out and... out

 my niece has been waiting for attention in an NHS hospital in london, things are becoming... tense. i guess that's what happens when your healthcare is at a third-world level...

my mother, gd and i bussed to ikea, stopping for a few minutes between buses to walk through the mall in glilot. we arrived with some time to spare, found a surprisingly nice coffee shop where i plugged in, enjoyed my coffee and had my daily with my team.

then i joined gd and my mom at ikea itself, and settled near a plug-point in the food court while they did the slowest part of the shopping.

i actually got some work done. including getting my client to change their substack profile name; as soon as i pointed out that it didn't look good, nobody argued (it looked like something a pornographic site might be called).

a bit later they joined me, and i continued to work until i received a reference phone call for my british devops coworker, which i really hope helps convince them to make him an offer.

my cousin arrived, with a very stiff neck, and we sat and talked for a while, which was lovely as always.

from there we headed downstairs and through the second part of the gauntlet, then through the warehouse, finding pretty much everything we needed, including a really nice big carpet for the living room.

the wait for the cashier was long, but i guess not as long as it looked from the back of the queue. i bought fries while we waited, and it wasn't until i picked them up that i realized they sell falafel too, but i ended up getting a falafel later so it's all good. a bit dry, but for NIS 5 it tasted pretty good :P

once we paid - with a lot less drama than last time - we very quickly got called to the delivery counter. while taking care of that and also severely instructing mr smear to do what he was supposed to (what was written in his temporary diary) before coming home, there was some kind of incident between a couple next to us and a very angry dude with a particularly dark energy who i'd noticed at the cafeteria earlier. just after two of the mentally handicapped staff almost came to blows. weird times.

on the way out, waiting for gd and my mother with my falafel in hand, i noticed a tall, heavy, older security guard angrily speaking in french while eating a small ice cream. i didn't take a photo, 'cause that would have been rude, but i have that image in my head now 🤣

they wouldn't deliver the big heavy carpet, so i had to shoulder that along with my heavy backpack for the not-inconsiderable walk to the train station. it was okay for me, but my mom and gd were both feeling a bit sore (for different reasons) by the time we eventually got home.

while there was a stretch of fighting with mr smear just before dinner - due to his "sensitivity" to "cringey" music (johnny clegg) or any level of noise that isn't silence - for the most part he was compliant this afternoon and did a fair amount of math catch-up.

when i threatened him with punishment, i tied it into his homework - he's just learned about the fibonacci sequence, so i explained that he would lose hours of privileges in accordance with it. he found that funny just before he realized i was serious :P

dinner was great. mr smear ventured a drop of scorpion pepper sauce this evening and did just fine :)

...

i've really struggled this past couple of weeks, and i'm anxious about the coming one. i've worked a lot less than i should have, mostly due to the combination of family surprises (gd's health and mr smear's schooling) and me being sick and losing a heck of a lot of sleep.

i've taken my supplements, and i've turned my brain off for the day. hopefully tonight will be smooth.

untethered

 sleep journal entry: after two hours of fitful sleep, i woke up with lower back and hip pain again and it took 45 minutes of stretching to calm down. this is the first time since i began supplementing with iron and magnesium, and i woke up feeling particularly poorly rested

meanwhile, gd woke up on the wrong side of bed this morning and her temper's on a hair-trigger.

all that aside, my niece is supposed to be giving birth in an hour's time at the latest, and we're all in a weird state of wanting to be supportive while certainly not being supportive of the fact that she's having another kid at all. i feel bad for both the siblings and the little one hasn't even come out yet.

...

yesterday was a day. i took mr smear to school, deciding once i got home that i have been being paranoid. i guess i'll wait for the homefront command to advise.

i did get a bit of work done in the morning, and i had a great (short) sync with my mentor. the afternoon, however, was a complete mess as far as work was concerned. i managed to get a whole lot of personal admin done, and i had a half hour meeting about the urban kibbutz idea that went really well, and certainly gave me some food for thought.

...

mr smear made some drama yesterday. when i dropped him off at school, it was with instructions to find out what work he needed to catch up and to bring home his workbooks. i called him after school to remind him. he arrived home without doing either of those things.

aside from the bad vibes, he's now under threat of losing weekend privileges if he doesn't shape up. i got him to write up what he has to do today in a temporary diary, including the instruction to start using his actual diary, and hopefully today will see him more functional.

after he did his chores, and a whole lot of music practice, he fired up human resource machine before i could stop him. technically i've made it homework, but practically speaking it's a video game, so i kinda screwed myself on that score :P

he spent a lot of time staring - his usual "i don't wanna think" mode - and there was a bit of tension, but i refused to give him the answer even as i gave him all the hints he needed to solve the problem. when he finally put 2 and 2 together (or 8 by 3, in this case), there was much rejoicing!

...

dinner was delicious, shower / bedtime went pretty smoothly, and i went to bed shortly after he did.

the twelve tasks of tuesday

sleep journal entry: technically a decaf coffee around 3pm. i still struggled with post-nasal drip and coughing for a lot of the night, but towards the morning i was able to sleep properly for a bit. now everything's starting to come out again...

earlier i had a dream in which i, along with a squad of sorts, entered deep into a terrorist's nest. one imbecile made enough noise to call attention to us, another (a kid i detested in primary school) did something even more dumb and suddenly we had to fight our way out. the battle was vicious and bloody (and involved shooting a lot of people in the eyes), and then i awoke.

...

i didn't get a lot of hours in yesterday, but i did end up with enough of a handle on the situation to be confident in how i move forward. the theme (or tantrum) of the day was due to ownership insanity - the devops who had seemed receptive to my initial proposal pushed back with the argument that there are two sources of truth, both valid even if contradictory, and that's on top of the situation in which there's no leadership coming from management and nobody knows what the situation should be.

it feels like the twelve tasks of asterix.

we weren't sure if we were picking mr smear up or not (he ended up going to his friend's place), but just before school ended his teacher called me for a long conversation - which needs a follow-up face-to-face meeting - with the fantastic starting point that they found all of mr smear's books! all but one, so my mother and i took a meandering walk through fascinating architecture to the bus, found the right book store, bought a copy of the missing book, sat down for a coffee, then walked home.

i didn't get much work done in the hour or so i was at home.

a potential impactful talk with my mom on the bus about my urban kibbutz idea.

one of the guys from my second team was looking through old stuff yesterday and sent me a picture of the gift i presented them during my farewell - it was such a fun memory!

mr smear met up with us at the mall after hanging out with his friend, we bought him a headband (his hair's been in his eyes) and he dutifully made sure it wasn't from adidas (i can't believe they're still operating in israel), then he sat down to eat his school lunch (?!) while my mom and i found a surprisingly good dollar store and picked up a bunch of things we'd been looking for.

mr smear wrote his name clearly in his new math book, dinner was great, and the evening was pleasant (including learning that the UAE has pulled out of OPEC).

i actually got a couple of practical things done before playing a bit of slay the spire 2, before hitting the hay.

sleep journal entry

 it was a horrible night, coughing and choking. and then a gross morning, with a sinus infection and a lot more expectoratin'. i'm so fucking tired.

in the middle of the night, after i did managed to fall asleep, i woke up choking from a dream about fighting drones with cyberpunk weapons. it's been a couple of hours, i wish i could remember the details.

i took mr smear to school this morning, and we talked about shaved heads (he has to wear a band for school while he grows his hair long) and tattoos (about not doing them without good reason, and not doing any that can't be covered up), and as i dropped him off i showed him a picture of myself with my head shaved. he was mortified :/

since getting back home, i've had breakfast (for my supplement regimen), watched a video about elon musk's tweet about UBI that's made me think the following: if the US could figure out how to enforce corporate taxes and shuts down loopholes for them and their wealthy elite, they'll have more than enough money to provide UBI and a stable, healthy economy.

brain fogging

 once again, as it gets later and i get ready to go to bed, my nose and throat situation begins to worsen... on the one hand, the antihistamines seem to be helping a bit. on the other, this really can't be just allergies.

i'm enjoying the excuse to accompany mr smear to and from school these days, even though it's awkward and getting more awkward by the day. are we at war? will the bombing resume? or should we be living our best lives?

limbo is uncomfortable.

i told my team what i've been thinking, and that i essentially needed to go back to the drawing board, and they were understanding. in spite of a fair number of distractions, i did manage to be productive today and i'm understanding considerably more than i did before. i'm not quite sure how to formally introduce AI tooling into what i'm doing - i may have to treat it as local harnessing only - but at least i'm feeling a little less lost.

a couple of months ago i began the process of setting up paybox for mr smear, and then a few weeks later got his account set up. since then it's been unclear whether he's actually earning interest, and today i got in touch with their support. after they initially lied to me, it became apparent that children's savings accounts do not, in fact, earn interest. so the whole exercise was one in futility, and i've now withdrawn all the money and we're going to have to find another option. and, just like every other thing we've tried, this has cost us; not just in cash, but i've now got two credit cards that need to be cancelled :/

assholes.

