electric pukaloo

 our pre-hackathon talk was interesting, i was grateful that my wife had come home in time to keep me supplied with coffee and for our beanbags which served as both seat and stand.

in the background i was installing local llm models, one of which initialized and was so heavy it killed my computer and it took so long to shut it down (everything was unresponsive, and the audio was jittering) that i had to rejoin the meeting from my personal laptop...

over lunch, gd and i watched the first bit of the ludwig pilot, and it starts off really strong!

i struggled to "wake up", as i mentioned before, and by the time i was (relatively) ready to dive into my work i received a call from one of the juniors - the same jobs had died once again. i found what seemed to be a smoking gun, connected some dots, and it looked like a broken infrastructure upgrade, but later on (after finally wrapping my head around what i'm supposed to be doing) i got another call back to say it wasn't that, but rather a legitimate bug in the code. we hunted it down, and although it did eventually turn out to be the bug, i was mighty suspicious as it's a code path that hasn't been touched since the project inception and the likelihood of it "suddenly" becoming a problem is extremely low.

anyway, i helped out, essentially taking charge, and along with another of his teammates we managed to get it resolved. the boss / my client called me for an update, and once i'd made sure that the junior had it handled i was able to join my family for dinner.

i didn't mention that i'd taken a break earlier to go pick up some stuff from the shops - i made mr smear come out with me on his blades, though i was walking, and he was not in the mood. with that in mind, i think we were both pleasantly surprised by the end of it; not only was i very happy with his progress, but so was he, and he straight-up told me that he was wrong and that i was welcome to lord it over him, and that compared to the hell that is bicycles, rollerblading is heavenly.

so that happened ^_^

i was late to join mr smear and gd for dinner, and i ate arguably more than i needed to, and then mr smear and i ate the oranges i'd picked up earlier. everything was fine until we saw two highly active fruit fly larvae wriggling around the remains of his orange.

he's always had a thing about worms, creepy crawlies in general but worms in particular, and what followed was some serious high drama. and lots of googling to be able to assure him he'd be fine, and then i started feeling uncomfortable so i decided to try and throw up.

any time i successfully throw up "on command" it blows my mind.

anyway, the rest of the evening post emotional-rollercoaster was fine, i read a bit of alice's adventures in wonderland to him at bedtime, and have been slowly gearing down and preparing myself to try and get some sleep since.

unexpectations

 what a weird day. it began with me walking in on mr smear brushing his teeth to angine de poitrine, gd's not a big fan but the two of us were loving it. i watched their davie504 response (mr smear hasn't seen it yet) and it's pretty freaking cool :)

i spent some time making a change to my AI harness that i was proud of, but discovered later already has a better cross-IDE solution. so 🤷‍♂️

we managed to get gd an appointment with the doctor, but we had to wait quite a while so we walked across to the mall and i got some work done. halfway through, i was having trouble concentrating so i went and bought myself a new headset, like i've been meaning to do for a while now.  ugreen studio pro, pretty good and not too expensive.

the appointment went alright, but it was good i was there. then we walked to the bigger clinic to try and arrange the prescribed ultrasound, but discovered that wasn't possible and gd didn't want to see the surgeon without it. unfortunately, we found out later that the earliest opportunity for an ultrasound is months away, and she just can't wait that long :/

aside from desperately needing a nap - i'm so grateful we have our bean bags - and an interesting conversation about our company hackathon which i unwittingly signed up to lead a team for - i managed to get a fair amount of work done.

after mr smear got home and ate something, i took him to the oral hygienist. overall, the trip was positive, minus narrowly averting an incident with his phone, and we were in good spirits and chatting away the whole time. right until we arrived home, when i saw his bike, parked across the walkway chained to itself, with his helmet over the handlebar.

i cannot believe my son a) is such a dumbass, and b) lied to my face when he came upstairs yesterday and i asked him about it. i mean, maybe i can believe it. maybe he is a little bit brain damaged 🤦‍♂️

anyway, the evening was nice, dinner was surprisingly delicious (another really good gluten free pasta), and we finally resumed watching highlander.

i did some more work after getting mr smear into bed, although it was mostly me squaring off against google's AI and losing dramatically (notebooklm fails). i guess i'm going to have to do the hackathon presentation myself...

productive lazy afternoons

 i didn't lie down, i did have a beer, and i managed to finish the PoC for my AI harness in time to play some more slay the spire 2 before kiddush. and i just had another beer now, that's two down and too many to go :P

we watched some random videos over dinner, one of which led to us watching a bob ross episode in awe.

