down/screen time

 we all slept pretty late this morning, but then gd dragged me out of bed to take mr smear to the doctor; neither of them got much sleep last night, mr smear was feverish and pukey.

the doctor's appointment was pretty straightforward - the most important part of it was her convincing gd to not try to treat problems we don't know he has, because for some reason she'd convinced herself that he had c. diff again - and the two of them went home while i walked to the pharmacy for child-friendly anti-nausea meds, then did a little shopping that included "treating myself" to a bunch of fancy teas (pukka) with my birthday discount at the nature store.

we watched tron: ares together, which was generally fun, but really suffered from some seriously lazy writing. mr smear spent most of the rest of the day resting and nursing his fever, we were a little worried earlier but he woke up ready to play a little before dinner and he seems alright now.

otherwise, i had an interesting chat with SxS earlier, and i've agreed to give him a hand with a project of his. and i've played a fair amount of balatro. oh! and i read a chapter of the department of truth today, it's pretty cool.

the challah-peño tonight came out extra spicy ^_^

now i'm holding off eating panda chocolate for dessert because mr smear can't have any. he managed most of an onigiri at dinner, and we don't want to risk any interesting stuff tonight.

inappropriate

yesterday:

a lot of yesterday was me unconscious on the couch. i tried to be productive in the morning, but all i managed to do was note down some design points for one of my projects.

...

the biggest mission was picking up mr smear from school, taking a bus to katalina, and successfully getting mr smear to try on his new rain boots. so that's good. what wasn't good, however, was him slowly but surely whittling down my good mood and patience with an incessant series of minor uncooperative behaviors, so by the time we left the store i was starting to get angry.

we found a place for him to sit and eat (after refusing to sit on benches that had any signs of bird droppings on them), and as soon as he opened his lunchbox a creepy old man appeared and sat down next to him with a weird expression on his face. and then, when he finished the leftover pancakes and pulled out the tupperware filled with melon chunks, we discovered that gd had forgotten to include cutlery...

when we finally finished up there, and had washed some of the melon off his hands, we began to move on to our next waypoint, the comics library. but as soon as we crossed the road the alarm for his antibiotic went off, so we found a place to stop and take care of that... only gd had forgotten to pack it, meaning we had to return home immediately.

fortunately, a bus home just happened to pull up as we learned that, so we scrambled to get aboard in time.

on the bus, mr smear was entertaining me by putting on accents, and while we were laughing about south african accents i noticed a guy standing by the bus doors starting at us and smiling. i assumed he was entertained by our conversation, but the staring was starting to bother me... and then he pulled out his phone and began having a very loud, rather inappropriate conversation in a heavy saffer accent himself.

i couldn't get off the bus fast enough...

just before we got off the bus, mr smear made references to "p diddy", "baby lotion" and "dropping the soap" and aside from urgently trying to get him to stop talking, that led to me having to explain some things to him once we were on the sidewalk.

jesus. h. christ.

not only is it hard to discuss these things without going into too much detail, but it's also hard to know if he understands me when i tell him that he can't go explaining this stuff to his friends because it might cause issues with their parents - and they're the kids who are talking about these things with mr smear in the first place.

as soon as he'd taken his antibiotic, we headed out again. we separated at the mall, where i discovered that i was too late for the last-minute emergency groceries gd needed, and then i rejoined him at the library, where we discovered that on fridays it closes at the same time as school comes out.

mr smear walked home, i walked in the other direction to find a grocery store, and eventually decided to hop on a bus and try our local 24/7. the bus was full of kids, and one old man singing awfully at the top of his lungs.

i bribed mr smear with treats to meet me at the 24/7 to help me with the groceries, and the treat ended up being a bag of cream-cheese lays which i'd never realized were vegan. and he yelled with joy in the 24/7 when he saw frozen vegan dumplings, so we picked those up as well.

...

i had a long chat with SxS last night for the first time in forever, he's just unemployed himself because the company he's been operating for the past decade and a half (that i contracted to from 2016 through 2018) is in the process of imploding. at least he's not walking away entirely empty-handed, but the other founders are screwing up royally and we have a lot of shared opinions about how to - and how to not - run a company.

...

gd's dinner plans went a bit awry last night. the vegan "fish cakes" came out as latkes (they tasted pretty good, though), the dumplings were really complicated to heat up / cook and i had to get pretty seriously involved. and then we discovered, when it came time to eat them, that gd hadn't realized they were sweet potato dumplings and she doesn't like those...

highlight of the evening: mr smear and i growling along to the original slipknot songs from the synthknot compilation.

today so far:

i slept alright last night, but woke up with what feels like a throat infection. and, now that i think about it, my tiredness the past day or two might well be me being a bit ill...

so far the day's been me reading percy jackson (there's a scene in the titan's curse which totally blew me away, it really adds so much depth to the old stories), doing dishes, and watching youtube videos (like this one) making it clear that we need to stop putting AI in robots :/

speeding up before applying the brakes

 so... i didn't just feel that inspiration and go to bed... i ended up starting the original fallout game and realized about halfway through clearing out a cave full of radscorpions that it was 2am already...

whoops :$

the day started really well in spite of waking up from a bizarre and disturbing dream about cartoon depravity. i woke mr smear up, explained the expression "the carrot and the stick" (which already got him in a good space because that's how you ride pigs in minecraft), and informed him that the stick was no screen-time if he didn't participate in the fight camp and the carrot was a homework-free afternoon doing whatever he wants if he did.

he did. and not only did he, but gd quietly called me after picking him up at the end to tell me he'd said he had an amazing day! he wouldn't say anything other than "it was okay" when i eventually got home, but that's just how he rolls...

between dropping him off at fight camp and getting to the office, i spoke to dod who's not just interested in a project i've been cooking up for about a decade now, but who presented an interesting re-focus that makes it much more likely to get off the ground. he (digitally) introduced me to someone he knows who's in the industry i've been dreaming about disrupting, and i'm excited to see if we can push this forward ^_^

the work day itself was manic. by the time we'd safely tested my previous evening's fixes it was already thursday afternoon, which is a not-good time to deploy to production. the deployment was a bit tricky, though it went smoothly, but it took hours of general disarray to be confident that the patch had been deployed safely and successfully.

for our weekly end-of-week happy hour, i convinced my team to order from mr donuts. four vegan donuts and one not (i feel confident they got it on principle), and everyone agreed that a) they were great and b) the not-vegan option was the least successful :P

i ended up leaving the office late again because i wanted to finish up our first official runbook.

it was a pretty peaceful evening (arguments over what to watch during dinner notwithstanding, mr smear doesn't like giving us a turn to choose and we wanted to continue with baking impossible). i was soooo tired after putting mr smear to bed, but we started watching a little more fallout and then stopped when i passed out on the couch.

today:

i didn't sleep well, but i did sleep. i woke up with a sore neck and shoulder, which followed me around all morning. it's still not great but it's much better, at least.

i began the day trying to figure out what the attack on iran means - i still don't know, to be honest - and wondering if ze germans are going to get together or not while SxS is in town. after a quick breakfast, we took the bike - i mean, mr smear walked his bike alongside us - to be repaired, and i had a coffee while gd and mr smear enjoyed sandwiches at cafe eva. the woman i asked for a chair was extremely rude to me, in english - "take the chair and GO!" - and i think she thought we were tourists. what an asshole!

afterwards, we hopped on a bus to the ichilov mall, where i figured out our next steps in getting mr smear a cellphone and we did a grocery shopping. then we walked home, dropped gd and the groceries off, and mr smear and i walked back to the bike repair shop.

eighty shekels for a new tire, gears examined and a new rear brake. nice :)

we picked up a really nice wine for our cousins' seder on monday evening, and we came home for a lazy afternoon. mr smear's been human fall flat-ing, i've almost cleared my daily quests in bloons adventure time, and i even killed all those damned radscorpions before doing most of the dishes so that gd could bake a challah in time for shabbat.

so far, it's been a good day.

a head full of clouds

my neck's a bit screwed, and i haven't been to the gym since last week. this might have something to do with my spending an inordinate amount of time on the couch playing final fantasy ix. i'm thoroughly enjoying myself!