i snacked a lot today. today was all about snacks. even if some of the snacks were essentially just an extended lunch :P

the supplement routine is getting a bit ridiculous, though. it's complicated, and i've kinda given up on intermittent fasting the full 16 hours (though i guess i've been unofficially doing less for a while now) because it makes it even more so. i can't drink tea or coffee for an hour before or after taking my iron supplement (or eating something with a reasonable amount of iron in it), and i've got to take vitamin D in the morning with food, and magnesium at night with vitamin C (but not vitamin D), and i have to have my handful of walnuts (or pancakes, if i'm in time for gd's breakfasts) for omega 3, and not forget to regularly take b12.

after my mom and i picked mr smear up from school, we returned home and then walked across the highway to find the supermarket. it really is well-hidden! mr smear's whole thing for weeks has been hunting for lotus biscoff cookies, and i honestly wasn't expecting to find them there.

but find them there we did :)

on the way there, i'd charged him with paying attention to the route so that he can he gd find the place, to which he'd responded in a decidedly uncooperative manner. i warned him there'd "be a test", and on the way back i quizzed him, putting the lotus cookies on the line. he was not happy when i "failed" him and assured him there'd be no biscuits until i got a map, at which point i went home and my mother volunteered to accompany him to give him a hand.

which he apparently didn't need 🤦‍♂️

it really is all about motivation with this kid. he got home, drew me a map, took half a biscuit and promptly forgot about the ones i'd offered him as a prize, and then settled down to try and improve his previous solution in human resource machine.

that was effectively the end of my work day :P

while he didn't exactly post the correct solution himself, he did work through it really well, he made a real effort and stayed focused, made a bunch of modifications that he was pleased with himself about, and when i sat down with him at the end, he was clearly on board with me every step of the way.

this is exciting stuff ^_^

just before dinner his new teacher called me, and our chat was pleasant. funny, even, in a distressing kind of way, because the story she told me was that she'd loaned mr smear a book for the lesson, and he'd somehow managed to lose it by the end of class even though nobody had moved.

my child is certainly talented.

eventually, i got the full story over dinner and everything made sense, nothing had been lost.

dinner was really good, gd and my mom worked together to produce a lentil curry that even anti-lentils mr smear found edible.

bedtime was smooth, i finally read a bit more of the colour of magic to him (we're so close to the end!), and i've now spent a couple of hours doing nothing of value (including some spire slaying). now i'm taking my cough to bed and praying to get some rest.

sleep journal entry

 most of the night i was kept partially awake by coughing and a post-nasal drip. the last couple of hours i actually slept a little. i'm paying for that now as my body tries to eject everything that pooled in my lungs.

i've had an ear-worm of dream theater's pull me under since i woke up yesterday morning, and it's still going strong. i suspect that it was triggered by the vampire water tank.

...

i did a lot of spire-slaying last night, winning a daily challenge run with an outrageously OP set of cards and relics (regular monsters dropping relics, all acquired cards doubled, and powers powering up powers). for the amount of entertainment and escapism i've gotten from it so far, slay the spire 2 has been well worth the early access.

of course.

 of *course* i'll get the work done after putting mr smear to bed. of course :/

as usual, the sinus thing hits harder after dark, even though i'm taking antihistamines at dinner and they do seem to be helping considerably.

...

my mother and i accompanied gd to the clinic. along the way, my mother almost got run over by a reversing truck - gd had to pull her out the way - who'd stopped in the middle of the intersection.

jesus.

the nurse was pleasant and helpful, and referred her to the doctor on duty who was pleasant and helpful. gd's been prescribed antibiotics and told to come back in a few days if the symptoms don't improve.

between the two visits, i spoke to the manager who was just as concerned by the lack of professionalism and the mysterious disappearing poo sample, and who apologized and thanked me for bringing it to his attention. so that was good.

we picked up a not-awful gluten-free bread from our favorite bakery, then walked to the mall, picked up a coffee (because i'd forgotten to get one at the bakery) and did a little moseying while gd hit the pharmacy.

we then walked over to the dermatologist's offices to try and bring her toenail appointment forward, but she couldn't wait that long so we promptly returned home.

after breakfast, i sat down and actually made some progress with AI harnesses. i also sat down with gd for a few minutes and laid out exactly what's been on my mind lately, and how i feel about her and the situation, and expressed that even if she only understands it intellectually that's fine by me. so i think i  managed to make her feel safer, and less of a burden, which is something she often has trouble with.

have made some progress - and then a little more - *i* felt a bit safer. or less anxious, at least.

my mother took another walk around the area we visited last night, and she found the hidden supermarket! it's literally well-hidden, no signs, and i'm now very confident that that's on purpose to keep us riff-raff out.

too bad, fancy-pantses, we're coming for your groceries.

my mom joined me on the pick-up run for mr smear, though he didn't come home after all because i agreed to let him and his friend go to the comics library. so we returned home - the long way - and i think my mother finally understands that me being concerned for her safety on public transport (specifically vis-a-vis holding on to things at all times to not get thrown due to heavy acceleration) has nothing to do with her age :P

i seem to recall getting a little more productive time in, but i didn't record it so i'm not sure. perhaps not, i think the hour or so between getting back home and then leaving again to pick him up from the library was a bit of a random mess.

i found him reading, chatted briefly with the librarian while he got ready to go, and then we returned home.

he had "homework" to do - human resource machine and music practice. he did really well on the programming, so much so that he was so thrilled he's decided that maybe coding stuff on the projects he wants to do *is* something he should be handling ^_^

i spoke to my mentor about pivoting towards AI harnesses, and he was both assuring and encouraging. i'm not sure how i'll approach the same topic with my teammates at my client in the morning, but i guess i'll cross that bridge when i get there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

dinner was nice, gd testing out a gluten-free pasta that was at least a palatable vehicle for her vegan pesto, and mr smear and i made a joke about putting black salt (kala namak) on clementines and were shocked to discover that it was weirdly nice (O_o)

showers / toothbrushes / bedtime went pretty smoothly. including getting started on never again will i visit auschwitz which i understand ends with some heavy TDS but at least starts very well.

...

i've got a cough and a post-nasal drip, and it's unpleasant. i'm going to do a little bit of nothing and then try to get some sleep.

bloody sunday

my allergies were more under control, but it was still a difficult night with a post-nasal drip so most of the night i was awake to some degree. between the iron and magnesium supplements, my lower back and hips haven't been causing me any real problems at night, although i did have some trouble during the day...

my last dreams were difficult: a massive attack on my armored corps unit with a zangief-like russian doing a lot of damage. then fighting to hold a vampire in a huge tank of water, assisted by an our-side vampire. something about making sure he didn't die, but not giving him enough oxygen to escape. and then she left me in charge, and aside from him wounding me in the underwater scrap, i accidentally gave him enough to get out.

i wonder if the vampire isn't AI.

...

after posting last night, my mother and i did our traditional annual try-to-find-out-what's-wrong-with-her-computer. i installed O&O ShutUp10++, and disabled all the recommended things, and it does seem to have helped. unfortunately, i then learned that she's still on windows 10 and her computer's too old to upgrade. so she either has to trade it in, or switch to ubuntu, neither of which are ideal.

and i can't give her my windows machine because the screen's too small :/

...

i woke up this morning to learn that there was a stabbing attack in our neighborhood yesterday by a south tel aviv gang of refugee / foreign workers' kids. i don't know how to break that to gd or mr smear.

i dropped mr smear off at school this morning, he's had a great idea for a front-door image!

i arrived home to learn that we're having hot-water cylinder troubles, which pisses me off not only because it's just another thing to deal with (i'm about to accompany gd to the clinic and hospital, her toenail issue has fast become an emergency), but because we just had a plumber in a week or two ago and he couldn't find anything wrong.

i'm so fucking over this week already.

artificial unintelligence

 an anxiety has been stirring. i've written about it a fair amount the last few days, and it's crystallizing.

AI is making me dumber. lazier, more than dumber, but a laziness that's rendering it harder and harder to activate my brain.

it's not *just* all the leaning on AI, though. it's also the fact that my life is being constantly railroaded and derailed by all sorts of unexpected, mandatory, urgent side-quests that are nobody's fault, but that put everything on my shoulders.

and then, when i finally manage to get part of my sleep issues sorted out, i get hit with this horrible sinusitis bullshit. so i'm completely exhausted and i don't have the energy to sit and focus and climb out of this hole.

i hope it's not covid again.

...

i read comics, played more slay the spire 2, made at least two attempts to make some progress on AI harnesses, went for a walk with my mom and mr smear, rearranged our bookshelves, and went for a walk with my mom around the soulless neighborhood next door before saying good night to mr smear, posting this, hopping in the shower, and praying for an easier night.

respite

sleep journal entry: i just got up a short while ago, after a terrible night's sleep due to acute sinusitis. i slept very little during the time in bed and got up frequently due to intense nasal and throat congestion.

...

my throat had ceased to feel scratchy, in fact i was feeling fine yesterday morning. it was a beautiful day. gd's stomach was giving her trouble so she couldn't join us, but my mom and i ventured to south tel aviv for a stroll with a shopping list.

we had a nice coffee when we arrived - both of us were approaching dire need - after which we meandered through the streets, eventually looping back to pick mr smear up from school. from there we went past yuka monsters so i could ask them (again) for a contact for their printing house, after which we walked past an ethiopian restaurant and decided to give their vegan "tasting plate" a go; not least because my mother had had to stay in a hotel in addis ababa at the beginning of the week and her culinary experience had left a lot to be desired.

