a calm before the farewell

my mom and i caught a bus to azrieli, we picked up a couple of things and then moved on to try and meet up with the mongoose. we got off the bus at dizengof center, walked up to the square to pick up a coffee, then walked all the way back to the square to meet up with the mongoose, only to end up having to leave again to meet him on the way back to the square again :P

at least we managed to see the baby and deliver her gift! the catch up was quick, and then we were off to do some last-minute shopping before coming home for the afternoon.

gd wasn't able to go anyway - isn't able to go anywhere, with her toe being so bad - so my mom, mr smear and i walked to an unfamiliar synagogue (relatively) nearby.

at least i wore pants and not shorts? i was hands-down the least appropriately-dressed there, everyone else was in white button shirts. the liturgy and nusach were familiar from my youth, and it was really nice not only to have a shared singing experience but to hear mr smear singing along as well :)

for mr smear, his reaction to the baby right behind us and the woman with tourette's on the other side of the mechitza was (relative, for him) admirable, my mother seemed comfortable enough from her side, and although i did feel like an outsider it was overall a good shul experience.

i'm not sure how gd would handle it, though. she's softened on the sitting separately thing, but i think she'd find following along a bit tough with her own marked siddur (she wouldn't be the only one) and i think the biggest obstacle is how far away it is.

kiddush and dinner were quite late, but both were lovely. even though my mom's been here for two friday nights, this was the only one where it was just us doing it our way, together as opposed to on a video call.

we were all pretty tired last night, but to keep things interesting my mom started getting sick and we have to take her to the airport in less than half an hour... FFS.

and gd's toe is only getting worse...

and mr smear still not 100%...

i just finished reading starship troopers:

"Controversial". I've read some suggestions as to why it may have been called controversial. I'd heard many times before how one of my favorite movies was intended to be satirical, and failed.

I've also served in the military, and am living through a crisis in the west where the people yelling loudest "for" democracy and "against" fascism have no idea that they've succumbed to communist, terrorist propaganda and are, in fact, begging for the opposite.

With that in mind, there's nothing "controversial" being peddled in this book. What is in this book is a phenomenally accurate depiction of military service, warts-and-all, a compelling notion of civic duty, and - barring one technically heavy pre-battle scene - it's a thrilling glimpse into what galactic war could be like.

...

someone proferred the name of the 2D side-scrolling aerial combat video game where you battle waves of enemies and shoot down ducks in between levels that we used to play on the ps3: minisquadron!

sleep journal entry

 i watched a couple of youtube videos, then played slay the spire 2 until 1.30am (i feel like i might finally on a winning run with the necrobinder, but i'll probably get my ass kicked by a regular monster soon).

between my brief wake up just after 3am and my alarm going off at 6.30am, my hip discomfort returned. the hour and a half i spent trying to get back to sleep was disturbed my son being loudly sick and lower back pain. all-in-all, it wasn't a great night.

i've just had my coffee while reading more starship troopers (it's always an experience reading something that gets the army), gd's just informed me that our balcony door is going to need replacing soon and my stress levels just spiked.

my only real, personal plans today are to build ikea furniture that's been sitting around. or do whatever my mom wants to do, and be sad that she's leaving this weekend already. not only is it great spending time with her, but in spite of the rare friction she really does make our lives easier even when she's just hanging around.

sleep journal entry

 i made a point of staying up late* even though i was really tired. i took an iron supplement during the day, skipped the magnesium. during the night i experienced intrusive thoughts and hip discomfort, though not particularly intense.

* some development, and another failed run of slay the spire 2

i was traumatized by mr smear's alarm going off in our room at top volume, i was dreaming and the dream exploded into a nightmare of violated anger, with no recollection. so that's how i woke up. i combined my morning coffee with some starship troopers to calm down. it captures the concepts and atmosphere of basic training superbly.

and then i sat down to take care of the usual morning admin stuff and received an email that i'm being fined for traveling in a public transport lane even though i'd returned the car prior to the incident being recorded. dammit.

it feels weird to be going into the office today.

the twelve tasks of tuesday

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

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

...

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

it feels like the twelve tasks of asterix.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

it's okay

i went straight to bed after posting last night. we only had two interruptions with attacks, but that meant about half the night with mr smear sleeping in our bed, which isn't terrible, but it's considerably less comfortable than him not.

another warning about an impending attack this morning, when i needed the toilet. so i held it in, and then suddenly it was a half hour later and no sirens...

i finally got up a short while ago, from a dream in which i returned to uniform with nystire: on our way into the base, nystire got bumped by a car driving out. it clearly hurt him, but when i wanted to stop the car and get him checked out he angrily yelled "i'm FINE!". then there was a large group of soldiers who'd just been sent off to a row of buses, and a whole lot of them had left behind bags and satellite phones. and then, finally, i was being briefed by a guy who - i only realized while he was literally climbing around on his desk - had no legs, and there i was, having been complaining about my boots not fitting (not to him, fortunately). after amusing him with a physiotherapy story, he told me about an experimental procedure he'd been denied because his operational capability wasn't impaired enough "by one point on the evaluation", and i woke up from the two of us laughing hysterically while he danced around his seat showing me how ridiculous that was.

now i'm back in reality, gd's sleeping, mr smear's reading (and trying not-very-subtly* to get to play oxygen not included like he did yesterday, in spite of his screen time punishment because of the extenuating war circumstances), and i'm having coffee and wondering how to approach my work day today.

* why is that always such a difficult word to spell?!

"professional" is being professional when you really don't feel like it and nobody's watching.

the brain slimes out the headcase

i woke up from a strange dream where i reconnected with my first branch commander and his family out in the middle of nowhere. when i got up i couldn't remember his name, but firefighter came to the rescue and i could return to a reality in which it really doesn't matter :P

 today began with an argument over the couch, which *i* had thought we were keeping, and which i'm now scrambling to sell before the move. and i tried to put our mattress on facebook marketplace, but because i used the word "orthopaedic" it was identified as medical equipment.

i could only ask for a review on the grounds of "it's not offensive in my country" and "it was a joke",  and the review was obviously just as automated as the original misclassification. and then, to make things worse, i couldn't edit or delete it because it had been flagged, and i couldn't re-create it either because it was detected as a duplicate 🤦

a sweet couple came to look at the apartment this morning, right after i returned from the hardware store with putty and shpachtel and a replacement showerhead for our last week because ours sprung a leak last night, and they absolutely loved it and we all really clicked over our rick & morty and adventure time pictures on the walls.

i arrived at work a bit later than usual, fielded a call from a scary-looking woman who asked incisive questions, and then dived into work.