---tuesday:

gd made excellent burgers and we washed them down with beers while watching the first half of the amazing spiderman, which as i remembered correctly is infinitely cooler and more fun than the tobey maguire version. gd went to bed and i spent a couple of hours drying out my eyes on final fantasy, and at 2am i looked at my phone and was amazed at how beautiful the resolution is compared to graphics from the turn of the millenium.

that night i dreamed deeply but couldn't recall a thing.

---wednesday:

i continued playing in the morning, and it took me many attempts to kill black waltz 1. each attempt costs a game reload and clicking through a whole lot of speech bubbles, and after what felt like hours (probably forty-five minutes) i eventually succeeded! after all that i found what zidane told the rest of the group kinda insulting.

i went on a mission to buy an rca-headphone cable and builder bars, and it was such a gorgeous day i decided to walk from vendôme to the starbucks near villa maria to meet vector. our meeting was really positive and it seems like we're going to be good :)

on my walk back to vendôme i really felt the spirit of being on holiday; not just behaving like it but knowing that i have nothing to worry about? it's been a long, long time since i've been this relaxed.

i walked past rejuice! and was pleased to see they have vegan lunches. they're not marked, so i was a little shocked when the woman charged me $16 for the salad i'd taken. seriously?! i then stopped in at a coffee shop next door and their $10 sandwiches didn't sound much better. westmount prices are something else.

i went looking for the commensal that google maps says is in my area, but that turned out to be a lie and ultimately ended up becoming a scenic route to midi 6. at least i got a whole lot of cool photos. i returned home with a full belly, a bag full of chocolate and a head full of clouds. on the way i picked up horseman from the metro and we played an hour or so of good tekken, and i discovered that other great titles are available on psn like abe's exoddus and crash bandicoot: warped. i'll get those when i'm done with what i'm currently into :P

we went for a walk along the canal, then i returned home with plans to rest. SxS and i have been playing phone tag for a while now, and i called him again. i forgot i called and accidentally left a five minute junk voicemail... how embarrassing!

i played some more ffix until gd came home, and we talked about himalayan salt. everyone talks about the wonderful properties it has like it's magical or something, but the only substantiated claims i could find online boil down to "salt isn't bad for you" or "salt can be good for you". if anybody reading this has a link to real data regarding the pink wonder-salt, i'd be really happy to see a link to it below.

gd made INCREDIBLE tortillas using fake ground beef i'd bought, and we settled in to watch oldboy (the spike lee remake). it's a brilliant film and i was blown away. almost everything was fantastic (or fantastically horrifying), the only thing i didn't like was that sharlto copley really wasn't a good fit for the character he played.

i followed that with a good deal of ffix progress.

---yesterday:

i got some hard sleeping done. hard like a log. i woke up to a sore neck and played a little more ffix. not really good for the neck.

somebody messaged me about a craigslist listing of mine, the listing was in english and they messaged me in french, so i responded in french only to discover that they're anglophone and their french is so lousy gd couldn't make heads or tails of it. later i'd discover that the dude was more of an asshole than that; i messaged him to confirm that we'd be meeting and he told me he didn't have the full amount on him and going to the bank would take too long. really?! if i wasn't so desperate to get rid of the damned thing (a model porsche) i would have told him precisely where he could stick his story.

i passed out for a bit, then woke up hungry and we still didn't have lunch. it's really hard to find commensal meals in this area! impossible, even. gd and i walked for a bit on her way to the gym, and we argued about ideological weaknesses.

strong people who feel they have control over their lives don't cause pain, they care and they build. when i say that i give people the benefit of the doubt i don't mean that i think people are by default smart or kind, i mean that they don't intentionally behave like assholes. that doesn't excuse bad behaviour, but it transforms my attitude towards them from anger to pity. gd and i had quite a misunderstanding, but we resolved it before she arrived so that's all good.

printing my documents for my first day at work was a breeze, and i sat down for lunch at satay brothers at atwater market for late lunch. the cashier knows his shit, he was able to warn me immediately that the tofu buns have skim milk in them (??!) and was able to suggest a decent vegan offering. which was delicious! oh, and he appreciated my ren and stimpy shirt, instant brownie points.

i struggled with the ps3 youtube interface for a while because you can't search or browse through channels. i played a little tekken and then took the metro to make the sale. i went into walmart and picked up yoga mats for gd and horseman, then returned home for more ffix and a little nap. gd made a wonderful quinoa dinner and we finished watching the amazing spiderman, supertongue called for advice on how to go vegan (slowly, i told her), and gd and i resumed watching detachment. phenomenal film, absolute must-see.

after being disappointed by the lack of offerings on canadian netflix, we watched a fair amount of the a-team and gd went to bed. i played with ps3 themes and converted some miyazaki films to mp4 so i can introduce gd to them.

---today:

i slept well but woke up with my neck feeling even worse :(
another craigslist listing of mine - my taekwondo gear - had a pursuer and they'd been in touch the night before, talked about meeting in the morning at 11am and had promptly gone silent. i took the gear along as i went to pay a visit to a laser clinic gd had checked out, then bought coffee and waited (writing a bit, i'm quite satisfied with my use of that time) and eventually returned home only to receive an sms to say that they were talking about tomorrow. assholes abound.

anyway, i bought a razor because i have to shave my beard for tomorrow's consultation (damn!!!), tweaked role models and wrote cattle farming, then walked into canadian tire to buy a bunch of random shit we needed. then i spent my afternoon playing more ffix, discovering crackle (a whole bunch of films we couldn't find on netflix!) and crunchroll (great anime experience! but disappointing library).

i've seen an episode of sword art online, watched one of hunter x hunter and sunk into writing this. suddenly 7pm has rolled around and i've needed to do some shopping (and dishes) before gd arrives... uh, oh :P

layers and stages - part ii

[... continued]

sunday:

oh, the rain. the endless rain :(

the workshop for the slam finalists was quite fun, it was nice meeting all the other poets and some of the exercises weren't bad at all. i kinda messed with the program because i had to leave early, but they were accommodating enough to switch things up so that i could get feedback on one of my works before leaving.

did the others really use works they might actually perform? seems silly to show your hand to your competition.

...

the places along the way where i would've eaten dinner were either closed or out of vegan options, and i didn't have time to go shopping. i stopped in at home to pick up the french materials that vfmp had loaned me, scarfed down a frozen meal and went to vfmp's. i would've stayed longer than the minute or two if i'd known that the next buses were going to take forever - i would've known that if i'd looked at the "sunday" schedules instead of the regular weekday ones. that made me feel silly.

i had a stick of liquorice in my jacket which i was very good about not eating because gd likes it too; i wasn't paying attention and she finished the whole thing without me, looking very ashamed when she realized what she'd done :P

i was too tired to move, and passed out on her couch to an episode of angel and the inexplicable universe with neil degrasse tyson. neither of them were particularly engaging.