...

firstly, ge'ez smells really good. it's clean and has a nice vibe. the food took quite a while to prepare - which is fair, considering it was a whole bunch of dishes in one, and in retrospect i'm really glad we only ordered a "single" because we weren't that hungry and it was a decent amount of food for the three of us.

secondly, it was not only a "corrective experience" for my mother, but my son dug in, tried everything without any encouragement ("it looked really good!"), and we all left pleased, sated and in good spirits ^_^

...

we traveled to yehuda hamaccabi, and proceeded to do the shopping. the fruit seller had great stuff (we were responsible for bringing a fruit platter to dinner), and we found a decent food scale at the hardware store, and we managed to find everything else between all the supermarkets.

we did have some bad vibes with my mother insisting on buying a dairy gift and keeping it in our apartment until the evening. mr smear is still dangerously allergic, even if it's less dangerous of late, and we are a vegan household.

that mini-drama was compounded a little later by her discovery that a coke she'd put in the freezer and forgotten about had exploded. what followed - after the initial anger (mostly at herself, but merged with her frustration over the previous dairy issue) - was a full family effort to clean out the freezer, which became progressively more light-hearted except for when mr smear thought it appropriate to begin trolling me.

the rest of the afternoon was a mix of playing slay the spire 2, and another episode or two of tokyo ghoul.

gd still wasn't feeling okay by the time we left for our cousins', so she sadly stayed behind.

the evening was very pleasant, mr smear was well-behaved and generally quite complimentary about the food, and the only thing i'm uncomfortably regretting was telling the story of how i got fired. not because it was inappropriate - there had been a point to the story - but because i was halfway through the story when i realized that it's a very long story and there's no way for me to "get to the point" without adding so much more detail...

we came home pretty late. right before leaving i coughed for the first time, which was the first indication that something was coming. by the time we arrived home, it had progressed to a proper, troubling post-nasal drip.

after showering i played more slay the spire 2 until mr smear went to bed, which took him so long that i eventually agreed to let him shower in the morning. which i'm kinda glad he did - he jumped into the shower first thing this morning with none of the usual bedtime time pressure, he didn't take too long, and for the duration was living his best life with his music blasting but not waking gd up because there were two-and-a-half closed doors between them.

for all its issues, this apartment is such a huge upgrade from where we were it's ridiculous.

while he showered, i finished reading the day everything changed. the artwork is fantastic and the stories are powerful, but i feel like the writing doesn't always do the stories justice.

sleep journal entry

my first two coffees of the day yesterday were decaf because i was still wired from the day before. the sleep i got last night felt broken, but i did dream, and i haven't been experiencing my usual leg/hip discomfort, which is probably due to the iron and magnesium supplements.

the last part of my last dream involved following someone to the "entrance" of his house, which included a terrifying jump around a corner at a dizzying height, and some kind of "bridge" which i couldn't see and didn't figure out before i woke up.

gd's other toe is looking scary. only this year (it was about this time last year), there wasn't any "accident" to explain why.

shouldn't have told the universe my plans

 gd decided to clean the bathrooms and floors today. i tried to nap for a short while after breakfast, though i really didn't get much actual rest, and then our kibbutz cousin arrived for a visit. it was great to be able to host her for once! it's the first time in the twenty five years i've known her :P

just before she arrived, i registered a flurry of activity on our classroom whatsapp group, and we were horrified to learn that mr smear's homeroom teacher was riding her bicycle to the school earlier this week and was run over by a truck. she's been hospitalized and is in a serious condition, it doesn't look like she's going to be returning to the school this year 💔

we had a great late lunch ordered from jars and bowls, after which i jumped on a bus to pick mr smear up from school. we walked all the way to the light rail, hopped on the light rail, and only then did i learn that he'd left his locker unlocked again. so we turned right around at the next stop, went back into the school and i made him unpack his locker and search for his books while i searched above and in all the open lockers in the same row.

we didn't find anything.

we then took a quick walk to a bus stop to ride to the dentist to join gd, who was very nervous after her last visit. by the time we arrived she was almost done, and we she came out she was (rightly) very proud of herself for having told her dentist exactly how she was feeling and why; the dentist responded professionally, and gd says the experiences were night and day.

i wanted to pick up a decaf coffee on the way home (it would have been my third decaf today), but the guy at the coffee shop took way too long. we caught a bus home, and since we got back i've been struggling to stay awake so as not to have a hard time getting to sleep tonight.

so, braindead, i played slay the spire 2 until dinner, ate a great dinner with my family, showered, and have just tucked mr smear into bed. now it's time to go to bed myself.

the alternative

a scratchy throat all day that caused trouble all night. it's still scratchy, but feeling slightly better right now so hopefully that's a trend.

i wasn't too sure that ze germans were doing the yom ha'atzmaut thing, and i made the mistake of only asking ru55 if he was going, and he didn't get back to me until this morning. so instead of going, i cancelled the car we'd rented and we had a "barbecue" hot-dog lunch at home that was really good.

a bit later, my mom and i dragged mr smear out to the beach. there was a chill wind on the beach itself, but once mr smear (mr inertia) was on the sand he didn't want to leave the beach, nor the sea. in retrospect, we should have brought him a towel...

otherwise, it was a beautiful afternoon. we took a slow walk down the beach and then up to allenby, where mr smear decided we should have hummus. that was a fantastic decision, we had a fun experience with the shifka and the meal was delicious.

then we walked up sheinkin, picking up some coffee along the way to the bus home.

unfortunately, i accidentally ordered a regular coffee instead of decaf. so it was around 6pm that i drank my fourth cup for the day.

we got home, and there was no argument from mr smear about jumping straight into a hot shower. afterwards, we started watching the tokyo ghoul series. which is really cool, but i did nap through half of the second episode...

dinner was the "barbecue" burgers, also delicious.

we got mr smear into bed, unsure of whether to expect a disrupted night or not because the ceasefire was supposed to end.

i went to bed pretty late (played slay the spire 2), and simply couldn't sleep. i estimate that it took me more than an hour and a half to finally fall asleep, after which it was fitful with claustrophobic dreams of an in-house rollercoaster with one of ze germans.

i struggled to wake up this morning, with my throat still doing a thing, but mr smear certainly helped as he made horrible noises (his throat) for the longest time. over coffee / his breakfast, we discovered that he's been avoiding going to school because he's been getting into trouble for not having his books. he's lost most of his books, apparently, and also never thought to report back that the lock on his locker is broken, and that he doesn't remember the code for the old one.

i don't know how much of any of that is actually true.

we explained to him that the books are expensive - they are - and that he's going to find them. and that all privileges are to be withheld until the situation is sorted out. on the bus to school, i explained what he needs to do and found his old lock's code, and sent a message to his homeroom teacher. on my way back home, he called to assure me that he's at least started the day off making an effort, so 🤷‍♂️...

also, on my way home, i thought some more about my work situation which is starting to freak me out. i've been trying to get a job done with AI that i have little context for, and the AI is leading me around in circles. not only do i need to change tack and focus on building the context i need, but i also *have* to  begin experimenting with AI harnesses because i'm feeling like i'm getting left behind on the most critical issue of our (engineering) time right now...

~3000 + 78 years old

our celebratory dinner was in order, with gd a little jealous of our desserts even though she usually doesn't participate, and the insanely good halva is naturally gluten-free anyway.

we learned this morning that the internet advises not to stop eating gluten until you have a diagnosis, to avoid a false negative. holy shit. so we've just had a talk, and agreed that *if* it matters to the medical establishment that she has a diagnosis on her record then she should put herself through it, and if not, then there's no point in getting scanned in the first place.

...

after dinner, and before leaving the house, mr smear turned our apartment into a dance floor with the bee gees' you should be dancing (followed by some kool & the gang), and then joined me an my mother for a bus ride to the museum to see what was happening. what was happening there - on the evening of a national day of celebration - was a gathering of sadness, all the woke lefties who are so bitterly opposed to our current government that they can't spare a moment to be grateful to be here and alive.

we quickly moved on from there, through throngs of tel aviv revelers going from party to party, to habima, where the concert's music was good, but not very upbeat. we walked about, marveled at the decorations and art installations, and continued walking until we got to a bus stop to come home.

the bus ride was very sweet, the bus driver and a bunch of guys behind us were all in great spirits, and we arrived home quickly and with more than 12000 steps on our watches.

after getting mr smear into bed and showering myself, i slayed the spire (i lie - the spire slayed me) for a while, then dragged myself to bed.

...

i didn't sleep particularly well, and was woken by my poor child at 6.10am (his groans indicated that he wasn't feeling well), and 8am was when i gave up trying to get back to sleep. i had coffee with my mom and mr smear while gd stayed in a bit longer, read a bit more of the day everything changed (which hits really hard), and am now relaxing while thinking about what we're going to do today.

