happy new year!

hopefully 2025 will be decent. if it's even halfway decent it'll be infinitely better than the last one.

having said that, this last one has ended on an extremely good note. one of ze germans (the irish one) asked if any of us were interested in coming to the science museum in haifa, and i've been wanting to take mr smear but i thought it was closed due to the war. and it wasn't.

so, very last minute and to gd's chagrin (initially), mr smear and i very spontaneously jumped on the train and headed north. the train ride was cool - mr smear expressed his amazement that he wasn't on screens but also wasn't bored, though he now denies it - and we arrived there in good time.

mr smear was throughly engaged for most of our hours there, and he also got along really well with our friends (two kids, ages 4 and 6), and we all had a really good experience. after they left, we ran through the maze and then headed into the "behind the screens" exhibit, which was highly entertaining and very interesting for both of us, and we had to be ushered out at closing time.

the bus and train rides home were pretty uneventful, mr smear got his "rewards" of sprite and screen time, and we've had a pretty good evening overall.

...

in addition to the two of us enjoying a really fun day at madatech today, there was another momentous occasion we have to celebrate. this morning, i received an email informing me that my south african chequing account had been closed. this was good news!

but when i signed in in to check, i saw that our credit card account was in minus. this was bad news :(

partially because without a chequing account i've no way to pay it, but more so because two days ago, i asked them to make sure everything was clear for us to close our accounts.

so for me, the train ride (~1 hour) and the taxi ride (~5-10 minutes) were consumed with messages to my bankers. i had to explain to the first agent that i wasn't interested in paying, and that whatever it was he was telling me i should have asked for was their responsibility to have told me two days ago. he eventually transferred me through to the credit card people (this was about 45 minutes in), who took forever to respond and then closed the chat because i didn't respond within a couple of minutes. so i had to start again.

for the second agent i got through to, i explained that i wanted them to reverse the charge and close the account, and i was (and still am) literally stunned by her rapid reply that the charge had been reversed and the account closed.

so here we are, ushering in a new year with our only remaining debt to my mother, and nothing more being held over her and her apartment.

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yesterday was a wonky day. the two memorable events were mr smear doing homework - fighting about it and subsequently doing it well - followed by me taking him to his jiujitsu class in the rain and realizing along the way that i'd misunderstood the hours update, so we arrived in time for the next lesson which simply wasn't appropriate ages for him.

*sigh*

anyway, it was a pleasant and interesting little adventure.

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happy new year. may 2025 bring israel military success, peace and stability, both in the middle east and worldwide. the entire world deserves a break.

contact

saturday:

saturday wasn't bad, but it was uncomfortable. we all spent our morning doing our own things, then walked to the beach in the afternoon. that could totally have been a great experience if it wasn't for the fact that mr smear whined and complained non-stop, he didn't want to leave the house, then he didn't want to leave the beach, and he only wanted to do what we didn't along the way (there and back)... so that was unpleasant. aside from that, it was a beautiful day and it was nice to be outside for it.

sunday:

i woke up in the middle of the night (around 2am) feeling sore, and spent three or four hours researching and writing an article on restless legs syndrome. i completed it on my two hour-long train rides, though i have yet to publish it because i need to get the photos done first.

dragging myself out of bed was hard. the walk to school was uncomfortable, and i dropped mr smear off with advice that i could only pray he would hear some of.

haifa is a beautiful city with a great vibe. meeting the guys was excellent, i love what they're doing and i love that we're all in a similar headspace. i think both myself and the CTO were taken by surprise to discover that we both previously worked with anti-ad-blocking tech, and he admitted that his team used to "borrow" from my team's work!

i was invited to join a bunch of them for lunch, it turns out half the company is vegan or vegetarian and we went to an entirely vegan hummusia (hummus bar) - the food was excellent, the company was great.

i don't know what's going to come out of sunday morning, but i can say that i really felt at home and would be thrilled to be able to join them!

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i got home in time to pick mr smear up from school. i chatted with the afternoon councillors, and the picture i have of his general behavior / interactions with the other kids is less clear than before. i also learned that he's been lying to them in order to get out of doing homework... i tried to do some of it with him when we got home, it was really tough to get him to cooperate.

gd had been spending the day with one of our community's rabbis, who came over for a brief visit.

after putting mr smear to bed, gd and i finally continued watching strip search.

yesterday:

mr smear and his enthusiasm for blockbench gave me an opportunity to send him off with an easy message for the day...

i took care of a bunch of things, then went to the office. the first thing i did was push a fix for something i broke on thursday, after which we had our daily meeting. one of the guys complained that things still weren't working, and i asked him when they last broke considering i'd just reported fixing it. "yesterday and the day before". this is not the first time he's done that, it's super weird.

someone else broke something critical yesterday and it still isn't fixed, so we were all stalled... i managed to get through an enormous volume of tedious effort; it's done, and hopefully today will feel more productive.

apparently gd had more luck with mr smear's homework yesterday afternoon, so that's good. on my way home i felt like my belly was a bit exposed, and while i suspect that my t-shirt has shrunk, gd assures me that i've put on a bit of weight :/

more strip search after bedtime.

today:

i slept very poorly last night.

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today is our cousins' matriarch's 92nd birthday. i feel guilty that i haven't made time to see her and her husband. they're both suffering from dementia, and i really hope they're at ease.