---monday:

being able to sleep in was amazing!

i spoke to the recruitment agency, and things weren't looking good. i spoke to SxS, and while things aren't so good for him right now it was nice to catch up and introduce him to gd. it looks like we might meet up soon, too.

gd went to see her dentist, which is right next to my starbucks so i sat there working on my comics until she was done. which was a long, long time. it was during that time that my throat began to get scratchy and i started coughing a bit, which would slowly but surely progress until i developed full-blown sinusitis. it's not clear if it's an allergy thing or not, but what is clear is that this is not at all good timing.

once gd was done and i'd eaten something, we went to the further supermarket and found the vegan cheese we'd been seeking the day before. i called up a recruiter who's a contact of hers to introduce myself, then phoned the tax authority to see if i'd be able to pay them yet. gd was in hysterics as i tried to reason with the agent, eventually reaching the conclusion that i'm going to have to call once a week until i'm allowed to pay them. and the interest for not having paid them on time.
the bureaucracy is astounding.

muay thai: i partnered with a girl who's much shorter than me. we worked well, but everything was more difficult for both of us. when i say well, i mean really hard and my body went all rubbery when i started the boxing class afterwards. i was partnered with army brat, who i managed to upset so severely that at one point she didn't want to continue to work with me. on the one hand i felt bad, but on the other hand the second she got angry she actually got off her ass an worked.

we ended the class amiably, and i can't figure out if she was exaggerating or if i was really being such an asshole. i hope it's not the latter, i'm going to do my best not to be that guy :/

i chugged a triple-liquid dinner when i got home (protein shake, orange juice and tonic water, each downed separately) then slowly moved my developing sore throat to gd's. that was when i listened to my voicemail and heard that the company i interviewed for last week wants me on board.

fantastic! only the other company that i really, really want to work for was only supposed to get back to me tomorrow, so at 4am her time i called up my mother for advice on how to delay things.

...

gd may not be vegan, but she's 100% vegan-friendly. her vegan étagé is absolutely delicious! ^_^

---yesterday:

we went to sleep after watching orgasm inc. - it's a great documentary and highlights just how disturbingly bad we are at defining "normal", the baseline for all medicine and psychological treatment. it's all sad and ugly.

i slept well but my throat infection was in full swing; then gd had a rough morning so the day wasn't terrific from the get-go.

i spent an hour or two posting, worried about how to not accept the job graciously, then hopped off to meet with vector to discuss turning one of my poems into a short movie. we bounced ideas off each other until we were both enthusiastic and excited, and he's now done with his studies so he has time to begin implementing. nice!
we were both intrigued to hear tracks from nine inch nails - hesitation marks playing at starbucks.

i shaved, overdressed (!) and went to the offices to discuss my contract and take a tour. everyone's really nice, the initial terms on the contract were what i was going to ask for and everything, including the dress code, is to my liking. i even got along well with the egyptian security guard while waiting to be shown in.

i walked out with the unpleasant feeling that not taking the job would be disloyal after all that.

...

gd's recruiter-friend's partner called me up to discuss my status and what i'm looking for. he has plenty of work for me, but nothing that can wait for a permit application.

a couple of weeks ago i got bloodwork done, and i called them up to see if the results were in.
"yes, sir - they came in the next day."
i love how they let us know - i would've checked sooner but they always say "up to three weeks" :(

...

kickboxing: the jolly moroccan makes for a tough partner, impact with him was killer and i received tons of important corrections from our trainer. i was quite impressed with myself because my breathing and my cardio were just fine in spite of my throat hating me.

i hurriedly prepared my self and a salad before going to gd's. she's having serious back trouble so we watched stand-up for a bit and then went to bed.

zen and martial arts before snowboarding - part ii

[... continued]

today:

the ideal sunday sleep-in! it was beautiful, i eventually got up with a slack face and huge bags under my eyes. i had coffee and chatted with SxS (who's having a seriously rough time) until i was running late for my first yoga class.

...

once upon a time nixon tried to teach me yoga and had the completely wrong approach. today corrected that, we began a program that's targeted to my leg flexibility and neck / back strengthening. it was a tough hour and she made me work hard. she warned me beforehand that i might find myself becoming emotional in a good or a bad way, and i was completely shocked to walk out of the gym feeling incredibly good and slightly euphoric!

...

i visited godmother for a chilled cup of coffee, then returned with plans to do some studying and perhaps work on my comics. i ran laundry instead, played a bit of fallout and posted this all while eating myself out of house and home. now i think i'm going to do the starbucks thing, shop, and maybe *then* be responsible. because today has been an absolutely magnificent sunday to complete a wonderful, wonderful weekend that closed a seriously exciting week.

^_^

---today's post was brought to you by interactive noise - dont kik no line. groovy tune!

sink or swim

wow! how did another holiday weekend disappear so fast? without me blogging at all? i must have been busy :D

i'm currently uploading my mars one application video after an evening spent with an ice pack on my leg and stuffing myself silly on a really good salad and dessert...

---friday night:

the wolverine! just what i like in a comic movie. very, very cool and a lot of fun :)
we did nothing after that but crash in front of the telly until braindead.

---saturday:

we got up early in the morning to join some friends of SxS's on a boat. i wore a peak cap for the first time since childhood, and i'm told it suits me.

we began the boat ride drinking gin and tonic. fort lauderdale's really impressive when you travel past its houses on the water! it's also pretty cool from the ocean. has it really been that long since i was last in the ocean? damn. we stopped for the perfect swim (my first since the operation), and the captain had just finished attaching the tube to the back when the storm broke. massive, threatening black clouds swarmed the inlet accompanied by drenching rain and lightning. driving into that to get to a dock was pretty damned intense! and quite fun ^_^

after half an hour eating and drinking to while away the time (yuca fries and bottomless iced tea) the skies cleared and we continued back. suddenly we found ourselves amidst a group of anchored boats blaring pop music and sharing jello shots, so we joined them for a beautiful afternoon in the water tossing around a hefty coconut and playing fetch with very cute dogs.

afterwards we went to a raw vegan restaurant. raw vegan restaurants are not my cup of tea. they're definitely not SxS's :P

we returned home exhausted. i watched some ufc before my cousin picked me up for a cup of coffee: i haven't seen her in twenty years! we talked for hours, and could have talked more but she had to get back to her family.

---sunday:

SxS and i were both broken after the previous day, so aside from shopping for sports equipment and eating a large and delicious meal at chipotle, we spent sunday on the couch with a friend of his watching americans playing soccer and enjoying moshe kasher's stand-up.

my israeli apartment: not only did i want pg's agent to manage my apartment's rent and sale, but my tenant woke up at the last minute and realized that he needed a couple more days. those cost me a lot of email time typing in hebrew on a canadian macbook. not exactly fun.

we ate take-out and watched pirates of the caribbean (the third one) to round out the nothing day. not good for the eyes, but definitely good for the soul :)

---monday:

monday was such a beautiful day! i *had* to go to the pool. i was on my way there with my hands full of towel and book and keys, thinking to myself that i had better remember to take my cellphone out of my pocket before getting in the water.

i didn't.

iphones can't swim.

i enjoyed the afternoon in spite of this, continuing to read kevin mitnick's memoirs and alternating between feeling like a complete imbecile and laughing at myself and the world.

[oh, man! i just realized that i scanned a photo my cousin brought of twelve year-old me and her kids and it's lost now...]

i picked up lunch at 4th generation, which is a pretty cool place. putting a veggie patty on a bagel surprised them, but it was absolutely delicious.

the drive down A1A (i wasn't allowed to put on ice ice baby but i really wanted to) was cool, that's one impressive stretch! i arrived at the airport on time, the only surprise was having a tsa official look at me and go "eh, what's up, doc?"

i hoped he wasn't talking to me, i looked away. then down, and realized i was wearing my bugs bunny shirt. i looked back up at him and signaled that i got where he was coming from.