...

from our saddest day to our happiest day, but both very, very strange days this year. to our fallen heroes, our terror victims, and to our persian counterparts: may this war bring us victory, and more than just independence: freedom from tyranny.

chag sameach, am yisrael chai 🇮🇱

frustration + anxiety

 it's been a very frustrating day. gd decided that mr smear was too sick to go to school - he really wasn't - so that gave me a bit of extra time to take care of some adulting admin. unfortunately, not only did i need that extra time, but i had a number of highly aggravating encounters and that really set a tone for the day.

then i dove into work. work sucked. four hours of highly frustrating work, and i'm confident using AI has ultimately made this whole project (so far) take considerably longer than it should have. i feel like i'm wading through a pool of raw sewage, being led by a broken compass that keeps swinging in a different direction any time i get close to an exit.

i've also been hungry / snacking all day, and my stomach's been unhappy.

while i'm going through whatever agitation i'm going through, gd's been having a really hard time. apparently a bit of wine last night has reset any of the healing that avoiding gluten was doing, and to add to that her shoulder's locked up. she's (understandably) pissed off now that my mother forgot some of her meds back in cape town that she really needs right now.

...

by the time 2pm rolled around, i decided i was done for the day. it's been an absolutely gorgeous day, so i took a walk with my mom and mr smear through the park to get some exercise before turning back, picking up coffee (decaf for me) and a malt beer for mr smear at our favorite dog-friendly coffee spot, then passed a supermarket and did some shopping on the way home.

and then took another short walk to the 24/7 for the stuff we couldn't find at the supermarket.

after mr smear and i had some chocolate weetabix (not bad for a "boring" additional iron source), i lay on the couch and finally started reading the day everything changed. then i got up, antsy as all hell, to post this.

it's independence day (shortly), i've no idea what we're doing tonight, and i've no idea what we're doing tomorrow. it's a very confusing time. the ceasefire is supposed to be over tomorrow night, but i'm more nervous about it being cut short than i've been since it started, and i haven't trusted it in the slightest.

sleep journal entry

 during two separate meetings yesterday i began to feel myself nodding off, one in my home office and one while sitting outside. definitely not lack-of-oxygen related, but also not the most severe cases.

otherwise, i was pretty comfortable when i climbed into bed last night, and my sleep was mostly uninterrupted.

mr smear's not feeling good, so he's staying home today. it's a half-day working from home because my client company's israeli office is closed for yom hazikaron, which seems a bit weird to me.

breaking points

 i accompanied mr smear to school this morning, and on my way back accompanied him through a video-call hunt through his locker and classroom to demonstrate that he's legitimately lost his math equipment 🤦‍♂️

the first part of the day can be summarized by the half a minute of me, exasperated, yelling furious and impotently at the sky trying and failing to navigate my mother's iphone while trying to set up her esim. what a fucking nightmare UX, steve jobs must be spinning in his grave.

i went to the office today; there were two friendly dogs, and i think i'm getting paranoid because the moment i petted either of them i developed a crawling sensation across my skin. all my skin :/

aside from a team lunch with the boss - good talk, delicious lunch, i only had half the meal which was still too much food - my day was extremely frustrating as i continued to get hit with code ownership problems.

i took a break to pick up mr smear from school, and joined another employer meeting (it's poor timing to say the least) about adding more work hours to my week to get AWS certified...

eventually mr smear and i got home, he took my mom to the comics library while i was brought to boil by the sheer idiocy of my client company's current state. to the point where i wrote an "angry letter" to my client and my manager in which i essentially let rip, though i did pull my punches (professionally) and tried to be constructive.

the response was... not exactly comforting, but not negative. and the thing that pushed me to breaking point - a team gatekeeping its contact channel by demanding anyone with questions do a small quiz first - did provide a couple of helpful responses to my auto-rejected queries.

it was a long afternoon and evening, with very little progress. at least i was provided with something positive when i called my mom to find out how they were and learned that the two of them were just sitting in the comics library and reading quietly together :)

it's yom hazikaron, so we watched the masa ceremony on the big screen after dinner, which was moving as usual. in spite of us fighting with mr smear throughout to get him showered and his teeth brushed and him into bed.

i can't believe it's so late already. i'm going to try going to sleep.

the nights are getting warmer.

sleep diary / politically asleep

 i've been using the consensus sleep diary for the past couple of days, and i've just gotten stuck on the fact that you can review your sleep stats dashboard, but not the comments you made - unless you're adept with the developer tools. so, for myself, i'm copying my comments here:

i'm not sure how long before 6.30am i woke up, i feel like it was a long time though. yesterday was my first time using both iron and magnesium supplements and i didn't suffer from the usual discomfort, just a bit of restlessness

on multiple occasions throughout the night i giggled at trump's absurd and acerbic humor.

...

then, first thing this morning, i woke up to respond to an instagram thread with a highly intelligent, educated man whose political extremism has been distressing me for years:

him: A blockade is an act of war. That's why during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis the US referred to it as a quarantine. Both the action, its intricacies and the specific wording were discussed and debated thoroughly. Oh well. Clip from Thirteen Days. I like it.

me: did you know that the irgc was blockading the straits up until a few days ago ? why didn't you post this then?

him: Of course I knew. I don't know of any historical analog, especially one with a dramatic Hollywood adaptation that includes the US principals discussing the blockade. Is there?

me: interesting - the timing of your post suggests that when the americans do it it's nefarious

him: nefarious means wicked or villainous. If you consider war as that, then yes. I don't. I think it's an act of war. Which requires approval from Congress.

me: ah, so it's okay that americans are using force to protect american interests, it's just an issue with protocol? cool, cool

...

[i'm] just perpetually curious how someone so intelligent and educated always seems to be pushing an anti-west agenda 🤷

him: Showing the lunacy and abhorrence that is the Trump administration is anti-West? Color me anti-West then.

me: if you can only see lunacy and abhorrence, then yes, you're anti-west. a pity.

him: I see much more. Terror. Abuse. Fascism. Sadness. Democratic decline. Mental decline, not to say dementia. Fear. Spinelessness. Systemic failure. At a glance.

...

what are you seeing that I don't? (I forgot grift and open corruption on an unprecedented scale, just came to mind as well)

me: a whole different side to the internet, and history. it begins before the end of the cold war, with the kgb inventing "active measures", and evolves into decades of unholy alliance between the russians, chinese, qataris and iranians to destabilize the west and create a massive, well-funded disinformation army that infiltrates western institutions and makes the media (traditional and social) push out propaganda at a terrifying scale. and that all rides on the back of social media algorithms that are financially incentivized to raise engagement by any means necessary, generating mass psychosis on all sides of the political spectrum as we learn that "folie à deux" scales. i recommend trying to balance out your media diet, the other side isn't all lies like you've been led to believe. also talking to your fellow israelis without assuming that everyone with a different understanding is either brainwashed or a bad actor (that's a general statement, i'm not accusing you of anything - it's possible you just don't happen to have people with different opinions in your circles).

smooth landing

 today's top stories: gd is rapidly evolving into gfd (gluten-free dragon), and my mother landed safely in tel aviv, and the mongoose is now a father of two!

i wouldn't say i slept well last night, but i did sleep for the most part and, after an initial struggle at alarm time, i was relatively rested and functional. so that was good.

after dropping mr smear off at school, i came home to take care of a bunch of stuff, including grocery shopping with gd* and scheduling a meeting regarding the impact investing from the other day. i'm a bit disappointed that my cousin hasn't responded :/

* an expensive, exploratory shopping for gluten-free products. it turns out that a few days without gluten have had a dramatic impact on her health, not just the debilitating stomach issues she's been suffering from the past few months. we've got to schedule a scan to confirm whether it's celiac or not, but at this point it's clear that it's meaningful. and meaningfully ironic that we've both been complaining about and laughing at non-celiac gluten-free fanatics for years.

i decided it made more sense to work from home until the last minute, so i did. a different coworker gave me a different direction, which i continued working on on the train to the airport, and while waiting for my mother to get through customs. later in the afternoon, we had a conversation that led me to understand that every moment i've spent on this aspect of the project was a complete waste of time as the whole thing's essentially deprecated...

it was an enormous relief to see the update that my mom's plane had landed, and obviously great to see her. we hopped on a train back to tel aviv, on the way booking a car to get the baggage home. something was misconfigured in the car which made it make an awful high-pitched alarm the entire ride home and back (which i dutifully - and angrily - reported), and we took a light rail from the train station to pick up mr smear who'd been hanging with his friend outside the school.

the bus ride back took forever...

after getting my mom settled, eating a late lunch, and getting mr smear onto some homework, i did enough work to figure out that i was wasting my time before heading out with my mom to pick up a few things. we ended up walking rather a lot - we picked up brussels sprouts, gin & tonic, and oat milk (neither of us can drink "barista" versions) - as well as sitting over a coffee (and tea), and then caught a bus back just in time for dinner.

full family dinner was really nice :)

we got the mattress inflated and mr smear into bed (eventually), handled two sets of groceries that arrived quite late, laughed at a bunch of different news items (most loudly over rogan losing it behind trump), and i'm now getting myself ready for bed.

downside up

 we were all relieved that mr smear made the sunset deadline yesterday!

it's day two of gd not consuming any gluten, and she's already starting to feel a bit better. we tried to make gluten free challah yesterday, it came out a bit like soggy rusks and i don't think we'll be doing that again. certainly not the same way.

we watched the second macgyver episode, which was a bit camp but mr smear was clearly into the experience :)

i don't recall too much after dinner last night, though it was definitely a late night.

what i do recall - because i'm now keeping a proper log - is that i went to bed just after midnight, took a long time to fall asleep, and then woke up about an hour later for about five hours of restlessness and discomfort.

i slept like shit.

in spite of that, i was kind of functional this morning. i started the day making an important firefly gif and sleep-journaling, then spent most of the morning playing slay the spire 2.

the afternoon involved finishing the first part (the colour of magic part) of the graphic novel, and sort-of napping for half an hour. it also involved finishing terminator 2, which was a much better experience due to the sound upgrade even though the projector  quality is garbage. after that, i sat down to learn how to make comics with kindle create, documenting each and every step along the way.

