saturday morning eye of the storm

 i just sent scrapper an overshare response to "how are things on your end" and i feel it's worth recording for myself:

from my side, i guess these are the times the chinese always threatened us with (“may you live in interesting times”)…

mr smear managed to close out his first year in the arts school without getting kicked out (though he managed to come close on a number of occasions), and in general he’s been maturing in front of our eyes and he’s doing infinitely better than this time last year. he just started learning to rollerblade this past couple of months, and he’s enjoying our rides much more than he was on a bike which is awesome. also, he’s joined one of his friends at a keitana which turned out to be a survivalist school-themed LARP where they learn how to construct and use weapons and have lectures on pyrotechnics 😛 

gd’s been having a rough time, we discovered recently that she’s either been celiac or has had a really intense reactions to gluten* for a long time and it just got much worse the past year or so. the good news is that a couple of months gluten free and her mind and body are in a much better place than they’ve been in years.

* this is obvious karma for us describing ourselves as “allergic to gluten free” for most of the last decade 😅

as for me, 2026 so far has been pretty wild. i’ve been getting deeper and deeper into AI both at work and in my side projects, and i can tell you that the entire industry has completely lost its mind. the tools are at the same time amazing and utter garbage, everything is hype and we’re watching tech leaders making the most ridiculously foolish plays right in front of our eyes. it’s mass psychosis and it’s disturbing as all hell. 

aside from that, i’ve been struggling on and off to figure out how to print my comics and i'm becoming more and more frustrated that none of the indie comic creators in israel seem to be interested in banding together and making it easier for everyone…

otherwise, the financial strain of living hand-to-mouth in tel aviv is “business as usual” stress, and so far the summer weather has been relatively kind, and i’m sitting on a balcony in a cool breeze and life is, somehow, pretty damned good.

...

last night was rough. emotionally and psychologically, gd and i had an argument about how we each see the world (when it comes to defining "normal" behavior in other people after the very upsetting start to season 3 of infinity train) which resulted in the always-uncomfortable "agree to disagree". that was followed by a particularly rough night, first with the hip flexors and then with indigestion that forced me upright when i desperately needed to be horizontal and took about two hours to calm down enough to let me get back to sleep. then it was morning, and after about half an hour trying to sleep in i gave up and got up to make myself coffee and sit on the balcony and make peace with my life.

...

rough night or no, rough times or no, in this moment right here and now i feel particularly blessed. the weather is beautiful and calm, the birds are singing, and our highway intersection and its surroundings are full of greens (and bright yellows), and interesting tall glass architecture (which i love because it almost makes the buildings camouflaged against the sky), and in spite of all my anxieties i seem to doing okay right now.

jumpy

 in spite of my stress and my lower back (which has been griefing me for quite a few days now in spite of my consistency regarding iron and magnesium supplements), i managed to sleep last night.

i started the day reading more watchmen* (my favorite chapter, where rorschach is caught, also omg my son just read this stuff and i'd forgotten what it included), then sat down at my desk to get productive and realized that my son had left for school having forgotten his sports class shoes. so i jumped to get dressed, caught a bus (traffic lights and bus timing perfect), and dropped off his shoes and grabbed his sandals with literally two minutes to go until the bell rang.

* oh, i totally forgot - on friday evening i discovered a massive collection of books and comics i'd bought over the years from humble bundle, so i've read a couple of battlestar galactica comics (specifically one about time warping into parallel universes) and watched part of a video about the original series, and it's really shed new light on the reboot. i love how it's all canon, while all very different.

i came home and have been struggling to get shit done, though i did managed to put in a claim and complaint for gd's physio sessions.

the tami4 technician arrived, wore his shoes into the kitchen, reconnected the machine and pushed the button. water flowed nicely. it was apparently an "air bubble", and we could have had a slightly easier weekend after all.

i washed the entrance and kitchen floors, and i've made myself a coffee, and in half an hour i have a pre-hackathon meeting. i'm really having trouble getting my head in the game, i hope i "wake up" soon...

numbers games

 i was having a fine evening, and getting stuff done, right until i decided to look at my bank account about ten minutes ago. now i'm enjoying a mild anxiety attack. i feel like i last checked just a few days ago, and a whole bunch of those expenses weren't showing up... i know that a significant chunk of it is for the summer day camp, but still...

