not only infuriated me but also lost him a chunk of privilege time - it took three increments of 15 minutes to finally get him to stop. on the walk home i explained to him how bad that was.

we were almost home before he realized that his punishment was going to be carried out immediately, and we sat on a bench and had a massive fight about how punishments work, and how the punishment itself is his fault and not mine, and how what he was doing to me was assault and if he wasn't my kid he could get into real trouble for it.

eventually, with only an additional 15 minutes added on top for rudeness (he did try hitting me a couple of times, but i responded in kind so that stopped quickly), we returned home in surprisingly calm spirits.

...

we tried out the new vegan sachlav that's being advertised everywhere, and it is good! it's one of those things that i've missed every winter since i went vegan (so... almost 15 years now) and i really enjoyed it :)

after doing some dishes while mr smear served his sentence (some sentence, he just chilled and read for an hour), we headed to the synagogue. along the way i talked to him about prayer, that there are different forms of it, and that there's power in communal prayer (whether in synagogue or on a dance floor) and power in being connected to our ancestors and our history.

the chazan was in a bit of a droning mood, so it wasn't as vibrant a service as usual, and there was a weird choir thing as the end, but otherwise it was a pleasant experience and i'm glad that mr smear's going with the flow.

...

between getting home and saying kiddush, we had time to try out the mechanic simulators, and sadly our windows machine just isn't up to spec :(

at least i could get a refund.

[gd just went to bed, and mr smear's now up and reading todd strasser's the wave on the couch behind me]

we enjoyed the pizza dinner and the simpsons, and then mr smear got an extra half hour to play an FPS during which time i taught him how to strafe and not stand still when engaged in a fire fight. i then jumped in the shower, where i heard him yelling excitedly from the living room after he won his first game ^_^

after getting him into bed, i played a bit of final fantasy vi and then went to bed myself. it's 4.15am and i'm not feeling particularly tired myself...

too much of a good thing

 well, i'm in a bit of shit right now. good shit, but scary shit. OMGOMGOMGOMG i just got the offer i wanted, and it's better than the offer i already had!! i don't know what to do with myself, but i figure i'll quickly do a mind-dump and then go home to celebrate ^_^

i've been really anxious since i received an offer yesterday after a really good couple of interviews, because it's a great offer from a great place and i'm very confident that i'd be happy working there. it also has the advantage of being established and pretty stable, which is nice.

at the same time, the company i've been praying to work at is essentially a dream job. a lot harder, and it's a brand new company so no guarantees of anything (aside from a promise of high levels of chaos and hard work), but i know that if i didn't grab it with both hands i'd always regret it.

so here we are. i've just reviewed the contract and i'm waiting for the copy to sign.

...

yesterday:

back to back interviews (that went well!)

a hint of good news after lunch

mr smear trouble (issues with a negligent hebrew teacher)

the offer, the turning of the screws (he knows what he's doing)

mr smear's "play therapist" makes me feel uncomfortable

good reading homework from him (harry potter)

a family meeting and a late dinner - explaining to mr smear his responsibility for his grades regardless, and that i'm about to start looking for a new school for him (and sign him up for the art school lottery). i'm willing to risk mr smear's behavioral issues not being resolved, he deserves to be out of that shithole.

a bit more operational finale after getting mr smear into bed before passing out on the couch (as usual)

today:

getting a pretty good night's sleep

my weight's back down to ~80!

a pretty relaxed morning

completing the form for mr smear's psych evaluation - that was hard. but it gives an interesting perspective. he's doing okay. like, he's really doing okay.

staying home to help gd with picking up mr smear

mr smear reporting that his hebrew language teacher literally told him "i don't care if you work or you draw, but if you draw i'm calling your dad" - a) that she told him she doesn't care, and b) that she hasn't called before, and it's half a school year already. i got in touch with both his homeroom teacher and the woman in the municipality responsible for new immigrants to complain

coming to the office and then spending the rest of the day in discussions about contract negotiations :P

...

right, i'm going home now.

noodle prayer

 my meeting with my now ex-boss went very well, although it began with a neighboring alarm going off  for a few very painful minutes and it reminded me that i've recently become more and more aware that i suffer from misophonia - not that the alarm counts, obviously, but i'm hyper-sensitive to anything unexpected, especially patterns of noises that should not be. like my family's chewing. or a dog barking the same bark in a loop.

anyway.

i returned home for a while before heading to my interview, and by the time i left i was quite nervous. i don't interview well, and this one was really important.

...

it seems to have gone well. i'm now gathering additional references (my current bosses referred me, i've got my previous team lead / manager on board and tomorrow i'll chat with a coworker from my last gig in cape town), and preparing for my next interviews and meetings. 

i've got another interview tomorrow.

we ate ramen for dinner.

...

i headed to the office and spent the next few hours making arrangements and brushing up on some blockchain stuff, had a brief encounter with one of my now-ex coworkers, then headed out and home.

i realized this afternoon that in the whirlwind of the past week or so, i've barely stopped to breathe and just let thoughts settle. i'm fantasizing about getting a job offer very soon, and taking a couple of weeks completely off before returning to work.

at some point in the afternoon i fired off a message to copywriter regarding the sharing of political posts, we don't usually do that but he's a democrat and recently been particularly fired up:

dude, let's chill with the political stuff. there's so much extreme shit on all sides, everyone posting shit without context and manipulating everyone. at the end of the day, i understand you're scared for what's happening now, but i've been scared about what's been happening until now, and nobody really knows what's coming or how things are going to turn out.

the only thing i know for sure is that america and the west in general have been played by russia, china and iran for decades, and we're in deep shit. if it takes bad people to change the balance, so be it. in my opinion there's no worse outcome for america than what comes after what we've been seeing across america and europe since october 7th.

you don't have to agree with me, and we don't even have to agree to disagree. but please avoid posting me political stuff because it's just more of the same of what i'm seeing in my feeds and i don't want any of this shit in my head. i want to be safe, and i want to be functional, and i want to have some peace of mind

fortunately that was received in the spirit it was intended. but now that i'm on the topic, i just saw this clip on the colombian deportation debacle and you can't make this stuff up.

...

it was a bit difficult to get mr smear to cooperate with working through fractions with me, it took a few rounds. i hit upon what seems to be an effective system: if he doesn't cooperate, it's five minutes "time out" + fifteen minutes off his "privileges" (screen time). it took three rounds, and when he finally decided it wasn't worth the fight we got through the exercises and he appears to have learned.

i told him that i really don't enjoy the battle of teaching him stuff when he gets in that mode (which is almost always due to a lack of confidence on his part), but that i really enjoy the payoff: seeing understanding dawn on his face when he *gets* something, and being able to show him how silly his resistance was in the first place 😈

hopefully our next session will be smoother.