"yeah, you looked at me like i was crazy or something."
"sorry, i forgot what shirt i was wearing today."

he wouldn't be the only one to comment. otherwise, boarding was smooth and we paid for it by waiting on the runway for over an hour. the delta staff were very careful to explain that the connecting flights would be made aware of the delay without even insinuating that they'd actually care enough to wait for us. this happened a few times, including just after landing.

detroit is beautiful from above in twilight.

we ran (with me flap-flapping my flip-flops) to get across detroit airport in time. we had plenty of time. that sucked.

after arriving late and close to midnight, it only made sense that they'd park the plane on the side of the airport furthest from passport control. i made it out just in time to not be able to make the metro home.

---tuesday:

it was late, and i made a terrible decision to take the bus and then night-bus from downtown. the bus took forever and without google maps i couldn't find the right bus stop so i ended up taking a cab anyway. all told i lost an hour and saved $5. not exactly worth it.

...

no phone meant no alarm clock, but i woke up at alarm time on the dot this morning.

wr is dating a friend of scrappers?!?! how did that happen? [she's one of the slow couple which i guess broke up] i was most amused by the background check i was asked to provide :)

my new old iphone (refurbished) isn't ready, so i was given the same galaxy that made me love iphones more before. on my way out i was given its big brother, which might be better but i think it's too big to be a phone :P

---the big meeting: our cto didn't like what i had to say at all, and megaman backed him up.
"no, we're going to do it this way. it's a fact, it's already been decided."
"oh, okay then."
... everybody else talks until they finally arrive at the same conclusions and suggestions i'd offered in the first place...
"oh, so all i had to do was agree with you guys to get what i wanted in the first place?"

i realized that wasn't necessary the second those words left my mouth. i'm very glad my "i told you so" was ignored.

---i've been mixing the creatine and the protein powder, and while it doesn't taste bad it does make me feel a bit sickly. i can't explain it better than that.

---finally - back to training! my skipping was horrible, i kept managing to somehow smack the back of my head. my legs weren't responding correctly to kick signals. my back and neck were a bit sore. there were only two of us, so we got an ultra-light sparring session which proved to me that i have a long way to go. it also made me think about the fact that sparring involves being hit in the head, even if not at full power.

hmmm.

the other guy wasn't satisfied with the intensity level when we were done and so got sent back to the punching bags to do a hundred roundhouses with each leg. i decided to join him, and while i'm really proud that i finished them i'm not so proud of my technique (directly related to that lack of a kick response). i also managed to connect on the wrong part of my shin a lot - i didn't count those - so that's what the ice-pack (frozen peas) was for.

i had to go shopping afterwards, and in addition to the usual i picked up fairly cheap microwave stir-fried veggies: *that's* how i'm going to make my salads from now on!

i can't believe that i've spent more than two hours on this post and my mars one application. i've got shit to do tomorrow!

---prosthetic advances usually inspire me, but everyman advances really make me happy. for this message i'm proudly south african ;)

cyberpunk day

it's late on a friday afternoon as i begin typing this all up. i have spent the afternoon glued to my monitor, catching up on comics and news. mostly gaming news. two items are particularly exhilarating.

1. shadowrun returns came out yesterday, and it looks really, really cool!

2. satellite reign's pitch gives me goosebumps. shut up and take my money!!!

also, bionic contact lenses? pretty rad.

---wednesday:

wednesday morning was cloudy with the sun peeking through and a cool wind blowing. it was the perfect morning to skip work to hang around coffee shops and comic book stores! but that's not what i did. i went to work.

after long hours in a design meeting with all of the developers getting excited about quickly and correctly getting out of the mess moonlighter's left us, megaman vetoed with a "fuck it, nothing's going to change on such short notice". "anguish" is a word that accurately sums up my feelings. we eventually managed to compromise, but on this topic we are not playing the same game.

aota has turned wednesday into "office wellness day" by bringing in a massage therapist / acupuncture specialist. usually skeptical, and always cheap, i went in for a half hour session. that woman took little time figuring out what was troubling me and how much pressure she could get away with applying, and after a severely painful experience (through which i almost fell asleep, i had to explain the concept of lekker-seer to her) i floated out of there feeling like my neck and back were made of jelly. it was nothing short of blissful!

strangely, that didn't motivate me to work. ceh's job was to migrate a server setup from windows to linux, and i babysat him through several headaches until very late. it was only after he left that i'd begin to understand just how sloppy he'd been, and we'd spend almost all of my working thursday dealing with that :(

---a reflection in my monitor made me spin around just in time to see the cleaning lady throwing the paper bag containing my eye-drops in the trash. jesus!

---i went to my favourite chinese restaurant for dinner, which would have tasted a lot better if i hadn't burned my tongue on the first bites. why do i do that? it's not like i don't know better, and it's not like i forgot. my brain can be so stupid sometimes.

i watched about half of kung fu panda 2 when i got home, then went to bed early. i was too tired to pack.

---thursday:

a morning of epically long dreams involving bullying and tribunals. i woke up with my eye behaving strangely: was i treating my eye okay? could the way i'd had my face pressed against the massage table done any damage? were my sleep goggles protecting me?

after my ordeal with leap motion, i was most upset to discover that my pre-order had failed anyway. they sent me a code to re-order with the pre-order conditions, but i'm not satisfied by my experience. i hope *this* attempt doesn't get screwed up.

packing was fairly simple, work was super-stressed. only because i was trying to get everything together before leaving and not a lot was going right.

---megaman's made me feel a little uncomfortable by splitting up the team and assigning me to web development. he has a tendency to pigeonhole and aside from not wanting to be left out of our core tech i have a feeling that if that's what happens we're going to end up in deep shit.

having said that, it's not my company and it would be a relief to have less responsibility. i want the company to succeed and i want everything to be great, but most of my job is hand-holding and that's tiring and not very exciting.

---aota played chauffeur and drove me to the airport, allowing me an opportunity to vent before flying. everything was smooth as all i had to worry about was my backpack. i had plenty of time to finish this month's wired and begin reading mitnick's ghost in the wires. walking through the airport in atlanta with pj harvey - when under ether playing was pretty surreal.

it only takes one asshole to ruin your day. or flight. the well-dressed gentleman sitting next to me turned on his ipad as the plane was taking off. now i know there's talk of dropping the rule, but in addition to it being a rule it made me quite nervous. i turned to him and told him that, asking him to please wait until we were in the air.

"i'm just going to continue reading," he told me, quite condescendingly.
"thank you," i responded, immediately wanting him to die a horrible death. the exact thought was "die in a fire," but then i had a vision of that fire being caused by us hitting the ground and instantly regretted it. i hated him for the rest of the trip, at least whenever i wasn't transfixed by kevin mitnick.

SxS arrived to pick me up just as i left the building and it was a long, chatty drive to his place. it was quite late when we eventually called it a night. i put in my drops for the last time before going to bed.

---today:

i woke late after non-stop dreaming. entertaining dreams! i took my morning slow, beginning an internet catch-up that's interminable even if i have found myself at the end of the day with a much clearer to-do list.

one important part of that list was making contact with the agent taking care of pg's apartment. pg left for europe after scaring my tenant off. the tenant will be leaving in a few days, and pg's brother and mother will be handling the hand-off. my mum and i want to sell the apartment, but until it's sold we don't want it to stand empty. so if this man can make our lives easier or organize a buyer, that would be pretty neat.

---SxS took me to whole food market, and my mind was blown. not only by the selection - vegan heaven! - but by the quality of everything available. everything i've tasted from their prepared foods has been delicious! i haven't stopped snacking all day :)

we went out for lunch and i ordered a vegan burger, not realized that "pepper jack" is a type of cheese. all the other ingredients were listed! so it was a vegan burger with cheese. which i had to scrape off, leaving me with just a patty and buns.