we ended up going to bed very late, with me getting into bed just after saying good night to mr smear.

then i woke up in the middle of the night for an hour and a half...

this morning started off alright, but turned sour after mr smear not only broke the screen time rules, but hid in his room to continue breaking them after he'd been given a warning. so he lost his privileges for the day, which led to drama... gd didn't agree with me entirely, but at least she understood (and explained to him) why it was important and i wasn't undermined.

then nystire messaged to say he and his family were going to the port, and i managed to herd mr smear out and onto his bike, and we arrived at the port in good time and with only mild complaints. until we crossed a bridge, at which point the complaints became a total meltdown. once he'd calmed down (a bit), i agreed that we can give rollerblades a try, but that he has to have wheels.

and if that doesn't work out, then maybe his bike just isn't a great bike and we need to invest in a good one.

the afternoon with nystire was very pleasant, we sat on the edge of the beach while his kids played in the sand and mine read under some shade, but unfortunately i never did get around to putting on sunscreen and i ended up getting pretty burned :/

after we split up, i took mr smear for a laffa, which we both enjoyed immensely, and then he - true to his word - walked his bike the entire gorram way home. walking on rollerblades gets painful, and i think he knows that, and i was done by the time we finally made it home.

so i showered quickly, cracked open that beer, and now that he's showered i'm waiting for him to be ready to help me wash the floors...

the birthday special

 omg i am PAINFULLY tired. as in, i don't feel so good tired.

...

mr smear woke us up to delivery the birthday card this morning, and from there we progressed to making the following (using a combination of gemini and gimp, because the AI guardrails for images are frustrating and the generated images are mostly garbage anyway):

gd loved it, and mr smear and i had a positive educational experience.

afterwards, i spent some more time trying to get notebooklm to make the cinderella reboot comics i was working on last week. i managed to get better results, but still a lot of weirdness. i suspect that i'm going to need to copy/paste across different attempts to get it to the point where i feel comfortable posting it.

i then proceeded to built some small units (i'd promised gd that for her birthday i'd put together as much furniture as i could), while mr smear got his first screen time at home in ages (he used his half hour on oxygen not included), and then suddenly it was noon and time to take mr smear to south tel aviv.

his friend's mother did warn me that it was very far. i didn't think it was such a big deal, but in addition to it very much being a big deal it was also unseasonably warm and very sunny with very little shade. i really hope this doesn't trigger an outbreak for mr smear :)

anyway, he handled the ride better than ever before, was rewarded with his favorite drink (sprite) without even begging for it, and after riding through proper poverty and squalor (and chickens in the streets) i dropped him off in good spirits.

i took a more direct path home, straight through a very busy predominantly sudanese populated area, and the vibe was very different from the other direction...

i only stopped to pick up a desperately-needed coffee on the way home, then arrived home to begrudgingly make good on my promise and begin putting together the first of four chests of drawers.

actually, i guess i must have done something else before then, but i can't remembered anything else and i can't believe it took me quite that long... anyway, i'd constructed the body and two drawers (out of four) before i realized it was 6pm already and i needed to pick up mr smear.

there was no way i was going to ride that distance again, certainly not when it was so late and i was so thoroughly pooped, so i tried to catch a bus (or buses) and was caught off guard by the fact that they weren't operating yet. so i called a taxi. the driver was cool, and i was very grateful when he said "no problem" to picking up mr smear and his bike, as opposed to me walking mr smear and his bike to hunt for a bus stop on the wrong side of the tracks.

it was a story getting the bike into the trunk.

i almost died when mr smear excitedly started listing the contents of his friend's home in front of the taxi driver, and there was nothing i could say to stop him that wouldn't have been insulting. but his friend's family is a true gamer family, with multiple systems online, and he's now extremely excited about their tekken 3 arcade cabinet.

i can't tell you how pleased i am that he's begging me for tekken 3, which is still my favorite of the franchise by far, nor how sad i am that it's so difficult to get hold of.

mr smear has got the chorus from ticks and leeches stuck in his head, he's been singing it on a loop.

i completed the chest of drawers, mr smear helped me get all the cardboard boxes downstairs, and now it's dinner time.

shhhhhhhhhh 🤫

 i'm sitting here quietly in my bedroom because my family forgot my birthday's tomorrow and they're "secretly" making me card 🤣

today was pretty cool. this morning we watched batman begins, which of course we all enjoyed, and in the early afternoon mr smear and i rode / bladed to his school to test out the route together, most of which was fun.

one thing in particular got under my skin, though:

a ten year old just told me led zeppelin's whole lotta love is elevator music and now i need to figure out if that's an offense worthy of disowning him for 😒

the evening was chill, i've suddenly found myself on a drum & bass kick for the first time ever. and over delicious ramen* dinner we finished watching young guns, which was awesome.

