unremarkably successful

i didn't sleep long, but i slept alright. i woke up with stomach issues that lasted until the early afternoon, and i'm pretty confident it has something to do with the sheer quantity of suboptimal snacks i've been consuming over the course of the past week... my weight's been bouncing up and down accordingly, and i really, really need to start behaving with a little bit of discipline.

i cleaned the balcony floor this morning, but it was already too hot and sunny to sit outside. i spent a good chunk of the day resuscitating my social media side project, and it's looking good, and i've put some effort into a new minigame as well.

i sat gd and mr smear down this morning (as soon as he was clear of his first two screen-free hours) to watch a fascinating video on jaw development, which unfortunately includes two incidents of animal cruelty so gd only made it through half. but mr smear appears to get the idea, which was the main intention.

he's busy playing the sims 4 right now, i can't tell if i'm an awesome dad or a terrible one :P

the big event of the day was gd fixing my haircut on camera, with mr smear serving as cameraman, and we're going to edit it and post it (and hope i don't get blacklisted from barber shops :P). i'm hoping this is the start of a hairdresser equivalent of kitchen nightmares, and that this builds gd's credibility towards becoming a consultant or mentor.

in the meanwhile, my hair's looking sooooo much better and gd's only a little bit injured from the effort... 🤷‍♂️

we all went for a short walk to the grocery store to pick up a few things, which was a corrective experience as gd was forced to admit, begrudgingly, that it's not the worst supermarket and that they do have stuff sometimes.

alright, i think i need to switch off for a bit.

first and second blood

 i've been distracting myself all morning, now that i need to get to work i just realized i haven't posted anything and i'd like to "clear my desk" before i get started, so:

yesterday we watched the first two rambo movies (first blood, and first blood part ii). which were both enjoyed immensely, and both discussed heavily.

additionally, i took mr smear out on our rollerblades and he's improved dramatically, which was great fun to see.

otherwise, i spent a whole bunch of hours working on and writing up my map seed generator algorithm, and fixing a bunch of incidental bugs, so i feel like we made some progress on mr smear's game and that i have something to show for the past couple of weeks of being all over the place.

i took a puff last night, and i slept well, in spite of the fact that i went to bed with hurting hip flexors and i'm also struggling with them now.

this morning began with now-routine comics and coffee on the balcony, then i accompanied gd to her new dentist and did some work while i waited. she had a good experience, it looks like we've found our new clinic.

aaaand scene.

getting stuff done

 it's been a busy morning! we failed to get gd's canadian crypto account reactivated (their verification is broken), but i managed to get my israeli one sorted out. this was after discovering yesterday that ethereum gas fees have finally normalized after all the upgrades, making it worthwhile transferring money, and that compound has been generating far less interest than promised.

i mean, with our amounts of money it didn't make a huge difference, but still.

while doing that, i managed to get the blast window for our shelter roped up so that gd can close it herself in case of emergency. gd and mr smear cleaned the house yesterday, specifically worried about all of us (including my sister and potentially mr smear's friend) having to sleep in our shelter bedroom together. apparently things are heating up, though i've been completely disconnected from the news cycle these days.

then i called and made an appointment for her to see the dentist, because of course she's in pain after her root canal and crown were done... at least her stomach seems to be doing a bit better today.

i think i've sent my insurance broker the documents she wanted - turns out my previous employer forgot to update the insurance companies that i wasn't working for them any more 🤔

finally, gd found our boxing gear (whew!) and i posted the mongoose's guitar hero guitars on the facebook marketplace.

so, all in all, it's been a morning.

[chokes on a raisin bran raisin]

unfocusing

 today was... awkward. not bad, but a little weird.

first, we all got out of bed half an hour late - gd had disabled her alarm because she's been relying on mine, i'd disabled my alarm for last week's jewish holidays and forgotten to reactivate it, but the last couple of days was woken by a different alarm that i subsequently disabled yesterday.

i know i got some stuff done before i left for work, but it didn't feel like it. i called to wish my brother a happy birthday, which he's spending trying to organize an inverter because his broke down and johannesburg doesn't have much electricity 🤷‍♂️

my work day began with a message from the product guy to say that what the report i put together shows is unpalatable. during and after my team daily, i spent some time putting together advice for my team, and over the course of the day shared it with a bunch of people in an attempt to raise general awareness. everything else (that wasn't a bunch of random distractions*) was preparing for the big meeting, the meeting itself, and then reporting the results of the meeting to various people. but the results of the meeting are, essentially, do some more research, and if i find that the real source is what we think it should be then i have a plan of action...

* including a kickoff to my employer's hackathon, and a video was shown where i recognized a woman i studied with in my first degree. she appears to have worked for my employer for many years, but left within the last few, and hasn't updated her linkedin profile. very strange.

mr smear got off the bus at the wrong stop, so he arrived home later than i did. very sweetly, he thought that he was saving money by only taking a single bus home, so i explained (again) that a chain of buses and light rails is one trip. i hope he internalizes that.

after he did a little music practice and helped gd in the kitchen (gd had a big day today, she went to the dentist entirely by herself for the first time in ages), we did an mma session. he complained about his post-rollerblading soreness (ow! my tailbone!) but with only minor coercion his was a reasonably good re-entry after more than a month (which was also after a break). the post-training stretching in particular did me some good.

we showered, ate a delicious gluten-free pesto spaghetti while watching more infinity train, spoke to my mom, got mr smear into bed, and ended his evening on the sour note of me asking him multiple times to stop making the evening end on a sour note before having to yell at him.

that sucks.

anyway, it was more performative than emotional and the rest of the evening's been pretty relaxing. i'm a bit nervous about tomorrow's work, but i'm absolutely done for the day and i'm considering going to bed early tonight.