...

the eventual success and the rest of the evening was good, though as usual i flaked and passed out on the couch trying to watch something with gd (operation finale). to be fair, it was after i'd spent half an episode of cowboy bebop trying to fix her neck with bengay :P

communities

define irony: i just got permanently banned from the southafrica subreddit for commenting that the southafrica subreddit has become an echo chamber just like the rest of reddit. 

apparently saying that violated their community rules 😂 

...

getting to ra'anana was straightforward, apparently i got lucky finding parking as easily as i did. i got a little bit lost getting to the synagogue, but i made it time to witness ru55's barmitzvah boy doing his thing. all in all it was a great being able to be there with the gang, especially as it's the first simcha for one of ze germans' kids that i've been able to attend. it was also interesting to run into a couple of my aunt and uncle's friends that i have seen in about 25 years.

the evening was pleasant. i passed out on the couch again, and then struggled to sleep once i eventually moved to the bed... i think? last night's a blur.

...

today started off alright for me, but gd's neck was still in a bad way (and it still is). i got to work at a normal time, spent a little while with the exercise again, and finally sent them a message apologizing for the last week being a wash and including the following (translated):

i have to say that up close the code looks pretty clean and tidy, but without a real familiarity with everything it's pretty hard to understand how everything connects and who is responsible for what. i would be happy to sit down with you to get some guidance.

at that point i had some ideas about what needed doing, but i was missing some pretty big pieces of the puzzle. before i clicked send i thought about it, and i figured that either they'd be willing to walk me through what i needed to be able to do the exercise, or they'd reject my application, and either action would give me important information as to what kind of people i was dealing with.

well... a while later, i got the rejection message. i took it politely, but it did sting. it bothers me because on the one hand, i don't think what they set me was a reasonable task and i don't think their code is well organized enough to expect an easy onboarding. on the other hand, i'm plagued with that voice inside my head: "is it me? am i not good enough?"

i really hate interviewing.

...

after lunch with my now ex-bosses i received an urgent call from gd to inform me that i needed to take mr smear to his therapist, which was very last-minute. i grabbed my gear and walked home, met him outside and bussed to the therapist. had coffee, had a chat with my insurance broker, picked him up and took him home.

walked past our apartment to a nearby park, dropped him off with his friend (chatting with his friend's mom for a few minutes), and the returned home. followed, shortly after, by the two boys.

the next couple of hours were a mix of messaging recruiters / headhunters, doing dishes and (healthy) snacking, while the kids played nicely. that went on until we had to rush to get to the school for mr smear's two parent-teacher meetings, dropping his friend off at home along the way.

the rush turned out to be for nothing, because both the teachers were behind schedule.

between the two meetings, we learned that, by and large, mr smear is doing relatively well academically and socially. unfortunately, we also learned that he's being totally uncooperative with his hebrew teacher to the point where she doesn't believe he can read 🤦

so that's a fucking thing. he's promised to start playing ball, but we'll see... we'll see...

gd wasn't up for making dinner so i took mr smear for falafel, which was a great experience. we got home quite late, though, and it was a rush to get him ready for bed in time because we wanted to log in to a private Q&A with an ex-mossad agent who was involved in captured eichmann, and was a consultant on the netflix movie operation finale.

he told us some stories that aren't in the movie, as well the fact that the doctor in real life was a man, but apparently the movie's an extremely faithful adaptation and the true story has some elements that are completely nuts, with truth truly being stranger than fiction.

the last couple of hours were spent chatting with my mom, playing a bit of inscryption (act ii), doing random things. it's now 1am and i have an exit interview in the morning and an important double interview at noon. and i'm nervous about going to bed because i haven't been sleeping well.

wish me luck.

noise and anti-noise

getting four hostages back this morning came as a welcome surprise, i hadn't realized the release was going to be so early. it's concerning that hamas are messing with the schedule, but most of us are just grateful to have a few more back in safety. i cannot imagine how devastating this must be for the bibas family...

...

mr smear didn't go to school yesterday because started the day with a cough, but he almost always starts the day with a cough* and it became pretty clear pretty quickly that he was actually fine. having said that, he's been struggling a fair amount the whole day today so maybe it was the actual start of something...

* i'm beginning to wonder if he's not allergic to the night

we had an incident (minor tantrum) getting him out the house yesterday for a walk, on the walk we sat down and had a real long talk and it feels like we cleared the air about some stuff. at the same time, i explained to him that as a parent it's really hard to have to convince him to leave the house every damned time...

i managed to get a couple of hours in on the job application exercise, it feels like i've made some progress but nothing amazing.

...

today has been quiet. mr smear and i started it with a couple of hours of inscryption, but at some point i started feeling like i was playing through him rather than advising him. i'm not quite sure how to balance that.

gd's neck's been hurting her a lot (nerve pain) since yesterday, so it looks like i'm off to ru55's eldest's barmitzvah alone in a few minutes.

...

RIP reddit. i cannot believe how ridiculously exaggerated the political echo chamber has become, even amongst the subreddits i would have least expected. it seems like everything's either anti-israel or anti-musk.

wackier thursday

 i'm starting this post at 1.30am on a friday morning, after tiredly and restlessly flopping around on the bed for the past couple of hours unable to get comfortable. i'm so freaking tired, but so freaking wired, and lower-back sore to boot.

...

after my previous post, i fired up inscryption, which turned out to be a big mistake. i got sucked in, and ended up going to bed a couple of hours later, which was way too late.

so getting this morning was rough.

i got mr smear to school, came home and updated my resume and sent it to my bosses, then shot out towards the train station to meet dod in ra'anana. trying to make sense of the train times via the app, i decided to chance taking the bus instead, and was given a stark reminder that tel aviv is the only city in israel that really *gets* public transport: an hour and a half by train(s), vs half an hour by bus. and when i arrived, dod explained how the train stations in ra'anana are effectively inaccessible to the people living there :/

travelling through my old neighborhood of gan rashal was a trip, seeing how the area's been completely renewed even though it's generally retained its layout, then seeing how shavit hasn't changed one iota. at least not from the outside. then seeing how the hillbilly farmland behind gan rashal was turned into a highway and train station, then entering ra'anana's ahuza and finding it looking pretty much identical to how i remember it.

the nostalgically gentle spring fresh-air smell of ra'anana as i stepped of the bus into the heart of suburbia was overwhelming.

we sat walked to a coffee shop where dod placed his order in french, and we had a good, long chat over good coffees. the relief of hearing that - by-and-large, in spite of his inability to find work in his chosen career - he and his family are doing alright, was big. we then aligned on the side project we want to build into a business, and our way forward seems pretty clear.

and then it was time to go home. i quickly and easily caught a bus home, and spent its entirety catching up on personal messages on instagram (which has recently become my answer to its algorithm). i had a hearty breakfast when i arrived, then walked to the school to pick up mr smear.

the plan was for me to take him to the first session of his evaluation, but as we arrived i suddenly felt sickly and faint, and i was grateful that gd could take him and i could lie down for a while instead. i eventually got up, made myself a cup of turkish coffee, and headed out in the wishy-washy kind-of-rainy-almost weather to meet with a friend of my CEO's who'd gotten in touch the evening before.

i thought i was running late, but as i stepped out of the light rail i found myself facing the sign on their build with five minutes to spare. thank you, light rail!

just before leaving the house, i noticed something strange - the invitation for the meeting had been updated by someone with the same name as lipgirl. i'd shaken it off, but when i walked inside their offices lipgirl was the first person i encountered! what a bizarre situation for a reunion :)

the boss man handed me a strong cup of coffee, and we sat down to chat.

what was supposed to be a 45 minute discussion ended up being more than an hour, and i cannot begin to describe how utterly amazing the fit would be if i could get this job, the alignment with my values and interests is simply unreal! i then chatted with lipgirl for a while, catching up* as well as diving into our ridiculous aliyah story, and she may have a contact who can help us expose it.

