war & peace

 i woke up this morning to an unhinged stream of invectives from the mother of a girl in mr smear's class. it appears that she was so terrified by something that mr smear looked up on the teacher's computer that she was unable to close her eyes until almost midnight. also, the following is the list of "curses" that mr smear name-called her:

1. stupid 

2. miss underpants 

3. a little girl in the nursery 

and that we must keep our child away from hers.

OH MY GOD. considering the rather disturbing vocabulary he's capable of, this is what upset her? as a fifth grader? fucking grow a pair. jesus.

anyway, after calling mr smear (who was already on his way to school at the time) to chew him out, i responded to her that a) his behavior was unacceptable and that would be dealt with accordingly and b) that i'm shocked that the kids have unsupervised access to the internet at school and c) that he claimed that her daughter wasn't entirely innocent in the story, and that i would ask the teacher to try and figure out what happened.

at that point, this woman completely lost it, and sent a stream of messages to the effect that her daughter was completely innocent, that the school has a zero-tolerance policy, and that she hopes they take the appropriate action (the insinuation was clear that he be kicked out of the school).

it was *very* hard to not respond, even to not say "i'm not going to engage any more", and i was in war-mode and literally shaking by the time i walked into the office. i spoke to a couple of coworkers, and one of them said something that made me realize she might actively try to get everyone on her side... i sent the teacher a message explaining that i'd tried to show cooperation, but that she was extremely aggressive.

the response i got indicated that her behavior isn't out-of-character and that we're not alone in our assessment.

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the legal team guy i served with is now working from the office, so we had a fun catch-up. which included me regaling him with some tales of the bug spray guy who apparently traumatized him with a bike ride.

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our first weekly lunch hour game hacking session wasn't nearly as successful as i was hoping, but it wasn't bad either.

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our "daily" meeting was in the afternoon, and afterwards i sat with the new captain for a bit to discuss some things. it was a lot more constructive and positive than i expected. later, as he was on his way out, i remembered that he's from netanya, and i suspect that his nonchalant-but-needs-to-put-his-thing-down affect may be due to growing up around arsim.

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in spite of the perpetual "urgent" distractions, i managed to focus on my primary task for a couple of hours. i think i made good progress.

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gd and i talked with mr smear about what's going on with him. it didn't get loud, but it did get intense. i hope to god he stops FA-ing before he FO-s.

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"i only test my code in production" - i need to get gd a shirt. i picked up some green curry yesterday, so she used it this evening for a really nice dish. only... it wasn't until she's put our entire dinner on the line that she decided that it was too spicy for her. and then, of course, mr smear decided that it was too spicy for him, even though i ate it and it wasn't spicy at all.

except for a couple of random bites, and then it was back-of-the-throat spicy, which i don't like.

in the meanwhile, mr smear decided (after chickening out of the main dish) that he was going to make shit real by loading up onion slices with hot salsa. i don't know which part of that sentence amuses me more, but the results were pretty funny.

bedtime was uneventful - less than it's been for a week at least - we read some more neverending story and then i sat down to post this. the computer's been much, much quieter than usual, though sometimes the fans flare up, but i have no idea what specifically i did that worked :/