back to school

yesterday:

mr smear's first day back at school (albeit fridays' "school lite")

a shopping mission gone wrong (gd panicking, and then feeling bad for not checking in with me before paying)

picking up mr smear and continuing on to a shoe-shopping mission down dizengoff just as the dust storm started.

trying out the 3D movie with the PSVR and being blown away, and ordering a bunch of 3D glasses on ali express.

another not-great experience getting mr smear to do his homework, but gd sitting with him and coaching him and getting through it.

replaying celeste all the way to where i gotten before. that game is hardcore!

sailor coming over for dinner with a lot more dietary restrictions than we were antipating, but gd managed to rustle something up and we had a great evening anyway. mr smear suddenly developing a pretty hectic cough.

today:

waking up to learn about our attacks on iran, and feeling disappointed that we've left the ball in their court again.

a VR start to the day, with a very enthusiastic mr smear. afterwards, i discovered a way to watch downloaded 3D movies using rad tv and the result was awesome!

spending most of the day reading articles and playing crying suns, with my family reading behind me - i think gd's just finished the wave, and mr smear's deep into the bone comics collection.

we had the usual fight about going out in the evening, but gd and i managed to get through to him eventually and we took the basketball to the high school courts with adult-height hoops. he didn't shoot a lot, but he got the ball in quite a few times and we were both very excited ^_^

then i had a turn, and i didn't do so well but i definitely got exercise. i didn't do so badly, either, but mr smear wasn't watching and decided that, absense any evidence to the contrary, that physics was against me and that i hadn't succeeded at all :P

overall, the outing was good and the evening went well. we started watching men in black over dinner, and after putting mr smear to bed gd finally watched the rest of demolition man while i passed out on the couch beside her. i woke up a couple of hours ago, groggy and sore, and have finally gotten up from either trying to stretch or doom-scrolling to make myself a cup of tea, post this, and play something before heading to bed.

i'm disappointed that my vacation's over, because i could definitely use a couple more weeks off, but i think it's been good for me. if nothing else, i've had less pressure and less juggling and that's made the world seem less overwhelming. and i think i've done a good job of not stressing about not Doing All The Things, while still doing a whole bunch of things.

peaceful and not peaceful

it was a weird day today. it's supposed to be a happy festival, and i was planning on taking mr smear to the synagogue for hakafot, but we all woke up feeling lazier than usual and the combination of that and "celebrating" the jewish calendar anniversary of the october 7th massacre just made for an uncomfortable mix of feelings.

yesterday:

we went on a mission to find gd a vape pen, and we visited a lot of places and put in a lot of steps before we eventually found one. i'm very grateful that the guy was able to let gd "try before you buy".

we then continued to ozen hashlishit in search of a 3D bluray disc. i was sorely disappointed by what they had available (though not unsurprised, it's a wonder they sell any physical discs at all), but we managed to pick up a copy of hugo and i'm planning on testing it out soon.

when i get to it :P

we indecisively walked about looking for food, and ended up at "garger hazahav" for a huge hummus lunch (even two meals between the three of us was way too much food), and it was utterly delicious and we thoroughly enjoyed our meal.

in the afternoon, i did a fair amount of "catching up" reading and watching videos online, while playing bloons: adventure time. i'm kinda in-and-out with it, and i kinda feel like i'm seeing the end (ie starting to close in on getting all my characters levelled up).

i actually spent some time designing a real estate solution i've been thinking of, too, which was satisfying.

we began the chag in the shelter, but otherwise the evening was pleasant. i watched videos until my eyes started shutting of their own accord, and i guess i got a decent night's sleep.

today:

more bloons: adventure time, reading william gibson's count zero. [omg i just realized that i've read it before, but didn't remember. like, at all (O_o)]

a large chunk of today was invested, unpleasantly, in getting mr smear to do his holiday homework. after five hours - under threat that i wouldn't let him go to sleep tonight until he was done - he completed the first two pages. and, i discovered to my extreme chagrin, had scratched a stick figure into our otherwise elegant, rather expensive dining room table.

out of about five hours messing around, he only needed *maybe* half an hour to an hour to actually get it done.