...

the rollerblading was fine, mostly positive, but the first, say, fifteen minutes saw me practicing patience in a very deliberate way. once we got to the park, mr smear opened up a bit and we both had a good time.

we started watching grease over leftover dinner, with lots of pausing to provide context 🙄

i think i need to find a way to relax, last night's sleeplessness was bad enough :/

reset: for better and for worse

 i didn't sleep well last night, but that's psychologically speaking. gd and i are feeling horrible about her toe, and praying that it doesn't cause complications down the line. it's demoralizing for us both.

i was enthusiastically writing up my article this morning when i overheard mr smear's phone call to gd - he'd been playing with a stray cat (a well-known one) at school, and got scratched :(

i arrived at the office just in time for my team daily, but once again it was only two of us. i hadn't yet updated my manager, so i sent him a message to avoid surprising him in our evening one-on-one.

most of the day was heavily invested in struggling to get the AI to help me plan the data migration work, and then put together an actual good prompt for doing it. it was tough. it was ridiculous. i went around in circles for ages on even the clearest prompts and requirements.

it was about ten minutes before my one-on-one that i was able to push what i believe are the right code changes to origin, and then i nervously joined the meeting.

i explained my position, my sentiments regarding the project itself, and how i've essentially just spent two days completely resetting the project to what it should have been from the very beginning: a migration of close-to-identical data to a new data store, wiring it up, and being able to verify that the customer experience hasn't changed significantly. and that we could ask questions about whether the customer experience is ideal at a later stage.

i was relieved to receive encouraging feedback; he's happy with my approach, he's been on top of things in general, and it's clear to him that i'm not doing anything that doesn't make sense considering the awful and ever devolving constraints. we then reopened a previous conversation we had about ownership, and he was intrigued by some of my suggestions, and the meeting ended on such a positive note that, in spite of gd's toe bringing us down, we're celebrating the end of the week with g&t and wine.

recalculating

 today was a DAY. i managed to get some annoying admin taken care of after mr smear left for school, and sort out an impending price hike from my mobile carrier, and try to help prepare gd for her day ahead with the cigarette bugs.

just before i left the apartment, i pulled the trigger on my PR, knowing that my bulgarian support team was on holiday and praying it wouldn't break anything.

i was still extremely anxious on my way to work, but i got in touch with my mentor and managed - through a bit of blathering - to explain the situation. he, positive as usual, assured me that i'm doing great. he asked if i've verbally abused anyone in the office, or physically abused anyone in the office, and said that as long as neither of those things have happened and that i'm doing my best to operate as professionally as possible, i can stop worrying about my misjudgment hurting my employer's reputation (and therefore my standing with my employer). and that besides, everyone must be fully aware that i'm doing damage control on a system that has been left in utter chaos due to bad management... just like everyone else's.

so that was really comforting, and although i still have leftover anxiety, it's worlds' less than it was.

i came in to find my deployment successful, which was another relief.

then i was asked by one of my client team's how long my contract is for, to which i replied, somewhat evasively, that i don't really know. on the one hand, i'm learning a hell of a lot of what i'm supposed to be learning. and it's a great place to hone my craft with (somewhat) less risk. on the other hand, it's a really toxic situation. although apparently on par for the course, these days.

i discussed yesterday's achievement of disabling all of the garbage that was unknowingly being injected into each and every prompt with a couple of people, two of them heavy, experienced users of AI. not only was i pleasantly surprised by their finding my personal skill-sharing strategy intriguing, but they'd never known about the extra weight either and one of them asked me if i wouldn't mind giving a short talk to the group about it 😅

i spent some time crafting a message asking for help with the new data pipelines, got called in to consult on a language identification problem and was surprised to find myself effectively running the meeting, and then i left the office to return home for lunch, stopping by the supermarket on the way home and finding precisely the kinds of plastic containers i was hoping to pick up for gd, who was apparently up to her elbows in cigarette beetles.

i believe i have a handle on their life cycle, now. it looks like if we manage to, erm, contain the present situation, we should be able to put a proper stop to the next potential generation. unfortunately, gd's had to throw out an enormous amount of very expensive food, which is thoroughly distressing.

i think i may have mentioned that money's a little tight right now...

after lunch, i returned to the office and began redesigning the monitoring dashboard. i would spend most of the next four hours troubleshooting the results, half of that time refining my agents' troubleshooting and self-improvement skills. while the improvements after yesterday's cleanup were palpable, by the final stages i just wanted to tell the AI "don't be an asshole" even though i knew that that probably wouldn't be constructive :/

i also finally delivered that report that had been causing me so much trouble - once the product guy gave me the green light this morning, it took about six hours to run...