...

work today - aside from forcing myself to take a lunch break - was completely ridiculous. as a hired "expert", i probably shouldn't be reveling out loud in the fact that this is my first mlops experience, but my gods, this is a discipline of complete masochists and/or trolls.

my first success was navigating the docker resources required to actually run a model in an ml instance, and the next was figuring out how to request predictions. but then i had to deal with logits and understand that the model i was using didn't include the labels it was trained with. so the data scientist who helped me yesterday jumped in enthusiastically to help, and the two of us were like kids trying to find buried pirate treasure with a riddle of instructions and no idea which map they referred to. or whether or not that map was accurate.

by the end of the day, we'd managed to synthesize a massive dataset of sample sentences (in 235 different languages) manually using google sheets and gemini, and we'd coerced a cursor agent to run a script against the deployed model that took our dataset plus a guessed label mapping and try to figure out what the mapping *should* look like, and we were surprised and amazed when the first iteration showed a fair amount of success and gave us a great starting point.

just before i called it a day - it was already much later than i'd intended to stay in the office, and my brain felt like it was oozing out my ears and nostrils - my boss/client appeared. we enthusiastically caught him up, but he didn't like my original plan, which was to give the project until the end of today and then make a call to use a temporary fallback to avoid blocking an end-of-next-week delivery.

"you should be more optimistic", he told me.

now i'm at a point where i know i'm not going to work over the weekend, but it's going to be bugging me that i might need to work over the weekend in order to make this deadline.

...

i walked home, had a very serious discussion with mr smear (he made a bad call today, and may have initiated some real bullying by some kids in his class), but then moved on to more positive things and dinner and showertime and bedtime were great.

i'm sure i'm forgetting something, but it's late and i need to chill a little.

...

it’s (hopefully) mr smear's second-last day of his no-reading punishment. yesterday i told him that if he reads hebrew it counts as homework, not reading time, and he’s embraced that loophole and is thoroughly engrossed in a hebrew graphic novel i bought a while back :P

half-and-half

the runny nose seems to be calming down, but i'm still battling with the cough. i was dead tired when i woke up this morning. most of it went great - mr smear got ready and ate his breakfast without a fuss, and he and i had a talk about poor writing (telling instead of showing, creating completely impossible situations) vs good writing (using the example of hawthorne's intro to the scarlet letter) - but it went awry at the very last minute when he refused to rejoin our family whatsapp group, presumably because we revoked his admin privileges after he abused them by deleting a message from gd that he didn't like :/

i don't recall too much from the early morning, but at around 10am i was just getting into doing something constructive when i got a call from mr smear to say he wasn't feeling well. so i dressed up for the rain and caught the bus, on the way arranging for his teacher to give him permission to leave. i instructed him to pick it up from the secretariat, and waited outside the school gates.

fifteen minutes went by before i lost patience and called him, and discovered that he'd (allegedly) misunderstood the instruction and had instead sat down to read on his phone while i stood in the rain.

the return home was frustratingly long. he was being very dramatic, i wasn't quite sure if he was really ill, and i was feeling a bit resentful wondering if there's some other parallel universe in which i get to use a bit of this "unpaid leave" i had plans for for myself.

to be fair, he's pretty damned sick, high fever and everything.

i spent an hour or two working on one of my side projects (in preparation for another one), and then hopped on to a couple of video calls to meet my new "lead" and our "sales" guy. those quotes are because our company works very differently from anything i'm used to, and the more i understand the better the whole deal seems ^_^

i asked if it didn't make sense to bring my start date forward, and i was told that if any of my preparation for my first day takes significant time, to bill them for my hours once i'm on board.

i'm impressed.

afterwards, i sat with mr smear and gd and we watched some youtube videos, then decided to watch the dark night. 

👌

i rushed to do as much of the dishes as possible, then headed out (in the rain) to the comics library for a very interesting evening; it's kind of like a book club, but without the usual book club nonsense. and i ended up walking out with kitaro for mr smear (recommended after i told them about our difficulty determining age-appropriate stuff for him) and the department of truth, which sounds insane.

i've just got out of the shower after spending some time discovering interesting synergies in balatro, and i'll probably be going to bed soon. for all my griping this morning, i ended up having a pretty good day.

...

i've just learned from someone who's seen south africa's list of veterans, that i'm not on it.

surprisingly, that's quite a relief.

dust in, dust out

the jackals are howling again - they've been a lot more brazen the past few days, and they've been going at it at all hours. also, very confrontational with dogs being walked even during daylight (O_o)

should we be worried about mr smear?

yesterday:

yesterday began with a fight - kind of the usual - between gd and mr smear about getting out of bed. and then mr smear stayed home again, i tried to take him to school but he threw up just outside the gate (ewww!) and so we turned around and walked back home, stopping on a bench for a good talk.

oh, yeah - and a handyman came in to clean up the underside of our kitchen sink, which entailed us clearing out, cleaning and repacking everything while simultaneously getting mr smear ready for school. the fun part was using sealant on a lifted edge of the sink :P

i started my word day cleaning the dust off everything after the workers were supposed to be done, but within a very short while it was clear that they were far from done, and all of our belongings and our lungs were coated with yet another layer of dust that i'm praying doesn't include asbestos.

it was a frustrating day of tweaking kubernetes installations and annoying the guy i'm reporting to, who was working remotely which made it feel worse. but i was also involved in some product discussions and i feel like i contributed.

eventually i hit partial success, just in time to interview another coworker and dig in to the all-hands / happy hour treats.

i didn't have another "nap attack" episode yesterday, but i did make an appointment to discuss them with my doctor.

as has become standard practice, i came home and sat with mr smear for his maths and reading. unfortunately, he got frustrated with how i explained a word to him and gd - who'd been holding on to the morning's grievance, amongst other things - completely lost it.

the day ended with a different kind of fight, or family meeting, or family meeting with lots of yelling, but it feels like we got through to mr smear and gd expressed some stuff that's obviously been hurting her for a long time. as she said - sometimes it's only when you start to heal from something that you really begin to realize the depths of the trauma.

anyway, it wasn't a fun experience for anyone but i feel like we all were in a better place by the time mr smear left the table to brush his teeth and climb into bed.

