boding

 omg i'm soooo tired, and as soon as i've eaten i'm heading out to tahoma's to celebrate his birthday. maybe i should caffeine up. [caffeines up. oh, great, organic soya drink full of cream-colored bits]

after i posted yesterday, we had dinner. mr smear ate so much - we split our meals, his "egg" salad sandwich was enormous, and i think we both agreed that my "shuwarma" was too delicious to pass up - that he didn't have space for dessert.

then the two of us played a whole lot of among us together, working together sometimes, and me backstabbing him a bunch of others, but in all cases we both were having fun and laughing at the ridiculous situations we found ourselves in / made for ourselves.

after he went to bed, i played out acts 3 and the ending of inscryption. mr smear occasionally poked his head around the door because he was having trouble sleeping, and that went on until very late, and then i ended up going to bed around midnight.

i had a couple of wakings during the night, but nothing major 🤷‍♂️

i don't recall too many specifics from this morning, but it did involve checking our finances and moving mr smear's pocket money around. if we can keep it together, we might actually be okay this month. *if* 🤞

i managed to leave at a reasonable time to go pick up our cleaning materials, which turned out to be considerably heavier than i'd anticipated. i lugged them to the sarona market, with a plan to pick up speciality halva as a gift, but the halva store was closed (hey, if you don't want to make money, don't open your store during your official hours) and i ended up picking up a few things at the asian market. the girl on duty was very sweet, and managed to find me a sealable bag with some ice in it to transport the frozen goods home.

i bussed home, had breakfast, then coffee, then a very serious nap, eventually taking mr smear out on a mission to find mugs and wine. we didn't find mugs, but we did get a lot of steps in.

it was pretty hot today.

i had a third coffee when we got home, mr smear got some screen time, and then we had a big fight because he wasn't ready to help me clean the floors. we got through it, but not without unpleasantness.

at least the floors are clean, i guess.

then it was shower time for both of us, and i tried to get some more work done with the auto-doc, but i'm just become more and more demoralized about AI output quality and costs and at the same time i don't - i mean i really, really don't - want to do any of the work manually :/

so that's the vibe that's been haunting me this whole week, and i made a conscious decision in the shower to turn it off, at least for the rest of the day. so i've read some more of inside moebius part 1, which includes some pretty disturbing sequences (in addition to being quite an inspiration in general), and tried to nap (didn't happen, even though i'm falling apart), and i guess...

... i guess i just need to chill. i'm looking forward to tonight, but i'm a bit sad about the fact that i need  a fourth coffee to even get out the door. come to think of it, i needed a fourth cup yesterday as well...

a belated hogwart's letter

 it's mr smear's 11th birthday today! he got a hand-drawn pseudo-hogwart's letter, but considering the fact that he's already been at the real-life equivalent of hogwart's for the past year it's a bit late :P

he spent a good chunk of his day watching harry potter, when he wasn't just chilling. sounds like a pretty good birthday plan to me 🤷‍♂️

...

i just got home deeply frustrated, and i'm feeling burned out for the second day in a row. i've invested an enormous amount of effort in keeping my AI token usage down, and in figuring out how to use mlflow to gain insight into where my token spend is going, but i've hit my daily budget two days in a row and i've already burned through more than half of my monthly limit.

and i have very little to show for it, because anthropic's AI be dumb as fuck. i was complaining to one of the AI guys next to me earlier, and the guy sitting behind me turned out to be the head of the program (just visiting our side of the office for the day) and he jumped in to clarify that i must be doing something wrong. he explained "progressive disclosure" to me (i'm very familiar, just not with the term) and sent me a link to some good tips on writing CLAUDE.md, and recommended claude-mem, which seemed like a good idea, but in retrospect i think that's the reason that i blew through half my daily budget in the last session before i left the office thoroughly deflated and demoralized.

i can't be certain, though, because my teammate asked me to redirect my mlflow traces to a central location, and there they don't provide enough context for me to figure out what the actual calls entailed.

i'm so over AAALLLLLLLLL of this bullshit. it's just ridiculous.

...

tuesday night:

we started watching life of brian - after giving up on a bunch of other movies that plex wasn't playing nicely with - and i had to cut the evening short and climb into bed because i was done.

yesterday:

i've started the past two days reading inside moebius part 1, which is sheer brilliance. having said that, i only barely started it yesterday because i was so inspired to dive into the game design for the tarot-based game i started working on last week. i have some really exciting ideas.

unfortunately, trying to share those ideas with my wife that early in the morning led to a bit of a fight; although it resolved with us both learning something important, it did burn my "roadmap" time and started the day with a shitty vibe. then the work day dragged me down into the dumps, ending with an awful sequence of me losing my mind (and my token budget) trying to understand why all my metrics were disappearing (and subsequently learning that metrics must be whitelisted manually in order to be preserved, but not for all the repos i've been working on), and then being called into a meeting with my client team's lead and making a total ass of myself both because she was asking questions about how the service operated, which is a nightmare to explain and which both of us had very different understandings of, and because i was struggling to untangle a whole lot of related stuff in my head, when all she really wanted to know was "is this possible?", a question which had a very simple answer.

so that was the note i left the office on yesterday. i felt broken, and like my brain was melting out my ears.

...

i met mr smear at the bus stop, and we hopped on a bus to dizengoff in the hopes we'd be able to return the motion controllers we'd bought for his birthday. in addition to having a fun time together, i was extremely relieved (and impressed!) to discover that the guys running the second hand game shop are really decent, and kind, and they did what they could to figure out how we could make the controllers work before pleasantly accepting them and returning the money.

i'll definitely be happy to do business with them again.

we picked up some stuff at the supermarket (including a treat of malt beer for mr smear), had an awkward moment leaving because - for a second time - the self-checkout hadn't sent me my receipt and the security guard wouldn't let us out, and then we returned home for dinner.

after dinner, we finished watching life of brian. i was constantly worried that mr smear would bail, and he did want to at one point, but by the time it was over he informed me that in his opinion it's a solid 8/10 🤘

today:

i got up early, read, and spent just more than an hour on my auto-doc project before heading to the office, very much not wanting to go. as described, the work day sucked. in addition to everything else, during the afternoon i developed painful bloating, and that combined with my work stress to make me really unhappy and very, very keen to get the hell out of there.

gd's not feeling too well either, so for mr smear's birthday dinner we're ordering instead of going out. 