i received an unusually helpful answer to my plea for help, from a couple of guys i've worked alongside before. one of them was in the office and introduced me to the two people who can actually help me, who very luckily are also in our office. and now i know that the work i've been planning to do - AI-guided, of course - has been entirely wrong 🤢

once my dashboard was looking good, i made my way home, dropping off my bag and picking up my child (essentially rescuing him from the trauma of experiencing gd freaking out over the nuisance beetles all afternoon) and heading to the container store. we bought a bunch of stuff - it's a little more expensive than the supermarket, and not quite as high quality, but it was a bunch of different shapes that we needed - carried everything back home and then continued on to the supermarket again, picking up a bunch more containers there.

we got home in time for a take-out dinner (gd was in no position or mood to cook), watched casual geographic and learned about gay giraffes, which was awkward.

we chatted with my mom, but mr smear brought the vibe down considerably when he became uncooperative at shower time. then, to make matters worse, he decided he needed to toilet. for almost an hour. it was very late by the time he finally had showered and brushed his teeth and gotten in to bed. i don't have any idea where we're supposed to get the patience from.

it's been a day. i think i'm probably going to go to bed soon. i'm expecting to sleep a bit better, he said out loud and then instantly regretted it.

sleep journal entry

 heavy anxiety before bed - about 45 minutes before i managed to fall asleep - and after waking up (i got up an hour early to go to the toilet, and couldn't get back to sleep after). i was physically okay, though. so there's that.

discouraged

 the more i worked today, the more despairing i felt. i'm extremely anxious and overwhelmed, i feel like i'm drowning. every layer of the onion i peel shows me that the onion was far larger and deeper than i thought; or, at least, each wall that i break down thinking it's the last one turns out to have two more standing right behind it.

it doesn't help me personally that i understand that what this company has done to itself is dangerously stupid: most of the companies in our industry, it seems, have shot themselves in the foot by attempting to drop headcount and fill the gaps with AI. even if we were using the latest models this would be a stretch, but with the model pricing being raised across the board (the drug dealer's sample period is over) and the israeli shekel having strengthened significantly against the dollar (making actual developers more expensive to the company), it's a race to the bottom and everyone's losing.

the only positive thing i managed to do - i'm not holding my breath about the disappointing reports i put together after five additional hours of investigation, or the plans for tomorrow so that i can ask for help - was to disable and migrate all of the thousands of lines of irrelevant and contradictory repository rules and skills that i didn't realize were polluting each and every AI context i've been working with up until now :/

...

gd and i were a little late to the school meeting this morning, because of course we hit ridiculous rush hour traffic and of course we decided to get off and switch to the light rail just as we got through the worst of it. we had a good, productive hour with the councillor and new homeroom teacher, though, some of it was funny and some deeply concerning. the homeroom teacher did a little snooping right after, though, and called me to clarify that the incidents were not quite as serious as they'd been made out to be.

that was an enormous relief.

gd stopped at azrieli by herself on the way home, which was the first time she's felt safe enough (from a health perspective) to do so in many months. i came home and dived into work.

i had a really rough afternoon, and i don't know if my regularly running back-and-forth to the bathroom was the result of something i ate, or the anxiety that was slowly building up.

either way, my first real "break" was after mr smear came home, and we had a very long (an hour or so) family meeting during which we discussed All The Things that had come up during the school meeting. it was mostly positive, but the big stuff is him needing to learn to avoid alienating his peers, and find more ways to connect with them.

oh, yes - mr smear came home sporting a weird rash on his hand. gd and i suspect that it might be from the borrowed wrist protectors, but it didn't seem to be getting any worse so now we think he must have brushed past a bush or something that he had an allergic reaction to.

because we were super-bored, and not stressed about anything, we discovered that in addition to everything else we have an infestation of cigarette beetles - or something very similar :/

by the time we had dinner i didn't have much of an appetite, and neither did gd, though we managed to eat anyway. after a couple of great episodes of infinity train (we're into season 2, now), we chatted with my mom for a while, fortunately discussing her birthday present and not making the mistake of getting her something she doesn't want.

...

we also discussed my cousin who was scammed a while back, and taken for literally everything he had. not only has he just gone from wealthy to destitute, and not only is he seemingly making every effort to not get back on his feet again, but gd made a good point today and now we're all really concerned that he's essentially dragging his son down with him, because nobody else is going to put him up.

it's just awful.