...

i passed out watching monk, dragged myself to bed when gd went, and slept fitfully through the night, dreaming a lot of very realistic dreams about returning to the army.

today:

this time mr smear actually went to school, and i went in after him to find someone to help me understand why it was so hard for him to get to his friday juggling classes. eventually i got some hints, and i sent them to mr smear on whatsapp, and i returned home.

gd went to her sewing class, and i spent much of my morning trying to do something constructive* while my stomache did flips for no apparent reason. or maybe it's related to the fact that i seem to be coming down with something - i don't think my sinuses and throat are going haywire just from the dust exposure.

* i surprised myself by actually succeeding, i published an article about apt-key being deprecated

until i received a phone call from mr smear, telling me that he'd been in a classroom by himself (he hadn't seen / had chosen not to see my messages) and was accosted by two of the bullies in his class. understanding the worst, i managed to get him to go to his juggling class in spite of how furious i was with him for giving anyone an opportunity to hurt him (not as furious as i was with the bullies, and not that i was blaming him, which i explained to him later), and on my way to the school to pick him up i consulted with my mom about whether it makes sense to go to the police when the school's clearly not willing or able to protect our children.

i think that's exactly what i'm going to do from now on.

fortunately, when i sat him down and got the details out of him it turned out that the bullying was only harassment, not assault, which was a huge relief. and aside from that incident it appears that he actually had a pretty good day.

we walked home, and the two bullies were walking across the road from us. i awkwardly gave them angry side-eye, which they noticed, with my tongue between my teeth. in retrospect, i handled that wrong and i should have been giving them an evil smile instead.

next time.

mr smear switched bags* and we caught a bus to azrieli to meet up with gd and buy underwear. and snacks. oh! on the way back from dropping mr smear off at school this morning i picked up a couple of things, one of which being pistachio-covered cashews. which seems ridiculous, but even more ridiculous is how much like cookies it tastes.

* one day, we pray, he's not going to need to carry an epipen around with him wherever he goes

the rest of the afternoon has been pretty quiet, only slightly interrupted by a call with ze german who i've been trying to help... it's not that i don't want to help him, but i'm completely out of bandwidth while he doesn't really have anyone else for what i'm assisting him with.

...

i've spent a lot of time these past couple of weeks trying to get my head around what i'm doing for work, who i'm working with, what the expectations are. it's been a difficult time personally, but i feel like i'm going to need to start opening the throttle and doing a lot more than my nine-to-five. it's also been made clear that i'm expected to go on-site occasionally, which i've assured gd won't be unsafe even though i'm not entirely confident that that's true.

...

politically it was a difficult week, or couple of weeks. between the stories (and eulogy) from the recently released hostages to the amount of disinformation online - specifically mastodon and vimeo, which make it impossible to report.

day two

 i didn't sleep enough, but i think i slept relatively well when i did... although i might've needed to come sleep on the couch for a while, i don't really remember.

i don't recall much from the morning, either, really, but i did pick up mr smear's new coat from the post office, which led to minor encounters with "humanity" (i got a guy to move his massive bike from right outside the door without trouble, and i kept relatively cool about the woman who jumped the line by taking a number when nobody else had).

i initiated the process of registering mr smear for the art school, which i'm hoping was in time. 

after days of being messed around by the plumber our landlords put me in touch with, he admitted that he had no idea how to help us with the sink, but he also made it clear that it's an old sink that needs to be replaced, which was useful information to have.

i called the dentist to try to postpone my upcoming appointment that i've been waiting months for, and while i was on hold i fantasized about the moment someone picked up and putting them on hold. i got so in the mode - i was on hold for a while - that when a human being finally answered i found myself uncontrollably speaking like an automated message :P

between various chores / admin thingies, i left the apartment a bit later than i'd planned, but it's much quicker to get to the new office so it wasn't a big deal.

the work day was interesting, not easy but not difficult either. socially it was a bit awkward - i haven't got a handle on who's who yet - but there was a fun moment during a process meeting when the four of us in the room suddenly realized we all served in the same branch of the army and the language changed immediately :P

something very special happened today: it was the first time that mr smear came home all by himself.

i made a point of not drinking the "good" coffee, but i found myself dragging a bit in the first meeting and really struggling in the second.

i walked to the supermarket, picked up snacks for mr smear's field trip tomorrow, came home and did some hebrew reading with him, we had a good dinner (not easy, but good, as we had to coerce him into eating the green beans and asparagus) and watched the simpsons, said good night to my mom, and then entered bedtime...

... which was complicated, he had trouble getting to sleep for a long time.

i think i've caught up on all the stuff i needed to get done this evening, and i think i'm going to go to bed shortly.

grinding down the week

yesterday:

work yesterday was hard, i was keenly conscious of my interactions with my coworkers and boss and generally feeling shit. not as shit as tuesday night, which i was anxious for most of, but still pretty shit.

i spent most of my work day generating test data and testing postgres support for and performance with jsonb columns. the results were... inconsistent. and i learned a lot about the limitations. jsonb in a postgres database can be incredibly powerful, but the table designer has to pay careful attention to the possible operations to make it work and ours... didn't.

last night i was in a zoom call where a group of us was briefed (unofficially) by an idf spokesperson. it was generally interesting, but of particular interest was him repeatedly expressing an (informed) opinion that really doesn't fit with how our government's been operating*, but is very much in line with what a whole lot of us believe.