...

good grief.

small accomplishments

we got shit done today. it took a while to get everyone roused, and gd and i had a bit of a tiff along the way, but the two of us abandoned our child to the screen gods and caught a bus to the shoe repair store where i dropped off my very expensive but now quite broken sandals, and she convinced me to listen to him and do the decidedly non-vegan thing of repairing them with leather, which makes me quite uncomfortable :/

we hit the supermarket - which is a surprisingly good one - on arlozorov, and eventually got out of there with most of what we needed. we caught a bus back home, yelled at mr smear for having put the air-conditioner on when all the windows were wide open, and then mr smear and i went on another mission to the street north of us, which required three stops but we got pretty much everything that remained on the list.

then mr smear and i left for the mall, catching a very cramped mini-bus and mr smear managed to keep it together in spite of the small kids around him. we paid the optometrist a visit and ordered his new glasses (apparently his eyesight has improved a little), along the way happening to pass the second hand game store and asking on a whim if they had what mr smear's been begging for for his birthday - motion controllers for the ps4.

i'd called another shop earlier about that, and learned that nobody's selling them or repairing them (the mongoose left us a couple that seem to be broken or in need of battery replacement), so i was surprised to learn that they had one pair, and they gave me a bit of a discount (still quite expensive).

so mr smear was very excited.

then we did one last mission to pick up another fan and a kettle because ours died this week, and caught a bus home. on the bus, a conversation we had led to mr smear deciding that he really wants to write a diss track response to dan bull because one of his songs isn't as amazing as the others, and i have to admit i'm quite impressed with what he's got so far!

i was crashing on the way home - recalling that i didn't sleep last night - but i made myself a coffee and wrestled with the motion controllers. poor mr smear, standing there with the vr helmet on and the controllers finally connected and strapped on, and discovering that the games he was hoping to play with them don't support them :(

we should have done some research first... anyway, i tried.

i tried to do something of value, but ended up opening inscryption instead (i really wanted to play braid, but it doesn't work on mac), and i've just kneaded the challah-peño and can't decided what my next steps are. perhaps nothing.

a calm before the farewell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and mr smear still not 100%...

i just finished reading starship troopers:

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

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

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

...

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

limitations

 today was messy. we slept alright - mostly - but i woke up with a skew neck. i managed to get mr smear out of bed and brushing his teeth, but by the time i'd brushed my teeth he'd curled up under a blanket on the couch, and i couldn't argue with that so i followed suit.

then we accompanied gd to the mall (with some nasty lingering feelings on the way out the door) to get her eyes retested and order new glasses; which she did that, mr smear and i milled around. the moment we finally sat down and i opened my laptop, and fortunately just before i ordered coffee, gd called to shock me with the amount they were asking her for - more than half a month's rent.

so we scrambled on over there, and managed to reduce the price by a thousand shekels. it still came out about half a month's rent, though :(

we caught a bus home, where we split up so that they could try to get vegan eggs for the seder and i could get started with work.

in spite of everything, i feel like i made a bit of progress today, but i couldn't check in with my team because it's their weekend so i've held my updates back until tomorrow.

in the meanwhile, mr smear's friend came over for a few hours and the two of them had a great time.

my company sent us a holiday care package, which was very sweet but also contained dairy, so fortunately his friend took that part home with him and i reminded our office manager (for the manyth time already) that we're vegan and have a dairy-allergic child... 🙄

the half hour zoom all-hands with my employer was a bit awkward, but sweet. i came stone last in the company quiz, in no small part because it took me so long to read the questions that i ran out of time on half of them :/

mr smear got through his human resource machine homework really well (i love seeing him excited when he finally *gets* it, even if can be a struggle to get him to focus), and his music "homework" was tooling around with garageband and he managed to put something together that sounded surprisingly good.

i tried to put in some (formal, for my employer) learning time while he helped gd with the kitchen, but i don't think i was working on the right stuff. also, my brain's been largely offline most of today.

we had a huge dinner and watched strip search, then had a good chat with my mom, and got mr smear showered and in bed. i was on my way to shower when gd caught me for a very serious talk, which ended up being a very serious fight, and it took a long time to get ourselves resolved and in agreement with each other about how we move forward.

and to get the office dry, after somebody got sprayed with a hose. with time that part will probably seem funnier, i'm sure.

destabilized

 i did go to bed, but i barely got much sleep. certainly nothing restful. mr smear stayed in our bed until morning, and then we all got up early ("in solidarity" according to gd), although i ended up lying down for an additional hour afterwards.

the day started off alright, though. i sat down with mr smear and my coffee and introduced him to mad magazine - issue #295, back to the future part ii - and it was really cool. i had to explain a whole lot of stuff to him, which led to some interesting moments. i think i blew his mind describing the difference by how we all dealt with the CFC / ozone hole crisis as a species, but allowed the oil and animal agriculture industries to divide us all on global warming.

i don't know how much "work" i got done today, certainly nothing significant. in addition to my brain feeling wrecked, gd was on a cleaning spree and discovered (what then became unavoidable) a sewer smell coming from the office bathroom next to my desk which we have no explanation for.

between meetings, mr smear and i walked to the hardware store to pick up draino, and did some tea shopping on the way back home. we sat down for a "salad pita" lunch while out, which was nice, and explored a local toy store's lego selection realizing that we never got mr smear a birthday present.

it's been a year. or two, or three.

i just got off a long call with horseman, most of it discussion the terrifying state of AI-fueled propaganda and the last fifty years building up to the west collapsing in on itself because its people have all been brainwashed to love their enemies more than themselves.

now to drag mr smear away from spore and get some exercise.

trying to remember to breathe

 ooooomgomgomgomg

i slept kind of alright last night. gd barely slept at all - she was completely devastated. convinced that we couldn't have a pet in the new apartment, and convinced that the new apartment is a must-have, she was torn and deeply unhappy.

at one point i said to her that if we couldn't convince him otherwise, we should probably move on.

so i sent him a carefully-worded message first thing, and we then spent the next two hours fretting anxiously because it didn't make sense to take any further action without an answer. we were discussing the situation with my mom when he finally called back.

i told him that the clause was deeply problematic for us, after a brief preamble, and he immediately cut me off to make it clear that the clause was a mistake, and that he has absolutely no issue with animals.

