the mandate

 i'm absolutely exhausted, but finishing my "good night" tea and dropping these notes before hitting either the couch or my bed.

yesterday:

a mix of learning, getting distracted and improving my changes from wednesday, and distracting myself with random shit.

in the early afternoon we all took a walk, a very pleasant one, and ended up at the ice-cream parlor with the salted oreos flavor. mr smear was *extremely* excited by how clean their toilets were and couldn't stop repeating, in wonder, how much they care about their customers.

after we returned home, i caffeined up and got a ride to the shiva house. a whole lot of us were there, the family was stunned to hear stories about a side (or sides) of my lead that they never saw, and our hearts broke for his wife, their kids, and his poor parents.

that was hard.

i missed my ride on the way out but got a lift from one of our founders who i've been chasing for a one-on-one for weeks, so we talked all the way back to tel aviv. i was in a hurry to meet with the rest of the team on the beach for beers in my lead's honor, stopped to use goodness' toilets and paid for a shake, and then had to hang around forever while they made it.

and it was getting cold.

i hopped in a taxi and met up with them, borrowed a sweater and we all commiserated over beers and pizza. i got a ride home just in time to say goodnight to mr smear, get myself ready for bed, and crash.

today:

in the middle of night i became restless, both physically and psychologically uncomfortable, and after an hour or two i moved to the couch where i stayed until morning. (i think the massager helped a bit)

mr smear's school's on strike (and again tomorrow), but we forgot until we arrived there... we did a full page of harry potter in hebrew, and he did well, and then i went to work.

between conversing with coworkers, a picnic in my lead's honor, and bussing through to the funeral, the day was almost all about him. in between, we discovered some issues with a deployment and i just (a few minutes ago) redeployed, found some more issues, and put it aside until tomorrow.

the day was hard, the funeral being the hardest part. i've only known the man for two and a half months, but son of a bitch, i don't think i've laughed that much or cried so hard at a funeral before. i still can't believe he's in the ground.

and i'm keenly feeling the weight of the additional mandate to succeed for his memory's sake, and for the sake of his family.