* ie. listening to our ignorant western allies even though we have a much better idea of what we're up against and what's at stake

today:

still with the shit feeling around the office, but a bit more positive. socially the day was me just being (relatively) under the radar, but while i definitely got a lot done, it was a miserable experience. as far as i can tell i'm handling this in the best way we could under the circumstances, but the solution isn't sparking much joy. and it still needs much more serious testing. so that's what i'll be doing on sunday.

when i'm not taking gd into the heart of bnei brak for an emergency dermatologist appointment that i managed to organize for her this morning. i may have yelled a little bit.

mr smear and i had time to play some a virus named tom between my getting out the shower and dinner time, and that was quite a fun experience. he apparently had a pretty good day today, particularly at mma where the jiujitsu instructor wasn't feeling well so the kids had a class that was basically sports games and socializing.

that's fine by us.

...

i looked into dental insurance again this morning, it's not a thing. i'm in real pain (last year's filling "fix" damaged a nerve that radiates deep into my jaw) and gd's apparently got two teeth threatening to crack. we literally cannot afford to do anything about either right now.

inspiration

 yesterday:

the exhibit was very interesting. getting there was a story, i don't know if there was a GPS issue or not but my bus app was playing silly buggers and i ended up making some lucky guesses to get there on time.

on the way i bumped into a combat fitness instructor (identified by her shirt), who was happy to answer questions that i had on behalf of someone online who's trying to get into that role and asked me if i could help. so that was convenient :)

the first part of the exhibit was very, very long. and there were no seats. and as a not-journalist, i found myself both amused and frustrated by the differences in calibre of the people in the group with me. some of the things i saw were new, one piece of footage of an unsuspecting victim driving straight into the firing line of a rocket launcher was unsettling.

not as unsettling as being in the same room as the actual trowel that was used to behead a thai worker, though. the room was filled with weapons, documents and clothing, along with certificates from hamas' kids' training camps, and the more information we were exposed to the deeper and darker the picture it paints.

it was a look into the abyss of the darkest recesses of the human spirit.

eventually we moved to a screening of footage from october 7th, and although i'd braced myself, all i needed to hear was the vague description of what we were about to see and "nope" the fuck on out of there. i understand the journalists having an obligation to bear witness, but i didn't need to see it with my eyes or hear it with my ears.

just the description alone was more than enough to rattle me.

in a completely different vein, the conversations outside on the way out and home were riveting, constructive, and encouraging. i feel less alone, and i'm warmed by the enthusiasm which some of the group who "get" what we're facing embraced my vision.

it was also cool seeing gco again. and i gave a pep talk to a couple of cadets who were on duty as guards.

i was utterly bombed (poor choice of words) by the time i got back home. i passed out for a while, woke up to a small fight with mr smear about his homework - gd did a great job coming to the rescue - and then mr smear, my mom and i went out to dizengoff center and the shuk for what ended up amounting to a nice, but rather hot, walk before dinner.

inscryption, then bed.

today:

i definitely slept better. i worked from home today, and actually got stuff done in spite of my noisy family all around me. mr smear's synth practice this morning was very impressive, and on the whole mr smear was very cool today. including at the climbing wall in the evening, even though he was really unhappy about the heat. it was ridiculously hot today.

otherwise, my mom and i took him to his hebrew tutor and i ran a quick half-hour errand in the heat to the post office depot to pick up what turned out to be nothing but a single sharpie :/

ali express ftw...

anyway.

two amusing things at the wall: i made a deal with mr smear but worded it badly, and he thoroughly enjoyed following my instructions to the letter in precisely the opposite of the spirit in which they were clearly intended. i conceded graciously, we had fun, and he'd already done a lot of good climbing anyway :)

the second was a harley rider driving by taking himself very seriously. mr smear: "i love it when motorcycles sound like farts" 🤣🤣🤣

it's late, and the next few days are full of Business. i'm probably going to go to bed soon.

...

my mom and her best friend were talking today, and a thought suddenly struck me - they're both aware that they need to get out of south africa, and they're both nervous about where to go and how to manage. so why not make aliyah together, be close to their families, and provide each other with a good buffer and support while settling?

post-proc

tues:

most of tuesday is too far away to remember.

mr smear and i having a reasonably good time accompanying gd to the hospital for her nerve block, and doing our usual laffa dinner.

gd's nerve block going well, but her being kicked out to the waiting room by an ignorant nurse

high-stress on arrival, trying to keep gd from interfering with her own recovery and mr smear going from uncooperative to downright nasty

a really shitty bedtime followed by a really shitty evening - otherwise pleasant, but ended with a literal poke in the eye when things were finally feeling calmer

yesterday:

interesting spring rain start to the day, gd feeling surprisingly good

a very intense day, our first release of the tool i've been working on

picking mr smear up from school and taking him to the therapist

afternoon tummy troubles, suspecting the barrista oat milk

dropping mr smear off at home, returning to the office for an hour or two

arriving home just in time for dinner after bumping into an old teammate

another rough bedtime and bad feelings

falling asleep on the couch

today:

moving to the bed at 3.30am

a better morning, "hot mama takes smooshy poo to school", gd starting to hurt again

fetching half the pharmacy

pod coffee

trying to help move stuck military equipment

losing an hour to forgetting to connect through my phone

the excitment of mr smear passing his first jiujitsu grading and being given a grey belt

finding and reporting an abandoned kitten, mr smear running off to sob while i tried to help

scrapper surprise, with a challenging conversation

putting mr smear to bed after a pretty good day

exhausted. brushing teeth and showering cost me, but i really needed to get this all down. i need to help mr smear finish his homework tomorrow morning, and i need to make up some work hours once he's in school. i'm stressing about a million things that need doing and i'm trying and failing to avoid thinking about the geopolitical situation.

gods help us all.

located

 my mother did manage to find the song! i'm not just impressed by her getting her hands on the books, and relieved that one of the books was the right one, but i'm also proud of her for reading through both of them well enough to find what i was looking for ^_^

it's called "אני מחכה לאחי החייל" and i've no idea who wrote it, but i definitely got the first verse right. i also didn't expect it to hit me right in the feels, i tried reading it to gd this morning, but at some point just couldn't speak through the sobs.