...

oh, yes:

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...

shouldn't have told the universe my plans

 gd decided to clean the bathrooms and floors today. i tried to nap for a short while after breakfast, though i really didn't get much actual rest, and then our kibbutz cousin arrived for a visit. it was great to be able to host her for once! it's the first time in the twenty five years i've known her :P

just before she arrived, i registered a flurry of activity on our classroom whatsapp group, and we were horrified to learn that mr smear's homeroom teacher was riding her bicycle to the school earlier this week and was run over by a truck. she's been hospitalized and is in a serious condition, it doesn't look like she's going to be returning to the school this year 💔

we had a great late lunch ordered from jars and bowls, after which i jumped on a bus to pick mr smear up from school. we walked all the way to the light rail, hopped on the light rail, and only then did i learn that he'd left his locker unlocked again. so we turned right around at the next stop, went back into the school and i made him unpack his locker and search for his books while i searched above and in all the open lockers in the same row.

we didn't find anything.

we then took a quick walk to a bus stop to ride to the dentist to join gd, who was very nervous after her last visit. by the time we arrived she was almost done, and we she came out she was (rightly) very proud of herself for having told her dentist exactly how she was feeling and why; the dentist responded professionally, and gd says the experiences were night and day.

i wanted to pick up a decaf coffee on the way home (it would have been my third decaf today), but the guy at the coffee shop took way too long. we caught a bus home, and since we got back i've been struggling to stay awake so as not to have a hard time getting to sleep tonight.

so, braindead, i played slay the spire 2 until dinner, ate a great dinner with my family, showered, and have just tucked mr smear into bed. now it's time to go to bed myself.

wtf monday

 wtf monday.

we all got up early (my hip's still locked, but not quite as badly as yesterday) so that we could accompany gd to her dental first aid appointment. we arrived on time. her dentist was running late. after we'd been there about an hour, gd decided she didn't really need to be there after all.

i raced to find an appropriate spot to join my team's daily, but realized too late that where we'd settled wasn't one. at least the coffee was good. i hope the little white bits falling all over the place weren't from dried bird poop.

we then caught a bus home, on the way doing a bit of hardware shopping.

once home, i was somehow dragged in to trying to diagnose an issue my teammates had been working on but abandoned due to their holidays. i spent the following hours trying to make sense of things - mostly asking AI to investigate a variety of things - and eventually i was able to suggest something that seemed reasonable.

only to be informed by the devops team that that's just what they'd been thinking. so why the hell didn't they do something about it without getting me involved?!

gd received her shoes, which cost half again as much due to customs.

i took a break to be assisted by big data, who began the work of installing proper ethernet outlets. it was very stressful, and i have no idea how he managed to get the clip wired up properly. finally, just before he had to run off, we discovered that one of the pieces i ordered was replaced by something incompatible :/

after closing up my work for the day, i headed out to the local store again, this time for a stack of dark chocolate, because apparently it's a good iron source. the more i try to do the math, though, the less sense that claim makes.

it gave me an opportunity to chat with my mom, though.

after returning home, it was time for dinner, two episodes of strip search (we're down to the last episode!), a family chat with my mom, shower and sketch time for mr smear, and now that he's in bed i'm posting this and getting my evening squared away before climbing into bed myself.

...

mr smear has seen some of the last halloween before, tonight i bought it and another book of abby's on kindle. i was a bit disappointed by the merch available, though. i wanted Stuff.

extra-innings

 we all slept late, though in my case "sleep" is an exaggeration. i slept poorly. again. lower back and such.

i woke up with a bee in my bonnet, and spent a day i needed to be full of downtime working hard herding AI agents to build me a game i concocted. i'm certainly not the first person to attempt combining scrabble and balatro, but as of a minute or two ago i'm at a point where it kinda feels like i've come up with a viable alternative.

we shall see.

otherwise, it was a pretty quiet (cluster bomb attacks notwithstanding) day, mr smear entertaining himself with a mixture of reading comics and watching solo leveling (he very kindly caught me up when i did sit down with him), and the biggest event of the day was us taking a walk to both stretch our legs and pick up snacks (and then eating a lot of said snacks, and then getting into trouble with gd because we're both bothering her with our weight sensitivies).

in unrelated news, gd managed to crack a temporary crown today, so tomorrow's going to be more interesting than planned :/

that seems to be all, hopefully tonight with be a little restful.

life is like a permeable shower curtain

 aren't shower curtains supposed to be impermeable? why can we not find plastic shower curtains anywhere?

1. getting up early was rough - i was still in dream-fugue for a while after our alarms sounded - but getting mr smear out of bed was even rougher. at least, after the initial shock and resentment, things were okay.

2. accompanying gd to the dentist for the second part of her root canal, and taking mr smear for breakfast. i tried to get some work done while he read. the vegan breakfast looked great, but was mediocre at best. i mean, at least he ate the "eggs", which were more curry than eggs, and he doesn't really like curry. but we both had too much of the pickled garlic. a tiny amount was too much, and haunted us both for quite a while after.

pg's folks walked in while i was in the middle of my team's daily, and didn't get the hint that i was in a meeting and couldn't say hi, which was amusingly awkward both for me and my teammates. i had a very nice chat with them afterwards, though.

then gd joined us, met pg's introduced herself to pg's parents. gd had walked into the coffee shop carrying a broom, and pg's mom asked her where she was flying 🤣

3. we caught a bus home, getting off early and paying the hardware store a visit. we picked up a shower curtain. then we stopped by a nature store, and mr smear found a bag of panda's dubai-style vegan chocolate. which i've been wanting to try for a while. i also needed something to calm the garlic-ness.

it was great. i wouldn't pay huge sums of money for it, but it was great.