* there was an awkwardness talking about a friend of hers passed away half a year ago from cancer, i didn't remember her but i *think* she might have tried to set us up once upon a time.

anyway, in addition to how incredibly enticing the company is from a business / tech point of view, i have it on good authority that it's a great bunch of people to work with.

i left the office buzzing. partially from the excess caffeine, but in large part from what an amazing opportunity this is - i'm praying that i get through their evaluation rounds 🙏

i sent a thank you to my CEO, caught the bus home, unloaded the story on gd as i did the dishes, helped mr smear with his math homework, and then sat down for dinner, not once having looked at the exercise i was supposed to be dedicating the afternoon to... this exercise has become A Thing. A Heavy Thing.

hopefully i'll get it done tomorrow. maybe even over the weekend, even though i try not to do any form of work on shabbat...

we had a long goodnight chat with my mom after dinner, and after getting mr smear into bed gd and i finally finished watching beetlejuice beetlejuice.

it's... it's not a good movie? although it kind of is? from a plot and engagement point of view it's really meh, but at the same time it feels like a horror stoner movie that's parodying itself. and it has some redeeming moments. it feels like an art house movie, the kind that might have been produced by the character of delia deetz herself. in a way it felt more like a play than a movie.

i didn't enjoy the movie, but i also didn't not enjoy it.

...

good news on the OB/GYN story! earlier we received an email from him directly, with a proper summary of gd's care along with exactly the prescription we were looking for and that he denied prescribing when i spoke to him directly. it was clomiphene. i've passed that on to my rollerblading friend, and i'm relieved that this rather uncomfortable little story doesn't have to been dragged any further.

wacky wednesday

yesterday:

the interview didn't go well. it didn't go badly, but it definitely didn't go well. when it came to the technical part i was really unfocused, and all over the place - "all over the place" has really become my standard mode.

...

i was just saying to gd this morning that i've been riding between the edge of burnout and being burned out for a very, very long time now. it doesn't just make things tougher when they're not going smoothly, but it also makes me really unmotivated and demoralized.

...

i walked home feeling uncomfortable about my performance. i worked through some of mr smear's math homework with him, we had dinner, and while he got ready for bed we discovered a massive mold bloom in his bedroom so we had to work to get rid of (most of) it before he went to sleep.

by that stage i was completely done, over it, and most assuredly not in the mood to go rollerblading.

i put some time into preparing my laptop to be formatted (backing things up, primarily), then joined gd in watching some more beetlejuice beetlejuice. i'm not not enjoying it, but i'm not exactly engaged, either, and we keep falling asleep. still infinitely better than venom: the last dance.

today:

another weird day.

i woke up feeling very anxious about everything, took mr smear to school, and as i returned home received a phone call from the manager of a recycling site. amusingly, it turns out that while my complaints about the sites i've looked for are valid, there's a large site literally across the road from our apartment. with a sign. the only reason i didn't find it is because its google map pin is about 500m south of the place itself 🤦

i continued preparing for the great format, while gd worked on dusting and sorting mr smear's shelves (that's a hell of a lot of work, it hasn't been done in forever - possibly literally), and i was very pleased and relieved to receive a message from the company i interviewed with yesterday informing me that they'd like to proceed.

gd finally cut her hair short(ish), it's a lot of money but she's much happier, so... 🤷
(i don't really care much about hair, but i do prefer hers shorter)

i eventually took a bus to the office, and sat down with the CEO for our exit interview. it went well. we had lots to talk about, and in addition to giving me very positive feedback he and the CTO are being very helpful when it comes to the next steps and finding another gig.

and i can use my desk and equipment until the end of the month, which is extremely useful.

i then demonstrated my laptop's formattedness to the CTO, had an informal chat with him, and began the agonizing process of reinstalling the machine for personal use.

OMFG.

the reinstallation has taken many hours, and it's still not complete. i have, however, just managed to get the exercise code back to where it was on monday evening.

two of my coworkers (now ex-coworkers, whatever) came in to the office as well, and we ended up talking for a very long time, until it was dark and we remembered that rain was expected and we rushed out to get home before the downpour.

fortunately i didn't get caught, just lightly drizzled on. i had a long conversation with horseman about the game idea, then found that swordschool had added notes to our shared doc, and i'm pleased that we're all seeing value in this, even if we're not necessarily seeing the same value ^_^

we watched curious archive's the evolution of absolutely everything over dinner, and it's stunning.

mr smear's bedtime was alright - not excellent, but alright - and gd and i watched some more beetlejuice beetlejuice, and now i'm writing this down while messing with configurations and thinking about going to bed.

the salute

 good gods, i woke up this morning to find feeds flooded with musk's apparent nazi salute. here's a post on the topic for any of you who're freaking out about not much.

also: 

this morning started well, with mr smear getting up early and the two of us having a great chat before taking off for school - i taught him cursive writing, which he was excited about, and also had some ideas for that game i've been thinking about.

after dropping him off and returning home, i settled into a long conversation / pitch with swordschool, which was exciting and fascinating but by the end of it my brain was melting... as usual with our chats :P

the biggest things i've taken care of today: signing the severance contract with my boss, re-applying for gd's therapy authorization, transferring tooth fairy money to mr smear, sitting with gd as she called her OB/GYN's secretary (who claimed not to have received anything in writing, after she'd already responded in writing two weeks ago to confirm that she has gd's file), did the dishes while gd took care of the projector's annual cleaning, spent a lot of time on phone calls with the municipality about electronic recycling (the sites either don't exist, or aren't marked at all) and "school fees" (personal insurance for mr smear, whatever that means), and threading through all these items i played a great run of inscryption that completely bombed towards the end.

when i realized that i needed somewhere quiet for my interview, i then also realized that it was a half hour earlier than i'd thought it would be. so i quickly slugged down my coffee that i'd just warmed up, jumped on a bus and am currently sitting in my office building buzzing quietly, nervously, and felt the need to dump all of the day so far because i felt it was dragging on my consciousness.

it doesn't help that i've done nothing towards the exercise i'm supposed to be working on for the other company.

hopefully the interview will go well.

ritual insanity

yesterday the ceasefire went into effect. more psychological warfare, more terrorist propaganda, more anxiety. at least the first three hostages made it out alright, which was an enormous relief. i don't understand the schedule for the rest of the jesus-fucking-christ *third* of the hostages they're holding, but at this point i don't trust or believe anything to hold or make sense.

it's a relief that trump is now the american president. at least he's less likely to make things harder for us than the democrats have been...