אני מחכה לאחי החייל

יש לי אח גדול,

בן עשרים אולי,

הוא יכול לעשות הכל,

וקוראים לו שי.

אחי שי הוא חייל,

הנה הוא פה בתמונה.

שי הוא חייל גיבור

ושומר על המדינה.

אם שי הולך למלחמה -

אמא נורא דואגת;

אבא שומע רדיו כל שעה

וכולם יושבים בשקט.

והנה בא מכתב

משי שלנו - הטוב;

"אני בריא וחזק

להתראות בקרוב-בקרוב".

אלוהים, לך אני מתפלל -

לגמור את המלחמה ודי.

תן שלום לישראל.

שיבוא מהר הבייתה שי.

...

tuesday:

i'm struggling to recall tuesday. i vaguely remember that there were at least a couple of points of interest, but i'm at a loss right now.

one thing i do remember, though, is that at bathtime i explained to mr smear how our ears downsample and we only hear about a third of what's said to us, and that we complete what we hear with context and expectations. with the implication being that we literally can't hear what other people are saying when we're upset.

yesterday:

yesterday started off scary: i woke up fine at 5am to go to the toilet, but on my way back to bed my back began to spasm. with some help from gd i miraculously managed to stave off the full spasm and by the time i got to the office i was more or less okay. i'm still nervous about it, though.

also, it looks like i might well have psoriasis.

it was a busy morning. gd and mr smear were both upset because gd, tired and in pain, spends forty five minutes every morning preparing breakfast and lunch and mr smear doesn't want to eat what she puts in front of him. the conversation that we'd had the night before came in handy: i asked mr smear if he could make himself calm enough to hear what we were saying, and he said "no". so i stopped trying, and on the way to school we managed to talk everything out.

this morning went much better.

i spoke to my mom, who informed me that uncle hate has shuffled off his mortal coil and that she was asked not to fly to montreal right now, which i guess is a bit of a relief. i sent my aunt and her kids condolences, glad that gd's supportive of me playing nice in spite of how they treated us.

i managed to get an authorization sorted out at the clinic, then picked up my favorite onion bagel, then went through to one of the clinics at the hospital to find out if and when gd had an appointment, and went on a side-quest to explain to management that their signage is insufficient. they were shocked, disbelieving, and i'm not 100% convinced they're going to do anything about it.

the work day went well, it was long but had some good moments.

the south african foreign ministry appears to be serious in threatening south africans who've served in the idf. assholes.

in the evening i watched another episode of unchained with gd, then tried to write an article i'm been stewing over for days, then crashing.

today:

mr smear was good today, breakfast went well. gd's on a mission to gather her thoughts about our cape town community, i'm going to help her put out an article (on whatever medium) in her own voice because she's really upset about how woke jews around the world are behaving when they have no clue what's going on over here.

post-weekend

friday cont'd: learning about the three hostages that were accidentally shot. this is absolutely devastating.

having read this article, i'm left with the impression that the current conditions are extremely unclear for our soldiers - hamas has made it very difficult to identify terrorist from unarmed civilian, and are employing all sorts of tricks to trap them - and it must be nigh impossible to adhere 100% to protocol under such circumstances. i cannot imagine how i would handle myself, and i don't want to imagine the psychological horror that the soldiers who killed the hostages must be going through / will be carrying with them for the rest of their lives.

yesterday:

the biggest part of the day was assisting mr smear with his holiday homework, in spite of it being very non-sabbath stuff. it certainly wasn't fun, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been, and i was very proud of him when he finally completed it - having made sure that i hadn't been doing any of it for him.

in the late afternoon i had a long chat with swordschool, which resulted in a list of interesting things to see and hear (as usual), one of them happened to be a spoiler for inscryption but at this point, i'm going to keep playing and i'm going to keep enjoying it.

i'm definitely addicted to bacterial takeover, even my son says so.

we watched another chimera ant episode of hunter x hunter, and my gods, the cruelty and violence wasn't just inappropriate for mr smear, but it was really hard to watch for us so hot on the heels of october 7th. at the end of the episode, mr smear informed us that he felt it was inappropriate for him, and that he felt that everything from the phantom troupe onwards was inappropriate, but he didn't mind because he'd enjoyed it regardless. but now he wasn't enjoying it anymore.

so that was a revelation.

as a palate cleanser, i started reading the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy to him at bedtime and he found it hysterical :)

today:

mr smear returned to school, and gd and i went to azrieli for a coffee and a consultation. the former was shit, the latter was highly informative and the lady we spoke to really made us feel heard. it's now clear to us that it's not worth appealing the disability judgement, and that we should instead just be praying that gd's situation never gets to a point where social security would be sympathetic.

admin anxiety-wise, that's a load off.

i had a pretty good day at work, my coworker who was on paternity leave returned, and invited me for a chat - it turns out we both served on the same base at the same time, and were both (militarily) seconded from the same unit. i honestly can't tell if i (vaguely) recognize him or not from that time, but it was fun to sync and laugh about the stuff we both worked with back then.

we adventure timed over dinner at mr smear's request, and i read some more of the hitchhiker's guide. there was one sentence i needed to modify slightly, but otherwise we're still going strong.

i've spent most of the evening sorted out gd's email accounts, and now most of the important stuff is taken care of.

...

and now i've just seen the latest terror tunnel that's been uncovered: holy shit.

ends and beginnings

the war has apparently resumed. it's a confusing feeling - we feel that the psychological warfare of the hostage / ceasefire situation has been way harder to deal with than the physical fighting and rocket attacks. we're nervous about our government and the world in general. we're relieved to have some of our hostages home and heartbroken for the tortures they and their families have experienced and will continue to experience, probably for the rest of their lives.