* we're actively praying for positive news from the consulting agency soon 🤞

and now, getting ready for mr smear's bedtime and then probably putting some effort into the assessment.

an hour behind, a catch-22

 it's 2.50am, when yesterday it would have been 3.50am (daylight savings time). but i don't get to enjoy the extra hour because i can't fucking sleep.

my insides are roiling with the tempest of feelings: the new captain's first mate has been working overtime all weekend to deliver what he promised me would be in last week, and now i realize that he's probably been dragging his feet so that the new captain would be the one to look good on it. and that made me think of the new captain warning me - a month or two ago in private - to watch out because the other manager is a viper.

it bothered me back then when he said what he said - at first i didn't understand why he would - but i've been watching him cozying up to her the past week and i now realize that i may well be in the process of being fucked. and connecting those dots with some others, i'm now quite convinced that he's been trashing me behind my back.

i have spent every moment since panicking, flitting between anger and terror, freaking out because if i address this and i'm wrong, i'm a paranoid asshole, and if i don't address this but i'm right, myself and my reputation are going to be in big trouble.

i might already be in big trouble.

at my mother's suggestion, i spent a good chunk of last night compiling all the things i should say, and possibly some things i shouldn't, and have since had my brain going full tilt on processing and reprocessing conversations that i have no way of knowing how they'll go until they're gone.

i might well be losing my job for trying to rescue my job. i might well lose my job if i don't. i literally cannot afford to lose my job.

...

in the midst of all that noise, i took mr smear out for a bike ride in the afternoon, which was very nice - except for when it wasn't. i think i handled it pretty well (it's all the same "i hate going outside" routine), but it does detract from the experience and the experience was already shadowed by my panic over all of the above.

...

he's really having trouble sleeping again :(

...

the morning was nice, though. i picked up a bunch of books on kindle (including the robert fitzgerald translations of the iliad and the odyssey, inspired by our talk around the hercules movie).

two years

 october 7th, two years later. i have nothing to say. that is, i have lots to say, and zero energy to even say it.

...

this morning got off to a pretty good start. reading and napping, including reading a chapter of the neverending story to my wife and child.

on our way out to ride to the swimming pool, i got stuck for almost half an hour trying to arrange tickets for circo circo for us and mr smear's best friend. we eventually got that right, so crossing fingers that friday will be smooth 🤞

the ride there was pretty chill, though i think mr smear was right about it taking much longer than i'd expected. most of our swimming experience was good, in spite of me having woken up with my neck threatening to lock (it's still threatening a bit). the toughest, drainiest part was the forty five minutes spent getting mr smear out of the pool, into the locker room, out of the shower, and out of the locker room.

we were both that special kind of tired after a sunny ride and a long time in the pool.

and that was before we had to ride all the way home...

we made it, eventually*, stopping only for a much-needed ice-cream break.

* about half an hour later

we came home with a plan, and we executed it well. drink water, shower, eat, play, and watch the first two episodes of full metal alchemist: brotherhood.

the rest of the afternoon has been switching between dirty dishes and inktober. now it's almost dinner time.

rest day

the rest of the day was good. mr smear finished a really good inktober entry, we've pretty much completed the pokemon puzzle, i read quite a bit and napped a bit, and we had a good ride to the park.

also, we're loving futurama together.

breath pt iii

 the rest of yesterday was pretty relaxed. last night, for the first time in a while, i actually got a pretty good night's sleep.

today was pretty relaxed. the only constructive thing i did was filing documents. we watched mrs doubtfire together.

mr smear started fighting about going outside again, and we had A Talk. quite a long one, but ultimately he came out with a good vibe and we rode the the beach (for the first time he made it up the ramp at kikar atarim without stopping), enjoyed the sunset, and talked non-stop the entire way there and back.

the rest of this evening went pretty well. my back and neck are a bit sore - i've had nerve pain down my arm the past few days, but my lower back which was feeling better was jarred by a bit of a stumble on my rollerblades earlier.

i guess i'm going to try going to bed now and hope for the best. maybe this "sleep like a baby" trick will work for me? maybe the shot of vodka earlier will help?

kombat

 yesterday was pretty horrible. gd and i had a couple of fights during the day, the first one triggered by me losing patience with mr smear and telling them i needed my space for the afternoon. the second one because later, i was trying to get to the bottom of something she'd said earlier.