*sigh*

the weather here in florida has been surprisingly comfortable. i've been indoors and air-conditioned all day, but those moments outside have been decidedly pleasant. this being on holiday thing is pretty cool, too.

like sixteen

forget the weekend (which was really cool, i might post about it), there's just one thing on my mind right now even though i've just booked tickets to go visit SxS next month.

and that's the gentle giant (gg). seriously, i'm smitten. i was partnered up with her for most of today's lesson, and she's as sweet and pretty as she is vicious when she strikes. she makes me feel like a teenager, all awkward and unsure of how to proceed.

but proceed i really, really must.

visualization

waking up visualizing the talk i was going to have with the cto, the horrible realization dawned on me that there's no way for us to discuss it without my at best implying that he's an idiot.

i'm not a politician, and being especially tactful is not what i do.

aota came in to the office for a short while, and i'm very glad i managed to catch her for a "talk". i shared all of my frustrations and she assured me that a) all the executives are aware of what's going on and b) that that's precisely what megaman's been tasked with dealing with.

i headed back to megaman's office to convince him that i don't need to be in the meeting and to argue with him for over half an hour about the value of commenting code.

...

if i don't give a shit and take things less seriously i *do* feel better. can i keep this up?

---i can't tell if megaman is a victim of buzzword-speech or if he's simply imprecise. regardless, he knows how to make me feel needed.

...

three things made me smile yesterday: my rocket surgeon shirt arriving at the office, buying ministry albums (psalm 69 and the mind is a terrible thing to taste), and one of the interns finding the original syndicate on gog.com.

oh, and leaving early for an eye exam.

---it wasn't hard to find the eye institute, their welcome was quick and pleasant. they did make me wait a bit, though, and i was pretty tired...

the tests went strangely. my right eye couldn't focus on the letters either, and the pressure tests left me in tears. afterwards i was led back to the waiting room where i sat for so long i began to nod off. it was in a haze that i entered the doctor's room...

... where we discovered that my right eye's vision is excellent. perhaps the test equipment wasn't calibrated correctly? anyway, for my left eye i was asked to look through a patch with holes in it and my vision was instantly corrected. science! and piracy. maybe i should just wear a patch instead of dropping almost two large on surgery?

the technician who explained the details and risks could barely speak english; he made everything awkward by constantly apologizing...

---i felt a couple of drops of rain and headed into tim horton's for a cup of coffee. i was inside and cozy when the skies opened up and the rain came bucketing down - once in a while i get it right!

while there i went online and was touched to read a lengthy note by tpj concerning consciousness; he may have missed a few steps in my personal history but he definitely internalized what i was getting at :)

i returned home with no plans to train. i did laundry, chatted for a while with SxS and then overclocker, finished season 7 of doctor who and watched another couple of episodes of death note before going to bed early.

i *was* thinking about working on my comics but i really disn't have the energy.

---today:

special deliveries! i received both my copy of the arden sonnets and my syndicate shirt! it came out beautifully ^_^

so far, it's been a positively meh day at work. the most interesting bit was designing icons for something and almost explicitly stating that cheshire cat lady's input wasn't appreciated...

revisiting: friday

i'm splitting these up. it's been a crazy week.

---friday:

on thursday morning a mail went around the office linking us to our ceo's twitter feed, and i "followed" using mine. on thursday morning i went to sleep worried by a message that he'd signed on to follow me... what bothers me about that is that my feed links to my blog... oh, well.

i slept the sleep of the dead, and woke up to some good emails:
1. moonlighter sending an email praising my efforts (i think he's realized that i'm not just all talk now that i've gotten my hands dirty)
2. pg sending me a valuation for my (and my mum's) apartment that's not disappointing!

work: there's nothing cathartic about discovering that you'd done something right the first time and that it didn't work because you were testing against the wrong thing. the previous afternoon i finished configuring the amazon instance and the reason we couldn't get it to work was because we were using the wrong ip address! for some reason, the management console provides two urls and an ip, but the actual ip that you need to use to access the server is embedded in the first url and not mentioned anywhere else. wtf?!?!

partially relieved, i joined aota and another co-worker for indian food. usually i order spicy and it's just good, but this time? i was crying, my nose was running and i had to take breaks! the funny thing is that even while suffering it was so good i couldn't stop eating :P

...

i went to the saq to pick up a bottle of wine for my uncle. the foxy girl i asked for assistance described the bottle in question as particularly good to go with meat; in particular, very bloody meat. there was something in the way she said it that made me blush.

on the way to godmother's, there was something magic about the slight drizzle blowing through the vent in the roof of the bus.

my uncle was very pleased with the wine, and i think he thinks we're friends again. dinner was pleasant, although he was on form and some of the things he said to and about his kids was pretty distressing :(

i had to wait quite a long time for the bus to the metro, and it was drizzling and cool. not cold, not until just before the bus arrived, but that cool, breezy, rainy night that coupled with the old-school house like josh wink - higher state of consciousness took me back to waiting in the line for unity to open; we were so fortunate to experience the cape town super-clubs...

when i got home i got an email from SxS, and i spent the next hour or two trying to plan a trip to visit him. flights are expensive! so i'm now waiting to hear if i can join him and his SO for a weekend a little closer to home.

smells of not cooking

well, how about that? i finally get it in me to make something (simple, of course), and i don't have anything??. it's too late to go shopping :(

i stopped off at walmart to pick up a notebook, and stayed for ages to talk to SxS because i wasn't up for multitasking. to be fair, i haven't been up for multitasking in a long, long time. i visited the dollar store and didn't find what i was looking for, then hurriedly returned home thinking i'd be in time for the 4.40 showing of olympus has fallen which SxS had advised me to see. i got home too late, so i looked up reviews for eye laser surgeons (it's hard to find negative ones) and left in time to catch the 6.50.

first off, the trailers:
oblivion looks like fun. after earth looks like more fun. red 2 makes me shake my head in sequel-shame, but not nearly as much as fast & furious 6. i'm confused as to how many installations of the series i've missed of the latter, and i'm reminded of the intro trailers to tropic thunder; i'll probably see both.

revolution looks like a good reason to go to the movies. or download illegally.

finally:
olympus has fallen is a wildly entertaining action flick. but what really got to me is the ideology. it's so over the top, is it ironic? is it for or against the current american government and its attitude towards its citizens and the rest of the world? that's me not showering you with spoilers. either way, it's fascinating meta and an invigoratingly classic plot.

i've now eaten too much (toast with peanut butter, tofu, salt, pepper and tabasco), and it's late, and that means nothing because i only go back to work on wednesday ^_^
perhaps i'll try out antichamber: scrapper gave it a good review so i figure the $20 was worth it.

deeply sighing

today was satisfying, although only at the very end. and the end was late.

i've established with everyone short of the cto and moonlighter that we share the concerns and i'm not a single point of failure. we've sorted out payroll issues, i've been given optimistic advice by the lawyer and pretty much confirmed a visit to SxS in florida next weekend. that's so that we can meet his girlfriend and respect pg's visa limitations simultaneously, then apply for her work permit on the way back in.

two of the interns worked through their issues with the builds with my and cls's coaching; the builds were finally ready around 5pm. so was the one i worked through with newk'd: that was a tricky fix that's been a thorn in our side for a while now. i think he's got the message about comment-driven coding now. even cam2 made me happy today, demonstrating that he's taking my last instructions seriously.

the only thing that didn't work involved our web hosting: they're not only expensive, but they're greedy and unhelpful when the tools we're paying fees for don't work. switching from them is now an item on the to-do list.

...

dinner at godmother's was really nice (and pg organized swell gifts), and aside from putting up the curtain rails (we finally have the need) i've ordered myself moo minicards with my canadian number. it's an exciting purchase.