...

i honestly don't know how i'm going to sleep tonight, but i have to. i'm so nervous about all the steps i need to take in the morning, and i feel just horrible about everything.

burning down

 i'm replaying today over and over, and no matter which way i turn things over, i'm in shit. and it's absolutely my fault, regardless of context.

there's something magical about the accumulation of various anxieties and stresses, and bad decisions made under high pressure, and now i've just broken the cardinal rule of my employer by grossly misjudging my time estimates and having to ask my client for an extension, which i'm praying i won't need. this is literally me praying for a miracle, and lots of extra hours.

but my life doesn't allow for focusing. that's not how things go.

i spent most of my hours today laser focused, in high gear, generating reams and reams of code and then reviewing it with a fine-toothed comb to make sure i didn't miss anything with my own eyes. with one agent doing a fix-and-detect cycle, and another ensuring that the first agent's changes still fit into the grand scheme of things, a task that i thought would be quick and easy and had scheduled for sunday evening past, i finally completed its first subtask after 6pm on wednesday.

and this is just the prep-work so that i can get into the real stuff.

...

gd's toe's looking and feeling much better, so much so that she decided not to see the surgeon today. let's hope it keeps getting better 🤞

...

mr smear had a good day today, although he's already doing his usual thing of latching on to any bad memory he can grab hold of and ditching the fun parts. his class went on their annual hike, a proper tour through the cave system at beit guvrin, and from the photographic evidence it seems like he had a good time in spite of himself.

...

i started my day today reading a bit more of stranger in a strange land. so far, it has not aged well. i'm now ending my day trying to make some progress on my AI harness, or climbing into bed at the earliest opportunity. i actually slept pretty well last night, which was amazing, and shocking too. but my lower back / hips were doing their thing all damned day instead, and i'm nervous about what tonight might bring. at least i was able to shower without triggering hell's itch again. i think i'm starting to peel now...

morning vibrations

 bad vibrations, that is. not only did the last month hurt financially a lot more than i was expecting - it's been a while since i was this stressed, and we have summer camp expenses to worry about - but it appears there's been some kind of mix-up with our municipal fees so i have to deal with that now.

[chokes suddenly for no apparent reason]

and then i just spent more than half an hour fighting with my new headphones only to come to the realization (after upgrading the firmware) that the microphone is dogshit and i get better results from my laptop mic. i was finally getting through a really good recording, with good flow, when a series of honking horns and ambulance sirens wailed, because i live on a fucking highway.

so i guess i have to record my hackathon "ad" at night only, then.

...

gd seems to think her toe's doing a bit better, and i don't know if i should be relieved, or concerned that a new surprise is in store.

the perpetual trauma train

 sleep journal entry: i was so tired i didn't record the precise times. i got up in the middle of the night from a combination of things, part of it was minor lower back / hip discomfort, but mostly it was restlessness and belly discomfort.

i'm really tired, and after a relatively good sleep (even if it was in two parts) i feel like it's just from being psychologically and emotionally on edge for too many days straight.

...

i never left the house yesterday. my team daily referenced the outcome of my sync with my manager - we had two items on the agenda that were affected - and afterwards one of my teammates contacted me and we sat on a video call for almost two hours, discussing the challenges in our work environment, debating viable approaches, and i guess a bunch of me reframing things to motivate him as much as myself.

between those three morning talks, i feel like i'm starting to shape my "mic drop" for when i leave; i told my mentor and my boss that i don't want to end my contract without having had some noticeable positive impact, and i feel like i'm starting down the path.

my afternoon was spent doing "more of the same" ticket preparation work, where, unfortunately, "more of the same" refers to going around in circles with AI and uncovering missing aspects that i somehow never encountered before. i took a break for dinner, and then had to put in another hour after, but i think i've done sufficient scoping. it worries me that it's real work, across a wide range of aspects of unfamiliar moving parts, and i only have two weeks to get it all done...

...

gd's thoroughly traumatized. not only does it look like the surgeon didn't get all of the nail out, but she's been reliving the surgery itself because the anaesthetic didn't take. she's terrified of losing her toe, and her foot with it. so we're heading out in an hour or so to see a friday doctor and hope that there's someone who can help her.

i felt really bad all afternoon after an incident; she was venting, and i was trying to be supportive and constructive, but at some point she yelled stuff that was so unhinged* i couldn't take it any more. so in addition to not being supportive when she needed it, it took additional time for things to cool down enough for her to resume and get through what she needed to get through.