[stops to witness a large mosquito being zapped and going up in flames in the zapper behind me. and be dismayed to see what looks like a crispy flea.]

it's fun to see the guided view experience take shape, though!

between working on that and dinner, mr smear and i did some boxing training for the first time in weeks. not only should we be doing it consistently anyway, but today was another dust-stormy indoors-only day... i'm actually quite impressed with how well my post-workout stretching went.

we started watching dead poets society over dinner, not speaking to my mom because she was on a flight to ethiopia (she's staying there overnight), and tomorrow after dropping mr smear at school i'm going to go set myself up to work at the airport so i'll be there when she lands.

...

please lord let me sleep tonight 🙏

dust mouth

 firstly, omg i didn't realize it was my turn on crosswalk duty at the school this morning 🤦‍♂️

so that's a bit shit.

also a bit shit is our financial situation this month...

i dragged myself out of bed this morning, and immediately completed my first sleep journal entry. i found it a bit confusing at first, not just because of whether 12am and 12pm are midnight and noon or vice versa, but also because it's weird documenting the night's sleep and only afterwards documenting any naps from the rest of the day before the night's sleep. either way, it amuses me that the first night of sleep journaling and i actually slept pretty well.

it was a warm morning, first day of shorts and vests. i dropped mr smear off at school, returned home for an early breakfast, and then accompanied gd to the clinic. she got an appointment for our doctor, and so until then we burned our time waiting in line at the pharmacist. we picked up a coffee at "our" bakery, and then sat down with the doctor for a very unpleasant session.

gd was not happy, because the doctor doesn't agree with her assessment of something she's dealing with and so refused to prescribe medication for it. after much drama, gd's managed to get our old doctor in cape town to prescribe it in a way that my mother can pick it up... it's all very weird.

after that, we visited the nurses office to find out what happened to a sample gd delivered over a month ago, and learned that she'd never provided a "permission" (which nobody had told her about) so somebody had collected the sample and... made it disappear? so we'll be complaining about that on sunday, when she brings in a new sample.

jesus.

we returned home to drop off the groceries and then head out to the mall to pick up gd's new prescription specs, at which point we realized that we'd forgotten about mr smear and that school had come out already. i told him to meet us at the mall, which he dutifully did. he arrived just as gd's eyes were being re-tested because her very expensive specs were completely useless - she literally couldn't see anything - and entered the lego store which i chatted with my big sister.

during our chat, i learned that someone in a group i'm in is doing something related to the impact work i've been thinking a lot harder about since wednesday. i've just sent the guy an email, hopefully it'll lead to something.

after gd came out, we went downstairs and had a delicious hummus lunch, then gd failed to pick up another pharmacy prescription (part of the doctor drama) and we headed home, stepping outside into a massive, choking dust storm.

i read a little bit of the the colour of magic graphic novel while listening to tool before crashing into a semi-conscious nap for an hour, then made myself a coffee, used the massage tool on my neck, and then settled down at my computer to try and do something productive, even though my brain's offline, while i listen to mr smear humming to himself and appearing to make enough progress on his homework that he might actually be done before the sunset deadline.

i don't know if i'm going to get anything productive done.

hopping from one foot to the other

 i think i slept alright last night, or at least better than the preceding nights. i woke up mid-dream, so i needed a few minutes to shake it off, and the day began with some mixed emotions over riddles and mr smear's breakfast habits.

i accompanied mr smear to school - i'd still rather be foolish than sorry (better silly than sorry?) - and continued on to the sleep clinic at the hospital. my appointment started on time at 7.30, and i walked out of there an hour later feeling pretty confident that the doctor had performed a thorough investigation into every relevant aspect of my potential narcolepsy (and potential rls, and possible anemia) and i felt very well understood.

i left with a recommendation to take iron supplements, keep a sleep journal, and exercise more.

by the time i closed in on the clinic, it was too close to my daily so i picked up a cup of coffee from "our" bakery, and tried to find a quiet spot for my meeting. unfortunately, something was blocking traffic and i ended up hiding out in a random building's parking muting constantly because multiple directions of cars were all honking furiously.

and, of course, our usual ten-minute meeting took half an hour.

from there i crossed the road and entered the clinic, where i was informed that i could only make the appointment by phone, so i dutifully informed the lady that i'd spent half an hour on the phone yesterday to be told it was an in-person only thing. so she said that it was probably an in-hospital thing only and not an in-clinic thing only, but that in any event the referring doctor had already requested permission and she had a response in hand: denied.

floored, i read the response and learned that they won't let gd do the recommended examination unless she's done a course of iron supplements too. i booked her a repeat visit to the same doctor, and the earliest appointment i could get was for july.

i left the clinic quite demoralized.

bus routes from the clinic are lacking, so i fast-walked home and arrived five minutes late for my quarterly roadmap meeting with my mentor. it was interesting, and while i was disappointed with myself for not achieving my goals, he was disappointed with me for being unnecessarily hard on myself considering what i've been through these past few months.

so that was encouraging, i guess.

i scarfed down a quick break, anxious that i hadn't yet called the plumber and clueless as to when would be an appropriate time for him to come over, when he called and asked me to take a video for him to assess. a few minutes later, his brother called to say he was on the way. i couldn't have planned the timing any better!

within two minutes the smell trap was installed, which was completely anti-climactic. the idea that there wasn't a smell trap installed before was and is blowing my mind!

gd, who had been struggling all morning* somehow had the presence of mind to ask him to check our hot-water cylinder, and we did, and it looks alright. then he left, and was just out of the building when gd had another bright idea, and we called him back to check under the kitchen sink.

* she suffered so much this morning that she was finally willing to try avoiding gluten to see if it would help.

he obliged. within two minutes, he'd found the source of the leak, and it wasn't the sink. we realized that there was a long gap at the back of the countertop, and water was splashing down the back of the cabinet 🤦‍♂️

(apparently, he'd warned me about this when we moved in. i don't recall this at all.)

between him and gd, and the special silicon we'd already bought to fix up the shower, the gap was sealed quickly and cleanly and i was able to grab my bag and head to the office.

what a day, so far!

[plugs in and turns on the fan for the first time this summer]

i got some work done, and then had to head out (again) to pick mr smear up from school. i managed to get there much faster than before by walking to the light rail, and that made it clear to me that the way back needed to be the same after losing a ridiculous amount of time to the bus ride yesterday. i got there early enough to catch up on instagram messages, and he came out pretty quickly for once, and i took him straight back to the office with me.

my desk-neighbor's dog was in the office. on the one hand? awesome! mr smear and him got along great ^_^

on the other? i've been feeling things (or imagining feeling things) since we got in, and i'm super-paranoid about fleas since the other night.

gods help me.

i barely had five minutes to work before everyone had to join a meeting about formalizing AI management, and mr smear came in with me and sat quietly in the corner reading. after an hour we adjourned to the main kitchen for happy hour, and there was delicious vegan ice cream! so that went well (mr smear has a penchant for coming to my work for good happy hours!).

i grabbed a beer and got some work done while mr smear put together a cool animation using flipaclip, then realized how late it had become and we packed up and walked home. walking across the bridge over the train tracks i pointed out an oncoming train, and the train driver tooted the horn and waved to mr smear, which was pretty cool! or, it was a pretty cool sentiment, at least, because mr smear didn't notice at all 🤣

i put in some more work while mr smear did or pretended to do his homework - i don't know if it's going to be complete by the weekend, and his weekend screen time depends on it - and then (finally) forced myself to file some of the stacks of papers that have been piling up.

over dinner, we watched the pilot macgyver episode, which was thoroughly enjoyed by all ^_^

(except for the kissing bits, which we all felt were inappropriate. but i kept dropping recently-learned trivia that made it even better)

it's been a pretty peaceful evening, and i think i'm going to be ready for bed soon. just one more cup of tea.

...

trendslop and mediocrity.

the unspark

 last night was rough, but in an unusual way. before writing my previous post, i tried to write poetry. what came out was... eye-opening. it was all about the trade-offs in my life - since my son was born - and how in spite of the easy prioritization of my family (i don't regret that at all), i've been mostly unable to finish any one thing before the urgency of a different thing pushes it out the way. and then i go around in circles, returning to tasks and leaving them.

i've achieved a heck of a lot in spite of that, but that's a constant nagging, gnawing anxiety and frustration that i've been living with for a very, very long time.