4. mr smear joined his last two online classes until the end of the pesach break, i tried to work. "tried to work" is the theme of the day, because i - was - a - wreck. i was tired, unmotivated, and everything was a struggle.

also, physically uncomfortable. and i snacked constantly.

i did finish reading ghost in the shell during a lunch break. it's fascinating. it's very clever. it's got 80's israel and mossad references that are as amusing as they are darkly disquieting.

i made mr smear outline a map of israel and hunt down major cities. he did a disappointingly half-assed job of it.

5. after mr smear completed his chores - he's been helping gd a lot lately - we took out the recycling and took a short walk to see if we could find a bath mat. correction - we took a short skip. i introduced mr smear to sheng wang's bit about skipping a while back and he's taken it to heart. also, it's hard not to smile as i let him drag me into it, because otherwise he gets too far ahead of me >D

we first discovered that gd had somehow missed an entire row of frozen vegan dumplings at the store. then we went to a supermarket and found the garbage bags gd and i like (this is how we know we're getting older). mr smear and i tired and failed to find the watermelon ice-creams we love so much, even at a weird new commercial ice-cream store. i mean, an entire store devotes to the ice creams that are sold at various kiosks.

finally, we went in to a container store. i didn't have much in the way of expectations, but we found a nice bath mat!

6. we came back home just in time for dinner. we watched strip search's fifth elimination, and then mr smear decided that we should try having the dubai-style chocolate with marshmallow. i thought that sounded ridiculous, but i decided to give it a try anyway. i didn't want to overpower the chocolate, so i took a bite of chocolate and then nibbled the marshmallow until the proportions were right.

a short while later i came back to reality. i'm glad i gave it a chance.

7. i used the "new" shower first. i preferred the overall experience - it's more comfortable than the bath in the awkwardly triangular master bathroom - but the water pressure's not as good. then mr smear got in the shower.

just before he was done, i checked in on him and found a large puddle of water outside the shower. immediately panicking, i checked the sides and i checked above, and i couldn't see the source of all the water! and then it hit me - literally - the water was spraying straight through the polyester shower curtain.

gd called it - we now know precisely how the bottom of the wooden doorway rotted.

8. after gd and i had a chat with my mom* - lots of drama surrounding my sister and nephew and my niece - gd and i had a chat about gd's friend, who's life-long battle with reality has left him suicidal. gd's really upset, and i explained to her that she's not doing him any favors by pretending that she's okay with what he's doing or planning on doing.

* i'd called her earlier, and my godmother was with her. i was waving to my mom, and then suddenly she was in the frame, and i think we were both equally uncomfortable. thank god gd wasn't with me.

it's not early by any stretch of the imagination, but i'm just finishing up a cup of tea and then going to bed, with a feeling like it's early.

these are strange days. the politics of this war and the noises from all sides of the media are distracting, confusing, and messy. we're doing really well, considering, and we're doing much better than a lot of people here, but my gods these days are taking a psychological toll in a middle different ways.

the time cluster bomb

 today was weird. the deployment didn't go smoothly, but was ultimately successfully.

a religious family came downstairs to present us with mishloach manot, which i explained was very much appreciated, but as we've got a dairy allergy and we're vegan we simply can't accept. an hour or so later they knocked again, with a whole different arrangement, including baked goods with the ingredients handwritten.

so now i feel bad that we haven't reciprocated - we had no way - and we've had way too many sweets today.

also, mr smear's molar fell out.

he spent most of the day dressed up as harry potter, he did his own scar amazingly well, and was very disappointed that it wasn't a school day and there was no one to show his costume to but us :(

we literally walked around the block twice today for exercise.

i eventually managed to complete my investigation into whether my screw-up last week had any undetected impact, and spent an hour talking to a new coworker - both at my employer, and my client - about both of them and giving him the details i wish i'd had. i then followed that up with a complaint to the woman who brought us both in because he was also supposed to start both jobs on the same day, like i did, and that's messed up.

my most productive time today was spent on my phone control solution, which i've gotten to a point that i can start playing with the more interesting ideas.

thanks to AI.

the war goes on. it looks like however the next couple of weeks play out, we've essentially already won: the IRGC is effectively finished, the middle east has realigned itself. the attacks today were fewer and further between, but louder and scarier.

mr smear was a bit difficult today, on occasion, but also a lot easier to get through to (eventually). on the one hand, he's been cooped up, but on the other, he's refusing to leave the apartment to do anything social, and gd's sick and unavailable and i'm working and unavailable.

i'm tired. but also antsy. i barely have bandwidth for the stuff that needs brain, but distractions? i don't even register time passing.

a tale of two incidents

 yesterday:

i did sleep, but only briefly, waking up an hour or so before our alarms to jump right back into AI cat wrangling. because my brain was on fire imagining all the cat wrangling i wanted to do.

so i began my day putting together a PR for my boss (not my client) which basically said "this is how it's done", and i was relieved to find it merged by this morning, so he obviously wasn't too offended :P

then i rushed off to the 24/7 to pick up mishloach manot for mr smear to take to school, and afterwards gd and i headed to the dentist for the first part of her two-part root canal, which i had to be there for because her dentist doesn't understand a word of english (or french).