we took a break from fighting to go to our friends for dinner, and we all had a really nice evening. everything was great until we got home, and then things got explosive and continued to be full shit until about 2am.

today was spent... recovering? i dunno if that's quite right, we both still feel horrible. i spent a large part of the day continuing to read nightwood, and napping, but we did watch the mortal kombat movie this afternoon and i really enjoyed how much fun mr smear was having. later, we took the bike and blades for a ride... there was a bit of an emotional breakdown triggered by his brakes not responding fast enough, but we moved on and i introduced him to charades (it appears we've never played that with him) and the rest of the ride was really nice.

dinner was pleasant in spite of no screens (he took too long in the shower), i read some more of the neverending story to him and gd at bedtime, and gd and i watched a psychotic episode and a half of the rehearsal reality tv show which is unbearably disturbing.

conditioning

 we went out for a ride, and ended up at the pipe track. well, at the kids musical playground next to it. mr smear entertained himself, i made the mistake of sitting down in the shade for a bit and my brain and body decided i was done for the day... the way back was good, we stopped for him to enjoy an ice cream, and the only issue i had was that my shoulder and neck started giving me shit during the last stretch... just like it did the last time we went out...

gd tried to make onigiri tonight, and it came out... not onigiri. but it was delicious, regardless, and we all tucked in and did quite a bit of damage (considering she'd made rather a lot of food). and we got started on watching stargate. mr smear's first time and he is loving it.

i continued reading the neverending story when he went to bed, although the swamps of sadness scene was dulled by the fact that our upstairs neighbors are psychopaths and were drilling and hammering until recently. i watched some random stuff and played another round of slay the spire, and now i'm going to crash early in the hopes that i'll be able to sleep and the expectation that i'll be up in the middle of the night to work through bigtalk's PR...

gods help me.

onigiri

 the clinic: learning that one of the receptionists' kids also has herpes in the eye. mr smear's paediatrician wasn't familiar with CRISPR but asked me to send her info. we're praying that someone will figure out how to remove herpes soon, and not just from a petri dish.

the bike shop: both bike shops were closed, so we tied up the bike and continued on to dizengoff. we returned later and were treated to a demonstration of the changing of the tube and addition of a new liner to protect it, which was fascinating.

japan month at dizengoff: mr smear was thoroughly amazed by the food, in particular the onigiri. that makes two of us - gd liked it, but isn't a fan of sweeter sushi rice so would rather make her own.

fine by me :P

some of yesterday afternoon was crashing, some of it was working, and some of it was reading and playing card games (uno and fluxx), and mr smear and i played a bunch of starcraft ii together. the evening was a pleasant shabbat evening (with pizza in honor of mr smear's birthday).

after putting mr smear to bed, i tried to get into cyberpunk 2077. i tried. but i had to repeat a section that really felt forced (perhaps you get more choices going forward, but i just felt locked in and bored), and the default controls don't make sense, and by the time i realized i was confused about how to set the controls up the way i'd like i was done, and i put in for a refund.

i played minutescape until it lulled me to sleep.

...

last night i had some really cool ideas for work, and i woke up in the middle of the night and had to get them written down (and book appointments with two of our founders, and book a few days off for long weekends), and then just did random things (including resuming a game of slay the spire) until mr smear woke up.

i tried to get back to sleep, but since then my lower back and butt have been really hurting me. i'm exhausted. emotionally, too, because i saw a message from our tech chief about bigtalk's PR and now i'm confident i need to share my new concerns with my boss tomorrow, which really doesn't feel good. i mean, i like the guy, and technically he's brilliant, but he clearly doesn't have enough experience with collaborative efforts.

we watched son of the white mare, which is fantastic and strange and wonderful, and i was surprised by how much gd and mr smear got into it as well - it feels more like something from a modern art gallery than a feature film.

i've been reading some more nightwood, it took a while to find its feet but i'm a quarter of the way through and things just started heating up.

my aunt's boyfriend rocked up a little while ago for a quick coffee, bearing gifts from my mom. mr smear was very excited in spite of gd almost spoiling the surprise yesterday (note to self: never tell her anything that's supposed to be a surprise, egads)

mr smear's playing spiderheck, i'm contemplating scrounging for some lunch, and then we're going to go out with the bike for a ride.