...

i'm a bit tired, and sore. it's just past midnight, my brain's a bit fuzzy.

i dropped mr smear off at school, completely oblivious to the fact that it was a field trip day. and he'd left his phone at home. i came back, and then gd and i went off to our guidance session.

amongst other things, all three of us (the therapist, myself, and gd herself) learned that gd has been losing patience with the "play therapy" sessions. and i realized that we're going to have to be very careful about signing him up for the art school lottery...

we bussed home, i had breakfast, and then took off for the dermatologist. i had a list prepared, and was relieved to learn that most of the things that have been bothering me are just irritating getting-older-with-overly-sensitive-skin things, nothing dangerous or infectious (well, aside from one minor thing that i knew about, and now need to see a plastic surgeon for).

her exact description was "you have a ginger's skin" :P

on the way to pick mr smear up i saw photos from the field trip, and by then it was too late to cancel his hebrew tutor... fortunately, she was able and willing to make up the lesson in the evening.

a little later, while waiting for the kids to return, i had an awkward conversation with our hardcore-democrat friend's hardcore-democrat parent, and things got a bit uncomfortable.

mr smear got off the bus so grossed out that he wouldn't stop (literally) spitting, which was quite embarrassing. he claimed to be feeling sick, but i'm pretty confident it was psychological because he'd been sitting next to a sick, coughing kid the entire ride :/

on our way home, we purchased his next hebrew book: a translation of the first harry potter. i hope this goes well!

the next couple of hours were a mix of getting mr smear to do his homework, trying to read more about the exercise i'm doing, and then eventually taking my kindle to the couch and reading/napping for a while.

...

mona lisa overdrive: five stars for vision and depth, but it's hard to follow.

i recently re-read neuromancer, which has aged superbly and is nothing short of miraculous. i chased that with count zero, which takes a while to get warmed up and ends with a character abruptly tying up all the loose ends.

and then there's mona lisa overdrive. brilliant world-building, phenomenal ideas and a grand vision for bringing everything across the three novels together... but for the most part i found it incoherent. some scenes blew me away with how ingeniously and cleverly they were rendered, and some just left me feeling confused about who was doing what and why. i still enjoyed reading the book, but i feel like i missed a whole lot of stuff and i would need to go back and re-read it to put all the pieces together.

what i'd *really* like, though, is to see this adapted into a graphic novel or television series. i feel like gibson may just have been biting off a little more than even he could chew.

...

i took mr smear to his tutor and spent half an hour with a decaf coffee while studying the code, with a south african voice engaged in an intense conversation about investec nearby and an enormous flock of monk parakeets in the trees across the road erupting in a loud debate that lasted a few minutes and drew angry yells from someone in the building.

i picked up mr smear and we returned home, i helped him with his math homework and we watched the simpsons over dinner.

...

so far we're up to '92 (season 3), and there're two simpsons predictions nobody ever talks about:

1. with all my criminal buddies

2. otto the school bus driver not having a valid license. i'm not going to share it, but we have a video of mr smear's class stuck on a bus last year chanting "shame! shame!" at their bus driver after he arrived with an expired license 🤣

trade-offs (ceasefire?)

the psychological terror continues. now we pray each day for the (relative) well-being of the hostages that we're paying for in future blood as we release serial and mass murderers who have every intent on continuing to try to wipe us out.

i'm trying to not think about what we're doing and what it means but it's really hard, and there's no clear right course of action available to us. i hope our "leaders" have secured us more lives than we've already lost, and i pray we have a real plan for whenever this "ceasefire" falls apart.

...

if there's a silver lining to this shitstorm cloud, it's that otzma hayehudit has left the coalition. thank fuck.

yesterday:

it was a relaxed start to the day, but then there was another rocket attack by the houthis (who the fuck are these assholes?!) followed by a massive fight to get mr smear to come out with me for a ride, even though he'd already agreed.

what followed was gd sitting and talking him through things, for what felt like forever (probably about 20 minutes to half an hour), and then fifteen minutes of him calming down, and then...

... and then we were off. i pumped us his deflated front tire, we took a rather roundabout route to try and stay on reasonably good bike paths, and we stopped occasionally because he needed rest, but ultimately we ended up at givon square, where we stopped to have a bite - a very large bite - at schnitt.

not too far from the stabbing attack that took place in levontin :/

the food wasn't amazing, but mr smear was having such a good time that he actually - unsolicited, i might add - thanked me for taking him out on such a great day ^_^

the ride home was good too, including a long stop on a bench on rothschild to have a heart-to-heart.

the rest of the evening went really well, including a really fun session playing inscryption together, and bedtime was a riot.

then gd and i settled down to watch the end of the third venom movie. omg. the writing in the first part was weak, but by the end it felt like a parody of an eighties action flick and i turned over in disgust before passing out on the couch.

today:

i slept alright, for the most part. we had some trouble getting mr smear ready for school, but we left the apartment in good spirits anyway. when his friend and his friend's sister caught up with us crossing the road i hurriedly said goodbye so they could enjoy their walk together, then made my way to the clinic to try and figure out what they want in order to authorize gd's therapy sessions.

turns out... they don't really know. so they made me an appointment with our family doctor, who then sent me off to the hospital, where i had a bit of a back and forth before they sent me off. in the afternoon gd's therapist called and i explained to her what i'd understood, hopefully we'll get things right soon.

...

it's been a day full of distractions. i spent some of the morning working on the exercise, and managed to figure out how to get the thing running, and then some of the afternoon reading through their whitepaper to try and understand how all the pieces fit together. i spent a chunk of the day taking mr smear to his therapy session and handling him doing his homework. i've been made responsible for the keys to the bomb shelter for the building. i've been contacted by a company i interviewed for before taking my current (now-last) job.

it's been a day, so far. it's been a day.

the game

yesterday (thursday night's a blur):

i got up early and started configuring my company computer to be able to work on the job application (my ssh and git configurations were very specifically set up for work, and not compatible with personal stuff). that took a lot of effort.

once that was taken care of, i started following the instructions for getting set up with the exercise. of course i encountered hiccups along the way that took lots of time to resolve and had nothing to do with the exercise itself... and then i finally got everything looking like it was up and running, but it wasn't.

at that point i tried setting things up on my windows machine, but that was a complete wash. i think i'm going to try again in a docker container and see if that makes more sense.

i took a break to pick mr smear up from school with gd, then took a walk to the supermarket to pick up some healthy snacks for the weekend. then i did the dishes, and had a long chat with horseman that was mostly about ideology and narrative but concluded with a discussion about a game idea i've been brewing. by that point, i was pretty much all in on the weekend.

i took mr smear to the synagogue for the friday night service, which was a corrective experience for him - we both enjoyed the service itself, and none of the babies were screaming. the walks there and back were good, too.

the evening was pretty good in general, and after everyone else went to bed i settled in to try out the tribe must survive that nystire gifted me (thank you!!) - i played until my eyes refused to stay open, it feels very much like don't starve together, but i felt a lot less stressed playing it. i mean, it was a while ago that we tried the latter, so i now feel compelled to replay it so that i can make a fair comparison.

either way, the concept, artwork and atmosphere are great!

today:

i got up early (again) and put together a document for the game idea i spoke to horseman about that's been on the boil since thursday morning. it's a combination of a bunch of different ideas that have been simmering over the past couple of years, and i'm really excited to flesh it out!

unemployment vibe

 i got up early this morning and began looking over the job application exercise i've been given. it's interesting, and meaningful: they took my request seriously and i'm to contribute something real to their open source project. this is good.

the rest of my time at home was spent fighting mold blooms with gd. we had a little left to do this evening, and i'm hoping that we're going to be okay for a while.

we tried calling her OB/GYN, but there was no answer. we'll try again tomorrow.