*phew*

also, that he wants to do the contract for a year and a half, not half a year, which i'd completely misunderstood.

*also phew*

so i put together messages for our current landlords (who got back to us complaining how their son was sick, and that they needed to think about how to screw things up for us and themselves), and for our neighbors, and had breakfast quickly, and then left to the shops, where i once again failed to get a refund for a bunch of useless bowls we bought - it took a long time to not get the service i thought we'd been promised - and pick up a gorgeous gift for the mongoose's daughter's third birthday, and then we returned home, dropped off the things we needed to drop off, and headed out again to take a bus to meet with mr smear.

by that stage, the city had warmed up and wearing a sweater or a coat proved to be a mistake.

he met us at the light rail station and we continued on to allenby, but i received a call from the movers and we missed our stop, ending up at elifelet - just perfect :/

fortunately, our experience there was much smoother than my last one, and we managed to get on a train back within ten minutes. we then walked to the mattress store for a reunion, and after a lot of lying down decided that we both wanted the same mattress - the one mr smear has - but we're still ordering them as singles (that are supposed to fit on the queen-sized base we currently have) and if one of us is unhappy that doesn't need to affect the other.

we walked a bit and caught a bus to the mongoose's, getting off early in the hopes of finding some food. we happened to go past and into the very expensive, very touristy cafexoho, which is fortunately quite vegan-friendly.

mr smear was still hungry when we left, so i let him have some of my really good sesame bagel. mr smear has always had a thing about sesame seeds - he can't stand the texture - and he loved it.

[a pause to deal with the discovery that mr smear picked his scabs again after we just had a whole thing about not doing that, and he has a proper wound on his hand again]

we arrived at the mongoose's, and met up with his parents for the first time since we've been in israel. of course, i fumbled his mom's name (i was close, but it was embarrassing). anyway, we had a really nice afternoon, the gift seems to have been well-received, and we all talked a lot.

then suddenly it was time to go. we ended up walking home, stopping for ice-cream along the way (way more sugar than any of us needed), picked up a bottle of wine and some tubs of ice-cream for tonight, came home, and began preparing the challah-peño. we used a lot of jalapeño, the dough ended up really wet, i hope it comes out well.

...

the stress of the previous weeks combined with the stress of the coming weeks is overwhelming. absolutely overwhelming.

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.

preparation

 yesterday:

i did a little bit more work on my side project, but spent a lot of the day on leetcode practice questions, when i wasn't just reading or doing chores (gd and i spent a good chunk of yesterday dusting and de-molding mr smear's room)

i picked mr smear up from school again, and we walked to the center again, and we picked up his friend's mounted poster, which looked amazing.

we got it home, the homework went well, and we ate way too many pastries for dinner.

bedtime was a bit rougher than the previous two nights. of course. but it could have been worse 🤷

i started falling asleep during jujutsu kaisen, but then woke myself up as i getting to bed :/

today:

i got practically no sleep last night. i didn't feel terrible this morning, but i didn't feel rested, either. but the entire night was a combination of mental restlessness and the usual lower back / hip pains.

i took mr smear to school by bus this morning, demonstrating to him that it's considerably faster than the light rail. i took a walk through the mall on the way home - by accident, really - and then spent most of the day doing practice questions on leetcode again.

this evening's planning - which was originally for me to go to a job interview - became complicated by mr smear's friend's availability... after a "discussion" with gd about mr smear travelling by bus on his own, it was decided that he would come with me to the interview, and we'd go together from there to his friend's place.

on the way, i decided that if bringing my kid to an interview was a problem, i'd consider that a red flag. fortunately, it wasn't a problem at all, everyone was cool (including mr smear!) and the biggest concern was that he wasn't impressed by their snack selection :P

the interview went on much, much longer than anyone expected (2.5 hours), but by and large i got a good sense of how they operate (i like the approach) and i think they were happy with my performance (in spite of my arriving with no idea of their tech stack or what they really do), and i feel a good culture fit overall. i hope the feeling was mutual!

mr smear and i caught a bus to his friend's, who was delighted by the gift, but disappointed that mr smear had to leave directly (by this point it was 8.30pm already). we then raced to catch a bus home, wolf down dinner, and get mr smear ready for and into bed.

fortunately, bedtime was smooth tonight.

oh! and we had an entertaining chat with my mom and sister, who's just announced to the family that my niece is pregnant again. none of us know quite how we feel about that :P

...

right, these past two days have felt a bit nuts, and i can't quite decide what i'm going to do right now. on my mind: praying that these guys are excited about me and that i get an offer soon, and hoping that tomorrow's HR interview with a well-known outsourcing firm goes well.

today felt like a good day.

the (big) little things

 today had some pretty important achievements.

after mr smear left for school, i had breakfast so that i could take some ibuprofen for the leftovers from yesterday's migraine and registered for unemployment for the first time in my life.

then gd and i walked to the pain clinic. it took a while to get to see the doctor, but he was in and available and he sorted us out with the recommendation we needed. afterwards, while advising gd not to see an osteopath for her shoulder issues, gd said something and he suddenly registered - apparently for the first time - just how disabled she is. and that was when gd's floodgates opened, because almost nobody we've dealt with really gets it.

i hung around and chatted with horseman while gd got a prescription, and then we walked to a copy shop to print a return label for a pair of shoes. i followed the instructions - sending an email from my gmail account to the shop's gmail account - but they claimed that "sometimes it can take a while" which doesn't make any sense. i half-jokingly asked if maybe their internet was disconnected, and the manager took offense and made a few snide remarks. while i was standing there trying to figure out whether it was worth being offended or not, i realized that the customer-facing computers were logged in to the same gmail account. so i hit "all mail" and lo! my email had arrived.

fuckin' idjits.