...

my eyes are feeling a bit better, but i still need the drops quite frequently :/

the good, the bad, the ugly

the good:

the swimming pool experience yesterday was just excellent. he followed instructions, and i came up with some new exercise ideas, and his swimming dramatically improved in front of my eyes. not only is his crawl technique significantly better, but he figured out how to get himself to the bottom of the deep end and we generally enjoyed our time together.

we both had a great time.

i napped well in the afternoon. in the early evening, we spent some time discovering bird flight simulators (such as birdz and aquila) - while the intention is to learn how to code them, i ended up feeling a bit overwhelmed...

while we were doing that, i installed starcraft ii (we're not really using our windows machine, so i was pleased to learn that it runs on a silicon mac!) and war thunder. the latter i tried out while mr smear was in the shower, but the former? mr smear and i have completed the tutorials and begun the campaign, with him playing each level first (and me kibbitzing) and me playing through after, and we're both having a blast!

we finished watching the boy and the heron during and after dinner, it's absolutely gorgeous and i was pleased that we all enjoyed it together.

i slept pretty well last night (until i was woken up by imagining the work conversations i need to have) and i napped a fair amount after everyone else got up.

more starcraft ii today, and we finally continued watching fantastic fungi which we started a few months ago. my late coworker had recommended it to me, and i was caught completely by surprise by the sudden shift in direction, and now it's too late for me to ask him what it is that made him recommend it to me. did i mention my opinions on terrence mckenna's food of the gods? or timothy leary's writings? did it have to do with veganism? or did he just happen to have seen it recently?

the bad:

on our way out to the swimming pool, we discovered that something broke the valve on his bike's front tire, so in addition to having to take the bus, we're going to need to get it fixed soon. that sucks.

my new filling is super-sensitive to cold. and it feels like i've been eating a lot of things that are much harder than expected - like the raisins in my muesli which are unusually small-rock-like.

i think my ingrown toenail isn't healing.

gd and i have unfriended some recently-added friends because they've gone from protesting the government to blaming us for the supposed famine in gaza and dressing their daughter in watermelon shirts. WTAF.

our afternoon walk this evening should have been good, but i left the house in a bad mood and returned in a bad mood.

the ugly:

as if the office politics from thursday weren't enough - they woke me up in the middle of the night and i never quite made it back to bed - while mr smear and i were at the swimming pool yesterday i noticed some redness around his eye.

it's herpes again. this time, there's a blister right on the edge near his tear duct, and i'm freaking out. and to make things more interesting, the timing couldn't be worse because now taking him to the doctor tomorrow and giving him his meds really interferes with his summer camp experience, which in my opinion is critical for him in terms of being a corrective normal-israeli-kid experience. (not to mention how expensive it is)

cold sweats

 i think i slept relatively well last night. i got up early, read the last of the five asterix books we have (asterix and the banquet, i was amazed by how many of the names i remembered), and had a few naps throughout the day.

we played rayman for a while, mostly it went great but we had some pretty bad feelings at one point due to a misunderstanding... it's hard to explain to a kid how some yelling is okay :/

we played uno for while, that was fun.

we watched some more deathnote. the past few episodes really haven't enjoyed the same level of writing and i'm beginning to find myself over it. i hope it resolves well, but where we are it's a confusing mess.

i took mr smear (bike and rollerblades) to his friend's temporary home, it was extremely hot but it went well. the last uphill before i got home wrecked me, however, and i entered our apartment feeling faint (my neck had been giving me trouble for most of the ride home).

after i cooled down, i cabbed to meet tahoma in his new apartment. it's an awesome apartment in an incredible location! he convinced me to consider looking for a new apartment now and finding a sublet for our current one, i spoke to gd and hopefully we'll be able to make this happen.

we had a pizza at the green cat, and then walked to cassata - a remarkably tel avivi place - for ice cream, before eventually walking to the eliphelet station where it took me three tries to get on the right train because the signage is so bad.

...

having not realized how late i'd been out, i was caught mid-dinner by mr smear informing me that he was ready to go home. for the first time, i arranged for a taxi to pick him up, and he got home fine, but he called me from inside the taxi to say "dad - do you remember how you told me about stranger danger? i'm feeling that right now" 😰

we're definitely going to have to have a talk in the morning 🤣

shifting gears

 yesterday:

we walked. we dropped off gd's sandals for repair, found the bike shop closed, and walked up the road to the next bike shop. we dropped off the bike, then walked to a small grocery store, then continued on to the big one, did an annoyingly long shop and carried it all home.

loop one.

we stopped for a bit, but the clock was ticking so we walked again, picking up gd's sandals, then grabbing a laffa for mr smear, picking up his bike and walking it home.

loop two.

the good news is he was very happy with the repair job.

the remainder of the afternoon was pretty quiet, with lots of napping and reading.

