banana drama llama karma farmer trauma

 today was a better day, even though that's obviously off a pretty low bar. i actually slept through to my alarm this morning, and began my day reading some more alice in borderland - it's good, but the main reason i'm getting through it is because mr smear's read it already and i'm not sure if there's anything problematic in it :P

i prepared a message for the office manager regarding the whole vegan options debacle, but gd and my mother both agreed that it was a terrible idea, and that next time there's an upcoming event i should just tell her not to bother.

just after i arrived at the office and joined my team daily, i saw that i'd missed a bunch of messages from early in the morning - an incident, with me as the primary suspect. fortunately, it didn't take long to figure out what had happened, and while i was the trigger for the issue, neither the action itself nor its resolution were on me.

i proceeded to spend all day fighting with AI to figure out what i was supposed to be doing. the model i used cost a lot more money than usual*, and i'm not convinced the results were significantly better...

* i've seen the company "leaderboard", today, and the top four spenders are my two teammates, and two of the guys i work next to :P

gd packed me a sushi and pancake lunch, which i ate on the balcony, kind of admiring the view while listening to interesting youtube videos. very social.

in the afternoon, while waiting for an AI investigation, i saw an email come in from someone claiming to be a university grad. i had to verify their identity because i initially thought it was one of the usual phishing attacks i received, but it seems like a researcher is legitimately interested in my comic adaptation and wants to ask me about it!

my two primary intentions behind the project are to get the sonnets into the mainstream via teenagers and young adults, and to manipulate the ivory tower of academia to engage with my interpretation. so this has potential to be an important beginning!!

my client's happy hour was far superior to my employer's, the vegan food was so delicious i had to double check the ingredients :P

i came home, picked up mr smear and the book we bought unnecessarily on tuesday evening, and we walked back to book store, experiencing the titular banana drama llama karma farmer trauma that my BDLKF son generates.  on the way we ran into the dad of one his previous classmates, and in our smalltalk i found myself joking that "we can use a few rocket attacks just to give us a sense of stability" and making us both uncomfortable :P

we couldn't get a refund, but we could exchange it. they didn't have any english books for kids or young adults, they didn't have drawing equipment we were interested in, their toys and games selection was pretty shitty, but eventually i found something - a book for gd entitled the mammoth book of bizarre crimes.

...

we paid, left the store, and i decided to take a short detour to look for supermarket / pharmacy underwear (it's the best value for money IMO). while waiting at a red light, an arab wolt driver rammed into the guy standing next to us, then immediately yelled at him to get out of the way. the american oleh immediately prepared to throw down by removing his shirt*, then pointed and laughed out loud when he realized that the delivery box on the back of the wolt driver's electric bike had a his number on it, which he immediately started memorized as the driver tried to get away.

* which i later explained to my son was an enormous tactical error - if he'd done that to intimidate me i would have knocked him out while he was struggling to get it over his head 🤦‍♂️

while we were exchanging details so that i could bear witness, the driver came back and threatened him with a large plank of wood with a nail in it. this big american dude kicked off his flip flops and ran towards him*, and i started recording. when the two of them disappeared around the corner, i felt sure that the guy was going to get murdered.

* yet another terrible tactic, as i explained to mr smear

when i realized they were moving further away*, i followed and told mr smear (who'd been following me) to wait for me. just then the driver started throwing rocks - massive rocks, double-fist sized, one of which whizzed past me and another broke just in front of me and a piece skipped towards mr smear.

* at this point, the american yelled the phrase "yesh li mispar shelcha, dickhead!", which is a simply wonderful catchphrase 🤣

he chased the mad wolt driver away, and another witness (also an olah) came to exchange details and help him call the police*. he asked me to wait a bit for his girlfriend to arrive, he needed someone else to tell her he hadn't started it :P

* some old guy came past and tried to convince him to "let it go", which pisses me right off. 

mr smear and i came back home, discussing everything that took place, with him telling me the story from his perspective and including some particularly funny takes. the first he saw of the incident was the guy taking his shirt off, and then he noticed that he'd removed his shoes, and he immediately thought to himself "what, are you gonna take off your shorts as well?"

later, he quipped: "he has balls of steel. and a brain made of the same material" 🤭

...

we had dinner watching more of splash, though we had to turn it off to get mr smear to actually eat. then he told the story to my mom, and the shower and bedtime routine went relatively smoothly. now that i've got all of this down, gd and i are going to watch some ludwig. ludwig is good.