* it may be unhinged, but it's understandable. all i needed to do was STFU

"the universal pressure cooker" - i feel like our family's a microcosm, and the world just keeps raising the temperature of the stove while lumping more shit into the pot.

...

at least mr smear and his friend sorted themselves out yesterday. they both apologized, and hopefully they'll both be better to each other.

over dinner we finished watching dead poets society. it's generated some very interesting discussions, but regardless we all enjoyed it (or, appreciated it, it always feels weird to say "enjoyed" for a tragedy) and i was surprised by how much i remembered for a movie i haven't seen since i was mr smear's age.

...

i don't know if elite's turkish coffee is "good" coffee by whatever arbitrary standards the world has, but i really enjoy it. it's a taste and smell that makes me feel like there are wholesome constants in the world. with all the madness around me right now, opening a fresh bag is like an emotional override.

mid-day update

 i'm sitting here on the carpet in my little office, back against one of the nice new beanbags that finally (!) arrived this morning, in a state that's a solid mix of coronavirus light-headed dizziness and post-meeting euphoric relief.

our meeting went so much better than i could have anticipated. after i presented my findings, the boss made it clear that he believes the new data to be more accurate than the old data, and that he's happy to overrule the product team's requirements. this means that the bulk of the work i've been wrestling with simply falls away, and what's left is a very small effort for bonus points, and pulling the trigger. the only new thing that came up that needs doing happens to be something i've already built for as part of my investigations, so all-round this has been a massive windfall, a huge stroke of luck for me.

...

gd's really traumatized. she made an effort to wash her toe again this morning, and i just inspected it while she's resting and it seems to me to be looking less angry.

i just chatted with my mom, who i was delighted to discover has actually taken the day off. i hope she's able to have a good rest and recover.

...

right, now for a coffee and another meeting, and then i think i'm going to go for a walk to pick up some replacement watch straps that were just delivered to a courier pick-up point.

prophesy

i left later than i should have to pick up the car (of course), and arrived at the address to find no cars, having been explicitly informed by the app that no further instructions were necessary. i tried calling the car sharing service, but their lines were down, and it took a while (and some helpful people) before i happened upon the vehicle and realized that the directions were simply wrong.

i made the pickup, and told waze to get us to the airport, and it gave us all sorts of weird directions that neither my mother nor my son were able to read. so my stress levels were kinda high by the time we finally made it onto the highway going in the right direction. when we finally arrived and parked, the signage led us astray (it's incorrect on shabbat, at least, i'm not sure what happens during the week) and sent us in circles with broken elevators before we finally entered the terminal.

at least from that point things went smoothly, and we had time to be ripped off for coffee and sit down with my mom before her flight. after we saw her to the security checks, we made our way back to the car with only one incident (i didn't realize we could only pay for parking at the exit, and made the mistake of getting out of the car and walking all the way back to the locked up pay machines), and aside from the shock of how expensive an hour or two's parking was the drive home was uneventful (fortunately, because we encountered some really insane drivers on the way home). i dropped mr smear off at home, returned the car, and on my walk home managed to get hold of the service hotline and complain and was offered a voucher as compensation.

this afternoon, after returning from the car ordeal, we watched the starship troopers movie together. i've always loved starship troopers; it's not a perfect movie, but it's a fun action film with some interesting ideas. so i'm embarrassed to admit that it took me this long to finally get around to reading the book.

in addition to what i wrote earlier, it's also surprisingly prophetic, considering that it calls out the kind of irrational 20th century ideology that's infected the west and the movie producers who tried really, really hard to misrepresent, subvert and undermine everything the author was trying to say. that's not an adaptation, it's a deeply disrespectful bastardization. thank god the original ideas hold up so well that so many people didn't "get" the "satire".

we're about to enjoy a late dinner, mr smear and i have showered and taken out the recycling, and my nervous system is bouncing up and down because i keep thinking about tomorrow's tasks.

i guess i'm really grateful for having had a couple of days off, a lot of which felt like actual days off even though i was pretty busy.

pause

 i'm a bit anxious because other apartments are anxious, we've just moved in and people are beginning to worry about metro construction that's supposed to be taking place beneath our building. sometime. no concrete dates or approximate timeline.

i don't want to even think about moving anytime soon. we're invested.

