nice

 it's the middle of the night, and i'm having trouble sleeping again. i've spent the last hour or so doom-scrolling, now i'm going to try writing this and maybe, possibly, going back to bed,

i went to bed early last night, again, and i mostly slept through the night. i started the day with the beginning of what i presume is the final shadowrun mission, saved (and double-checked my save) and got ready to go out with gd to pick up snacks for our guests.

it was at that point that we realized that mr smear's bag was missing, the one with his epipen and mobile phone 🤮

i was panicking that we'd left it in a park or something, but then i checked google family link and was (somewhat) relieved to see that it was at or near the ice-cream parlor we'd stopped at. so gd went to the store for snacks, and i rushed over to the ice-cream parlor. it was a huge relief to find the bag there, and find everything in the bag, but the experience had certainly elevated my heartrate.

the minecraft playdate was great, the kids really enjoyed themselves and the adults had a good chat too. overall, excellent.

at some point gd decided that we needed to go and find food, so we went our separate ways and took mr smear with us to cafe eva. the only seats available were the comfy sofas, and after we'd finished eating mr smear pulled out his kindle (he's voraciously reading dr block books) and i continued reading superman: escape from bizarro world which is far more interesting than i expected it to be.

but between the comfy chair, and the food, and the atmosphere, i spent most of the remaining time there passing in and out of consciousness :P

...

eventually, we returned home and settled in as a family to watch pantheon (horseman's recommendation). as far as age-appropriateness is concerned, it's mostly fine with a rare scene where we need to send mr smear out of the room for a minute and then explain what happened afterwards. as far as entertainment / intellectual stimulation / writing is concerned, it's phenomenal, and we're all in, all three of us!

...

the only unpleasantness of the evening was mr smear being upset that we weren't going to watch another episode when it was already getting late on a school night :P

in spite of that, and the subsequent 45 minutes of him not brushing his teeth and then complaining that he wasn't being given time to read, bedtime went smoothly. and then i passed out on the couch, eventually moving to the bedroom, and then eventually moving back to the couch again. now i don't know what i want to do, because i don't want to get into a game, but i don't want to doom-scroll either.

ooh! maybe i should try actually reading again. it worked this afternoon :P

...

this long weekend has been good for me. we're now entering a more-or-less regular work-week tomorrow, and then it'll be ten days off. i'm really looking forward to that.

baby rabies, coughs and game time

friday evening:

gd wasn't well enough to join us, but my mom, mr smear and i walked to the synagogue and back. it was hot, and it's not *that* far but it's definitely too far for gd even on a good day, so i guess if we're going to start going regularly we're going to be taking a taxi or something.

overall, it was a good experience, it's a nice shul and very familiar. having said that, mr smear has an issue with smaller kids and it was *really* hard to manage him in the moment. we've since sat him down and had a conversation, and we've talked about it again, and hopefully he'll calm the fuck down.

so that was friday night. otherwise, it was really nice to be able to make kiddush together for real, and not via whatsapp.

yesterday:

we had some good talks with mr smear, and we had some difficulties with mr smear. it was another "downtimey" day, reading / video games / not much. in the afternoon my mom, mr smear and i went for a walk to and through park hayarkon, then stopped at a really nice bar near basel for beers (or sprite), and then stopped for sandwiches and croissant desserts on the way home.

their cubed croissants blew my mind, and i had to get one just to try it. a croissant cube filled with pistachio and vanilla cream. it was pretty darned good.

the evening was a bit rough. mr smear needs to spend more time with kids his own age - but at the same time, he also needs a break from his schoolmates.

revelation of the day: disco elysium isn't just a great detective game, and it isn't just great eye-candy. it's a comedy, but a psycho-philosophical one deeply rooted in literature and with a deep sense of irony.

today:

first order of the day: gd gave me a haircut. i feel much, much better about it.

i rollerbladed to work, and made great progress on my current project. i took two breaks during the day: the first, to pick up a package from ali express; the second, to buy a new vacuum cleaner. now that we have the replacement, it seems like the warranty on the original is much longer than we were told...

gd's on antibiotics, my mom's started coughing too, and mr smear's cough has suddenly gotten dramatically worse. gd's given him something in the hopes it would help him sleep, but it doesn't seem to be helping and it has antihistamines in it so we're going to have to defer (again) his dairy allergy challenge that was scheduled for wednesday :/

after dinner all four of us played uno together, and it was lots of fun.

i suggested my mom watch the game changers this evening, and she did.

i played a whole lot of kaycee's mod this evening. that's a whole lot of excitement, followed by a whole lot of disappointment.

goddamn.

i'm going to bed.

speeding up before applying the brakes

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

whoops :$

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

today:

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

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

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

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

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

so far, it's been a good day.