parenting.

i kept myself occupied with a combination of reading, and playing crying suns. when he was done, we took the basketball out to the school to shoot some hoops, and so far the evening's quiet pleasant.

jump

yesterday:

mma was fine, although on the way there mr smear did something rude and lost screen time, and then threw a wobbly because he didn't appreciate their being consequences :/

while there, i tried to do something functional but ended up spending most of the hour reading pete collins' pain & gain, which is finished this afternoon.

i saw and enjoyed the movie when it came out, but a few days ago came across a discussion about it in which it was said that the movie wasn't as faithful to the original story as it was made out to be.

that... was an understatement. what an unnerving, harrowing tale. also, a dramatic emotional rollercoaster, right until the very end. sometimes truth truly is stranger than fiction.

gd wasn't up for making dinner, so mr smear and i took a walk and enjoyed falafel and chips, picking up a vegan curry for gd along the way. it was a very nice evening out.

today:

i definitely slept better last night. i got up this morning, sat down with my coffee, and then saw a worrying message from sailor that he'd left a package for us out in the hallway in case he was fast asleep.

wtf?!

i scrambled to get my rollerblades on, and was just passing a grocery store when the sirens wailed and everyone ran for cover. there were a lot of loud explosions, and i found out afterwards that gd had been on the can at the time and that's a pretty awful time to have to get to the shelter :(

i arrived at the wrong address, but didn't get caught by the spider who'd webbed the gate, then went back down the road to the right address, and sat with sailor for a really nice macha tea and a serious conversation about where he is and (possibly) should be.

then we agreed to meet up at the icon festival, and i returned home for breakfast before mr smear and i made our way there. gd, unfortunately, wasn't able to join us - at first because she was hurting, but then because she took a muscle relaxant :(

the festival was full of cool things, but overall it wasn't an exciting experience. mr smear really wanted to do the LARPing sword-fighting thing, but after a short time he found it pretty boring. maybe it's just boring with me :P

we came back home, and spent the rest of the day reading, doing homework, and messing about. i think i've been spending a lot of the time over the course of the past few days wondering about what i'm doing, or not doing, and trying to make peace with relaxing and being useless. i think it's okay for me to rest and be useless. i don't believe it, but i think it. is that enough?

out of office

 yesterday:

starting the day at the mental health clinic, for an appointment which took most of the last year to arrange. heaven forbid that should be drama free - mr smear and i were waiting outside when we heard lots of shouting, and it turned out that the psychologist, who's supposed to be dealing with people with psychological issues, greeted gd both rudely and aggressively.

WTAF?!

so gd was upset, the "doctor" was behaving like gd had done something wrong, and i had to jump in to the rescue... fortunately, the manager made every effort to fix things and, miraculously, an english-speaking shrink with a good attitude and a free slot arrived and the morning (and months of waiting) weren't lost. mr smear and i parked ourselves outside, reading and chatting, and gd was able to use her time and we're one step further down the road.

...

a surprisingly productive day at work in spite of the fact that i did *not* want to do any work. also, i was still in a mind-blown state from the vr experiences from the previous evening. i did have an argument with a coworker in the afternoon, and i was honestly really irritated by him not seeing things my way, but eventually i was able to put my finger on why each of us felt the way we did and realized that he was, ultimately, in the right.

it was a huge relief to leave the office, and (on-call notwithstanding) switch off for the next ten days.

i don't remember whether we tried to watch anything last night.

today:

i slept a bit better last night, but that's off a really low bar.

today was a big day, we set out to buy mr smear a proper synthesizer and we achieved our goal! we also tried to pick up some vr games along the way, but nobody seems to be interested in stocking them. we also looked at some books, then decided to get the entire bone collection on kindle instead.

the afternoon was spent playing with the new toy, and trying to watch a 3D movie on the psvr. that proved way more complicated than i was hoping... no success yet :/

mr smear played a vr space simulator that made me queasy, which led to a shitty mood, but eventually i got over it. kiddush for sukkot with my mom (virtually), followed by a nice dinner, interrupted by a hilariously crazy call from my sister who got herself into a particularly dramatic situation with multiple job applications and in addition to being entertained, i was actually able to give her some useful advice.

i hope she takes it :P

we put mr smear to bed, and i mindlessly/compulsively played did an idle run through kaycee's mod (only the final challenge enabled), and now it's anyone's guess what's next for the evening.