...

i got a little bit of work done on my first AI harness attempt, learning openspec (in general simple to use, but lots of nuances for people who care about the potential implications of esoteric configuration options), and i read a bit more of never again will i visit auschwitz, which i'm preemptively annoyed by because until it gets to the TDS part, it's a brilliant and important work. i also read a little bit of the sample i got of heinlein's starship troopers [pauses to purchase the full book on kindle and complain how the pricing in canada is a lot more than in the US], which has long been one of my favorite movies and i've yet to read it.

our ikea delivery, which was scheduled for sunday, arrived early ^_^

my mother, wife and i took a bus to the mall, picked up a few things and had an emotional and dramatic experience picking up her new glasses - first bad dramatic, then good - and we were considering stopping for coffee when we realized that we were running out of time to pick up mr smear and get home and get to the museum of illusions "on time". so we hopped on a bus that turned out to make things more complicated (thanks, transport app), and ended up getting off at a supermarket to do some last-minute shopping for tonight, discovering as we entered that the supermarket is in the process of selling off its stock and shutting down.

we got home, mr smear got home, and then we realized that's gd's toe was in no condition to go anywhere :(

so my mother, son and i caught a bus to the port, stopped for a coffee, and arrived at the "museum". unexpectedly, there was a lot of activity and a queue, and when we arrived at the head of the queue we were instructed that no food or drinks were allowed beyond that point. so we went back to the tail off the queue, and i uncomfortably drank my coffee as quickly as i could, gave up the last bit when we got to the front, passed security, and only then learned that we'd been in a queue for the wrong thing, and that the entrance was around the corner, and that there was no actual "time slot" in spite of what our tickets said 🤦‍♂️

that aside, the museum of illusions was fantastic! it was especially cool seeing all the illusions i saw jason pargin talking about just this week in real life, and we got some great photos, and the three of us almost lost our cookies in the "vortex", which was hilarious :D

we came home to put together a shoe stand and make challah-peño (my mom's first!), mr smear's been "doing homework" (pretending to read his history texts), i've been fiddling around with my first AI harness, playing slay the spire 2, and we're about to start getting ready to visit our upstairs friends for a friday-night barbecue.

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.

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.

terror storm

ever since i was a child i've loved electric storms, and found lightning and thunder comforting. but last night's lightning strikes were so close that every single one sounded like an iranian attack had caught us by surprise and that there'd been another impact nearby.

thanks a bunch, mother nature.

so, ironically, during a night with no actual attacks i got a whole lot less sleep and a whole lot more anxiety. fuck you, headless chicken that remains of the IRGC.

 ...

so i was a bit rough around the edges today. in spite of that, i feel like i got *some* good work done, and i helped mr smear through his programming "homework" (human resource machine), and he did (with a little bit of shouted encouragement) do a reasonable amount of music practice, and we continued to use in-shelter time-outs to learn zoology with ze frank, and while we didn't train this evening, we did do some serious stretching.

we received two deliveries today: a small care package from my client, and a slightly bigger couch. we're happy with the care package, but we're particularly happy about the couch.

the post office saga was embarrassing, the guy who i'd sent it to had to go twice to the store to pick it up, and i'd had to have a real fight with the representative who eventually ended the call because she was upset that i was upset and taking it out on her. specifically, because she started saying "the next time you use our services" which i immediately cut off with a tirade of why i would never (voluntarily) be using their services again.

what's it called, when you pay for a service and they don't provide it to you? it's on the tip of my tongue...

slightly more reasonable snacking levels today, but a big, late leftover lunch after the couch was delivered, and gd made latkes for dinner (for the flax), and mr smear and i had vegan nutella on the last of the marshmallows.

we watched another strip search elimination, unfortunately mr smear loved the sex-adventure comic and "sass" a little too much and it was an ordeal to get him to not repeat it all to my mother 🤦‍♂️

omg it's really late again. we keep eating late, and mr smear's been going to bed really late, and it kind of throws off my clock.

overload

 it scares me that today's tuesday. and that this coming weekend is our last one in this apartment, and that there are so many unknowns, so many things i might have forgotten to take care of.