...

i arrived at the office, our reservist was finally back after some months stationed in gaza. we filled him in on what we've been working on, and then it was time for our all-hands.

as this post's title suggests, it wasn't great. we're officially shutting our doors. we knew it was a possibility, but it doesn't stop it from being a sad surprise and a real bummer.

it's also a tiny bit scary, but intellectually i'm pretty sure we're all going to be okay.

we toasted the company, then headed out to catch a bus to a restaurant for our "last supper". there wasn't much for vegans, but one of the modified salads was nice and it was a great excuse not to break my diet. speaking of which - i'm down more than a kilo since i panicked over the weekend, which is encouraging.

after that, most of us went for coffee in the unseasonably warm afternoon, then returned to the office (well, there was a back and forth and an opportunity for me to sync with gd and my mom) and talked a bit more.

then i gathered all my belongings, including the m2 macbook i'm about to buy for about half price, and walked home.

...

i guess the most apt description for me today is "all over the place". i'm fine. but i'm not. i'm praying i do well with the exercise and get an offer, because that's the optimal path. i'm looking forward to investing some time in my side projects.

ultimately, i'm going to continue to take each day as it comes and hope for the best.

the not-so-good doctor

 once upon a time, in 2018, gd and i were trying for another baby. gd's OB/GYN prescribed a medication that was supposed to increase her fertility, but instead triggered early menopause and obliterated any chances of her having more children.

i recently spoke to someone who's working in menopause studies, and mentioned this story, and she asked me what the medication was - but gd has forgotten and i have no records of it. so i've requested her medical records from her OB/GYN.

after two ignored emails, i called him up this morning. he knew exactly who i was, had all the details in front of him, and not only refused to release her records but directly lied about having prescribed any medications at all.

i was fuming - i'm still fuming - at his revolting behavior. although it's very clear to me that he's attempting to protect his ass from a malpractice lawsuit, but after making a mistake and hurting a patient he's now doing intentionally doing something that could interfere with her new practitioner's history-taking, even though we're living in a different country.

this evening i read the following. i don't know where this is going, but now i *know* we need to get hold of her records:

The Promotion of Access to Information Act 2000 gives everyone the right of

access to records held by either public or private bodies for legitimate purposes.

In the latter case, people should be allowed access to “any information that is held

by another person and that is required for the exercise or protection of any rights”.9

This includes access to health records.

Either the patient him/herself, or someone authorised to act on the patient’s behalf,

can request access; ordinarily the request itself is made in writing and should be

responded to within 30 calendar days.

...

yesterday:

another rocket attack in the middle of the night. it took forever for us to get out the apartment, and i honestly don't know why. when i got to the bottom of the stairs i saw mr smear and immediately yelled at him for not entering the shelter, then turned the corner and saw that everybody was outside the shelter because some asshole had locked it.

mr smear and i stopped to watch the demolition guys begin their work yesterday morning on the way to school, and he's decided that that's what he wants to do when he grows up.

i totally get it.

i was tired yesterday - my boss asked me if i was sleep-walking when he realized that i hadn't registered his existence while standing next to me in the elevator. it was a long work day, though by the time i left i felt like i'd made some good progress.

i knew on my way home that i was in no shape to go rollerblading.

on my way upstairs i checked the shelter and found it open. nobody's admitting to being responsible, and we still don't know who has the key :/

gd was at the dentist, so i took mr smear out for falafel. it was a really good experience.

i passed out pretty soon after putting mr smear to bed, and although some of the night was spent restlessly tossing and turning i mostly caught up on sleep.

today:

after dropping mr smear off at school, gd and i met with the guy who's going to do his psychological evaluation over the next few weeks. i feel it was a pretty good meeting.

gd and i had a small fight about something on the way to the bus stop, so that sucked, but we were fine shortly after. the work day was pretty good, minus my phone call to gd's OB/GYN and its aftermath, although the rude people from my cousin's office tried to crowd us out of the kitchen at lunchtime again and it makes things really unpleasant.

...

before dinner, i realized that mr smear hadn't completed his math homework (matific). when he completed it suspiciously quickly, i took a look and saw that he didn't quite do it in the requisite spirit of the thing. i made him do a time exercise because it's one his weaknesses, and where he was struggling i coached him through.

right until he threw an absolutely wobbly because, in his words, "it's IMPOSSIBLE!" even though he'd already done exactly the same thing successfully in the previous question. what followed was a tantrum of note, with much unpleasantness.

after his shower, and a very grumbly start to dinner, he cooled off. after dinner, i wrote out the question i remembered and he sat down and breezed through it (the IMPOSSIBLE question). he then begrudgingly apologized to me for the drama, and to gd, and finally to himself (he needed a bit of coercion to do that last apology out loud, but it's fine).

he then sat down to do the actual thing. the first few questions he breezed through, but then he got stuck again on a question where it was obvious to me why: he was overcomplicating things and confusing himself to the point where he was effectively guessing.

let me just say: there was a LOT of arguing. a LOT of me attempting different ways to get him to approach the question differently. a LOT of me pushing him to "think out loud" so that i could make sense of the weird leaps of logic he was performing.

but, goshdarnit, we got it in the end. and i witnessed what appeared to be a lightbulb moment, eyes wide and mouth agape, when he realized that he was confusing the numbers 0 and 60 because the minute of an hour is effectively both.

holy fucking shit.

the rest of the evening went swimmingly. emotions and strategic arguments with my mom and gd notwithstanding, and now that i've written this all down (has it been half an hour already?!) it's time to try watching venom again.