[goddamn i love chocolate-covered pecans]

i dropped her off at home and continued on to the office, where i was completely manic and infected a data engineer and my client with my enthusiastic idea for an AI cat-wrangling IDE extension.

and then i ran a test that my cat-wrangling had produced, confident that it was ready and that i'd had good results from the dry runs.

...

i was pretty bored while waiting for missing user permissions to complete the tests we were running in production, so i took care of some other stuff while i waited.

while i was making myself a cup of coffee, an unknown employee began interrogating me as to why he didn't see me at the company purim party that i didn't go to. he obviously thought he was being funny, but at no point did he get the hint that it would be wise to drop it, and in front of HR staff brought it to a point where had i been so inclined, that could easily have earned him a warning for harassment.

then i was brought into a call with my client team for an incident i knew nothing about and had nothing to do with - let's call it incident B - only to be informed, as i was explaining to them that my coffee wasn't working yet, that it wasn't an issue for us.

at that point i realized that i was falling apart, so i finished my coffee and left for home.

on the way home i tried to pick up a frying pan from kikar ha'medina, but i couldn't find what i was looking for, all the while struggling to get hold of mr smear and then threatening him to get his ass home to assist me on a mission to dizengoff.

...

and then i got home, and learned that the test i'd run earlier in the day had led to an incident.

let's call it incident A.

it took me about ten minutes to figure out what was happening, and another five to realize it was my fault. another two minutes to decide how to fix it, at which point i saw that one of my teammates had already pushed a fix and i'd been typing into silence for five minutes.

over the next twenty minutes i was in contact with my teammate but had received nothing from our client team (who were presumed to be dealing with the incident), and nothing seemed to be happening so i rushed out with mr smear and a washing basket that needed returning to catch a bus to the center.

we were halfway there when my phone started buzzing again, and i'd left my computer at home 🤦‍♂️

the bus was packed, with non-compliant riders arguing with the conductors, and a stop too early i jumped off with mr smear and we raced through the crowded sidewalks, scrambled down to the store, where i had trouble finding a frying pan, eventually giving up and taking an expensive induction one.

we rushed through the center to catch another bus home, and when we returned it was to discover, to my absolute horror, that i'd taken our production services down completely by running a test that i had literally forgotten i hadn't reviewed yet.

i cannot believe i did something so utterly irresponsible, i was mortified and humiliated to post the list of things that had been unnecessarily affected, a danger that i would easily have spotted had i checked it beforehand.

while i scrambled to figure out what was happening - i was in a flat panic, and had no idea where to look for monitors or logs* - my bulgarian teammates were quietly working with AI chewing gum and duct-tape and getting things back online.

* in retrospect, nobody does. and there isn't a lot of monitoring or logging going on to begin with...

all i had to offer were my apologies and volunteering to write up the RCA.

i continued freaking out until my mentor called me (i'd messaged him), and he was very reassuring ("if somebody had lost their life, maybe i wouldn't have called you"). still very shaken, i went to bed early knowing that no good was going to come of me getting less sleep.

today:

surprisingly, i did get some rest.

mr smear gave us some trouble this morning - he's been doing the slow morning thing since we moved, and he's been talking back whenever he gets in trouble - but by the time he had to go to school we were all in a better place.

except for gd, who was pissed off at the new frying pan because it's not as non-stick as it says.

(alanis morissette) ironically, the technician for the stove was due to come this morning and the element was heating up fully. fortunately, they called to tell us he'd been delayed and so we rescheduled for monday, which gives us a chance to test if it's really working or not.

the appraiser for the household insurance came back, an elderly man (a biker, i should say) who was impressively professional and efficient.

finally, the technician from the internet company arrived to sort out internet in our in-home bomb-shelter (our bedroom).

it took a long time. it took a lot of assistance from us. at one point he left the apartment, and then returned but forgot to take his shoes off.

he took so long, that i had to stop following him around to join my morning post-incident meeting with my teammates, which was really important because i knew i had to be able to discuss my disastrous fuck-up while looking them in the eyes.

by the time he was done, i was extremely frustrated. firstly, because the wiring isn't what i thought he was going to install, it's simply a single, very long ethernet cable from one end of the apartment to the other, instead of two wall jacks. secondly, because the outlet in the bedroom doesn't fit properly, so it looks terrible and it was squashing the cable he'd just installed, and i had to explain this to him. thirdly, because as relieved as i am that the network appliance in our bedroom is now working well, the speeds we're getting are inconsistent and surprisingly low. finally, because goddamnit when i tell you you're damaging both my screwdriver and the screw by using the wrong bit, fucking stop.

jesus h. christ.

anyway, so gd and i washed the floor, and there's internet in the bedroom, and on that note i left for the office. it was lunch time already, so i had to skip lunch. on the way i caught up with my mother who'd just had an interesting conversation with the new head of the jewish agency in south africa.

i hope something positive comes out of it.

the first half hour at work was fighting with IT network issues.

the next two hours were a complete mess; trying to understand the impact of incident A as a step towards getting started on the RCA, strategizing with a data engineer, and, amongst other stuff, being dragged back into incident B.

i never did get started on that RCA - i spent five hours on incident B, and was somehow assigned to lead a task force and only walked out of the office a little before 9pm.

not only did i bear witness to a member of my client team - the only guy who legitimately knows what he's doing - threatening to quit, and being mollified by the team lead, but at every step of the way i learned more about the system architecture and was stunned by the absurdity of it all. it's shit, deep shit, all the way down.