---
my emotions took a dive this week, but i think i'm already back to manic. this delegation stuff is pretty darn cool.

more buck for my bang

i'm going to start with the bit that i still haven't internalized: it's kinda weird news.

let's start with the immigration lawyer: the lawyer costs a bomb even though we paid substantially less than the full fee; at that price she didn't even get to go over our forms. she just sent us a list of things we need to give her to review, and that list included a super-critical form that doesn't appear anywhere on the immigration website. she also told us what we have to write on the envelope. apparently this is an important detail and we'd written the wrong thing. in my defence, i wrote precisely what the guy on duty at the ministry had told me to.

instead of completely redoing the application, we fired off an email to the ministry with the new form and an explanation that we'd fouled up the envelope, what we got in return was a reassuring phone call and helpful instruction. part of the instruction has to do with the salary offered: in order to hire a foreign worker, the company must pay the provincial average salary for the posting / experience level of the applicant.

there was a sensation of "oh, shit" when i was informed that i've accepted (and gratefully so) a lot less than average, and we're talking about enough of a margin that the difference could cover most of a year's tuition at graduate level over here. the sensation wasn't a positive one because everyone up the chain would have to approve the new salary or the entire deal would be off.

i tend to lose confidence in that sort of situation.

and then... relief! i have been given the impression that this will not be a problem. so while i'm not going to be totally relaxed until i actually walk across the border with papers in hand - otherwise they could agree to pay me millions and it would mean nothing - but the outlook on both counts, future employer and the province, is really, really good. it's very exiting stuff!

---thursday and friday:

the weather over the past couple of days has been a little too warm: here in montreal the word "balmy" is used when the temperature rises above -5. no jokes, i find myself opening my jacket and removing my tuque if there's no wind to bring relief. hands feel the cold if they're not protected, but that's about it. it's been so warm that i've actually opened a window, and slept with just a sheet: wtf?!

on thursday i walked into the office to find the snow / salt stains on the floor cleaned and my shoes neatly placed on a small square of a black plastic bag. how sweet :)

in the office, i've been feeling like my hands are tied. i can't work until i have my permit, and there's so much i want to do and get involved in and play with! it's exciting and pleasurable and frustrating all at once.

in the meanwhile, i've been messing about with my own little projects and one of them involves using curl and jira apis. i couldn't figure out what the problem was, and tried everything, and then suddenly yesterday morning i had an epiphany and realized that the issue was security configuration, not software. this led me through a chain of fixes from which emerged a solution so much bigger, better and easier than what i'd previously planned that i ended my day well pleased with myself.

i woke up on friday morning early for a long skype meeting with sorter and -someone. i was five minutes late, -someone was about twenty. the meeting went better than i anticipated but i'm still left with not much faith that anything's going to happen.

i don't know why, but i suddenly felt distant with pg over the past two days. it's better now, but it was disquieting.

playing through on the rain-slick precipice of darkness on the ipad, even if it's the second time because saves are shared between devices, is nothing short of grand! i'm not a fan of their d-pad implementation, but it's not a big deal. i do feel a bit awkward about the ipad in general, though: between games and wired magazine i'm getting great use out of it, but pg's just not getting into it. at least i know she's got the hang of reading comics.

---this morning, i woke up three times from three vivid dreams, each connected somehow to the last.
1. i return to sea point with SxS and ru55 from a party on the same morning SxS and i have to fly. i get ready with the help of pg but SxS is nowhere to be found, i'm late for the flight, i can't find my passport anywhere and nobody can help me print my ticket.

2. walking down to an alternate mouille point on a long road. i help an old indian woman (dots, not feathers) and we start talking, then we're walking along a bridge past the most intensely beautiful scene: i look to my right straight up a giant, calm river flowing through a vast, golden city of skyscrapers. i stop to take a photo and somehow i can see below the waterline, where there are giant turtles swimming downriver towards the bridge and then turning sharply to follow it giving me great turning shots, but now when i look up the bridge seems infinitely long and is slowly sinking. the two of us continue hurriedly, i'm holding my phone above the waterline and eventually, when the water reaches my neck, we give up and swim.

3. i'm on a hollywood-like college campus and it's a gorgeous day for skiing, so everyone's getting ready. but i'm having trouble finding my gear.
then i'm with a family and we're getting ready for the bus to the slopes: they've brought me my gear and i'm expected to hurriedly put it all on because the bus is leaving. we're dressing in a glass booth on the edge of a square where some kind of celebration is going on; the announcer conflates new year's with [the weekend? i don't remember] and suddenly the square explodes with a powerful house beat that makes it difficult to do anything but dance like a wild thing. only the younger members of the family get me. we drag ourselves away to find the bus.

---i caught a link from hido yesterday morning to tri-force Live at ageha 24.03.2012, and i've had it playing while posting this. what a groovy, adrenaline-filled mix!

to quote scrapper on extra credits - god does not play dice: "it's a unique feeling, to hear someone state your own opinion, especially when it's one that you've had such trouble expressing, and when he does it so well."

dramatic return

pg's back! but the story of her return wasn't an entirely happy one. in fact, it was quite traumatic.

---yesterday:

i got up slowly, and was supposed to meet with sorter and -someone online, but they were both ignoring me. it turned out that one was sleeping and the other had (usefully) turned skype's notifications off.

i wasted some time labelling blog posts (as opposed to tidying up a bit), and walked out into a beautiful, sunny, warm -5 day without pavement access. i spent my morning playing with css (my favourite, he says sarcastically), chatted with SxS, and enjoyed vegan cookies that newk'd made.

i left early with a smile, for the magnificent weather and the exciting knowledge that pg would be back soon. i helped a little old lady over a snow-pile and onto the pavement, and entered the metro.

egads - it was hot down there! so much so that i was sweating, and had to remove my jacket and blazer. meanwhile, everyone else kept their coats and hats on and their scarves around their necks... what gives?! everyone made me feel like i must have been having a hot flush or something.

---i arrived about ten minutes after pg's plane landed, and i wasn't sure if i had enough time to find coffee or flowers... so i just stood there and watched the doors intently. i had my ipod going most of the time, but minutes turned to hours and there was no indication of what was going on.

i kept expecting her to walk out any minute.

most people were waiting around an hour or so.

by the time i got to two and a half hours i was losing patience. the thought that pg had somehow slipped past me, not found me and gone home arose, as did my irritation that her phone was off.

what i didn't expect was a phone call from an immigration officer. identifying pg and giving details wasn't a problem, but then i found myself being grilled properly about why we "hid our intent to find a job and settle down" from them the first time. what?!?! as far as we knew, we hadn't done anything wrong. she had all my details from my permit application, and it took quite a bit of explaining while being dressed down.

i'd love to say i kept my cool, but i was panicking and there was even a moment where i was asked a question and my brain froze, leaving me speechless for a few seconds. by the end of the conversation i hoped i'd convinced her that we've been doing everything by the numbers (we have!), and she told me she'd take my words into consideration and call me back.

...

the next few minutes were very, very tense. if they'd have sent pg back, i would have had no choice but to pack up and leave. i had no idea what pg had said to them and i prayed that she hadn't freaked out and said anything that didn't fit - as it was, she used the word "tourist" instead of "visitor" and i had to explain to the officer that english isn't her mother tongue and that either way we'd both thought they meant the same thing to them).

...

she called me back to inform me that they were letting her through, with a stern warning to be entirely open with the border officials in the future (we thought we were!). i was reminded of something that's written on the cic website and that i entirely appreciate: entry into canada is not a right, it's a privilege. and these officials have to authority to deny that entry, regardless of what the government thinks.

about fifteen minutes later a thoroughly harassed pg walked out the doors. we'd dodged a bullet, but my swiss princess was decidedly stressed and unimpressed with her treatment. it didn't help any that it was at the end of a long day of travelling.