so i spent 10 NIS on poor service, a single printed page and a plastic sleeve.

then gd and i walked home, had a bite to eat, and after a few failed attempts to request her cannabis license renewal i made myself a turkish coffee for the road and walked the shoes back to the post office.

with everything that's been going on, i've needed any excuse for a walk and think, even if there hasn't been a whole lot of thinking going on.

i arrived at the packed post office, and tried to set the package down because usually they don't make us wait for that. except that now they do, and the clerk made me feel pretty shitty for not waiting my turn...

when i got home, i sat down at my desk and cranked out some improvements to the language app i haven't touched in months, and although gd got a bit frustrated while testing it i feel like it's actually on it's way!

i went to pick mr smear up from the school to take him gift shopping, encountering the unhinged mother and making a point of neither looking at her nor avoiding her. then mr smear came out and we enjoyed a pleasant walk to the mall, where we found some posters but not the right one. the guy at the store had a south african accent, and we ended up talking, and i ended up learning that we could do custom prints! so we found a perfect image, got an amazing print made, and hopefully tomorrow i'll be able to pick it up with it's basic mounting.

the owner of the store told me some weird stories. i'm not sure i really understand what was happening in them.

mr smear and i bussed home, and settled in to homework. the hebrew homework went well. the math homework started off pretty well, had some rocky moments, and then mr smear took a toilet break and when he came back he was completely unfocused and uncooperative, and i got upset. and then gd got upset.

and then i started thinking about how i got called out for getting upset with skippity in the office, and about how i wasn't modeling well, and i explained to mr smear that i wasn't upset with his homework performance, but with his uncooperative behavior, and that even if it was reasonable to get angry after having all my patience worn down, i wanted to get back to the positive vibe from before when he and i were both so excited by his progress.

and between the two of us, we did it. his behavior over the next half hour or so wasn't perfect, but i managed to keep an even keel and focus on the good stuff and we both learned some cool stuff; he learned about exponents, and we learned how to use prime factorizations to make large numbers easy to reason about, and he was super proud of himself ^_^

dinner was... i overate.

bedtime went similarly to yesterday - the new plan is working, hopefully it'll keep working 🤞

finally, after putting mr smear to bed, i tried one more time to renew the license, and this time realized that i was using brave with its shields up. so i took them down, and voilà! done. what a thoroughly different experience (not using machon mor).

closure

 oh, and there are other anxieties too... like the "i've just started an application with a company and they're not going to be okay with me stopping the process with them for the fourth time in three years", and the unrelated but not negligible "my son isn't fully understanding how precarious his tenancy at his new school is" anxiety...

i accompanied mr smear to school this morning, then ducked into the office to clear my desk. i encountered two of my now-ex-coworkers and we talked for a bit, with me needing to do more consoling than them and not doing a particularly great job of it.

the "decision" meeting of my hearing took about five minutes. i wasn't unhappy with the severance they offered. when i later signed the document, it was with utter disgust and contempt for their pitifully childish responses to my hearing responses that were encoded within.

i posted a farewell message in the company whatsapp, to which i have received a heartwarming outpouring of commiseration and goodwill. there's something extremely precious in knowing that during the course of my eight month run i touched a lot of people, and that a heck of a lot of them understand how capable i am and how wrong this all is.

some of my now-ex-coworkers are miserable, some are scared, some are furious.

one of the back-stabbers had the gall to send me a perfunctory message, gd was impressed by my ability to phrase "go fuck yourself" so politely.

i must say: it struck me on the way to gd's eye doctor appointment that had my boss fired me the week before, or had he let me grind another month or three in the new team before firing me, i think my reputation would have suffered considerably more harm. he has no idea how much his bumbling just-so has protected me, and i guess i should be grateful.

in the morning, my old improv teammate called me to discuss his employer, and not only did he sell it but he gave me some useful advice about interviewing with them.

i'm now looking for something a little less adventurous, something that will hopefully stick to my resume for a few years at least.

[logging in to my cousin's funeral on zoom]

not being employed, i was able to accompany gd to her eye doctor appointment in neve tzedek. we picked up a really good coffee from mae on the way, and the appointment itself was interesting because the doctor is french so a) gd didn't need me for translation at all and the communication was fluid and b) i was surprised to find i understood most of what transpired.

after a mission to find polenta we came home, stopping by the store on the way, and i was feeling pretty weak and a bit faint. i wolfed down some leftovers, then rushed off to the school to inspect mr smear's locker. on my way, i spoke to skippity, who hadn't been able to bring himself to join us yesterday. i told him it's not a good idea to grieve alone, and i gave him some encouragement, and i really hope he doesn't keep taking this so hard.

1. i learned that when mr smear doesn't leave class with everyone else, he holds up the janitor who does not appreciate it at all.

2. his friend ratted on him and i learned that he's still using the teacher's computer (boy, was he surprised to be informed that all his teacher has to do is look at her browser history)

3. he very confidently informed his friend that i was fired, which made my heart sink. later, when i mentioned it to gd on the phone, i was walking into a light-rail tunnel and said it out loud just as a whole bunch of people came walking round the corner :/

4. the books he claimed he couldn't find were right in front of his eyes when he opened his locker. and he's missing a book, that he likely left outside the locker, and we're going to have to put down a lot of money to replace it :(

it took so long to get out of there, that i was under serious time pressure to find a place to take the sensitive* intro call. we pulled into a hotel foyer, paid the dues (a coffee and orange juice), and i had what felt like a pretty good conversation.

* the fourth-timers

we went into the mall and went through the posters hoping to find what his friend wanted, but they didn't have it. then we returned home, breezed through his hebrew homework, and he did his math homework well.

gd made good on the polenta, i usually don't like it but i totally enjoyed the dinner tonight.

the bedtime routine went quite smoothly, but i almost fell asleep reading to mr smear and i joined gd in the living room and passed out on the couch. i woke up a while later extremely uncomfortable, and transferred myself to the bed. then i got up to my midnight alarm for my cousin's funeral.

for decades, my memories of him have been tarnished by something he did when he emigrated, but listening to the eulogies and being reminded of all his other attributes, i feel like i've been judging him rather unfairly.