"builder's syndrome".

it's also preying on my mind that i'm a perpetual wage slave, and i honestly don't see a way out. or, at least, i see many ways out that i simply don't have the resources to take.

so it struck me, when i woke up a couple of hours after i went to bed, that i have a cousin i've recently become re-acquainted with who might actually be able to pull the levers to get a ball rolling. then this morning i met with my old british devops coworker for coffee after my daily, and learned that his brother's into impact investing... i'm hoping he'll make me an introduction.

work today was repetitive and annoying. every time i solved an issue a new one was created. at lunch time, i sat quietly chewing, feeling lost. then i left early again to pick up mr smear (neither of us are happy about the current arrangement), and we sat in traffic for a ridiculously long time.

two encounters on the way home: the first, some guy so impatient to get out of the light rail that he shoved his phone in front of mine, even though he didn't have space to get past me. i called him rude, and then he had the gall to complain that i'd been taking too long (i hadn't), and the next while on the bus saw me nursing violent thoughts.

then we arrived home at the same time as the crazy lady from downstairs, who, honestly, is legitimately bat-shit insane. she was complaining about gangsters and prostitutes and how she can't leave the building without seeing someone's genitals, and once again climbing into big data who wasn't there over things that didn't make any sense, and then she started yelling about how the highway we live next to wasn't supposed to be a highway. at that point i just couldn't take it any more.

i spent half an hour on the phone with the medical insurance to learn that i can only make an appointment in person (the doctor yesterday told us we couldn't make the appointment in person, only over the phone) and i finally managed to get my PR cleaned up. after mr smear had been messing around for an hour i blocked (once again) all the fun websites, and all this while freaking out about and trying to get a plumber in for a sudden, inexplicable repeat of the shower stink issue from a month ago.

i just received confirmation that the apartment downstairs has the same issue! so it's a building thing, thank god 🙏

0.8

 i guess the day worked out alright, all things considered. gd and i are celebrating the 12 anniversary of our first (and only) date [i just got lost down a rabbit-hole for a while].

i accompanied her to her appointment, which we almost missed because although we arrived on time, it was four floors from the reception and it's a really slow elevator. as we walked in i noticed the doctor had a french tinge to her accent, so i asked if french was okay and from that point (especially after the two of them strongly agreed about how awful celine dion is) she and gd communicated perfectly well and i was only able to catch the gist of things.

so gd feels heard and understood, and we have referrals to further testing and suggestions of what might be going on.

we returned home, and then i left for mr smear's school where i ordered a lemonade at a coffee shop and tried to get some work done while i waited for him.

that was where the AI really began to lead me astray; i hadn't read the project's installation instructions properly, and it hadn't read them at all, and it started "fixing" things that weren't actually broken, each fix breaking something else in a slow-motion chain reaction.

when school came out, mr smear called to ask if he could go to his friend's place instead. getting to my dermatologist appointment from there was going to be complicated, with or without him, so i agreed and then made my way to the clinic.

i arrived with some time to spare for some more work. or, i should say, more running on a virtual treadmill. between my lack of sleep and the sheer boredom of what i was doing, i was pretty sleepy by the time it was my turn.

the doctor was quick, and pleasant. he's not concerned by the lump on my neck, but he's referred me to an ultrasound and a removal, so i'll look into that tomorrow.

from there to the bus i was falling asleep on my feet. i did get a bit of rest on the first bus, but was still groggy when i got off at the prescribed stop only to realize that that app had steered me wrong and made me get off two stops earlier than i should have, so i had to walk an extra ten minutes to catch the next bus :/

i arrived at the mall, had a chat with my mom, then went to the bathroom before finding a spot at a coffee shop. i stood at the urinal next to another man with a shy bladder, and the next few minutes were very awkward for both of us. at least *i* eventually managed to pee :P

the next hour or two were the most productive of the day. about halfway through i finally realized what i'd been doing wrong, restarted the day's effort the right way, and finally had things making more sense.

mr smear really didn't want to leave his friend's place when it was time ("we were about to go to the park!"), but i eventually got him to come down and we had a good time together on the way home - aside from when an old lady fell hard while trying to get off the bus, poor thing was on a walker and dressed up (too much heel, too little skirt) and we all felt really bad for her. i hope she's okay.

the evening was pretty smooth. i completed the work i was doing, mr smear easily breezed through the homework he'd spent an hour staring at yesterday, we watched some more of ready player one (omg it's so good!), bedtime was smooth.

now [yawns] i think it's time for mine.

0.1

 i went to bed way later than i intended to last night.

i know i slept, but only because i had seriously weird dreams.

i woke up tired.

i hurt my back stretching (it's somewhat locked up right now).

i dropped mr smear off at school.

i returned home.

i ate breakfast.

now i need to figure out how to navigate yet another complicated day (gd's appointment, then mine).

finding out

 i think i had plans for tonight. like, real ones, i was excited. but after a really long day - accompanying mr smear to school while practicing the sign language for FAFO and singing nant's ingonyama bagithi baba, trying to console gd who's stomach's messed up again, investigating weird messages from my mobile provider, long hours working with AI*, a huge, delicious vegan lunch from an unfamiliar place, more hard work, picking up mr smear while "participating" in an hour and a half zoom workshop that i didn't need, lots more hard work, losing my temper trying to help mr smear with his homework (him claiming to not understand a thing after successfully doing pages of the same stuff), sitting down with big data (and then his family) over a utility app he wants to build, a great dinner and ready player one followed by the terrible mistake of trying to eat 99% chocolate (why TF does it exist?!) followed by a rather shit bedtime, followed by more hard work.

* and understanding that AI is really teaching us to be better mentors and instructors to juniors

oh, and i saw and killed a fucking flea this afternoon. we have no idea where it could have come from. fuck.

i mean, at least i managed to sleep a bit last night. i wonder if i'll be so lucky tonight.

the last opportunity?

 i went to bed late last night. i finished with the button a little after midnight, then climbed into bed and found myself entirely unable to sleep. i don't know why, but i was completely wired and spent the entire night miserably uncomfortable.

the 6.30am alarm was painful.

i accompanied mr smear to school - again, because i'm worried about when the war's going to resume - and we had a fun conversation about the drawing for our front door. on the way home, i stopped at the pharmacy to pick up something for gd, and had a chat with my mom about whether she'll be able to land here next week, and what we should do about her laptop (i'm thinking of giving her our windows machine).

i came home, and struggled to get started with work; primarily because in addition to exhaustion, my back and feet were really hurting. i eventually remembered our foot/back massager, though, and i have to say i'm quite grateful for it!

[turns it back on again]

i prepared a scary bit of work last week, and this morning i pulled the trigger. i nervously monitored the dashboards, but a half hour later i was convinced that a) the deployment had gone smoother than i'd hoped and b) i've discovered something quite bad (a memory leak) that's been causing disruptions, probably for years.

i also helped the team lead of my previous customer team navigate the airflow interface - that shit is hard!

in addition to working, i assisted gd with a wolt driver who couldn't figure out how to find our address on a map and was unable to follow directions. not only was he shockingly dumb and incompetent, but he had the nerve to tell me that we shouldn't be using our correct street address and should go for the (essentially) illegal one instead.

we also managed to figure out how to return a pair of shoes she bought online, and it was much easier (albeit much more expensive) than the other site.

in the afternoon i returned to the school to pick up mr smear, and managed to buy raisin brain (for the iron fortification) along the way. mr smear made me wait for a while, so i took off that same amount of screen time, but the journey home was mostly pleasant and once the timer began, he grabbed watchmen off the shelf and started getting into it.

i spent the next few hours drowning in a task that's heavy on the AI because i only vaguely understand what needs to be done. so while i'm constructing (hopefully) a mental model, i'm casting magic spells and praying they don't backfire...

and then mr smear had homework to do. fortunately, he worked through it pretty well, with only one short episode of me losing patience (he couldn't understand the problem, but wouldn't pay attention while i tried to help him), and he managed to score himself some game time before dinner.

dinner: delicious corn soup / corn on the cob combination, accompanied by the next part of ready player one. i've been avoiding spoiling the chest-burster scene from the alien movie because we're planning on watching it soon, so i was pretty bummed out by the disguise scene! at least i know mr smear won't be traumatized by it, though. he thought it was funny. (though he still hasn't plucked up the courage to continue with terminator 2, which he finds too intense)

we managed to get through shower and bedtime pretty smoothly. i didn't have energy to read to him (and it was late), but instead i recited the slam. the last time i recited something i received some pretty harsh feedback from him ("i HATE your poetry!"), but tonight? he was riveted, and actually praised it ^_^

...

i'm going to try to get to bed earlier tonight (ie. soon). it's clear that the "cease-fire" with iran is officially over, so if there's an attack we're moving mr smear back into our bedroom immediately.

gods, this is a really confusing time. strategically, it seems like the americans have really done an amazing job, but right now being in the moment and in the IRGC's crosshairs...

distractions

 well, the good news is that it wasn't our apartment, someone drove into a power line yesterday and the delayed effect was destabilizing the power for everyone on our block. fortunately, the electric company had everything back online by 9pm, though we did end up having to order food and eat it in the dark.

we started watching ready player one, though. so that was cool. and at least mr smear had showered already.

while i was starting to wind down for the evening, trying not to pay too much mind to mr smear not winding down (but at least making an effort, so it was much easier to be patient about it), big data asked me about using twilio to make an app with a button to open our parking gate. so instead of going to bed early, i'm busy playing with that...

avoidance and procrastination

 i'm probably iron deficient. or maybe just exhausted. or perhaps a combination of the two.