...

scratch that. after pausing for a twenty minute discussion with gd about the ceasefire agreement and the hostages being released, how every surviving hostage is as much a tragedy as every dead one, and how traumatized we all are, and how we can move forward as a people... i don't know what i'm doing or going to do.

disillusioned

 i think today was okay.

work-wise it was a bit of a wash, which was a combination of mixed messages from the boss and manager and a dramatic lack of enthusiasm on my part.

mr smear seems to have had a good day all round. he walked out of the school with his "girlfriend", as he'd been referring to his zipped-up jacket, and his antics had me in hysterics.

my credit card declined at the grocery store in the afternoon, after we thoroughly overloaded it with grocery shopping in the morning. having said that, we're financially in a better situation than we've been in a very long time and i feel like it's safe for gd to sign up for sewing classes again.

in related news, she had a difficult day today (nerve pain / headache) but seems to be doing better from the most recent cold/flu thing. so there's that.

in the afternoon i took mr smear for a follow up with the "australian" doctor, who turned out to be danish 🤣

it looks like we did hurt his foot removing his too-small rain boots a couple of weeks ago, and the thing that the doctor saw on the x-ray appears to be a sign of normal growing bones.

i'm feeling alright. mr smear went to bed without a fuss, which is amazing. i don't know if i'm tired enough for bed yet, but i think i'm going to get off screens in a minute.

speaking of which:

between two sleeps

 i recently watched thoughty2's video on biphasic sleep. well, it's past 3am and i've just gone through the training in system shock 2, and i don't even feel like i'm doing it wrong :P

yesterday wasn't a bad day. the weather was alright, and i published and babysat a new release at work that went relatively smoothly.

my team decided to go to tamir, which is a terrible idea of you're trying not too eat too much, even if you're vegan and only ever go for their falafel. to avoid the pita i ordered a plate, which was heaped with food, in addition to a large plate of fries :P

in the evening i sent a message to the CTO i met with a couple of weeks ago, and it looks like my timing was appreciated 🤞

we're continuing to watch the simpsons, we're deep into the third season ("homer alone"). and at bedtime, mr smear has me reading calvin & hobbes. there's something magical and fascinating about re-imprinting nostalgia in a next generation.

i passed out watching the latest venom movie soon after mr smear fell asleep. i haven't been sleeping well at all, and it's mostly been due to "the usual" physical pain in my lower back and legs :(

out of it

 the weekend has come and gone, and i'm... tired. and feeling dramatically overweight - i have gained a couple of kilos, but it's less about that and more about how i've been consciously eating too much in general, and generally too much stuff i shouldn't be eating in the first place.

yesterday:

mr smear seemed pretty much fine by the morning. while he was at school, i strapped on my rollerblades and skated across the city to pick up his new rain boots, which happened to be at a place that makes great shakes. my coffee shake was excellent, and i enjoyed just sitting with it in the sun on the sidewalk.

gd hurt her back in the morning, and her cough is getting worse. it would be really nice if things could be boring for once.

after picking him up from school, we did a grocery run, and i was definitely ready for a nap by the time we returned home... only i was sent to the pharmacy to pick up something urgent. that took forever, but in addition to the meds i also picked up a couple of graphic novels translated into hebrew: spider-man: quantum quest! and amulet #1.

and some edamame, which looked really good but turned out to be bland and yucky. and a bagel, which turned out to be really heavy and didn't taste so great. and then, after finishing the bagel on the way home, i discovered that gd had made ramen that mr smear didn't want, so i garbage-bin-dadded and felt awful.

after an unsurprisingly urgent nap, i coffee'd up and did the dishes and helped gd clean the apartment. after that i read through spider-man: quantum quest!, then we had dinner, got mr smear into bed - just as the massive thunderstorm began - and then i passed out on the couch.

today:

i eventually managed to crawl into bed, with the thunderstorm still raging on, but i slept rather poorly.

in the morning, when the world had calmed down a bit, i got up and completed what remains of edith finch:

the mechanics are excitingly clever... the story is tragic. the game does an incredible job of making the experiences wonderfully vivid and disconcertingly real.

this is a masterpiece.

mr smear saw a couple of scenes over my shoulder, and he wants to play some of the stories, but avoid the really sad ones. i think that's fair.

i read some more mona lisa overdrive, then fell asleep on the couch for a while. after i got up, we all settled in to watch thor: ragnarok. we have now seen all of the great MCU movies together (minus guardians of the galaxy, that's for when he's older), and it was a great experience.

i did, however, eat too much popcorn on top of the pastry on top of the definitely over-the-top challah with peanut butter and chocolate spread that i'd had for breakfast. i'm now officially on a reduced carb diet - not low carb, but just avoiding all the obviously unnecessary ones.

i took mr smear out for a walk, which ended up a very pleasant three hours past the museum (mr smear walked into the replica terror tunnel, then immediately bolted out), sat outside habima, walked up rothschild to legenda where he had a sorbet (i'm starting on the right foot), then walked all the way back home without barely any complaining and lots of good conversation.

we arrived just in time for dinner - gd had a squash alternative to the pasta for me, which was good - and mr smear has just gone to bed after a slow but mostly pleasant bedtime ritual.

i have no idea what tomorrow will bring, but i'm once again grateful for the weekend pause.

drips

yesterday:

yesterday was... weird. firstly, my sinuses were busy and i developed a headache towards the afternoon, one which only intensified into the night. i barely slept last night, my head hurt, and i was uncomfortable and restless.

at the same time, i slept really well after my last post and my hips and legs felt much better than usual.

the work day was all over the place, lots of shouting (mostly nothing to do with me) and a few misunderstandings and stress over the work i'm doing. by the end of the day i had a pretty good handle on what was happening, though, which was a huge relief. and i was very proud of myself for bringing home the two extra "happy hour" desserts i'd picked up for gd and mr smear, who definitely enjoyed them.

...

over lunch, a woman from another company made our whole team hate her over lunch when she rudely sat down at our table and invited her friends to join her, when there wasn't any space and we hadn't finished eating.

...

i started listening to the interview with the united nations whistleblower (emma reilly) and it awful, but thanks to UN watch it's not as shocking as it should be. it does answer one of the biggest questions surrounding china's motivation to promote anti-semitic content on tiktok, specifically anti-israel propaganda since october 7th: the chinese are trying to divert attention from the very real genocide that they're perpetuating on the uyghurs, which they're doing in order to secure the particularly resource rich region that they're exploiting as part of their plans for economic world domination.

as much as i was already aware, the interview is an absolute revelation.

...

i've uninstalled the pokemon pocket app. good riddance.

today:

fortunately, i took a tylenol this morning and my head's been alright since then. mr smear had his mid-term today, which apparently went really well 🤞

i left early to pick up a package on the way to the office, but discovered on arrival that it would only be available from noon.

the workday was pretty good. after yesterday's win, this morning's effort went smoothly and i moved on to a surprise "favor" for one of our customers who's still using our pre-pivot platform. i managed to have that code complete by lunchtime, and the rest of the afternoon was a mix of finalizing, and exploring a potential memory leak "on my own time".

i've been using the AI-assisted terminal warp for the last couple of days. it's legitimately great!

...

i picked up one of the three calvin and hobbes compilations i ordered on the way home, and mr smear was very excited - we're all excited to be able to read it comfortably ^_^

i was concerned by the fact that the other two books in the set weren't shipped yet, but as i was trying to contact them about it i received an update that they're now on the way to us as well. awesome!