...

tuesday:

another rough morning with mr smear, but handled better. he and gd had been having a fight all morning about the usual waking up and getting out of bed stuff, but as soon as we walked out the door he transferred his anger to me even though i had nothing to do with their thing. his shoes were in a plastic bag tied to his bag, and at one point on the way (he stopped moving entirely when we needed to be walking quickly) we had an interaction that saw the shoes swing around and smash into his face. it actually wasn't my fault, but there was no way to convince him of that...

anyway, he was pissed at me when we parted ways but by the afternoon he was totally cool, which was a relief.

...

TRIGGER WARNING: ALL THE TRIGGERS. before going to work, i accidentally heard two stories from october 7th that have traumatized me (even more than i already was). i've been making a conscious effort to avoid details, but gd was listening to a podcast where the speaker suddenly talking about the pregnant woman whose foetus was cut out and beheaded in front of her while she bled out. and about women being shot with their rapists still inside them. i'm still messed up from just hearing about this stuff, and in addition to these montrous acts these depraved fucks then forced their child hostages to watch the videos at gunpoint.

i walked around with genocidal thoughts all day. it's very hard to be reasonable and compassionate when that's the kind of "human" that we're up against. i recently wrote about how there's a bit of hope, but i'm fucked if i know how one negotiates a different path for people who are capable of such atrocity. i don't know if the word "atrocity" is even sufficient, here.

...

a pretty successful day in the office in spite of my distraction, including a comforting guidance session over zoom with mr smear's therapist.

ending the day with a rooftop chat with the CTO that was very positive. and i managed to give some of the negative feedback i'd been nervous about sharing, and it was received positively.

completing my final big task late, just before going to bed. being grateful for having extended my notice period by two weeks (in spite of having to go an additional on-call duty) because i got to finish strong with a satisfying win.

wednesday:

the last day at work, full house (mostly), some emotional speeches, lots of stuff to take care of.

the exit interview with my boss: we both had lots to say, and we both appreciated the feedback.

- my "calming presence" and lack of ego in the workplace

- my maybe-can-do attitude even though i've proven myself capable every time

- their handling of the firings last year

- my positive impact on their processes even though it wasn't as much as i would have liked, and my boss comparing me favorably to the italian "rockstar" who left a couple of months ago and only managed to piss people off

formatting my laptop and leaving it behind, walking out the door on a very positive note.

yesterday:

a bad wakeup for a birthday, but finding resolution eventually

feelings rescued by my smear popping out of bed to give me an impromptu "present"

taking gd to the pain clinic, getting us and the doctor into trouble because we sat down with him before registering at reception. he explained to us why he doesn't think any self-respecting surgeon would operate on her: she's in a lot of pain, but her body is (for the most part) functioning and invasive surgery after invasive surgery only gets more complicated and dangerous because of the scar tissue... 

which leads me to a very strange but intriguing thought - what if a surgeon could deliberately induce scurvy in a patient in order to dissolve the scar tissue and enable a repeat surgery in a sensitive place?

we'll still consult with the surgeon, but we understand now that gd's primary focus needs to be on pain management, both physical and psychological.

a nice, very relaxing couple of hours, then a sudden and unpleasant call to pick up mr smear - we'd gotten confirmation from multiple sources that school was ending around 2pm, and then missed the update that pickup was actually an hour earlier :(

a long lunch / coffee with the googlers, and a stark reminder of how antisocial the air force was in contrast to my years in a green uniform. the guys i met with served on the floor above mine, and didn't remember or know the names of any of the people i was with! meanwhile, a guy who served on the same base as me - but a different unit - joined my previous (!) company a couple of months ago and we not only recognized each other, but know a whole bunch of the same people...

regardless, it was a really nice afternoon, well-spent.

a long dishwashing (i was already tired by that point), and helping mr smear with his homework.

rental contract extension update: we have confirmation not only that we're going to extend, but that we're going to extend for two years instead of one. this is actually a huge relief. on the one hand, the landlords haven't increased the rent, but on the other, apparently rents in tel aviv are dropping dramatically these days. but whatever, we'll take it and take it gladly.

finishing the harry potter and the chamber of secrets movie, early bedtime for everyone.

i didn't sleep very well, but i slept. now to try and make good use of this morning.

50 years and a day

 by now the whole world has some idea of what's going on in israel, which means very little considering how in the dark we all are over here.

my wife and son were rushing out the door by the time i registered that the sirens were going, and that was 6.30am. we heard explosions. we came back, i tired to go back to sleep, and then we returned again at 7.30am. so i was still half-asleep the second time.

and the experience was hardcore - one of our neighbors suffers from ptsd and he and his partner have two rescue dogs that suffer from anxiety, and between the first siren and the second he was off to fight and in addition to the sirens and the explosions we had to deal with the two dogs freaking out.

i walked to the hospital for the blood drive, i was pleasantly surprised by how many people turned up and unpleasantly disappointed by the number of them with wet coughs (even one would have been bad enough, jesus). i was there for an hour and a half before everyone without type-o blood was asked to leave.

the afternoon was mostly quiet, with me constantly checking the news for the horrifying updates from down south, and our biggest mission was keeping mr smear calm (although gd herself has been terribly anxious). the next siren was while he was on the toilet before bed, so that was an experience, and we entered the shelter just before the barrage hit. after that i was reading to him (the story of cupid and psyche) in bed when the next siren sounded.

ugh.

it's weird being so exhausted after a day doing practically nothing, and i don't even want to think about the number of dead and wounded or the terrors visited on our southern border. it's scary how we got caught with our pants down, and we're praying that our armed forces get it together and take control of the situation quickly.

ethical army

in response to someone deriding the IDF code of ethics:

the sad fact is that they're doing the best they can within the context that they're forced into. what's hard to understand from a non-military / outsider's perspective is that the extent to which the israeli army follows the ethical codes outlined in that little book actually undermines their power and is strategically unsound.

it's not good for the palestinians either way, because if the israelis don't fully suppress the instigating elements (hamas in particular) then they're in trouble, and if the israelis do what needs to be done innocent civilians will be harmed.