one of my upper teeth has been really, really hurting the past couple of days, and it's getting worse.

in the evening we all went to our friends for a delicious and very entertaining dinner. the conversations were all over the place, but i'm struck by how diametrically opposing our political views are becoming.

we came home very late and i slept surprisingly well.

today:

we got up pretty early, and ended up leaving around 10am for the kibbutz. gd and my mom prepared and brought all the food - there was plenty - and we had a very nice time visiting our kibbutz cousin and her daughter (who i haven't seen in many years, and suddenly looks so much like her dad), and an excellent time by the pool.

on the way home we stopped in netanya to see my cousin, for whom the move (and the leaving of her husband) is very new and overwhelming (and i also realized that the connection to one of my bosses is that he was her landlord, which is a whole story). she suddenly looks so much like her mom that my mom and i were both blown away.

gd was having a tough time by then, so we came home. it's been a very long day, mostly very enjoyable, and i think i'm going to crash soon.

after a gin and tonic, with my mother and i realizing that i've been joining her the past couple of days and it seems to be helping me sleep...

the secret

 i've complained about the bullshit misconceptions regarding "the secret" before, but there's one aspect of it that is valid: if you decide you're going to have a bad day, you'll be sure to get it.

i began the day trying to disable avatars in zoom:

am i the only person who finds the idea of a zoom "AI companion" creepy, and am concerned by the fact that when i tried to disable it it warned me that that would mean deleting biometric data of mine??!

i mean, i've never heard of the AI companion features until i signed in to disable avatars so that my son's zoom class behavior would be less chaotic...

possibly related, by a bizarre sequence of events gd was forced to re-enact the scene from the dirtiest toilet in scotland this morning and we were all thoroughly traumatized.

most of today was spent indoors, alternating between random shit and napping. i finished reading danny the champion of the world, which was superb. we bought noita, which looks amazing, and i have to say mr smear gave it a very fair chance before he decided he was bored. he wanted to like it, but after going through some of it with him and then reading up on how long it takes before it starts being fun, we requested a refund.

oh, which reminds me - i started investigating entry level gaming PCs last night before going to bed, i think i might have found a good solution but i'm going to ask my coworkers to vet it first.

we also tried to get the MIDI controller working with garage band; it does work out of the box, but i couldn't for the life of me figure out the controls.

after spending some time trying to compile the sonnet comics images into a format for the printer. i was horrified to learn that i don't have all the hi-res images, and that some of the hi-res images are slightly different resolutions. fortunately, mr cat was quick to respond positively and he's going to (re-)deliver them soon.

...

i planned to take mr smear to the charles clore park for an outing, which started off positively but he soon found things to complain about and became progressively more convinced that he was having the worst day ever. the fruit shake was great, the ice-cream was great, being on the promenade on a beautiful day was great, and having dinner at mexicana was great (although once he actually tried the food he remembered he didn't like the rice, goddammit).

on the way home his bike started acting up, so he decided he was going to walk. *i& didn't want to walk because i was on blades and moving slowly over long periods makes my feet hurt, and we'd already travelled pretty far. so i grabbed his bike and rolled with it, he jogged alongside me, and this was going great until he tripped on some sunken bricks and really hurt himself.

the limp home was painful for him, and i ended up having to "walk" anyway so it was painful for me too. and we had a few characteristically unpleasant moments along the way, although we both seemed to handle things better once we got home.

now it's just about 10pm, i've almost finished my strong tea and i'm about to get to work 🤞

calm

i'm tired, i'm posting this and drinking my "good night" tea (chamomile and lavender) and then hopefully i'll be ready to get a full night's sleep.

thursday:

it was a relatively calm work day. one of my coworkers was particularly condescending to me and another guy, and i'm quite proud of how calmly i handled it.

lipgirl organized an insanely rich, delicious vegan cake for the happy hour and i ended up bringing most of it home. i've eaten too much cake over the course of the last three days.

i was inspired by some of mr smear's homework questions to try teaching him math from first principles. he was so excited by how much easier it is to understand what's going on!

yesterday:

yesterday was the first day in a long while that i've had bandwidth for stuff other than my day job. i installed the windsurf IDE - which i'm so far quite pleased with (it feels more comfortable than cursor, but i haven't got lots of experience with the important stuff yet) - and recalibrated myself with some of my side projects.

some of the morning was just spent doing nothing.

after mr smear came home from school, i took him to meet gd and urchin at the sarona market for lunch. overall it was great, although it would have been better had mexicana not screwed up my order and given me chicken when i'd asked for vegan. yecch.