and there are knowns, now, too. gd went in to the new apartment today to take photos, and she called our friend down to verify that under the gas plate, the cupboard smells like gas. after a literal hour trying to get a technician to come and take a look (the first forty minutes were spent talking to the wrong gas company), the guy came in and confirmed that there's no leak, that the gas is off, and that the gas plates are probably broken 🤦‍♂️

there're water issues, too. blocked drains all round, and the toilets don't flush properly. and damage under the kitchen sink. and a whole story with the "jacuzzi". so we now have a plumber coming in - scratch that, he's busy, a plumber's brother coming in - first thing tomorrow morning.

and with all this noise in the background, i had to bail on a couple of hours' work this afternoon. i feel like i'm making good progress though - i've figured out a decent way to compare "my" model's results with what's in production - but it's a long, manual process and it's full of surprises.

oh, and at lunch today my boss/client and my team were having a very strange conversation about alcohol, drugs and chronic illness and i couldn't figure out if i was following what they were saying or not.

i didn't even talk about how my day began, yet - dishes, and reading moon knight: what a completely insane experience, and i mean reading it, it's properly destabilizing. i can't believe mr smear read it already.

oh, yes: i don't know what came over me, but i told him a really dumb but funny joke that could be potentially offensive to white saviors. he thought it was hilarious, and then i had to caution him about not re-telling it and now i'm wondering if i'm going to get in trouble for it :P

after he left for school, i took care of a bunch of things and then gd and i walked to the bank. it was a beautiful morning, and a good opportunity for some time to just walk and talk.

this time everything went quickly and smoothly, gd signed what she had to sign and i picked up the chequebook. we then went our separate ways, and when i arrived at the office *just* in time for my daily, i saw that she'd gotten home and received a message from the bank informing her that she'd left her ID there... so she had an additional experience on top of having to spend the day keeping house and packing for the move.

dinner was very late, but it was amazing. gd made a great ramen, with a yo egg on top with a runny yolk. it was glorious.

mr smear, in addition to doing his hebrew homework before i'd let him read in english (we're doing a weird thing since yesterday, hopefully it's not a bad call), decided that he's exhausted all the english stuff he wants to read and, entirely voluntarily, to both his parents shock and amazement, picked up the hebrew translation of kazu kibuishi's amulet (הקמע) and is devouring it.

...

my brain is throbbing, it's past 10pm. i'm going to make myself a cup of tea, and attempt to complete my employer's onboarding. and hopefully, hopefully, get a reasonably good night's rest.

going around in circles

i feel like i'm trapped between rocks and hard places.

i have a sinking feeling that i'm out of time for the embedded model solution i've been working on, but at the same time i have the boss *strongly* encouraging me to continue and i do feel like i'm *almost* there.

last night the woman from the morning contacted me to say the apartment's too small for her.

i had a rough night last night, the new cream doesn't seem to be doing its thing. gd was up all night too, so we were both a bit miserable this morning...

mr smear, meanwhile, woke up just a little *too* excitable and loud :/

for both him and me, the early morning was predominantly about moon knight and getting the midi device playing nicely with garageband.

then we hopped on a weekend bus to his friend's place, and i moseyed on to the museum (picking up a coffee next to habima on the way), and i spent about three hours tinkering with local LLM development until my battery almost died.

i came home for a while, now i'm on my way to pick up my boy and return home again.

addendum: anxiety diet

 the anxiety diet continues to be effective; i dropped below 77kg yesterday for the first time since my early twenties. scrapper's comment on saturday about expecting me to have learned to handle stress better is rolling around my head a lot.

oh, and i showed mr smear maynard taking down a drunk fan and continuing to sing. he's agreed that as long as he doesn't have to do mma, he's ready to get back into jiujitsu. i told him and gd that we'll look into that as soon as we're over the move.

a lost work day

 am i sick? i don't know. but i was soooo tiiiired today, i had trouble not falling asleep at my desk, and then during a lecture. i've also decided that just like i'm lactose-intolerant, i'm also meeting-and-presentation-intolerant. similar symptoms, too: i get real sleepy.

what did i achieve today? i managed to find proof and convince social security that they were supposed to pay me unemployment for december. the packing boxes arrived today. i got mr smear through his hebrew homework (even if it did take until 22.30, and there was occasional drama), and i managed to post our apartment on two sites even if i don't believe anyone's really going to want it (i had three people respond so far, each ending up more disappointed than the last).

oh, and i got authorized for time off for the move (and its follow-up ikea-day), and i had a positive first "roadmap" session with my mentor.

work-wise, i'm not sure i got much done.

...

i am feeling a lot less anxious about the move than i've been since last week.

i'm feeling very anxious about what's happening in iran.

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