...

mr smear just jump-scared me, it's 1.30am and he just had a nightmare. i am grateful, though, he finally got the message about not yelling "help" from his bed...

the cut

goddamn.

yesterday.

i got some shit done on my way to the office yesterday, not least of which being sorting out a pain clinic appointment for gd in the hopes to start getting the ball rolling with her cannabis license renewal.

i arrived at work in good spirits, but hadn't even managed to grab a coffee before being called in to a meeting with my boss and our HR woman. i didn't take it well - they listed their claims, and i told them that the claims are clearly nonsense - and i had some very awkward non-conversations (being "discrete") on my way out.

i feel the betrayal keenly. i would have felt a lot more like this was an understandable play on their part if it wasn't for two things: first, that a week ago they told me they weren't happy with me, but instead of firing me they moved me to a different team - a team that wanted me, and that i had a good chance of success in. second, they surprise-fired me along with five other people, about half of whom the decision makes zero sense.

i've received some concerned phone calls, not just concern for me and the others, but concern for all those who're left behind. you don't fire obviously competent people who lots of people have worked with and leaned on without sparking a panic. nothing about this play makes sense.

so obviously i'm not in a good place right now, the anxiety from the past week or so has now shifted to a new, differently-terrifying one. they're doing something ugly, dirty and counter-productive, and i'm walking away with a black mark on my resume in the form of an eight-month stint.

one for which i've made enormous sacrifices of my physical and mental well-being.

i don't regret doing what i believed in, and i'm proud to be walking away with my integrity. i'm also kinda glad that it's happened exactly as it has, in a way that anyone in the organization with half a brain can see through, can see that it isn't right and it isn't deserved.

now to find a new job. i'm praying that the guys who made me the competing offer are ready to make it again... i have a meeting with them next week 🤞

...

mr smear went to a friend's place yesterday (obviously just a pretense for extensive and inappropriate screen-time), and i went to pick him up (and pace and ponder while waiting) and take him to the mall to look for a belated birthday gift for his friend. i told him basically what was happening, and a bit later he needed some consoling because he literally interpreted it as "we're going to have to start eating worms" 🤦

we didn't find anything amazing, and then he very wisely said that he didn't want to get his friend anything that he might politely accept but be disappointed with, so we caught a bus home and he said he'd ask his friend what kinds of things he might want.

last night was dinner (half a dinner for me, the anxiety diet*) and a lot of phone calls. and eventually a chat with my mom, who made a very good suggestion that i write down what i'm going to say in the hearing. i now have a pretty solid statement prepared, and i think i'm just going to tidy it up, and then send it to my boss and the HR woman right before reading it to their faces.

* i was down to 77 kilograms this morning!

last night, gd and i started rewatching thursday. and passed out about a third of the way through. [i checked: good guess]

today:

the highlights of this morning were an hour long conversation with horseman, and taking gd to an ultrasound appointment.

horseman told me something very surprising about why he won't work with kids under fourteen, and it seems wrong but it also explains a lot of the frustration we experience with mr smear: at his age (and all ages before this age), he's very good at continuing the flow of a conversation and sounding like he's understanding. but he's not understanding. so we get all frustrated and angry with him but he's just playing along and not fully comprehending what he's doing wrong...

gd and i bussed through to south tel aviv, eventually finding the place and arriving with half an hour to spare. which was fortunate, because it took just over half an hour waiting on hold for the clinic staff to get authorization...

having had a successful adventure, we came home to do the dishes, and then gd made us really good toasted sandwiches and we completed watching thursday. still good.

the rest of the afternoon / evening (shit, it's getting dark really early already) has been mostly syncing with mr smear over his day and helping him with his math homework (algebra!). somewhat successfully :)

dog day halloween

 i'm still feeling tired, weak and fatigued. at least tahoma's halloween party last night gave me a proper excuse :P

...

yesterday morning started at the park with the school's "dog day". there were dogs, and it was a day. the sun was beating down (it was surprisingly bright and hot), and mr smear and i arrived a few minutes early, just in time for me to be awkward with a couple of other dads before everyone began setting up the picnic.

highlights:

mr smear's teacher sitting down next to us and reporting that mr smear has really turned things around over the course of the past couple of days. please god it holds.

the angry mother from the previous week refused to make eye contact. gd and i have been laughing about the fact that both of us were responsible for bringing a specific vegan cheese spread, so we  childishly brought two in order to "show her up" 🤣

i asked mr smear not to tell anyone that we were going to a private birthday party afterwards. he made sure to tell everyone. loudly.

everything on the table was vegan because of the allergy requirements, which was a first for us at a school event. cake for breakfast.

...

from there, the relevant parents and kids snuck out and the birthday boy's mom gave us ride to the country club. it was a perfect day for it, beautiful weather, hardly anybody else around. the downside was spending a fair amount of time fending off crows, egyptian geese and myna birds, but most of the afternoon was spent watching the kids have a great time together both in the water and out, having long and interesting conversations with the other parents (there were only three of us), and quietly recovering from the madness of the previous weeks (and months).

we were not expecting the gift giving, because our previous school and social circle culture is so different. the gifts were custom, and really impressive, and we're going to need to do something about that this week.

oh! and his eye seems to be clear, so i don't think the pool - certainly not this one - is directly contributing to his outbreaks.

...

we got a ride home, and showered, and immediately jumped in to some of the math homework mr smear hadn't done during the week. it wasn't all smooth, but it never got dramatic, and even for me it wasn't trivial (it's working with square roots and ranges of answers, neither of which he's used to). by the time we were done, we'd both had good exercise and i was quite proud of him.

we made an particularly potent challah-peño, my face caught a bit of it (fortunately not my eyes!) and my fingers burned for hours in spite of washing them thoroughly and even doing a whole sink of dishes.

but it came out delicious.

dinner on call with my mom was nice. afterwards, we did have a repeat of the usual fight about mr smear going out with me on saturdays, but at least it ended softly. then i left for the halloween party.