also, the guy who just left the team last week? he'd convinced us all that the migration i took over was ready. tonight we discovered that it really wasn't.

oh, and i wasn't home to receive my son, who - in spite of a bit of a freak-out because he'd waited at the wrong bus stop on the way home - had managed to take the comics back to the comics library all by himself, by bus ^_^

my "dinner" was two slices of happy hour vegan pizza (it wasn't bad) and a beer, but when i got home i had gd's ramen (with bok choy and a yo egg) and dessert. after assuring gd that if i do lose my client over calling it quits for the weekend (with the rest of the task force backing me) it'll make him look bad, i immediately sat down to get all this down before i jump in the shower and probably climb straight into bed.

tomorrow's a big day, mostly in preparation for taking mr smear to a purim family trance party on saturday. we have no idea what's happening with iran - obviously if things go crazy we'll have to stay home - but whatever happens i'm mostly confident we'll be fine 🤞🙏

nagging (feelings)

 today was... calmer? i mean, gd and i were not vibing this morning, she was upset with me for asking her to do two things outside (that she had to do, but we ended up deferring the misrad hapnim visit), and i was upset with her for harassing me about building furniture.

the weird typo is on gemini☝️

...

i killed another silverfish last night, which led to me doing a lot of research. we're currently serving their favorite meals - books and clothing sandwiched in cardboard boxes :/

so i began my day building a malm desk of drawers and one of its drawers, then off to work i went.

work was weird. firstly, i arrived late for a meeting that had been extended, and i must have joined just after the others signed off, so i was basically alone in a zoom meeting for a while.

then i resumed my investigation, quickly determining that there was a chain of services doing a lot of very silly things. i explained my findings to my client team, who asked me to verify them with my teammate who was also on the case.

"i have good news, and i have bad news."

"we're a bit overwhelmed right now, i only have bandwidth for the good news."

"the good news is that my teammate and i came to the same conclusions. that's also the bad news."

my salad lunch was boring, after i'd been frustrating getting it by crowds of inefficient people (including one guy who was trying to evenly shake canned tuna over the top of his salad).

i excitedly shared my new comic and process with my client team, then made myself a coffee, and then did relatively little (reviewing PRs, mainly) until i realized that i didn't have much to do, but also that i had a small window to pay the mattress store a visit.

the guy tried to convince me that what i'm missing for a good night's sleep is coffee with turmeric and honey before bed. i tried a bunch of mattresses, but had a difficult time determining the harder from the softer ones, and eventually he put in an order for what we have, but customized with something called "super soft".

it took a while to get out of there - he kept chaining his (interesting) stories together, even after i explained that i really needed to go - and i bussed home in time to put together another drawer. mr smear, who had irritatingly refused to take the bus home from the library, arrived just in time for us to grab a cab to gd's dentist appointment.

we waited a long time. we played, roughhoused, and napped in the waiting room. mr smear farted while a woman on the next couch was tried to rest, and she almost immediately got up to get some fresher air 🤣

the secretary who helped us was very kind and helpful, and she explained things clearly, and gd has a treatment plan that seems to be on a reasonable timeline.

we caught the bus home, had a delicious* dinner from jars and bowls, and a long chat with my mom, and a pretty smooth but late bedtime ritual.

* mostly delicious, the mexican bean stew was a little too heavy on the liquid smoke and i overcompensated with hot sauces

i have no idea how tonight's going to go. hopefully alright.

cutoff

 omg what a day. i'm tired-but-wired, some of which is due to the excitement and some of which is due to my having looked for decaf coffee late in the afternoon, having found colombian coffee instead, realizing after preparing it that i didn't want more caffeine, but drinking it anyway so as not to waste it.

...

firstly, a lot of stressing, but in the late afternoon the landlord finally confirmed that the apartment was ours. after dinner and mr smear's toenail treatments (during which time i discovered he's still scratching holes in his hands and legs, which is driving me demented), gd and i walked over to take measurements, and had a really wholesome chat with the guy (and his filipino caretaker).

gd's in need of a nerve block again, the walk there and back were tough for her :(

work-wise, i'm not sure how today went. i'm feeling a bit out of my depth with a tech stack i'm completely unfamiliar with :/

gd went to the dentist in the afternoon, and discovered that the issue is with a neighboring tooth, not the one she previously thought. this means she has three teeth demanding very expensive treatment plans, rather than two (one of which she finally just completed). jesus h. christ in a bucket.

after completing some important admin for my new employer, and putting more stuff on my moving apartments todo list, i went through the contract terms. it's mostly fine, there're a couple of minor clauses that are a concern, but then we came across a heartbreaking clause that states that no animals are allowed.

so i guess we're going to have an interesting conversation tomorrow. this has taken all the wind out of gd's sails :(

...

during dinner and shower time, mr smear was all about tool (particularly parabol and parabola). we discussed jimmy, because i suddenly realized today what intermission is all about - it's the innocent, happy childhood that's disrupted by the tragedy (his mother being left paralyzed after an aneurysm) - while his feet soaked, we sang along to ænema together.

yes, i know the lyrics are inappropriate, but he does too.

anyway, as a long-time tool fan, this is really special.

still waiting...

 the threats from iran are escalating (while they're massacring the persian people), and there's been a (literal) storm brewing (i was supposed to meet with tahoma earlier, but cancelled when i realized that i didn't have an umbrella on me), and i'm supposed to finish a PR i started this afternoon...

