slow day

 yesterday:

mr smear and i are getting into a much healthier homework groove.

i finished reading blindsight yesterday:

blindsight is mindblowingly ambitious, and it does a damned good job of delivering. having said that, there're some intense sequences that i just had to allow myself to not totally follow, and i'm sure that i wouldn't have been nearly as impressed if i wasn't already deeply fascinated by a lot of the ideas watts has stitched together.

i started reading the first percy jackson book yesterday (mr smear's on no. 5 already), and it's really good.

a surprise intro interview in the evening, i felt like it went well but they haven't got back to me yet.

mr smear's punishment was over, so we finally continued watching awakenings.

i played disco elysium until around 1am.

today:

i actually slept pretty well last night, and i had a couple of intense dreams. unfortunately, most of the morning was me still half-asleep and in a dream state, with every act a struggle...

mr smear wanted to go to school on his own, so until gd dragged me out the house to accompany her to the hairdresser i alternated between napping, reading percy jackson, and watching more jujutsu kaisen*. 

* so far, nothing too crazy for mr smear

while gd got her hair cut, i nursed a coffee and mostly stared out the window... primarily because my eyes were giving me trouble. it looks like ocumetrics is finally doing human studies...

the only other outing i had today was being sent to pick mr smear up from school with umbrellas because we were worried it might rain. for the rest, i basically did very little.

mr smear's homework was tough, but not unpleasant - i struggled to explain to him how to translate a multidimensional graph into various average calculations, and he struggled to understand, but we got through it eventually, and in good spirits.

then we finished awakenings, with lots of feelings all round.

it's been a bit of an uncomfortable evening: i watched random shit on youtube and played minesweeper challenges, when i should have been doing pretty much anything else. i should be reading, or playing a proper game, not this time-killing bullshit.

ocular migraine two

almost immediately after posting, i developed another ocular migraine. it's been a rough day since.

lots of switching between reading (blindsight) and resting, a little bit of disco elysium, and (when he wasn't reading) a fair amount of fighting with mr smear because to his mind it's not fair that he's being punished two saturdays in a row 🤦

oh, and as for his reading: gd decided at some point that giger's artwork wasn't appropriate (lots of genitalia, but it was the BDSM stuff that crossed the line), and he got into swamp thing, and coraline.

i helped gd prepare dinner tonight, which was basically us sitting around the table and making attempts at putting together onigiri, with varying success. it was delicious.

i had a good chat with scr tonight, he's invited me to join him in a project... i'm not sure i'll be able to, but it would be nice if it worked out.

at least mr smear's bedtime went smoothly.

baby rabies, coughs and game time

friday evening:

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

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

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

yesterday:

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

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

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

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

today:

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

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

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

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

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

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

goddamn.

i'm going to bed.

infestation

tuesday:

tuesday morning, i managed to convince mr smear to join me for a walk to the post office to pick up his test synthesizer. we had a good walk, a little bit of tension when arriving at the post office and seeing that we needed to make an appointment - which turned out to be nonsense, but nobody else saw the sign pointing to their package depot either - and i was very pleased and relieved to open it and discover that it's actually pretty good (for a cheap chinese product) and mr smear's been giving it a good go!

by the time i'd gotten him set up, i realized i was going to be late for a meeting at the office, so i scrambled and made it there on time. the coworker i was scheduled to meet was late :P

my coworker made a comment about disco elysium, and he's not wrong. he stopped playing the moment he realized he was playing against his own character's self-destructive behavior.  i'm finding the game's story and mechanics fascinating, but my character is indeed the kind of person who i would avoid like the plague in real life.

yesterday:

i went past the hospital in the morning to arrange for gd's final allergy challenge (in the current round), and on the way out picked up some really nice fruit from a stall nearby. it was really expensive, but also really good, and i guess it's supporting our farmers down south so i wasn't upset.

my boss, however, wasn't happy that i'd bought my own fruit for the office and insisted on paying me back for it. no complaints here :)

gd, my mom and mr smear went to the museum in the afternoon, and due to a miscommunication i was in a shitty mood for a lot of it. but we had a chat when i got home and all was settled.

today:

the day began with bad vibes, primarily triggered by me unwittingly dumping big pieces of food into the kitchen sink's drain thinking that our drain filter was in place. and gd is definitely sick with a horrible cough.

i went to the clinic on the way to work, after it took me way too long to get all the right documents together, and hopefully the authorization for mr smear's dairy allergy challenge will arrive before the scheduled date.

i was quite unmotivated to work today. i feel like the most constructive thing i did all day was take a walk to the sarona market at lunchtime to pick up hot sauces, chutney and potato spice. oh, and pick up a pack of sharpies from the post depot on the way home.

oh! and take mr smear to the climbing wall. he did great, and there was a group of amputees climbing *well* with or without prosthetics that just blew me away.