...

i've been doing holidays wrong, so i don't know how this one is going to turn out. my first priority is to rest my mind, kind of. and spend some quality time with my family. my second is to make some progress on the side project that i discussed with dod. my third is to try to arrange some test prints for my comics.

anything else is bonus.

winding down

 it wasn't too bad a day. i rollerbladed to work, which was very quiet because i was the only one in the office. in spite of things getting a bit hectic at one point, i managed to complete the frontend work that's been upsetting me for the past couple of weeks and returned home for lunch before taking mr smear to his jiujitsu class.

while there, i did a little more work - but nothing too serious - and when his class was done we returned home. as we stepped off the bus, the sirens sounded and we scrambled through narrow stairways into a deep bomb shelter along with a large number of coffee shop patrons, most of whom were clumsily wielding their dairy-based drinks in a way that made it anxiety-inducing to navigate to a safe corner while keeping mr smear out of contact.

god damn.

anyway, it was unpleasant but we didn't have an incident, so that was a win.

we both showered quickly when we returned home, and there was time before dinner to fire up the vr.

gd and i agreed that we could afford to get him one of the vr games, and he decided on battlezone, then he discovered that i'd downloaded a bunch more vr demos, so instead of buying something we dug into those instead - and we had a really good time. there were two games in particular, which caused a bit of a fight at first because we didn't understand what was going on or why mr smear needed us to tell him what was happening, but once we did get it they were brilliant. and then i took a turn, and i was absolutely blown away by how good the vr experience was!

after dinner, mr smear went to bed, i posted my two books on gumroad, and then gd and i settled down to re-attempt deadpool & wolverine. we made it a bit further before we were both falling asleep. it's really fun, we're just really tired...

i haven't slept well in a while, and i know that going to sleep early will cause problems, so i carried on fine-tuning all my online offerings and i'm now pretty happy with how things look. i think i'm about ready for bed now. i hope i am.

i'm very excited that i'm going on vacation tomorrow evening.

day of atonement

friday:

aside from grocery shopping in the morning, we were pretty much at home all day. the biggest achievement of the day was finally (finally!) setting up the psvr system, only 2.5 years after the mongoose loaned it to us. the pad at the back of the headset is falling apart, but otherwise it's in good nick. unfortunately, the paddles won't hold a charge so we're limiting to games that work with the regular gamepad.

either way, mr smear is over the moon and we both thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and the biggest challenge is going to be finding good games that don't cost an arm and a leg and being solid about limiting time with the headset on.

...

gd prepared a feast pre-fast, and after dinner we put together a very basic 200 piece puzzle, and mr smear actually participated fully for the first time. afterwards, i managed to convince him to come out on his bike. we met up with his re-friend / her dad and brother for a little, but all the kids were being whiny, so we went off in different directions. mr smear decided he was done earlier than i'd hoped - but apparently that's because he needed the toilet and didn't want to go outside - but overall he got the yom kippur "vibe" and we had a pretty good experience.

yesterday:

i slept really, really badly. i barely slept - although i did sleep a little, because i remember having some weird dreams - but i got up in the morning almost as tired as when i'd gone to bed.

firstly, we're really impressed that yesterday went as smoothly as it did. not only did we not have issues with a day without screentime, but we had constructive conversations about what we were doing and why we were doing it.

secondly, i spent most of the day resting, or following the morning prayer service with gd, or reading. i was tired, and a bit dehydrated, but i didn't have the usual caffeine-withdrawal headache and i wasn't feeling hungry.

in the afternoon we went to a park to meet up with a new friend of his, by which stage i wasn't feeling too fresh. the kids were getting along great, which was a relief to witness, although at some point mr smear wanted to leave because he was being harrassed by mosquitoes. he ended up staying in spite of that, though, because he was having fun... right until he wasn't. his new friend's little brother accidentally bumped him off an installation, and he was hurt and angry.