...

mr smear left for school seeming prepared for his history test, which he reported went well. he's also reported that he behaved well at school all day, but we never know until the reports come in...

the biggest thing about this morning, aside from a whole thing about gd and her dentists, was that we finally started looking for a new apartment. which caused a fair amount of distraction throughout the day.

it was a mostly-positive work day (half work day), except for me forgetting my sunglasses in the office when i hopped home for lunch, and high winds were making little dust twisters all along the way, and then me getting back to the office late for a meeting with one of my teammates... and then the train station entrance i needed to get to my employer's office was closed, and i *just* made it in time for my meeting with my mentor, or would have had he not cancelled at the last minute...

the rest of the afternoon was a lecture, some vegan dimsum and a proper seaweed salad, an awkward "game" debating technology opinions with no context, and chatting with some of my coworkers before heading out.

...

i was very relieved to make it home without being rained on. mr smear's hebrew reading homework was good, dinner was great (mr smear impressing me with his improving heat tolerance after having spilled too much habanero honey mustard sauce), and the rest of the evening went pretty smoothly. now i have to decide whether i have it in me to finish the PR or leave that until morning.

i should probably leave it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

stormy weather

 i woke up yesterday morning with my back still hurting - particularly, a band of pain around the middle of my trunk whenever i breathe deeply. it's still happening now, though considerably less.

gd (who'd decided her jaw pain could wait) and i enjoyed a slow morning, and then we headed south the florentin and the levinski market looking for a nice place for a coffee date. we didn't find what we were looking for, and gd became distressed about all the market people and vibes, so we cut across to cafe barzilay.

i returned to the table after ordering to find gd upset, she handed me the phone and mr smear informed me how seriously he FAed at school - both in being defiant, and then following that up by lying about having seen the principal - and it looks like he's about to FO.

at least he told us before his teacher got hold of me...

so that fucked up our weekend vibe. we have a meeting with the principal tomorrow, and we have no idea how we can defend him (or even whether we should).

so yesterday was pretty shit. i mean, he seemed reasonably contrite, and he did finally catch up with his homework, but it was pretty shit.

on the plus side, without screen time he dove into building the lego monster book of monsters kit that the mongoose had bought him, so that was cool.

dinner went smoothly, but the evening fell apart when i responded inappropriately to gd sharing her feelings (like a man, i tried to be helpful instead of just listening and nodding my head), we had a massive, exhausting fight and i woke up this morning still feeling emotionally drained.

although i spent most of today reading - including continuing to read the ocean at the end of the lane at mr smear's request, and getting him into alice in sunderland, and getting through most of the complete ballad of halo jones, and winning a blake stake balatro run, and getting back from a not-unpleasant 8km walk dropping mr smear off at a friend (which means we both got exercise and fresh air and didn't get caught in the rain) - the day's still pretty shit.

gods help this kid get his shit together. PLEASE.

looming

 getting mr smear out of bed this morning was pretty tough. but we've had worse.

my back, on the other hand, threatened all morning to lock up. thank the gods we have the massage kit, it really helped. which reminds me that we still have the TENS NMES kit unopened on the table :P

[makes a note to unbox it tomorrow]

i've been reading the complete ballad of halo jones, which is amazing, and i got through quite a bit of it this morning before attacking the piles of paper that had been accumulating on various surfaces.

i did a lot of nothing, otherwise, and i didn't feel particularly good about it. i also did a lot of unhealthy snacking today. i felt antsy a lot today.

i did sign the revised contract, though, so that's good. and i discovered a bunch of interesting meetups in tel aviv, which i hadn't realized was a thing. and i filled out an onboarding questionnaire. and i redid the color on my not-so-white (and somewhat torn) shoes again.

in the afternoon, i took a walk to the library to get some work done on my side projects, but i spent most of that time onboarding. it's awkward joining chats before officially being welcomed. it's very quiet :P

i did get a little bit of work done on my "social" media project, at least, before i headed downstairs to pick up a graphic novel they were holding for me (hakim's odyssey), then return home via the mall in an attempt to find a grey sharpie (to make the white shoes intentionally not white).

i got home a little before mr smear, and most of the rest of the afternoon went smoothly. i made some side-project progress, he got through his music and quite a lot of the math exercises before breaking down, i did a lot of dishes, and by the time we were ready for dinner i decided that we could continue watching the highlander.

after dinner, i felt like the day had fallen apart. the thing gd went to the dentist to check is getting worse, so she's getting angrier and angrier with the dentist for being useless, and mr smear began behaving less than ideally... and i think a lot of my stress was due to the fact that the rest of the day had been positive, and my plans to go on a "date" with gd tomorrow morning were falling apart, and it was just a bummer.

by the time mr smear was in bed, though, i was ready to read some more of the ocean at the end of the lane to him. it was an even more horrific chapter than the one before, and i *had* to keep going until its end, which fortunately hit the turning point in the darkest part of the misery. mr smear had some interesting conversations along the way, and i think that helped because he went to sleep pretty easily afterwards, and in a good mood.

after saying good night i hit the shower, and then played balatro - finally earning the green chip! - and i think i'm going to bed soon.

probably.

babysitting

 it was difficult getting out of bed this morning. i made it even harder by moving to the couch and covering myself with five soft blankets (we just bought another two a couple of days ago).

i seem to recall it not being the smoothest back-to-school morning, but i don't actually recall anything particularly troublesome either, so 🤷

i accompanied gd to the dentist, where there was a weird mix-up about her appointment time (it's not clear if they messed up, or if she misheard), and the secretary was being unpleasantly and aggressively defensive while i was trying to figure out what happened, and gd assures me that she's seen this same woman drive other patients mad so i guess i shouldn't take it personally...