by the time we left, our buses weren't running anymore and it was searing hot at the bus stop. fortunately, while we were waiting for a taxi to accept our fare, an unexpected bus arrived that worked for us and we got home without further stress.

the rest of the afternoon was pretty relaxed. i looked up an alternative synagogue - we don't like the politics of the one we've been going to - but the only one that's close by and checks all the boxes doesn't hold friday night services which i find really confusing.

gd experimented with yuba for dinner, which came out really nicely.

today:

i started the day by initializing a language learning project, and then by reading more of a canticle for leibowitz when out spare mouse turned out to be broken and mr smear demanded (begged) to use our main computer.

and then i rotated my rollerblade wheels (which i've been meaning to do for ages) and mr smear and i rode to the beach.

it was a glorious beach day. the rides there and back were good (minus a minor incident where i tried to give him a boost and accidentally pushed him over), we found a spot in the shade for our gear, and we spent plenty of time having fun in the water.

i did get slightly sunburned, but not painfully.

the afternoon was spent reading and napping, and in the evening (after doing a whole bunch of dishes) i walked to our friends to deliver the barmitzvah present two weeks late, and we were all very awkward about it.

it was a very pleasant evening.

i've just bought tickets to a family-friendly trance party next weekend in honor of shavuot. we're praying that gd can come with (she's got a nerve block procedure on tuesday), but even if it's just me and mr smear i think it's going to be awesome ^_^

,,,

tomorrow is towel day! which in my book is synonymous with DNA testing day.

שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְּמַן הַזֶּה

the end of the vacation

 the rest of yesterday evening went really well. going to shul together has become a very pleasant ritual, both for the walks-and-talks and the services themselves (even if mr smear refused to stay for kiddush).

today was really good, too. we had an issue getting mr smear out the door this morning (after we'd prepped for the beach and had been talking about it for more than half an hour), but that was resolved as soon as i promised that *i* would be the one to unlock his bike [shakes head in confusion]

we were about halfway there when he decided that going to the beach was too far, so i compromised and we rode to a dog-friendly coffee shop. we chilled there for quite a while, generally having a good time (except for an incident where i had to re-teach him about personal boundaries).

the ride back was cool, too, and the weather was just beautiful.

most of the rest of the day was alternating between video games and relaxing, we played a round of exploding kittens before lunch and i read some more of a canticle for leibowitz, which i'm starting to get into.

i really didn't feel like going to my old boss's place for mimouna, so i made my excuses and we ate pizza with black-salt avo and mushroom before taking a short walk before putting mr smear to bed.

and the rest, as they say, is slay the spire. i mean, i should be going to bed now.

the perfect beach day

yesterday:

we all went off to dizengoff, which was a lot less festive than anticipated. having said that, there was plenty festive outside, and it was a gorgeous day. we took care of a couple of minor things, including picking up a bunch of hebrew comic books, and then took a slow meander up to dizengoff square, where we stopped for a very nice lunch.

we all enjoyed the food, and we all had a good experience.

then we caught a bus home and had a pretty relaxing afternoon.

in the evening i took mr smear to the synagogue, he came without a fuss and in addition to some generally pleasant talks along the way, we had a pretty serious conversation about the weekly portion (which includes the story of the golden calf), why we're supposed to pray so often (specifically, the shema), and how those two both ultimately have the same moral: no matter how smart we may think we are, that we *get* the lessons from the torah, we're descended from the same morons who *forgot* about god after witnessing his miracles directly, after hearing his voice directly, and we need to keep playing our history on repeat so that we don't forget it and lose our way.

today:

i slept horribly last night. i hadn't taken my new nightly pill (alpha lipoic acid) and my hips hurt constantly, so i was in a lot of discomfort and i barely got any rest.

i started the day a bit antisocially trying to catch up with private instagram messages - the result of ignoring them for most of the week - and then i put down for satisfactory which is on sale right now and sat with mr smear while he got into it. so far, pretty damned awesome.

without a fight - remarkably - we began moving out for our ride to the beach around 10.30am as planned. it did take us about 45 minutes to actually start riding, but there were no bad feelings and it was turning out to be another beautiful day.

we enjoyed a good ride to the beach, which was easier now that half of arlozorov is open again and with decent bike lanes, found a good shady spot, completed the sunscreen ritual and headed into the water. the side of the beach we were sitting on was too rocky and cold, so we went to the other side which was easier on the feet but absolutely freezing.