...

 
i haven't managed to complete kaycee's mod yet. this game so far, i picked up an ouroboros and have been slowly pumping it up... but i also managed to build myself a bee and ant deck along the way, which just became ridiculous as i've also scored a totem of undying insects... PLEASE let this be the deck that gets me through!!

...

godsdammit, i just completely ruined my run because i - on autopilot - picked up an insane amount of pelts. which i realized immediately that i didn't want at all.

arrival + double-time

 it doesn't feel like only a single day has passed since my last post. i played a little bit more disco elysium, then hit the hay. i woke up at 4am, left on time with a green tea in hand, reported a burst water pipe on the way to the train station, and arrived on time, but at a closed entrance.

so i missed my train, and had to walk all the way around. fortunately, the next train arrived at the airport at a reasonably close time, and i found my mom waiting comfortably.

i reloaded her transport card, and we hopped on the next train home. by the time we arrived - around 6am - the water pipe had been repaired, and gd was awake and ready to greet us with coffee. unfortunately, i'd forgotten to pick up non-barista oat milk yesterday, and it took a quick walk around to find something that looked alright, but that ended up being unpleasant :(

i took a "nap" - getting another hour and a half in - and woke up feeling pretty refreshed. mr smear was excited to wake up to his granny being home, so that was really cool :)

we all went to the mall together to sort out my mom's SIM card, then picked up some nice breads from our favorite bakery on the way home. i had a big breakfast / lunch, and around noon went to the office. when i left, mr smear was very enthusiastically engaged in a lego build that our cousin sent him for his birthday next month :)

the protests were just beginning, and they were already pretty loud.

the work day was pretty intense, but i finally left the office around 7.30pm feeling like i'd crushed it. not only did i get the stuff i've been working on code-complete, but i also helped out a couple of my coworkers along the way, and was pleased to be informed by my argumentative coworker (after we learned that the TODO that started the fight on thursday *did*, in fact, come back to bite us as i predicted) that once he'd had some time to give it some thought, he decided he didn't disagree with me after all :)

i had to walk home because everywhere between my office and my home was shut down for the protests.

we had a really nice dinner, and i've spent a good chunk of the evening doing not much. although i did just play a bit more inscryption, getting crushed in the first game (it's deeply disappointing when you believe you've built a deck with potential) but finally picking up a boon from the painting in the second.

now... to decide... whether to go to bed or not. we're up early tomorrow, after my early morning doctor's appointment we're heading downtown to spend some time with wp who's here for a few days.

slow

it's getting late, and i have to be up at 4am to go fetch my mother from the airport - we're so excited that she's visiting!

yesterday:

after a chat with horseman, i went up to our elderly neighbor's place because i suddenly remembered in the middle of the night that i promised to visit her days ago and clean forgot. turns out she needed help with her wifi and an ipad her family bought her, as the neighbors who recently left had been letting her use their network.

she can't connect to ours through all the concrete, so she asked me if i could help her get internet installed. we then discovered that already did have internet installed, and we could upgrade her connection for less money than she was already paying. eventually, we managed to get her password sorted out, and her devices connected, and she was really happy.

she then informed me that she was particularly grateful because her husband and son both passed away many years ago, and the rest of her family is too far away to help with this sort of thing... so that was heartbreaking. it was interesting to learn that her daughter's a published poet.

afterwards, she gave me a super-sharp knife for gd and i came back home, gd responded by going to visit her and i took mr smear out to run errands. i asked the mongoose for advice and he invited me to join him and his daughter at dizengoff, so mr smear and i made our way there. stopping for an emergency breakfast sandwich along the way.

our mission at the center was really fun. we all had a good time, between the robotics and the games and the comics and the figures and the toys, although we didn't end up buying anything. and mr smear got a taste of a proper synthesizer at the music store :)

we ended up having lunch with them as well, even though that wasn't the plan, and after they rushed off for toddler nap-time we made our way home for a quiet, lazy afternoon and evening.

i started playing disco elysium. i'm enjoying it, it's brilliant, but after quite a few hours i still don't really understand what the game actually is. i mean, i want to solve the mystery, of course, but i get the feeling that that's merely a superficial element...

today:

aside from a midday excursion to discover a nearby park that tahoma suggested and pick up ingredients so that gd could make tabouleh for my mother, and an evening excursion to the climbing wall, today was very much spent indoors resting and playing video games.

the climbing wall experience was excellent, and mr smear got to the top of the really high wall he's been working on for the last couple of sessions.

it's now 11pm and i've got to be up at 4am to fetch my mom from the airport, so i think i'm going to go to bed pretty soon.

probably.