---we both had the blues on the bus home, we got tears instead of the joyous enthusiasm that i'd expected from our reunion after such a long time apart. i suppose my anxiety / relief / disappointment / having been on my feet and alert so long all contributed to my feeling very weak and having difficulty carrying the giant, stuffed, officially violated suitcase.

we got home to discover that the caretaker has done absolutely nothing about our doors or our busted toilet. on the plus side, that gives us an easy enough out with the contract (or do i have to complain in writing?).

my plans for dinner were bust, so i ran out to the supermarket and picked up the first thing that looked alright for two people with little appetite: supermarket sushi (i'm pretty sure it was vegetarian, but i didn't care).

worst sushi ever.

---today:

we went to bed early last night and woke up late. aside from a few snarky comments about my housekeeping, cooking pasta for lunch and a few episodes of one piece, we did nothing but lay about or, in my case, label old blog posts while pg rested.

lots - part i

[post divided retroactively]

what a week! most of it tough and uncomfortable. all of that from work: fighting fires, performing a massive technology migration... there were a couple of good moments, though. and there's almost a sense of satisfaction from a job well done.

---tuesday:

waking up at 6am "naturally" to do a tough translation for french class was ugly - amusingly enough, after driving myself (and pg) crazy figuring out how to express certain things in hebrew i was informed by our teacher that english is not only acceptable but is actually preferred. score!

french class: i spent a lot of it fighting the falling of my eyelids. afterwards, i passed out on a couch for fifteen minutes (it think it's going to become a "thing"), and once again didn't meet with wr because he was busy. i'm not offended because i think he doesn't want to talk to me, rather because i suspect him of being incapable of taking enough control of his life and situation to be able to do simple things like take a five minute break.

after lunch our database had a meltdown and i learned all about microsoft sql's concurrency handling. it's AWFUL by default, and i had to go through each and every function and stored procedure to correct for it :(

i had terrible problems to solve, and one huge meta-problem: no matter how urgent the current task is, a hundred other things seem to pop up, each demanding more attention than the last. i ended up leaving late, with the boss upset with me for having other plans.

i arrived at my cousins spaced out and worn out for a quiet(ish) family dinner. i was mostly pretty awkward. afterwards, i was off to ra'anana to meet with SxS, and i'm glad i called him before getting on the bus because he turned out to be having dinner with one of ze germans at etnachta.

people who whistle on the bus should have their lips sliced off.

ze german is no hippie, and he really doesn't get my lack of consumerism. he goes so far as to ridicule my lack of interest in becoming enslaved to a career... i guess that's part of the reason we're not really friends. grootbek joined us later, and i left soon afterwards.

---wednesday:

after a long, long sleep, i awoke to discover that the internet was down for the second day in a row... and urgent work needed to be done...

it was a day of important meetings (with a salad on rothschild in between): the first about my shakespeare paper, which was far more positive than i'd anticipated, and the second about signing the prenup. pg and i are now more or less hitched, i guess.

we celebrated with soya ice cream.

office biltong? the guy i share an office with lived in pretoria for many years, and learned to make biltong at home. what he brought in was really, really delicious. in fact, it was superior to most of the biltong i've eaten in south africa over the past few years.

scr and i began the migration to microsoft azure, and while the actual database stuff was fairly easy to handle (ie i sat next to him bored out of my skull for an hour or two) i ended up having to rewrite and repackage most of our services and the process of getting everything up and running again was infused with a sense of terror. the clock was ticking, and i could hear it.

we left late, having eaten on the office account (mike's place in herzeliya made a huge stuff-up of our order, it was weird), and i was broken again. i unfolded on the couch while pg watched angel, and was ready to go to bed when the boss called (around midnight).

i spent the next two hours certain that he was going to cry. i wanted to cry, too. the errors we were seeing were really weird and distressing. eventually, i spent a half an hour adding detailed error reporting to *everything*, and after another half an hour of testing determined that checking for the errors was enough to get rid of them.

that doesn't make any sense, but it let me get to bed (2am).

---thursday:

i got up at 7.30am, and it took me a few minutes to realize that an sms from scr had woken me and that i hadn't registered it consciously. "oh, well," i thought, "i may as well go for a run."

weird, huh? i've had running every two days on my calendar since last week, and this was as good an excuse as any. the weather was ideal, it was foggy and a bit nippy, and i changed my route a bit so it'd be easier to measure distance. this time i managed about 8.5km fairly comfortably, and while my legs are stiff and sore the satisfaction i derived was immense. what was odd was my disconnection from enjoying it totally; i kept thinking about how i would describe the morning's beauty to others instead of just focusing on enjoying it in the present.

anyway, i hope i can keep it up. running fits my schedule perfectly.

[continued...]

sprayed

after finishing up with the waterproofing, it was time to pull out the spray-paint. i'm *really* pleased with the effect of the bright, fun colours i used on the wall outside our bathroom window, although i couldn't reach all the visible angles so i need to find a better way of painting.

then i went upstairs with our coat stand to spray it orange (it took an entire can to cover it properly) and then put a cleaner, prettier coat on the board we found to use as a table (after taking the nails out). i got a bit of a reddish colour on me as i was up there exposed a lot longer than i'd anticipated :(
it was *hot*.

i then took the thesis (and my kindle) to lunch at the coffee shop next door, which was really pleasant, before heading off to visit SxS, serj tankian - elect the dead drumming his magnificent poetry into every fibre of my being. we ended up in the park with a couple of friends who'd taken their kids out to learn to ride their bicycles - their kids were mostly fine, but the hundreds of others tearing about, screaming their heads off and not looking where they were going? where the heck were all their parents looking?!

i drove back a bit later than i'd planned, had a super-fast shower and got dressed so that pg and i could head off to kc's parents' for dinner. dinner was great, loud enough that i barely got a chance to talk (so i felt better about myself), and for the second time (last night being the first) i found myself saying shehecheyanu and really, really meaning it.

---
this last year has been absurdly stressful, tough and exhausting; it's been filled with problems and issues and near-disasters... but all of that stuff happened on my terms. and there was so much good stuff that all the unpleasant bits seem petty and short-lived. i've successfully completed my catch-up year, having made a good impression on the faculty and on most of my fellow students, and having thoroughly enjoyed such high-intensity learning; i've managed to find work that affords me a fairly comfortable standard of living, i'm living with a girl who i've been with almost a year and who makes me happy, and i'm writing poetry and i'm not the only person who thinks it's good.

contrasting all of that to the four ugly years of studying as a poor foreigner, followed by six nightmare years in uniform - or even just the traumatizing experiences of 2009 / 2010 - and it's all i can hope for to have another year as good to me as this one's been.

maybe... maybe this year the herd will start turning away from the cliff? may the new year bring us all improvements, in all spheres.