...

dinner was pretty good, but after dinner we needed to have a conversation - mr smear responded badly to a situation at school today and got kicked out of the class. the first part of the conversation went well, but then it turned to mma and it went... not so well. but as not-so-well as it went, i'm relieved that bedtime was okay.

unfortunately, mr smear's now dealing with an itchy nose and we're worried it might be another herpes outbreak. please god let it be something less exciting 🙏

teeth out

 it was a weird tuesday. it started off simply, but then gd became scared about her tooth extraction so i accompanied her, but i first had a chat with a recruiter scheduled so i walked while she took the bus.

i looked at the scale this morning, and realized i've climbed past 82kg. not fantastic.

i initially thought it was a phone call, but was then reminded that it was a zoom chat, so that was a bit awkward. more awkward was the fact that i could barely here the recruiter, so we gave up and switched to phone calls, which suffered from reception issues 🤦

anyway, we finally got it right, it sounded like she was happy with my history and what i'm looking for, we'll see.

i arrived at the dental clinic, sat down next to gd, and opened my laptop to try to get some work done. gd, meanwhile, struck up a conversation with the arab dentist's six year old. when she finally went in for her appointment, the kid didn't hesitate to switch his attention to me. he's very cute, and bright, but he's in that phase during which kids barely stop for air while telling stories with no point that never end, and by the time we got out of there i felt like my brain was bleeding out of my ears.

at least gd seems to be doing well post-extraction. that's actually quite big news.

i caught a bus to the office, on the way seeing a question from my boss that made me realize that the thing i got stuck on last night and this morning made absolutely no sense, and between the mma blowout yesterday and this morning's goings-on i didn't even register before forwarding a request for help that missed the point completely...

... so that was embarassing. i walked into what i thought was a strategy/update meeting, explained myself and apologized - interrupted twice by my cousin appearing out of nowhere to hand me his laptop to look after it and take it back, for some reason - and only after that was resolved discovered that the actual purpose of the meeting was to figure out where to have lunch :P

i had to choose between gd's delicious (and healthy) cottage pie leftovers alone, or a burger joint with the team. i've mentioned this "new learning" before, but professionally, nine times out of ten lunch with the team should trump lunch alone.

the vegan burger at vitrina was delicious, albeit a bit small. but the chips portion was large, and i shouldn't have eaten all of it. it was at that point that i decided that it was time to rejoin the rollerblading group.

mr smear lost another tooth today!

the work part of the work day was all over the place, although i definitely learned some things and at least moved forward a little bit.

...

i played a bit with pokemon pocket over the course of the day, but i didn't feel quite as drawn to it. a big part of that is the battle matching system, which keeps matching me with players who ridiculously out-class me. when i got home, i rediscovered pokemon live, which is the pokemon i played before, and after reading a bit about the differences and trying out its mobile app i'm pretty confident that it's the "real" pokemon game.

it's certainly the full game, as opposed to the pared-down pocket system.

...

the evening went well until bedtime, we could all have handled it better (a really silly argument over moving a chest of drawers) but it could certainly have been worse.

then i geared up, strapped on my blades, and headed to the group.

it was a really nice night. a good route - an easy one, though by the end of the 17km i was falling apart a little bit - with quite a lot of familiar faces. the last few kilometers i ended up in a riveting conversation with a woman who's just putting together a startup, something that could be really helpful to a lot of women (and something that could have really helped gd a few years back when she was still trying to get pregnant again), and she was really interested when i started talking about gamification.

i made a whole lot of suggestions, and i realized while i was making them that i would love for that to be my actual day job.

i got home feeling pretty good about having gotten a proper workout, and a good social experience, and i'm now stretched and showered and caught up on posting and pretty much ready for bed.

the weeds

 today kinda sucked. i slept a bit better last night, but not great, gd seemed to be getting better and mr smear had a more positive morning.

gd and i had a good parental guidance session with the therapist. this has bcome foreshadowing, it feels like whenever we discuss his (and our) progress we have a major issue on the way...

but i had a really hard time getting into work, i was very sensitive to the cold today and i'm now pretty confident i'm starting to come down with what gd has.

i'm also having trouble with the pokemon app. it's really good at doing what it's trying to, and that's suck all of my attention.

in the afternoon i took mr smear to his jiujitsu class, on the way explaining again why it's important that he goes and he seemed to be understanding and accepting. right until we arrived, at which point he refused to cooperate.

on top of that, he was also pretty rude to me, and that's a thing that's been building up the past little while. i intimidated / scared the shit out of him and we came home is mostly silence. when we arrived, we sat down for a "family meeting" but i was pretty furious and just unloaded. i sent him to his room and gd and i spoke for a bit, which calmed me down a little, then i called him back and we had a proper talk.

on the one hand, it went better than we could have expected. on the other, he's done with mma and we have nothing to replace it with. i've no idea where we go from here and i'm deeply disappointed, not just about the mma, but about his behavior surrounding it.

fuck.

and that's on top of a shitty work day in which i barely got anything done, and the shitty feeling of having blown three workday hours on a failed mma class and three months of mma fees for barely any classes. on the way to school mr smear had expressed interest in playing the drums, and that's about the price of a low-end electronic drum kit :/

gotta catch 'em all (again)

 what a weird freaking day. the primary thread winding through it is the pokemon pocket mobile app, which my coworkers (easily) convinced me to install this morning, and i've made considerable progress at random intervals (travelling by bus... sitting behind my manager... lying on the couch after gd went to bed...).

otherwise, i managed to get more than my 12000 steps in again today, but i don't really understand how.

i took mr smear to school this morning, had a cup of tea and ordered groceries with gd, went to work, had a frustrating morning after discovering that two of us were assigned the exact same work, picked up mr smear from school, wolfed down lunch, and took him to his therapist, had coffee and made zero work progress while waiting for him in spite of my best intentions, brought him home, returned to the office, worked with my manager for a bit, hung around for absolutely no reason while he tested (that's when i got bored and played pokemon), came home for dinner (we waited until mr smear finished eating before watching the simpsons, much smarter), got him into bed (without too much fuss), watched an episode of arcane's second season (it's beautiful art, but it feels a bit soulless), played some more pokemon, and am now deliberating on going to bed.

i slept very poorly last night, again, and i'm pretty sure it's the mattress topper not doing its job.

shape of a weekend

over the last couple of days we've become really concerned by mr smear - he's barely eating, lately, either claiming that he forgets to eat or that he's just not hungry. we don't want to make too much of a "thing" about it, but it can't be good :(

otherwise, gd's continued to be pretty sick. it's not as dramatic as the last time (a few weeks ago), but she's finding it unpleasant and gross and demoralizing.

...

the weekend is now over, after a very long and tiring week. i'm not sure what this one's going to bring, but i'm already feeling... unenthusiastic. i guess i need to find a technique to turn that around...

friday:

gd's dentist appointment didn't go as well as we'd hoped, but at least she got the filling for the cavity that was intefering with her crown being taken care of. we caught a bus, paid a visit to a pharmacy, hardware store and nature store, then walked to pick mr smear up from school.

the rest of the afternoon was spent quietly at home.

i started playing what remains of edith finch and journey. both really great so far. 

so far, i'm feeling like planescape: torment is torment in more than name. maybe now isn't the right time.

yesterday:

the day started with a few hours of doing random online things (mostly reading, but also posting a comics update for the first time in months) and reading mona lisa overdrive (i'm about halfway through, and it's finally starting to feel like it's coming together), and playing more of what remains of edith finch, while mr smear played on the playstation.

it was the mongoose's birthday, and he invited us to join him and his daughter for an outing to the zoo. that ended up turning into a stroll in the park, which turned into meeting up with his wife and going for hummus, and ultimately it was a very pleasant few hours that saw us getting a very real amount of exercise and fresh air, with only a few mild complaints from mr smear about wanting to go on his phone.

i spoke to the mongoose about a couple of ideas that have been bouncing around my skull: he put forward some solid arguments as to why my property disruption idea can't work as i've envisioned it. it's a sad feeling to discover big blindspots...

on our way home, we picked up a couple of tiny tubs of ice cream and mr smear expressed the sentiment that it was unfair that gd couldn't join us, and that he should leave her half. i agreed whole-heartedly in principle, though only half-heartedly in practice - it's *really* good ice cream :P

shower / dinner / bedtime: the first two were pretty smooth, but bedtime was, as usual, problematic. his fear of the dark.