ultimately, the region needs an alternative solution. there are plenty of people on both sides of the fence who would welcome a real solution and would love to just get on with their lives, but fear really does control everything which is why netanyahu kept his position in the last elections and why the palestinians let the terrorists run everything. most israelis are tired of fighting, and most palestinians are tired of subjugation (they're suffering infinitely more because of hamas than they are because of israel, but they're not allowed to admit it).

the biggest difference we can make from the outside is to stop picking sides and start thinking about ways forward, because i promise you no solutions are going to come from within. and there will never be a solution if everyone keeps blaming israel or the palestinians for the crazy and horrible events that continue to take place on a daily basis.

drained - part iii

[... continued]

when i walked into the gym a guy i'm friendly with was behind the counter, and he's taken it upon himself to right the wrong that is me having ordered a custom shirt when i moved to the advanced mat in jiu-jitsu and still not having received it. it turns out that the other guys were all blowing me off, and that the order had been cancelled. he was kind enough to use his employee discount and give me four shirts instead of the money back; he used his discount again later when i paid for my new fighting shorts. i'm really pleased with all that.

kickboxing was good, but i was breathing even worse than on tuesday! that was crazy :(

i ran into mti, and explained to her that the reason nothing's happening with the comic is because... nothing's happening with the comic. i've told her i'm hunting for new illustrators, and i really hope i find someone soon :/

badger gave me a ride to the supermarket and i bought some emergency supplies, i came home and ate while watching steve jobs: one last thing. the biography was way more in-depth but it's nice to actually see the footage.

---friday:

it was my second day of stomache troubles. otherwise, i enjoyed a good, relaxed wake-up. completely obsessed with the razors edge, total earworm.

...

örmagörd, i'm like a little kid - i was rocking out while brushing my teeth and ended up with swipes of toothpaste on my chest :$


...

having left my umbrella at work, i was forced to use my poncho. i'm very glad i have that poncho.

i made some progress towards transferring my apartment lease, and bought myself a keyboard for work because the ones the it department provides suck. i sat with one of the guys cooperatively debugging and had a hard time keeping my eyes open because i was so tired. after we were done, he spent an hour introducing me to the magic of twilio.

i briefly spoke with my toronto cousin, had an awkward moment in the elevator when i realized that i'd responded to a stranger's "have a good weekend!" with a "thank you", and ended the week with some hard work. i practiced role models on the metro - which seems a bit creepy - and met up with gd at p.m. for way more sake than i was ready for and a delicious, delicious meal.

we headed over to côte-des-neiges to a russian restaurant for kgb's surprise birthday party. we drank a lot and danced a lot and the borscht was brilliant after i scooped out the blob of cream to the waiter's dismay and disgust.

gd and i had a wonderful time. our tipsy revelrie felt sooooo good and i was sooooo grateful that it was weeekend and sooooo grateful for how the week had played out, but i wasn't so excited about chasing it all with a blood donation the next morning.

i fell into bed, absolutely wasted.

---yesterday:

i woke up with cotton wool in my head and mouth. it was a perfect cool, rainy morning and i was warm and toasty and foggy and sleepy and the belly discomfort from the previous days was gone and i was sooooo comfortable and i was enjoying my dreams and there's nothing i wanted less than to drag myself away from all that.

but i did. i clambered out of bed, got ready as fast as i could (not very fast) and left a little late for the slam team meeting. i arrived there and was met with a silent, empty room. i fired off messages to the rest of the team and eventually one of the flatmates appeared and reminded me that our usual host is away for the weekend.

i thought about that on my way back to the metro. since i've been at work i've been so overwhelmed that everything *not* work has been on autopilot. i knew my teammate was away, but didn't connect that piece of information to whether or not we'd be meeting.

wow :/

at least there was time to do the shopping i needed to do. it was inconvenient to be walking around with both a sweater and a poncho, the latter going on and off every time i left or entered a building, but i picked up a decent iphone case, and i found a good pair of under armor shoes to replace the ones that screw up my feet.

i would've picked up a lightning cable from the apple store if it hadn't been so pricey. i picked up a knock-off from walmart later instead.

i had a quick lunch / snack at home, which would have included baba ganouj had that not been taken over by a very serious mould, chatted briefly with my mother while setting up twilio (and forgetting my password, which would drive me nuts later), hunted down all the rental assignment forms and rushed out to get them printed.

...

a girl begging in the metro was particularly aggressive.
"sorry," i shrugged.
she took a step closer.
"how about two dollars?"
"sorry," i said as i shook my head.
she took another step closer.
"one dollar"?
now she was way too close for comfort.
"why are you sorry?"
i stared back at her.
"why are you sorry?"
"because i'm not interested in giving you any money."
"you could have just said 'no'" she snarled as she stalked off.

and you could have not bothered a total stranger, and not harassed him for trying to be polite in an uncomfortable situation.

...

printing the assignment forms was quick and painless. i stopped in at walmart to buy the cable, and by the time i got to my apartment there wasn't time for coffee and i'd only had my first cup in the morning. the guy i'm assigning to rocked up a little late with his girlfriend. nice kids, but *damn* they took a long time to fill out the forms!
by the time i walked out it was 6.30 and i was running late for the 7.30 movie and was exhausted and hungry and feeling bad for making gd meet me at the cinema after she'd had a hard day at work.

i then had to wait a ridiculously long time for my meal in the food court. then i sat down and the people at the table next to me were watching videos on their phones at top volume. then gd walked in, suffering real back pain.

[furious part i]

we went to see the movie anyway, clearing things up a bit on the way in. we'd missed the first few minutes, but it didn't matter too much. guardians of the galaxy is GORGEOUS. total sensory overload, funny and fun and we'll definitely be seeing it again.

[furious part ii]

---today:

after sorting things out we went to bed exhausted, i dreamed insane dreams and woke up with a stuffed nose.