...

i kinda slept last night. with a few disturbances, i tried sleeping on my back - or, at least, lying on my back until desperately tired - and i think that helped.

i began the day with a coffee and booth's sonnets, but my brain was pretty much offline. i think it's safe to say that i spent most of my day playing slay the spire 2, but i did read the balatro creator's story while trying to understand what the good card games are backed with.

the first attempt to talk to mr smear about making plans for the day - after it had initially gone sour - turned into wrestling, which was fun until i had to call a time out for a nap. later, when i came to (with a sore neck), we began the arduous process of getting him out the door; of all the suggestions i'd made, he found one i hadn't thought of, and we ended up taking the basketball up to the courts.

worst experience of his life, he says. he doesn't like sharing a court, and he's really not a fan of any kind of physical exercise. his neck hurt from looking up at the net, his fingers hurt from the one time he caught the ball badly, he was convinced he'd split his lip when the ball *touched* his face, the sun was shining, and his skin was threatening to sweat. but for all that, he put in the time, and he clearly had some genuinely enjoyable moments while we practiced stealing the ball (he's such a cheat!), so as much as he suffered, at least it wasn't all bad.

the sun is setting, gd's making dinner, he's playing minecraft, and i'm just... being. that's gotta be okay.

...

nope. the stovetop's not drawing enough electricity, and i have to find an electrician now 🤦‍♂️

...

nope, the whole apartment's electricity is behaving badly. jesus 🤦‍♂️

dead battery

 winding down... i messed around, including playing balatro, until way later than i should have. i'm guessing i went to bed around 1.30am; i lay down, closed my eyes, and that was precisely when the air raid sirens sounded without the usual pre-warning (it turned out to be from lebanon) and i rushed to mr smear's room to drag him back into ours.

bearing in mind that i didn't get much sleep the night before, i got practically none last night. between him being in our bed, and a sore back, and needing to pee at least four times before daybreak, i was a wreck by the time our alarms went off. and then, after the night's excitement, i had to figure out whether mr smear was really expected to go to school or not.

surprisingly, it was a "normal" friday morning. i accompanied him to school (because wtf), then returned home for a brief cup of tea to wait for gd to decide whether she was able to come out with me or not. we then headed to south tel aviv to hunt for rocking chairs and beanbags. it was a beautiful morning, and we went up and down florentin looking at a wide variety of stuff, and ended up buying some really arbitrary things.

we didn't find anything to sit on, but we did enjoy the morning.

a little before we headed home, mr smear called from the school, which caused me to panic a bit before i realized that he'd been invited to a birthday party and wanted to know if that was cool. so we were excited to hear that he was invited in the first place, and that he was interested in going, but later were quite disheartened to learn that he'd decided that he wasn't interested in tempting himself with birthday foods so opted to come back home instead :(

gods help us.

after gd and i hashed out our differences regarding beanbag ideas and i'd ordered them online - seems the thing to do - we spent the next couple of hours putting up some more of our pictures. the apartment's definitely looking more homely :)

i put a couple of hours into looking into comic publishing, and it's looking like the right way to do this is to use KDP again.

my throat's feeling a bit scratchy.

gd made a delicious dinner, we chatted a long time with my mom while eating it, and then shower / bedtime took forever. i picked up slay the spire 2 today, and have been playing it along with a bit of baba is you, which is insanely challenging.

i think i'm going to go to bed soon. please god let tonight be quiet and let me get some damned rest.

complications

 last night was a bit rough. first, getting mr smear into bed at a reasonable hour didn't happen, after we finally did get him into bed i went to bed soon after, only to wake up a while later and find him out of bed. that led to some bad emotions, because we were already out of patience and we knew how difficult this morning was going to be.

we finally threatened him (one hour of screen time for any infractions) into bed, and i eventually managed to get back to sleep.

for a bit. but then i found myself awake again, sore lower back and hips, and indigestion. so i dragged myself out of bed and spent an hour or two playing balatro and listening to tousi making it clear that this ceasefire is bullshit.

i finally got a couple of hours' sleep before our alarms went off at 6.30am. getting out of bed was hard. my neck hurt.

to be fair, mr smear handled himself pretty well this morning. he got up, made his bed, brushed his teeth, and then sat down to do some of the homework. he made a good effort.

then i accompanied him to the school, early because i had two back-to-back meetings starting 45m before his first class. we arrived just in time for my first one, and he sat across from me reading on his kindle.

after my second one - by which stage he'd gone off to class - i made my way to a KSP to stand in line for half an hour for a couple of ethernet cables. then i picked up some groceries for gd, then i returned home.

i was at home for an hour and a half, struggling to get work done, then headed out once again to pick up mr smear, and then return home for another hour or so, before heading out with gd for her dental appointment.

in spite of the fact that her dental appointment turned out to be a few minutes - and that we didn't need to be there - i got an hour of real work in (jira tedium) and felt at least kind of okay about calling it a day by the time we started back home.

we stopped for an expensive visit to the grocer, then gd picked up more groceries, and then it was finally time to come home and unpack the other groceries that had been delivered.

so lots of groceries.

i had a good chat with sailor before dinner, over dinner we watched an episode of the littlest hobo (gd was bit upset that mr smear didn't love it, but i was impressed that he watched it through to the end without complaining), chatted with my mom, got through the evening stuff (including moving his bed back to his room!), and then i sat down to watch all the videos that were open on my work computer, set it up for the OS upgrade, and now i'm on my second cup of tea and winding down.

🎶 and i would walk 4 point 5 miles 🎶

 we walked up to the park, then across to the port, and we settled on babylon park even before either of us said anything. we had fun, though two of the games mr smear played (motorcycles and snowboard simulators) were remarkably unfair; if you win, you should get another go, no?

we looked for ice cream, but golda had removed their vegan indicators which was super suspicious. so we picked up a couple of drinks instead, and began our walk home. along the way, mr smear decided that he didn't want the traditional post-pesach pizza for dinner because he's watching his weight, which led to a lengthy discussion with gd over the phone because she was trying to be supportive and he... neither of us really understand what he was gunning for.

then, most of the way home, he decided he needed to stop by the candy store...

long story short, i "supported" him by not letting him go to the candy store, and we all thoroughly enjoyed the olive & mushroom pizza (with black salt, too, in my case). of course, gd ordered two pizzas when one would have done just fine :/

at least they were vegan. i'm never sure, and i *really* didn't feel like taking mr smear to the hospital this evening.

now to (hopefully) find out whether the kids are returning to school tomorrow or not.

wtf wednesday (ceasefire?)

 i really don't understand if there's really a ceasefire or not. or if it means anything or not. none of what's happening makes much sense.

...

yesterday:

we managed to get up at a reasonable time, and i woke up with an itch to reinstate public access to my comic pages and post an update to my patrons.

then i jumped on our daily call, and my manager reminded me that i was supposed to be on holiday.

i dragged mr smear along with me to the mall after learning that home center had not sent me the items i'd ordered. their in-store staff was just as useless. mr smear's friend met us there, and we paid a visit to the candy store, where i picked up a "hot mama" flavor of van holten's pickle-in-a-pouch, which still makes me giggle.

i dropped the kids off at home and continued on to the hardware store, but 100m out got trapped in a sudden heavy electric rainstorm. when it calmed down i jogged further on, arriving (wet) at a synagogue just as our missile alert system kicked in. i spent the next ten to fifteen minutes in their shelter, surrounded by people and animals with heavy smells, and i was half-asleep by the time we were able to leave.

i made my way to the hardware store, picked up a tape measure but not a garden hose, then paid a quick visit to a nature store to pick up a protein bar, passed one of my ex-bosses on the way to the grocery store (i didn't greet her, she didn't see me and i'm still sore about her and her co-founder back-stabbing me and not even having the decency to try to speak to me on my way out), picked up a bag of carrots and made my way home.

gd had let strangers into our mamad because she didn't know that it's safe enough for them to use the stairwell. weird people, apparently.

the kids had a great afternoon (mostly playing rayman: legends), we all tried the pickle (it wasn't that hot, but made for a great matzah sandwich) i had an emergency coffee and the put up two of our maps (a real world map, and our map of ankh morpork) in our office, and later i put up some clothing hooks too. and also managed to get our new sound system set up, and it's SO much better than our previous one!

i did, however, almost fall off the ladder doing that (i mis-stepped after forgetting i was on the top rung) and i managed to hurt my hip again, which had finally been feeling better :/

our upstairs friends came downstairs with wine, and we sat talking negligently late, which included some uncomfortable expressions by gd about some of their friends... not that she's entirely wrong, mind, but how one says stuff... :P

we had a nice dinner, chatted for most of it with my mom, and then watched the final episode of strip search. gd had had enough of the day (and parenting) by that stage, so i handled shower and tooth brushing, and i went to bed exhausted before mr smear had himself fallen asleep.

