asshole accumulation

today - post posting - continued with four assholes. i called the jewish agency to find out something for my mother, and was stuck with their hold muzak while running around the supermarket looking for a product that they didn't stock. as i gave up and arrived at the self-checkout, an agent answered and promptly refused to answer my general question because my mother wasn't with me. while i was being pissed off about that, the checkout assistant came over and insisted on interrupting my call to tell me about a special on one of the items i was purchasing, to which i responded sharply "i really don't care" but i really wanted to scream it. the answer i got from the agent was basically that the people in cape town are continuing to waste my mother's time. i tried to reset emotionally, but almost got run over by an irresponsible cyclist as i stepped onto a crosswalk (he was coming up behind me, and decided to go around in front of me instead of behind me. or slow down a moment, as i had right of way. a few seconds later the crosswalk was blocked by an impatient taxi driver while it was still green for me to cross, and he got angry with me for indicating that he was doing something wrong.

later, i'd learn that half the kids in mr smear's class are sick with covid so tonight's lag b'omer bonfire isn't happening, so that was all for nought...

working from the office wasn't unpleasant, though i was very frustrated by the coffee machine situation. not only do people move the pipes between the dairy and non-dairy milks without cleaning them, and leave milk pouring onto the grid our cups are supposed to go on, but there's no decaf coffee anywhere.

my work day was... well, it was successful in the sense that i eventually managed to run the tests i needed to run (and that i arguably should have run weeks ago). it was unsuccessful in that i uncovered even more of a hot mess beneath the surface than i already thought there was. i worked a longer day than usual, and my last findings before stopping for the night stressed me out. i've sent an update to my manager so that he's not surprised, and i'm overall feeling pretty shit about it.

...

anyways. i came home for lunch, primarily because krybabie's widow (what a weird thing to type, even years later) had come over to pick up some stuff my mother brought with her. it was nice to see her, and it seems like she and the kids are doing quite well.

it turns out she recently met up with some old mutual friends, and that they have pictures of teenage me at summer camp, so i've just awkwardly reached out to them to ask if they'd do me a favor and send me a few of them... i don't have much from before i made aliyah, a handful of photos from my party days is just about everything.

...

mr smear once again came home without having done what i asked him, and i gave him the twenty minutes it took for me to get home from the office to rectify the situation. i spent some of the walk home wracking my brains trying to think of an appropriate and effective punishment if he didn't, and i was deeply grateful that he managed to get his assignment off one of his friends and i didn't have to come up with a solution to the problem 😅

dinner was great, as was the evening in general, but he started coughing just at bedtime and i'm hoping he's not doing the covid thing himself. i actually suspect that that's what my last week was about, and that perhaps mr smear was patient zero when we sent him back to school a couple of weeks ago because he only had symptoms when getting out of bed.

...

i don't have energy or bandwidth to be functional tonight. i'm really enjoying starship troopers and slay the spire 2, one (or both) of them will suffice.