[furious part iii]

we took a while to clean up, literally and figuratively, i was introduced to the pixies and getting a bit more sleep was good. we went to midi 6 for a desperately needed lunch, then headed downtown to brave the crowds and pick up an ipad to replace gd's computer. i mentioned my new iphone and the amount it's improved my quality of life - gd's pc has been driving her nuts and it's so old and dysfunctional that there's really not much we can do with it.

by the time we returned home it was 5.30pm and we still had tons to do. the evening has been spent setting up the ipad and introducing gd to its wonders, posting, grocery shopping, doing laundry, eating wonderful home-made vegan pizzas (groundless beef and daiya cheese), being admitted to a lone soldier's veteran club, and wondering where the time has been going while my task list hasn't been getting any shorter. and now it's almost 1am.

DAMN. i needed a restful weekend :(

out of the way

before i begin squishing my week into this tiny space, i'm going to dump a few things that have been on my mind. in no particular order.

---twilio is amazing. i've been given a good introduction by one of my co-workers and it's something that someone like me could really use!

open-source mobile windmills? we could use a couple of these. the timing's good too: climate change has become disturbingly apparent.

support for non-immigrant lone soldiers. i think i need to get in touch with these people and become a node in the network.

discovery's dishonesty during shark week is sensationally disappointing.

sierra games are making a comeback!!!

when it comes to medicine, this is why reasonably evidence-based should be a thing.

essentially, ibm is working on synthesizing a human brain. with incredibly cool results ^_^

edward snowden *is* a champion of american values.

google smart lenses. say no more.

quick turns

today was coloured by the phone call that i received in the afternoon informing me that i've been cleared through the first interviews and will be invited back for the rest. that - is - AWESOME news ^_^

so i've got more studying and preparation to do for those, but it's so nice to know that it's working for me!!!

---after posting yesterday, i went to take all my tax documents to vfmp who's going to hand them over to his boyfriend, the tax expert. on my return i waited for a while at the wrong bus stop, and some mentally handicapped dude saw my hesitation and wanted to help, and he was so sweet (he was telling me how he got lost, and how he cried) that it was hard not to take his advice when i was sure that it wasn't good. after missing another bus i *did* cross to the one he was suggesting and it turned out to be the right choice.

after my last experience i decided to skip the french meetup and instead put on puss in boots in french with french subtitles. it appears that animated kid's films are the way to go.

boxing last night was really good, and i was pleased to find that after the last week or two my legs are already back to being tough enough to handle the heavy bags. my ankle's good again and i guess the fact that i've been cautious about using it is why i softened up...

my yoga instructor offered to pass my resume through to her boss, and after i sent it she suggested that considering her company's policies i might want to play down my military experience. i told her that if her employer has a problem with my military experience, i'd have a problem working with them. there's no room for discussion on this.

aota contacted me out of the blue for a chat, which was nice, and i was surprised to hear her speaking well of darn who has apparently begun to shine since megaman left. i'm glad to hear it. a little disappointed to hear that they finally moved into decent offices *after* i left, which they'd been promising to do since before i joined them...

i made an over-sized, delicious salad and watched the rest of puss in boots before lining up a bunch of other films. and then it was late and i crashed.

---today:

i began the day trying to figure out how to sell my books that pg's keeping for me. this isn't easy because facebook won't show my posts if they're not engaged with and the only second-hand website in israel isn't open to use from outside of the country. that's kinda dumb.

i took a pair of pants to the dry cleaner, trying to sneak in some recycling by carrying them on two dry-cleaner hangers covered by dry-cleaner plastic. i was so pleased when the woman there actually put the hangers with a bunch of others :)

i headed out to fcmg's new place to discuss the comics for the first time since before she gave birth two months ago. the metro was experiencing some serious issues and in addition to the crazy congestion that caused, someone in our car was freaking out every time we came to a stop and the lights went out. this happened in between stops, and i had my earphones in so i didn't hear what was said but i noticed that everyone around me was giggling...

rain + metro issues = CRAZY packed.

so fcmg's pad is awesome, her daughter's really cute and she has a couple of very cool cats. the difficulties with working and tending to an infant quickly became apparent, and so everything was stop / start but we got through whatever we needed to get through. i walked out of there uncertain of where we're going but sure that we're going somewhere.

i'd read 18 ugly truths about modern dating that you have to deal with in the morning and i'd been thinking about the mixed messages from aaa that i'd been receiving over the previous couple of days. i became convinced of two things:
1. that she wasn't really interested in me and that it was time to call it.
2. that, like the japanese, i'm done with all this dating shit. it's bullshit, and lots of it.

on that note, i sat down at la panthère verte for their meal of the day, a delicious vegan stew, then returned home to watch pirates of the caribbean dubbed in french (eh, not too bad) for a bit and wonder if my back could handle the evening's training. that was when i got that phone call, so i was super stoked and relieved :)

i was pretty tired, so i downed an energy drink and headed off to the gym. i don't know if it was the drink or something else, but as i walked out i developed a bellyache that wouldn't go away until halfway through the class...

[holy crap, i just saw (finally!) weidman vs silva 2 - it doesn't matter that i knew what was coming, that was absolutely insane to watch.]

... so there's this girl at the gym that i've been friendly with for a while and who just joined our kickboxing class for the first time. we were partnered up and everything was as usual until the final exercise, about ten or fifteen minutes of kick / check drills. i gotta admit, at some point i found that i was concentrating less on kicking and checking and more on checking out because she's quite sexy and between her movements and semi-transparent training outfit my brain's wired to stare. i didn't miss a beat, though, so that's cool. i guess that was actually good for me because i was checking unconsciously :P

...

aaaaaaanyway, after all the negativity surrounding aaa i got home to find she'd called and left me voicemail... so i called her back and we had a good, positive chat for half an hour. so i guess she *is* interested, and i'm just a little girl when it comes to relationships. that's okay, i can deal with that.

well, time for bed, and an exciting couple of days ahead. things seem to be moving in a good direction and if i play my cards right, they may just become awesome! if not, they'll be shit. so i'd better get it together.

---so, québec - the liberals have won the elections. while everyone's jumping for joy, i'm hoping that this means that things will stabilize (apparently they've already stabilized, and it's only been one day) and remain stable for the next four years. because that's just how long i need to become a citizen, assuming i land a job soon. after that, i'll be happy to vote and pray like everyone else :)