apparently gd's situation isn't too worrying, but the dentist who examined her needed to have his finger put on the place she's worried about before he could recognize that there was anything at all, so...

we took a walk past the doggy cafe, and were both surprised to hear my name being yelled by my cousin - who's just arrived from the states with my aunt - flying past on a scooter! it's a tiny country :P

i picked up a coffee, and we continued on to her gastro scope. we arrived early, concerned that gd drinking sips of water when it's supposed to be a water fast might be a problem :/

we waited quite a while, and i spent the time working on one of my side projects. then we went through, and i hung around while gd waited for quite a while (on a less comfortable chair) until they came to get her, and sent me back outside. i waited a while (not too long) and read dev articles, then they called me in and we waited for quite a while until a doctor came to tell us they hadn't really found anything interesting.

it's information, i guess.

gd was pretty messed up after the anaesthetic, but okay, and overall her experience was considerably improved from the nightmare scope she endured in montreal at the hands of a couple of evilly cruel doctors and nurses who barely sedated her and... i guess that's her story to tell.

we came home, i ate breakfast, barely finishing before jumping onto a zoom presentation about using AI to handle entire task lifecycles. after a pretty boring hour, not only was i left unconvinced that one should do that, but i was pretty convinced that the presenter's company (which he's running, essentially) is burning through huge quantities of human capital and energy capital and that the value-for-money isn't as high as they probably think it is.

but i was reminded to reactivate my sonarqube plugin for vscode, which gave me some fun chores to do this evening.

mr smear came home, and sat down to his homework for the first time since before the holidays. it didn't go well (i later discovered he's been skipping exercises again, which blows my mind because it took us months to catch up last time and it was a big deal for both of us).

meanwhile, i napped under all the blankets until i needed to go to my dermatologist appointment. i didn't feel like going, it was cold and i was tired. but i went. the dermatologist did a full examination (and used the sun damage on my ankles to quiz his intern), and i guess the thing that was bothering me a few months ago when i made the appointment must have gone away 🤷

i walked home, chatting with my aunt and then my mom, the latter discussing apartment hunting and the fact that we should get started already.

i stopped at the bakery on the way home to chat and pick up more-expensive-than-i-expected yummo's bars, then came home to take care of mr smear's toenails and shower, and deal with his non-compliance, and have dinner, and then read another chapter of the ocean at the end of the lane.

i'd forgotten about the bathroom scene. i apologized to mr smear, to his five year old self, and to all his selves since. i don't know what i was thinking at the time, but that definitely wasn't appropriate.

...

after reporting that back to gd, i told her what i've been thinking about a lot today: things are really hard for her, and i know that i can't fully understand what she's going through, and i know that i get upset with some of her behaviors that aren't her fault, and that that's not fair. at the same time, though, i don't feel like i ever really get a break, and my life seems like a never-ending gauntlet, and i guess i need to accept that as my base-line.

all either of us can really do is just do the best we can to keep putting one foot in front of the other. i'm not sure what normal people go through, but whatever it is, i'm pretty sure we're not normal and that this isn't it.

adulting

 the interview was a bit weird.

firstly, the office is much closer to home than i expected. it's in ramat gan, not tel aviv, and i think it's the first time i've been up in a tall building in the area because the views were surprisingly spectacular.

secondly,  the moment we sat down for the interview itself my interviewers were shocked that i hadn't brought my laptop with me. i'd actually thought about bringing it with me, funnily enough, but it's such an odd thing to do i'd decided against it.

the interview itself may or may not have gone well. mainly because it took me a while to get to what they were looking for, but the conversation we had along the way was a real conversation, and interesting, so hopefully that satisfied them.

i was pleased to get a phone call from my mentor, after i emailed him a post-interview update, in which he was furious about them expecting me to bring a laptop :P [as we both agreed: it wouldn't have been unreasonable if they'd asked me to, but they didn't]

after i got home, put together a quick diagram and sent it, and spoke to my mentor, mr smear left for the comics library to go and read chainsaw man, which i'd told him i didn't want him reading. i took care of a bunch of random things, and then all of a sudden i got a call from him, on his way home, explaining that he'd put back chainsaw man after deciding it really was inappropriate because the protagonist was behaving badly and was intending to act in a way that's he felt was sexual assault.

so i'm relieved, and gd and i are both very proud of him.

he got home, i passed out on the couch, gd went to the dentist for first aid.

she came back early, having been at the dentists' office at the right time to be able to make an appointment to see one tomorrow morning (as opposed to waiting hours for first aid). so that's cool.

mr smear and i fired up oxygen not included together (i kibbitzed), and we both had a great experience!

in the evening, the three of us hopped on a bus to meet up with the mongoose and his daughter at the mall. we discovered, when we got to the lego store, that he was shopping for a late birthday present for mr smear, who ended up with the very exciting monster book of monsters!

we spent the next half hour or so struggling to find a place to eat, because everywhere we thought of was closed already. eventually, we ended up at lampur, which had excellent options for veganizing dishes, and although it was quite pricey the food was excellent and we all had a great time :)

afterwards, we all took a short stroll through the park, and then we got a ride home, and it was very late by the time mr smear finally got into bed.

now it's very late and i'm deciding whether i should be getting into bed, or playing a bit first...