we had fun in the water for a little while, then returned to our spot where mr smear insisted on me burying him a couple of times (it's his favorite thing), and after a lot of time trying to convince him to come into the shade i got to lie down for a bit. after we had agreed that it was a good time to go and find food (and coffee for me), it took about an hour to get him into the water to rinse off some of the sand, then out of the water, then through the showers, and eventually we were ready to ride again.

we tried a very busy coffee shop near the corner of dizengoff and ben gurion, but the service was shit and the menu vegan-unfriendly so we pushed on to eazy cafe, for our favorite salad and a generally good vibe.

we eventually got home quite late, took turns showering and then chilled the remainder of the afternoon away. the evening was pleasant, dinner was good, and after getting mr smear into bed gd and i watched a lot of andrew schultz - life, which is mostly just amusing but does has some really good stuff in it. we're a bit disappointed that monk's been taken off...

...

i'm on a water-only fast now for blood tests in the morning. i hope i sleep alright.

breaking the cycle

 it was the first real weekend in three weekends, though i was really, really tired last by yesterday afternoon. i think that's just because i'm working really hard these days.

i slept awfully and far from enough on what remained of thursday night, woke up yesterday and took mr smear to school, and then shortly afterwards gd dragged me to the mall to do some shopping. i was starting to feel worn down by the time we returned home, and was relieved to have half an hour to myself before picking up mr smear when he called to say that the juggling teacher was MIA. again.

*sigh*

i convinced him to calm down and just wait by the gate, and once the school day was officially over i picked him up and brought him home to change bags before we all headed out to the ayalon mall for purim costume shopping. after some bus shenanigans - waiting almost half an hour before giving up - we grabbed a rental and were there in no time.

we couldn't find a costume mr smear wanted, but we did find him a fake executioner's axe.

which he can't take to school because since october 7th, no costume weapons allowed :/

anyway, i dropped them off at home and returned the car and returned home, and napped hard, and took a hot bath, and then it was dinner time, by the end of which i was literally passing out at the table.

today:

mr smear and i got up around the same time, and i restarted buddy simulator 1984 which he'd begun last night. we had a great time together, but some of the events were quite disturbing and he had trouble going to sleep tonight...

the game's ESRB rating being for teens is... appropriate. i'm only a little way in and i'm first and foremost impressed by the use of lazy writing to disguise a very carefully crafted experience. secondly, what begins slightly creepy is only becoming creepier.

son of a *****, i'm in.

we had a bit of a fight about him coming out with me today... as usual. but he did, and once he was out he was great. we paid our friends a visit for a while - it was only supposed to be a quick stop to drop off the extra calvin & hobbes books and a hand-me-down onesie - but mr smear and their kids were having a good time and then we got into some conversations. eventually, it was time to go and they asked if they could join us, so we all headed out together on our bikes, through the park to the port.

we began at a playground, with mr smear uninterested in using the facilities and deliberately sunning his "herpes eye" (wtaf?!), and afterwards we biked through the port (big mistake) until the crowds proved too much and then we took a quick detour to get to babylon park. as we turned off the main stretch, right after two large women had just walked right in front of us while mr smear's temper was reaching boiling point, he angrily yelled something to the effect of "i HATE that obese people existing is a thing!" [laughs and dies inside simultaneously]

babylon park was a great idea, except that about 45 seconds in mr smear's friend burst into angry tears because her father wouldn't pay for her to use one of the gambling machines. that tantrum went on for a long time, while mr smear played some cool games (he's surprisingly good at the shooting games and he's getting good at the motorcycle ones too), and mr smear and her little brother and i played air hockey, and generally had a good go.

they left before we did, but when we decided we were done we found them still outside, with her refusing to leave. she agreed to go home with us (although we didn't agree to that :P), and we were almost out of the park when mr smear stopped and i had an opportunity to give her a talk about how her dad was protecting her from herself... it seemed to have landed, but she still didn't want to ride home with him so we all split up and i made sure she got home before mr smear and i came home ourselves.

overall, i'm really pleased with mr smear's attitude today and the two of us got exercise and sunshine and had a good time together, and i feel like i parented well even with the other kids. we had a good evening, with a less insane episode of delicious in dungeon, followed by a good chat with my mom and big sister (who's just arrived in cape town and is staying with her for a week).

and then it was bedtime, and the remaining half of an episode of monk that i'd fallen asleep during, and then comforting mr smear, and now... it's late, and we're about to lose an hour of sleep to the clock moving forward.

[checks]

why the fuck did anyone say that the clocks would be moving forward today? it's another few weeks.

either way, i'm tired and i hope i get a good night's sleep.