...

nystire and nyah nyah and partners, as well as the linguist we served with, were there, the place was packed with interesting-looking people and the decorations were really something. it was a really fun evening, there was lots of alcohol, and the conversations migrated from work to parenting to language as the night wore on.

by the time i left i was practically falling over from exhaustion - at least i'd made an effort to drink a fair amount of non-alcoholic liquids along the way - and i hailed a taxi home and climbed into bed. i got a particularly warm and fuzzy feeling from ending a night of good company and entertainment with a heart-to-heart with a taxi driver about the state of the nation that left him profusely thanking me for the conversation (which i'd very much enjoyed too).

it didn't take long for me to climb into bed (having thankfully received authorization from my wife that i didn't need to shower again first) and i mostly slept well, and late. it's been a slow and pleasant morning, we've talked and i've read (i'm halfway through blindsight) and now i've posted this, and gd and i are on our way to the shop quickly to pick up flour in honor of friends coming over for lunch.

interrupt

yesterday began with a fun find - i didn't use up my food allowance, so i purchased a voucher with it. as usual, it took a few steps to add it to my wallet, during which i discovered that one of my phone numbers wasn't connected to my account. when i did that, i found that my first israeli employer had gifted me two vouchers on my other number that i'd completely missed! the big one's link had expired, but i got on the line with their customer service and they reactivate it for me ^_^

so i basically found some money that had been stuck in the couch since 2023!

...

the story of yesterday was basically me starting to do things and almost immediately being interrupted and pulled in a different direction. it was frustrating, and constant context-switching is overwhelming.

to make matters worse, i was planning on taking sunday off, but now i've got interviews lined up for sunday and monday, some important stuff on tuesday, and mr smear's dairy challenge on wednesday, so there really isn't a good day next week that's worth taking off...

[shifts it to the following week]

i felt stretched thin by the time i got home last night, we had dinner, showered, and i read a little of the neverending story to mr smear (and gd)...

... and then i got back to work for the next hour or so :(

i spent the following hour or two trying to understand crop marks for my comics and playing slay the spire, slept kind of alright, and now i'm gearing up to take mr smear to the extra-mural fair at the school.

more strike

 the strike continues, on through tomorrow. this morning i took mr smear with me to pick up a parcel, and then took him to work, picking up a mother's day gift for gd along the way.

getting him to do his homework was tough, but aside from that having him in the office was fine and he enjoyed coming with me to build a salad for lunch.

it was another annoying work day, though. slightly less annoying, but annoying nonetheless. but: while i didn't get through what i needed to get through at the office, i did make progress and managed to get things working after getting mr smear into bed. and i got to show off something cool to gd, which was fun.

mourning / scrambling to finish the work / dealing with a strike / not sleeping well / overcompensating by snacking and consuming too much caffeine -> wired, tired, not happy

and my wrist's a little sore from too much minesweeper.

i don't know if i'm ready to rest, but i think i'm ready for the massage kit.

pains in the neck

 wednesday was rough. i was fine in the morning - i took mr smear on an "outing" to pick up a parcel, which was nice* - and i was fine until i got into the office. but at some point something in my neck / shoulder spasmed and started pushing on a control nerve, which immediately triggered a painful headache, dizziness and nausea.

* he made a point of carrying something heavy because his new "resolution" is to not be lazy. that last all of a day, and then the next day he made a new "resolution" to be lazy again 🤣

and then i had to navigate two arguments with coworkers, mostly in a position of having to calm them down.

after a while i realized that i was on the verge of fainting, and i packed up and wobbled my way home.

i felt a it better after lying down and stretching and massaging my neck for a couple of hours, though i managed to bruise myself rather severely. i spent the afternoon / evening learning the hard way that my lead's warnings about never modifying git submodules directly were bang on the money.

...

yesterday was better, though i was still sore (as well as bruised) and my neck was threatening to go bad for its entirety. a coworker leant me a small but surprisingly powerful massage tool that i tried a couple of times, but that literally made my eyeballs bounce in my head and made me start feeling nauseous...

i started the day trying to read a canticle for leibowitz, which starts off well enough but i was still too sleepy to get very far.

on the way to the office, gd and mr smear joined me for a mission to the appliance store where we ordered a replacement oven (even with delivery it's cheaper than a repair attempt) and picked up a blender to boot. which i carried to work in the unexpected dribbles of rain that started when i left the building and only stopped once i found cover again.

it was a long and intense day, beginning with me moderating squabbles between my teammates and trying to keep everyone with eyes on the prize in spite of personal differences towards approaches. there were lots of feelings.

i warned everyone that we needed to rip the bandaid of our old tooling as soon as possible, and for my sins they complied. we're running into a lot of teething troubles, but rather sooner than later ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

my interview with one of the investors was postponed, which turned out to be a good thing because i spent most of my work hours running between people to give them assistance. or cheerlead. or commiserate, such as when my lead got irritated by a linter i'd introduced and somehow managed to deep-six hours of his work.

anyway.

we received some nice passover gifts from the company.

lipgirl had put me onto a midi controller (the akai mpk mini mk2), and i really wanted to pick it up before the weekend. at 19.45pm, i had just sat down to dinner when the seller contacted me to say he'd be at azrieli at 20.15pm, so i ate too quickly and scrambled to get there on time. in spite of the evening bus schedules and regular protests, i arrived with a few minutes to spare...

... and then had to hang around for another half an hour before he showed up :/

but he was cool, and i was happy to have paid about half price for a piece of equipment that looks really good and is in really good condition.

on my way to catch a bus home i walked past an old grocery store cashier who's always very kind (she's taken a shine to mr smear) and waved to wish her a chag sameach, and she called out for help - she's injured her leg, and was having trouble carrying heavy groceries to her bus stop. i gave her a hand, but as we arrived she suddenly realized she hadn't swiped her card when she left, so i quickly ran back to take care of that.

so it was with a good vibe that i caught an unfamiliar bus, with the driver making sure that i got to the right stop. and then i came home, chatted with my mom**, showered, put my son to bed, opened the gift bottle of gin and tried to continue watching redline. gd got bored, and wasn't interested in akira, so we ended up watching some of nightcrawler before going to bed.