...

i must have spent at least half an hour with him, trying to comfort and boost him but having a couple of fights along the way, but ultimately i got him to understand that i'm trying to help him out of love and that he's going to have to face this stuff - he might not find my specific advice useful, but that just means he's got to figure it out for himself. he finally rolled over without a shit feeling between us, and whatever he did appears to have been successful.

hopefully tonight will be easier.

dental and rocket drama

[in case i miss a few, i'm typing this on my dell, and for some reason the keys aren't always registering] 

yesterday:

i left for work early to preemptively make up for gd's dentist appointment. i was pissed off about the code review issues - the clear conflict of interest - but i was determined to find a reasonable solution so i rewrote my changes on top of my coworker's branch, and opened a PR for him.

i don't feel like he appreciated that as much as he should have, but whatever.

for my second task of the day, it took a while for me to understand what i was meant to be doing but by the time we stopped for lunch i'd at least made some progress. lunch was good (gd's vegan cottage pie leftovers), and i left earlier than the estimate i'd asked the transport app for in the morning.

amazing how suddenly there was no way to get there on time.

fortunately, i registered that a bus that was supposed to have passed already was so packed that it was delayed, so i managed to squeeze myself in and arrived at the dental clinic just in time to help mr smear out the taxi and upstairs.

i had absolutely no bandwidth for work while we waited, and we were there for two hours. it was really good that i was there, though, because i had the list of things that gd kept forgetting to tell the dentist and we managed to get her on the same page regarding how much gd's been suffering and how urgent this treatment is.

also, i came up with an idea for a hairdresser business that gd could manage and we're both quite excited by the possibilities!

the ride back to work, during rush hour, took another hour. i arrived in the office just in time to help my coworker out with merging my changes and his, and then everybody else started leaving so i left too, doing a little grocery shopping along the way.

i was completely done by the time i got home. after dinner and getting mr smear into bed, i turned in myself.

today:

and woke up to the siren at 4.45am. gd hurt herself jumping out of bed, and between her and mr smear's bound foot we couldn't make it to the shelter, and simply stood outside our front door in the stairwell for five very cold, very uncomfortable minutes. recently a building collapsed after being struck, so after we got back inside i was haunted by the idea of us being crushed to death...

i stayed with mr smear for about an hour because he always struggles to get back to sleep, so i ended up with a very sore back myself.

winning.

at least by the time he woke up for his return to school his foot was feeling much better, so we unbound it and he was fine the entire walk to school. then i returned home to pick up gd, we went to the clinic to find out what was happening with her psychologist authorization, then caught a bus to the dentist.

on the way i had a great idea for gamifying property listings, so i wrote it up before coming to lebowski for a coffee and to post this.

i'm sore, i'm tired, and i'm praying that gd's session is going well and that the rest of the day and weekend will be at least relatively smooth.

aaaand GO!

 today began with mr smear limping out of his bedroom with a very sore ankle. that resulted in me leaving the office around noon* to take him to the clinic, but our clinic was closed already at 1.30pm and the closest one available (fortunately pretty close) was only opening at 3pm. so i got a little work done in the interrim.

* on the way to the office i went to the clinic to submit a form for gd, but only she could submit it. i had to talk her through the process, and i'm still impressed at both of us for getting through it. the office experience itself was a mess**.

** i was nervous about how things would be with my boss, but things seemed fine. then we had a big meeting (all four of us devs and him) and it was really frustrating because nobody would let anybody else speak, but by the end i felt like some semblance of sanity had finally been restored. now i'm pissed off about code reviews and forming a theory about how and why PRs need to be prioritized.

the clinic we went to is in a building that's under massive construction, and mr smear was hobbling along using one of gd's walking sticks. it was a long hobble from the taxi to the elevator, and then we had to navigate stairs down to the reception, and then go see a doctor, and then go all the way back to the elevator to get x-rays done.

mr smear let a couple of deadly ones go in the waiting room, i was mortified. and one of them was exceptionally loud, too. everyone else was being very polite, while i died a little inside.

the x-rays were quick, and we then headed back down to the doctor, who informed us that it doesn't look like there's a break but that there's something worrying he wants a specialist to take a look at. he then sent us to the nurses' offices to get mr smear's foot bound.

a couple of us waited for half an hour (mr smear and i had a nice chat with another ex-saffer) before being told that we needed to take a number. we then had to wait another half an hour until they called our two numbers in quick succession, and by the time mr smear managed to get to the door they refused to open it.

i - was - fuming.

when they finally called the next number, five minutes later, i had to put on a mask of patience so as not to interfere with mr smear's treatment, and that was hard.

anyway.

on the way out i ordered a taxi, and while we waited i pitifully tried to be helpful to some old ladies who were trying to hail a cab. the weather was pretty unpleasant, and it's simply not possible to hail a cab without an app these days; that's really unfair for older people... i'm now trying to get in touch with the app's product team to convince them to make it possible to order a cab for someone else when you've already got one on its way to take you.

i got mr smear into the apartment, then almost immediately turned around to walk to the pharmacy to pick up some emergency supplies.

the first thing that irritated me was trying to dispose of used medical containers: i was directed to the pharmacists, and the pharmacist i spoke to insisted that they don't handle that and that i should just throw it away, which is ridiculous and clearly wrong. then, after gathering the stuff i needed, i found myself standing in a long queue, with only one cashier and two out of the three self-service kiosks out of order.

i don't know if i waited in the queue for five minutes, or ten, but as i got to second-in-line a random woman with a coughing kid signed to me that she was next :/

whatever. i just wanted to get out of there.

just then, the second cashier arrived (she'd been putting prices on things), and hurriedly scanned my items. i was a bit taken aback by how expensive it was, but by then i just wanted to go and i tried to make sense of the numbers... but while packing, we realized she'd mistook something someone else had left on the counter for mine and scanned it. so then i had to wait another three minutes while she reversed the charge...

the final candle lighting for chanukah was mostly smooth - mr smear was pushing my buttons a little, but he'd been otherwise really well-behaved for most of the day - and dinner was delicious, showertime was complicated (mr smear can't get his foot wet), we finished re-reading the magic pudding and, as i said good night to him, we agreed that it's a brilliant book highly deserving of a modern reboot.

today was a Very Long Day, and my brain hurts. god knows what tomorrow will bring, but we're finally meeting with gd's dentist in the afternoon so here's wishing us luck 🤞