today (so far):

sleeping late, napping, reading and loving most of the importance of being earnest, eating a pretty good breakfast of matzah, peanut butter, banana, vegan nutella and tabasco. i tried watching jujutsu kaisen with mr smear but i passed out, and i woke up to spend a frustrating half hour or so trying to fix our microsoft / minecraft accounts so that i could reinstate his birthday present (the marketplace pass).

now we're heading out to try and make the most of what may or may not be a peaceful afternoon.

wtf monday

 wtf monday.

we all got up early (my hip's still locked, but not quite as badly as yesterday) so that we could accompany gd to her dental first aid appointment. we arrived on time. her dentist was running late. after we'd been there about an hour, gd decided she didn't really need to be there after all.

i raced to find an appropriate spot to join my team's daily, but realized too late that where we'd settled wasn't one. at least the coffee was good. i hope the little white bits falling all over the place weren't from dried bird poop.

we then caught a bus home, on the way doing a bit of hardware shopping.

once home, i was somehow dragged in to trying to diagnose an issue my teammates had been working on but abandoned due to their holidays. i spent the following hours trying to make sense of things - mostly asking AI to investigate a variety of things - and eventually i was able to suggest something that seemed reasonable.

only to be informed by the devops team that that's just what they'd been thinking. so why the hell didn't they do something about it without getting me involved?!

gd received her shoes, which cost half again as much due to customs.

i took a break to be assisted by big data, who began the work of installing proper ethernet outlets. it was very stressful, and i have no idea how he managed to get the clip wired up properly. finally, just before he had to run off, we discovered that one of the pieces i ordered was replaced by something incompatible :/

after closing up my work for the day, i headed out to the local store again, this time for a stack of dark chocolate, because apparently it's a good iron source. the more i try to do the math, though, the less sense that claim makes.

it gave me an opportunity to chat with my mom, though.

after returning home, it was time for dinner, two episodes of strip search (we're down to the last episode!), a family chat with my mom, shower and sketch time for mr smear, and now that he's in bed i'm posting this and getting my evening squared away before climbing into bed myself.

...

mr smear has seen some of the last halloween before, tonight i bought it and another book of abby's on kindle. i was a bit disappointed by the merch available, though. i wanted Stuff.

the square hip

 not so restful, but i did eventually manage to get my hip to stop bothering me enough to get some sleep. but then, when i was woken up by the third alarm for an all-hands event that had nothing to do with me, i got up to find that my hip was totally locked up, front and back.

i started my day on the carpet on the floor trying to stretch it out while sipping coffee and reading the importance of being ernest - i've owned my copy for years, how have i never opened it before?

i guess today was pretty constructive, all things considered. i think i've finally nailed down the upgrade of a service to the latest golang version (from 1.11), and i think i handled my RCA ticket being irrecoverably deleted by someone who didn't know what it was quite admirably.

i took mr smear with me to witness my very painful limp and call me a cripple pick up the internet cable outlet plates and return the comic books to the library, but arrived at the library to discover that they'd been closed for half an hour. because holidays. and war.

getting through the mall gauntlet was alright. there were a few cosplayers doing their thing, but i don't think mr smear noticed much.

after we got home and dropped off the box, we went to our new 24/7 to pick up a couple of things, then returned home for more work, to receive the new soundbar, and then to dive in to a dramatic homework session.

ultimately he did well, and he was pleased with himself, but the journey there was fraught with him doing everything he could to sabotage himself. i truly believe he can do anything he puts his mind to - and i don't believe that of many people. but omg getting him to put his mind to anything is nigh impossible.

dinner (and strip search) was great, gd rushed him through shower and toothbrush time surprisingly rapidly, he read while i showered and brushed my teeth, and then we said good night.

gd and i spoke for a little while - mostly she's feeling bad about stuff that's totally normal for all of us right now - and i tooled around (mushing my brain with trash) until posting this, and now i think i'm going to try to get some rest.

again. my hip's still acting up.

extra-innings

 we all slept late, though in my case "sleep" is an exaggeration. i slept poorly. again. lower back and such.

i woke up with a bee in my bonnet, and spent a day i needed to be full of downtime working hard herding AI agents to build me a game i concocted. i'm certainly not the first person to attempt combining scrabble and balatro, but as of a minute or two ago i'm at a point where it kinda feels like i've come up with a viable alternative.

we shall see.

otherwise, it was a pretty quiet (cluster bomb attacks notwithstanding) day, mr smear entertaining himself with a mixture of reading comics and watching solo leveling (he very kindly caught me up when i did sit down with him), and the biggest event of the day was us taking a walk to both stretch our legs and pick up snacks (and then eating a lot of said snacks, and then getting into trouble with gd because we're both bothering her with our weight sensitivies).

in unrelated news, gd managed to crack a temporary crown today, so tomorrow's going to be more interesting than planned :/

that seems to be all, hopefully tonight with be a little restful.

recovery

 today was nicer, though not by too much. i didn't feel nearly as shit and dysfunctional, but my neck's still sensitive and i spent a large chunk of the day either lying with my neck at stretched angles or avoiding screens (i found a pack of playing cards and played old-school solitaire).

otherwise the day was very much spent indoors, we watched the first half of terminator 2 and the first episode (TWO HOURS OF IT?!?!) of the second season of the live action one piece.

there was some arguing over privileges, but mostly the day went smoothly. after kiddush with my mom we had a nice dinner and watched an episode of strip search, and then after all the kids were in bed our upstairs friends paid us a visit, and just left a few minutes ago.

now i'm going to play a little more balatro (i've been vascillating between balatro and full throttle) and go to bed.

passover 2026

we're approaching midnight, and for the first time since this afternoon i'm feeling a little better, after spending most of the day with a neck issue causing a massive headache, nausea and dizziness. now i've showered, i've made myself a lavendar/chamomile tea, and i'm hoping to get some rest tonight.

...

i was so relieved to be on holiday and turn my brain off. feeling extremely ill and sore is not relaxing.

yesterday:

we didn't do so well when it came to coming up with april fool's pranks, but i did have a fun idea inventing an elevator that detects smells; if someone farts in the elevator alone, it emergency stops until the extractor fans clear the air. if there are multiple people in the elevator, it immediately lets them off on the next floor.

it was erev chag, so of course we had last-minute shopping to do. gd sent me and mr smear off to find stuff i've never bought before, and we ended up on a serious mission, tired, and frustrated by all the other last-minute shoppers as well as the shops themselves for largely being disappointingly crap.

we did manage to get everything by the end of the mission, though.

aside from helping gd out a little bit here and there, mr smear and i spent the afternoon resting or reading or playing games. nothing intelligent. gd, on the other hand, had a very dramatic afternoon and evening cooking for the pesach seder for her very first time.

as unhappy and stressed as she was during the cooking - not helping by a long series of rocket attacks timed perfectly to mess with everyone - she was as happy as we were with the results and the seder with our upstair friends - which included reading and singing in their shelter - was great. the kids were generally well-behaved and involved, we got through to the meal in pretty good time, and dinner was delicious.

today:

the first part of the day was perfect. i finished reading crumb's kafka, which unfortunately has a few too many inappropriate things for me to be able to suggest that mr smear reads it, but is thoroughly brilliant and engaging. we all enjoyed a huge leftover breakfast. mr smear and i walked to the gas station to pick up the new playstation controller and charger; neither are amazing, but they'll do.

that got us into resuming our latest replay of rayman: legends, and it went really well with some exciting invasion runs!

and then my day fell apart. everyone else seems to be doing okay. i managed to eat some dinner while we watched another strip search elimination, and then lay down on the couch stretch my neck and watching random shit until just after mr smear (finally) went to bed.

i hope tomorrow's nicer.

lackluster

 today was a weird one. not a bad one, mind. lots of it was comfortable and comforting.

i got up tired. i read a bit more of mairowitz and crumb's kafka (it's amazing, with a very interesting perspective of ghetto life), i worked, with shenanigans around code ownership, and i eventually ended the work day in the middle of making some progress but also ready to put everything down because i'm officially on leave for the next couple of days.

i left the house around noon to get to a blood donation site, but for the first time in my life was rejected because my hemoglobin count was too low. so there's that to stress me out now.

mr smear tried desperately to get as much screen time as he could even though he was under punishment from calling me a jerk yesterday. he did music homework - garageband, he's making cool stuff - and later we sat down on yesterday's human resource machine problem and had a positive experience.

i'm not sure if his "performance" of being sick just as we started training was real or not, but whatever. he's the one concerned about his weight.

actually, that's not entirely true. mine's been climbing a bit, too.

but he did join me for a very serious mission hunting down matzah meal and healthy snacks, which proved surprisingly difficult to find.

either way, we watched strip search over a delicious dinner, spoke to my mom, and then got through the evening rituals and a bit of the colour of magic before calling it a day.

...

i've engaged in three or four different, toxic arguments on facebook over the course of the past day. people are fucked. i've now watched a whole lot of random youtube videos (some news, some not), and now i'm going to play some more balatro and have one last cup of tea and then climb into bed.