** oh! my brother's oldest got married yesterday. none of us were invited :P

...

today: i think i must have spent about three hours trying to figure out how to connect the midi controller, create the requisite accounts, install the basic software packages... i'm sure there's a whole bunch of stuff we've yet to learn, but by the time we left the apartment for a gift-shopping run i'd at least managed to get mr smear able to play with samples in cubase elements, and he was making pretty cool noises.

[gd shatters a bowl in the kitchen]

we walked down to ibn gvirol, where gd got additional holes punched in her belts, we picked up a bottle of cognac as a gift for the seder, tried and failed to find someone to cut a new house key for us, gave up waiting for laffot, scarfed down sandwiches at cafe eva (and found black salt!), made it back to our local hardware store in time to pick up dehumidifying slabs, and have spent a cozy afternoon doing not much.

mr smear just got through his homework for the day without a fuss, and he did it well, and now we're settling in to skip shul and watch prince of egypt instead.

...

i just finished watching dave smith and douglas murray on joe rogan, which i found deeply disappointing. if nothing else, murray could have talked about the outrageous efforts israelis make to avoid civilian casualties, but either way he wasn't on form, and his manner rendered him less than effective. looking at the comments, he didn't convince anyone of anything.

chores and childhood

saturday:

i went to bed, got up a bit later to pee and caught mr smear on the computer... i warned him that that had lost him screen time, got him to go to bed, and then returned to bed myself.

i was in the middle of a dream when he woke me up to ask if his punishment time was over yet 🤦‍♂️

by the way, i have to note that he's been reading the wave and is really enjoying it.

when i eventually got up (i didn't get too much more sleep, unfortunately) we sat down to play some space quest v together, which was fun and got a lot of laughs until he decided he was getting bored 🤷‍♂️

i moved over to the playstation, and began playing nier automata. i managed to get through the first sequence, it was a lot of fun and the game world is gorgeous, but by the time i got to the save point i was feeling worn out...

mr smear's german friend came over for a few hours, while i played some more final fantasy vi.

in any event, the day was mostly spent quietly indoors. we were all exhausted.

yesterday:

after dropping mr smear off at school, gd and i took the bus to dizengoff center, then walked to the shuk. we enjoyed a cup of coffee on rambam street with no pressure, we picked her up a couple of bags (custom prints, she's happy with them) and a couple of nice t-shirts for me, i picked up some wired speakers for my windows machine, and then we checked out the book store looking for a gift for the mongoose's daughter (whose birthday we've missed, twice) and hit the jackpot - a large piglet plushy and a hebrew translation of winnie-the-pooh.

after we got home, gd went back out to meet up with urchin, so i had to pick mr smear up from school. i arrived there just as he was leaving the gate with a friend of his we've never heard of before, informing me that they were going to take the bus to his place and asking me to pick him up by 4pm.

so... that was a moment. i made sure i had the address, and that his friend knew that mr smear is vegan, and off they went, leaving me feeling a little bit anxious but very proud at the same time.

gd, however, didn't take mr smear's independence so well... to be fair, though, if we were in canada or south africa i definitely wouldn't have felt so safe about it.

i spent the next while setting up my new work accounts, and discovering that the cheap speakers i'd bought were terrible, and then gd and urchin arrived and we chatted for a while, and then gd and i left together to pick mr smear up from his friend.

he was fine, they'd had a nice afternoon. we took the bus home, picked up the gifts, then took the bus to the mongoose's. and discovered that his daughter already had the matching winnie-the-pooh plushy, but their copy of the book they had wasn't as nice so she'd been bored... on our way out i overheard them reading to her and they later sent an adorable picture of her hugging her new friend.

all good ^_^

from there we went to market vegan for dinner. i had the hand-made couscous, which i really didn't enjoy the texture of, and they shared kebabs which were delicious, but there was an embarrassing incident with mr smear trying to spit out a mouthful of food because he didn't like the peanut butter sauce 🤦‍♂️

we got home pretty late, had a struggle to get him to do some of his homework, and then just before bedtime he decided he was hungry again.

ay carumba.

today:

another difficult day getting mr smear ready for school. while saying goodbye, some guy walked his kid past me and the child wet-coughed openly into my face. i was literally stunned, and i really wish i'd said something because i spent my entire walk back fighting with the shitty parent in my mind :/

i took the speakers back for a refund, then ended up meandering until i found myself at a nice coffee shop on ibn gvirol, where i stopped and took care of a bunch of chores.

it feels good crossing things off my list.

it didn't feel good learning that mr smear had absolutely refused to cooperate with his teacher until the third lesson of the day :(

then i walked home via the mall, where i picked up some urgent groceries and found a pretty decent bluetooth speaker that was on sale for even less money than the cheap ones i'd returned. they work well, although the windows machine itself is pretty shitty so they're not as good as they could be...

mr smear had left school with a friend of his who was performing in a piano recital at the conservatory. i was told that he would be ready to be picked up around 3.30pm, but on my way there i saw that his phone was on the other side of the city, and when i checked in with his friend's parents i was told that the recital was only scheduled to begin at 5pm, and that they'd have mr smear home by 6pm.

color me frustrated.

i'd been in the middle of a meeting with horseman, who was trying very hard to explain a complex crypto scheme of his, and i took the opportunity to make myself a coffee and reset my brain a little. in total we must have sat for about two hours on his presentation, arguing non-stop about how all the mechanisms work together, but by the end of it i think we had a good handle on the design and we'd also both learned a some things about crypto that we hadn't fully understood before.

mr smear eventually came home around 7pm, just while i was talking to our kibbutz cousin for the first time in ages, and we dived into dinner because he hadn't eaten anything all afternoon. he apparently had a really good time, though :)

we had a long good-night chat with my mom, some of which was stressful (regarding aliyah), and now that mr smear's in bed and i've knocked this post out, i think i'm going to start winding down for the evening.

overload

it's past 1am, and i'm just slowing down from high-frequency vibrations, most likely caused by a couple of hours in the bloodlines mission that was ridiculously intense for the entirety of the run.

at one point i switched to my browser and read about the mission on the shadowrun wiki, and it became quite apparent that as invested as i am, and as successful as i've been so far, i'm really not particularly good at this game.

meanwhile, i've become convinced that a shadowrun: dragonfall tv series would be epic.