---
after dinner we went to visit SxS, who wasn't home yet. his sister and cousin and their spouses were in, though, and we had a good time both before and after he arrived. it was a bit late when we finally left, but i'm guessing that i can thank the last pseudo-ephedrine tablet for that not being too much of a problem.

shit - it's 4am, and i need to run off the unbelievably delicious pavlova before it gets too hot :P

rolling saluna

tuesday:

i went out for coffee after posting, and a kosher-for-passover brownie (not bad, really), carrying my annotated alice and dressed to catch the last rays of sunshine.

what a pity that i'd missed them!

even more of a pity that a chill breeze had taken upon itself to visit us. the one we beg for on our hot summer's days who never pays us any attention? oh, we felt its affections, all right. like ice kisses on the backs of our spines.

i sat with blues brother, his wife and some of their friends in a relaxed repeat of saturday's meet, and was highly amused by one particular incident: a woman asked me what it is that keeps me occupied, and i responded that i'm currently experiencing the spring of the rest of my life... she didn't ask my name, but when she got up to leave she called me "aviv", or "spring", and we all had a good laugh :)

i returned home to rome, then strapped on my blades and went to test the route. i managed the cinematheque to the saluna bar in about fifteen minutes without pushing, and arrived a little early. unfortunately, danny gilboa's performance started half an hour late - it wasn't his fault, but it meant another half an hour cut from my enjoyment of the performance...

while waiting, i got in touch with click-girl (the girl i clicked with on saturday)... i was surprised to discover that i'd misheard her name :P

aside from finding jesus in my mug (or on my mug, as the case may be - i noted the lettering and it took me a few seconds to register the meaning) and having a pleasant chat about manners with an elderly gentleman, i was surprised when, a few songs in, a cute girl i didn't recognize waved and smiled at me.

i waved and smiled back, but she knew i hadn't a clue who she was and commented on it. when she came to the bar a bit later, the penny dropped - one of the women at the birthday party on saturday afternoon. she looked a bit different in the saluna lighting; definitely a lot younger :P
[she's just invited me to go to the sinai - i assume in a group - for a few days... thank you, military service, for providing the excuse]

i left early, unable to bring myself to roll past the stage to hit the toilet on my way out. i very fortunately found a good place just off the road on my way, picked up a couple of things at the convenience store across the road, and joined the group with a few minutes to spare :)

it was a good group, with a really fun route - the new bridge by the power station is styling!

on the way home, i was shocked to find myself telling one of the girls the story of my last year - i awkwardly thanked her afterwards for her patience :P

i stopped by ze irish german to see ze germans and SxS, the simpsons in israel and a bit of mario kart, and to feel extreme pity for some random friend of theirs who shares opinions with my SC about how people do "fun" things just to prove that they're having fun.
*shudders*

i'd consumed a fair amount of alcohol during the evening, and i drank plenty of water while watching another episode of rome before putting myself to bed.

yesterday:

i woke up late (to good music, at least [for some reason, it's not found until i refresh the page]), and took the book to coffeeholic for breakfast. i was in need of some warmth, as it was chilly again, and i stopped a couple of times on the way to soak in the sunshine with a giant grin on my face.

the chef was out, but i sat on the corner anyway:

a) the dude may have been quick to take my coffee order, but he promptly forgot to deliver
b) he stopped halfway through my ordering breakfast to deal with someone else, and i had to recall his attention when i registered that he'd disappeared
c) no matter how much i asked - no sugar
d) my salad consisted of a barely sliced cucumber, a barely sliced tomato and dry lettuce
e) instead of making me an omelette with meat in it, he produced a plain omelette with two (2) slices of pastrama on the side
f) although he offered to replace the cream cheese with avocado, it never arrived

as i've informed the chef: no chef, no breakfast. next time, i'll just continue on to their rivals on the next corner - oh! i suddenly remembered! a minute further on is a really impressive breakfast. i'll be doing that, then.

i went hunting velcro (for my pockets) and jellybeans.

* i wished ru55's wife a birthday filled with jellybeans and rainbows - or rainbow jellybeans - or even jellybean rainbows; of course she'll know what her present is. and because last year i made a serious faux pas by giving her a serious gift, this year's can be enjoyed by all :)

on my way, i found a brilliant new toy - a bubble sax! i sat testing it outside for a while, and it's very, very cool.

i discovered that the latest release of ubuntu comes with pitivi already installed, and it didn't take me too long to splice the videos i wanted to upload.

and then wr arrived. my word - it's been almost a year since i lent him bill hicks live, noble brats, leary on drugs, and the boondock saints. of course, he hasn't actually watched / read / listened to any of it.
*shakes head*

we had a fun hour chatting over rum and hot chocolate, and then i had to go north. i stood reading the iliad on the bus to ra'anana (how am i always getting on the full ones?), and was picked up by the dean's son. i was horrified to discover that our last session was almost in vain, and spent the next hour or two drilling him on breaking down problems.

at least he started getting it in the end. it was nice to see his father, as well. it was also nice to receive an envelope with a passover gift in it. [that's an absurd way of stating that i have finally, after 5.5 years of keeping my nose clean, done something *not* by the book - tahoma, if you're reading this, know that you were an influence]

i was planning on getting into the database structure already, but now that he has a better idea of what pre-pseudocode looks like i've tacked on the data items as a bonus effort of his new homework.

i walked back to lev hapark, where SxS picked me up. we went through to yogi's, to be amused by his daughter and discover what he hasn't been up to the past few months. he really needs a kick in the ass, that one.

we then went to mmf's. this is the first time either of us have seen his daughter - which reminds me that i didn't even consider what gift to give them - and after SxS left he and i sat down for a ton of decent sushi and a lot of chatter. as usual, we ended up talking business towards the end and it would appear that we've had some crazy miscommunication over the last couple of months...

i caught up on comics when i got home, watched half an episode of rome and then crawled through the shower and into bed.

---while petitioning - with army support - to save a community centre, i was charged with carrying a spider to some unremembered purpose.
i placed it on my hand, slightly concerned that it would scuttle off down my arm, only to have it begin hammering away painfully in circles until i managed to catch it by the legs. i cannot remember if i was able to stop yelling immediately...

---piraro - just for me

this morning's wake up call

drifting off

i got to the show on time, but it began an hour late. i left just as the band was getting ready to get on stage, and i had to run to catch the last bus :/

i met up with SxS, his cousin and ru55 in a park, we chatted for a bit before dropping ru55 off at home - i gave his fiancée a birthday present that she absolutely loved: i didn't realize i was the only one to get her a serious gift, though :$

dinner was amazing: we all ate way too much and after such a long day i've been passing out constantly since. we went off to mmf's place, where yogi, grootbek and our irish friend joined us, and i crashed on the couch while they all watched or played poker. now i'm going to get some real sleep because the last couple of days have really taken it out of me!

oh, and i spoke to my mom and finally admitted (i was asked not to tell, but i can't keep secrets from my mommy) that i'm not going to the kibbutz for passover after all - our cousin and her husband are separating. that leaves me with a couple of choices, and what i really want to do is find out who of my friends aren't celebrating and do the big meal in the style i referred to the other day.

flaked out and all soldiery

right - this was a HARD week. i was completely exhausted when i returned to base on sunday... exhausted to the point where the raising of a limb or the flexing of grey matter was a chore. with that as the background, sunday and monday were two of the most physically demanding days, both mentally and physically, that i've undergone in the last half a year.

this week was spent in the deep desert, being drilled and living like real soldiers, sleeping in crappy tents, dealing with no water, eating rations and trying to remain focused on the million-and-one different things that we had to remember for every step of the way.

without getting down all the details, i can say that on the whole i enjoyed the experience, although i got horribly sunburned and i had some frustrating moments with my platoon (although the team's getting on much better). i even managed to get a couple of good words out of my commander :)

today i got *really* lucky, after missing the bus from the base i hitched a lift with a cute major - she not only got me to a good place but she gave me a few pointers as well, and i managed to find a bus travelling from the previous base i was assigned to and they let me ride with them until be'er sheva. after three days without showering and working my ass off, i had a good shower before changing into my clothes for mmf's wedding and heading off to meet up with ru55's fiancee to get a ride to the event.

the wedding was really nice, we had a lot of fun, and i just completed my mission as designated driver.

now i'm at SxS's, about to crash for a couple of hours before heading back to base. my commander was so impressed today by my offer to do the book report on my partial reading of the hebrew one that he gave me an extension which will make all the difference! in addition, my day-job commander has okay'ed my vacation so although there's no "final" in the military i'm pretty darn close to it.

this week i was way more relaxed, and i've found my groove. it's a bit late as far as the peer-review is concerned, because there're a bunch of assholes who've been discussing openly how they're going to screw me over - but there's not much i can do about that so i'm just carrying on and hoping for the best.