...

oh! on the way out this evening we did something we haven't felt able / been inclined to do in forever - we booked tickets to a comedy show! in february. on a school night. with no intention of hiring a babysitter.

(to be fair, it's an early show)

the pause

life feels like a hurricane at the moment, so it was nice to be able to spend a day in the eye of the storm.

yesterday:

our friends (plus parents) actually tried the challah-lina reaper with me, and it was a great success. both in that nobody suffered too much, and in that i wasn't the only one to go back for more.

dinner was great, the kids had a good time together, and although gd and i are always on our guard with the parents due to the political divide, we had lots of interesting conversations with zero friction. it was a lovely evening overall.

we got home pretty late, lit the candles (with my mom), and got mr smear into bed before passing out ourselves.

today:

the early morning was slow (we all got up late), and i spent a little time checking out last call BBS which i picked up last night in the steam sale.

cm got back to me with an invitation to bring mr smear over to play with his kids. getting mr smear out the house is complicated at the best of times... but he came, willingly, and aside from a section through the park that felt too much like a hike to him, we enjoyed a pleasant walk and he kept us both entertaining by singing psychosocial's chorus with ice age's sid's lisp the whole way there.

since mr smear's finally conceded that speaking hebrew has utility, he had no issue communicating with cm's kids and the bunch of them got along well. so the kids had a fun afternoon, the few times they didn't had nothing to do with mr smear, and the adults had a fun afternoon.

eventually, we said our goodbyes and i walked mr smear to his other friend who lives close by, and then i came home, rested a bit, did some dishes until mr smear got home, when he very begrudgingly helped with the drying, and then it was chill time (balatro, it's dangerous) until dinner, and then we enjoyed dinner and the end of equilibrium, lit the candles (with my mom), and got him through bathtime / ingrown toenail treatment time / bedtime.

i spent the next couple of hours balatro-ing, showered, spent a little time last call BBS-ing, and am now about to put myself to bed. i've got a haircut scheduled for tomorrow morning, and gd's developed another dental issue (obviously she's bored) so we'll have to deal with that, but otherwise tomorrow's all about preparing for my technical interview on monday.

constructive behavior and eating out

on monday night, i balatro'd for more than a bit. i went to bed late, but having understood just why it's such a big deal - it's as intricate and unhinged as inscryption, only without the story.

i mean, i love the story of inscryption as much as i love the card game(s), but they're both really intriguing once you get deep enough.

...

yesterday:

mr smear didn't have an easier night, but we realized in the morning that his workshop wasn't yesterday after all, it was today. so that was a relief.

the first thing that happened was a conversation about the previous evening's drama, and for the most part it was pleasant and constructive.

the main part of my day was preparing for a work meeting, and then the work meeting itself. and in the evening, another conversation with my lead/mentor about a different contract, where he made it clear to me that it's entirely on me to pick contracts that i want.

i still have to wrap my head around this.

in the afternoon, gd and i took mr smear to get his chest x-rayed. the x-ray was quick, but the wait was kinda long and in spite of his not feeling great mr smear and i had fun wrestling a bit :P

on the way home, we stopped at donattelo's for surprisingly good vegan pizza, and a generally good experience during the break in the rain.

we watched most of equilibrium last night, which was really fun. oh! and our taster's box of hot peppers arrived ^_^

i read another chapter of the ocean at the end of the lane to mr smear, putting myself to sleep as much as him. i almost woke up completely between saying goodnight to mr smear and brushing my teeth, but in spite of it being relatively early i did fall asleep after a short while, and i did sleep through most of the night.

today:

i woke up from a long, convoluted dream that ended with me and tahoma chanting enthusiastically at some kind of work event.

i opened the first of my sunglass lens replacements to arrive, the photochromic ones. i'm convinced they're a scam, because they seem to change tiny slightly in the sun but they don't seem to be protecting my eyes from anything.

we weren't quite sure about sending mr smear to the manga workshop until about an hour before, by which stage we'd decided he was fine to go and he still seemed to want to go - which is surprising, considering his track record of nope-ing any activity outside of the house.

while he did that (with one of his friends), i sat upstairs and spent a couple of hours working on helper scripts for one of my projects. one of my now-ex co-workers came over to say hi, which was nice, and i find it interesting that he chooses the library when he needs quiet time during the workday.

mr smear seemed to have had a good time, even if the two of them had found the workshop a bit "childish". it took some effort to drag him out of the comic library (and lose the argument about him reading chainsaw man), and we did some urgent grocery shopping on the way home (most importantly, for gloves to handle the peppers).

and stop for a quick chat with the bakery owner, who's been getting into south african documentaries and was surprised to learn that chris hani's murder was such a big deal for all of us. and to hear confirmation of what he thought were exaggerations of the load-shedding and the crime.

and stop for a quick chat with ze irish german's wife; turns out they're all the same kind of sick as we've been (with the parents seeming to just have colds, and the children being knocked out of commission entirely).

mr smear and i had lunch and watched a king's quest playthrough together, and then a short while later we all headed out again to gd's check-up, from where we walked together to the dentist so i could pick up my new mouth guard (which fits!). we wanted to try a vegan place next door for dinner, but they only had QR code menus and the QR code wasn't readable, so in frustration we gave up and continued to lebowski, where we enjoyed a really nice dining experience.

mr smear got to taste shakshouka (not amazing, but decent), and gd's shuwarma (apparently great), and although my curry wasn't as intense as i would have liked, the experience overall was solid.

we just got home, mr smear's showered and soaked his feet and i've sorted out his toes for the night, and now we're going to light the candles and get ready for bed.