...

i had a hard time getting up this morning. mr smear wanted me to keep my distance on the way to school so that he could prove (to himself) that he can handle the roads, but on the way out the building he started a conversation about roblox that clearly took priority. roblox - to my mind - is much like oasis in ready player one - and the scale and range of games available is simply mind-boggling.

roblox might just be the future. i feel confident that there's a way to make roblox games in which players do real work for real pay.

i came home, and gd and i wrote rosh hashana cards for mr smear's teacher, their class aide (who used to follow him around to make sure he didn't come into contact with dairy), and for him. i was super awkward about writing them, because i'm always super awkward about writing cards or birthday messages or dedications.

it used to be that when i got embarrassed, my face would flush and heat up, but as i've gotten older, my flush has moved down to my armpits. it makes awkward things even more awkward, but at least it generates endless amusement for my wife :P

work went pretty well today. we toasted the new year with a plate of dried fruit and really nice baklawa. i had lunch with the CEO, who jumped both times my phone went off and so i changed the ringtone from the x-men theme back to a soothing track from rayman: legends. the afternoon was super productive.

...

midway through the afternoon i had to rush off to the paediatrician to get a referral for an "attention examination". after expressing relief when i assured her that we wouldn't be medicating mr smear regardless of the result, the paediatrician had quite a story to tell - when she made aliyah, they tried to force her to put her kid on ritalin and she ended up going into debt in order to fight the authorities in court.

what was particularly tragic about that story, is that she did what she could to protect her son, but still wonders if she did the right thing. i explained to her that, having read robert whitaker's anatomy of an epidemic, unless her son struggled through life and wasn't able to succeed in anything, then 100% she made the right call.

she definitely made the right call. on my way out i called gd, and when she expressed concern (again) that doing the test would enable the authorities to force us to medicate our boy, i explained that under no circumstances would i ever let that happen. and beyond that, i believe that taking anyone who tries to court, and making the case public, would be an exquisitely constructive way to take a stand against a system that promotes drugging kids instead of adapting teaching practices.

...

in retrospect, it would have made more sense to go straight home afterwards, but i returned to the office, completed the task i've been working on and geared up for an argument with my boss, to convince him that it made sense to change an API that we have that's really poorly designed.

the boss is being moved sideways (we're not quite sure what that means yet), so he delegated to my coworker... i mean, i guess he's now my boss? i'll start referring to him as my manager. so he delegated to my manager, who heard me out and then immediately responded with "do it".

that was easy.

i left the office on that note, walked home, spent half an hour kind of helping mr smear with his prep for tomorrow morning's math test, and then signed on to a zoom call about sailor's idea. sailor was fifteen minutes late, and the tension that generated was palpable.

we love him, but he really has no respect for other people's time and he has no idea how much it hurts his relationships, personal and professional. i feel like i need to say something, and not in a friendly hinty sort of way.

i left the call feeling like my brain was melting, just in time to wish mr smear a good night.

now, four and a half hours later, it's time to say good night to the rest of the world.

the sim

i'm tired, i'm sore, and we're leaving in an hour to drive for an hour or two to our cousins' seder. i've just had four cups of water after realizing that the only liquid i'd consumed today was black coffee. ugh.

firstly, today was a huge day for us and mr smear: i've bought him a sim card, and given him my huawei, and he now has his own phone. well, shit.

secondly, it was a big morning in the mall, and then when we finally got home my mom called to ask us to take some chocolates as well. i walked to the chocolatier (cardinal) on ibn gvirol, amazing vegan stuff but no hechsher. i walked back to leonidas, nothing gift-like that was vegan. i then walked all the way to max brenner, arrived before they closed and finding a couple of items that reasonably fit the criteria for a gift.

i returned home with sore legs and 10.5K steps on my watch. i tried resting, but found that hard to do with mr smear very noisily playing among us and gd struggling with our old iron that almost destroyed her shirt (fortunately our neighbors could help us out with theirs).

oh! she very successfully made potatoes in the oven today. she's now rather embarrassed that she's been ovening wrong all these years, but we're very glad we don't have to buy a new one just yet.

...

gd and i had a very difficult conversation this morning, one that lots of jews are having right now: how do we celebrate our freedom, when we have up to 129 hostages still trapped in gaza?

the birthday boy, the nerve block girl

still coughing. waiting on a new dermatologist appointment.

...

we managed to get up and make a card just in time to present it!

*whew*

it was a busy morning, rather productive in spite of the birthday message distractions. i received an amusing email from one of the companies i'm applying to inform me that they'd like me to meet a potential vp r&d, and if it's the guy i bumped into last week that would be hilarious!

in the afternoon we went off to dizengoff center to look at all the toy and robot and action figure shops, bumping in a guy i went to high school with. we ended up in the lego store, where i realized in-store that the budget i'd summoned into my head from nothing just made no sense, so after more than a little discomfort i explained how the budget would work to mr smear and he was beyond cool about it - we actually had to explain to him that he didn't have to worry, he could spend up to that amount and enjoy it.

i wouldn't have picked what he picked, but he walked out of their with his gifts and a giant smile on his face, and his excitement hasn't slowed down since - he obviously picked well, and it was great seeing him so happy :)

i got in about forty five minutes of work before we all left for the hospital for gd's nerve block, we arrived just on time and then sat in the waiting room for an hour or so, i worked on my laptop while mr smear watched some minecraft channel on youtube. then gd went in, and i took mr smear to the food court to eat dinner, picking up dessert along the way. he ate well, thoroughly enjoyed his dessert (a panda chocolate/coconut bar), we did a very fast emergency grocery shopping and then returned to the pain clinic just in time to see gd go in for the procedure.

it felt like a long time, but she came out doing alright. in shock, but alright, in spite of the nurse's concerns because it's unusual to do both sides simultaneously. we very cautiously brought her home, we had a really funny arab taxi driver who sang happy birthday to mr smear, and then we slowly got ourselves organized and ready for bed.

i'm tired, but i don't want to go to sleep just yet. so here i am, typing up my day and then figuring out whether to mess about or crash.

it was a big day.