the resulting outburst was thoroughly embarrassing. i made my apologies as i followed him out of the park, and about halfway home managed to get him to listen to reason (i'm sad that i needed to threaten privileges for that, but it is what it is). things escalated when we got home and i explained what had happened to gd, but refreshingly quickly he managed to figure out what we were trying to get him to figure out and the tone of everything changed.

i sent off messages to his friend's mom and hopefully there'll be more playdates...

we logged in to the prayer service for the ending of the fast + blowing of the shofar + havdala + singing of hatikva, then dug in to a big meal. mr smear decided that he'd rather vr than fantastic four, so we tried out some of the other demos and we both had a *really* good time. then it was bedtime, and bedtime went smoothly.

gd and i tried to watch deadpool & wolverine, but as much as i was enjoying it i started passing out quite early on.

...

so far, the day's begun well. i slept alright, woke up and did a lot of stretching (my hips and lower back are still really sore), and we've had a long a constructive conversation with mr smear that covered the plans for the holidays, and a big discussion about gambling and other addictions that ended up with all of us agreeing that if we had the money, we'd establish and run a doggy hotel.

now it's time for me to go to work. *i* still have a couple of schooldays to go before my vacation begins :P

someone's on vacation

 a pity it's not me. mr smear's off for the yom kippur / sukkot vacation, and i'll be joining him from wednesday next week. in the meanwhile... at least i'm off for the weekend.

work-wise, yesterday and today were punishing, and i'm still not out of the woods yet. and it's all css bullshit. i told my boss today that i'm willing to bet that backend / application developers will be replaced by AI long before frontend devs, primarily because none of that shit has any sort of logic to it and there's no way to know which signals make things work and which signals interfere.

i have made progress, though, but it's been really, really slow. otherwise, between my manager and my boss i kinda feel like things are good. i hope i'm right.

gd's been in trouble, pain-wise, much worse than usual. she's managed to pick him up from school, but both yesterday and today i've taken him to mma. the travelling together has been fun. he's been mostly good with his classes, but not very focused and not particularly well-behaved :/

i'm sad that the fight camp has been cancelled due to insufficient numbers, but he's happy about it, and it certainly uncomplicates our holiday times.

...

one of ze germans posted about notebooklm yesterday, so i took a stab at it and it's the first time i've used an AI tool that has absolutely blown me away. i spent a good chunk of yesterday evening making "podcasts", interrogating sources, and writing up my experience, and this evening i've been throwing more stuff at it, mostly with superb results!

...

i'm not sure about what i'm going to do now, but i don't want to go to bed too early. speaking of sleep, mr smear's been going to bed without a night-light the last week or so, although he's been asking for the airconditioner on which serves as a very dim night-light, but i guess it's a win. he's definitely going to sleep faster, that's for sure.

nice

 it's the middle of the night, and i'm having trouble sleeping again. i've spent the last hour or so doom-scrolling, now i'm going to try writing this and maybe, possibly, going back to bed,

i went to bed early last night, again, and i mostly slept through the night. i started the day with the beginning of what i presume is the final shadowrun mission, saved (and double-checked my save) and got ready to go out with gd to pick up snacks for our guests.

it was at that point that we realized that mr smear's bag was missing, the one with his epipen and mobile phone 🤮

i was panicking that we'd left it in a park or something, but then i checked google family link and was (somewhat) relieved to see that it was at or near the ice-cream parlor we'd stopped at. so gd went to the store for snacks, and i rushed over to the ice-cream parlor. it was a huge relief to find the bag there, and find everything in the bag, but the experience had certainly elevated my heartrate.

the minecraft playdate was great, the kids really enjoyed themselves and the adults had a good chat too. overall, excellent.

at some point gd decided that we needed to go and find food, so we went our separate ways and took mr smear with us to cafe eva. the only seats available were the comfy sofas, and after we'd finished eating mr smear pulled out his kindle (he's voraciously reading dr block books) and i continued reading superman: escape from bizarro world which is far more interesting than i expected it to be.

but between the comfy chair, and the food, and the atmosphere, i spent most of the remaining time there passing in and out of consciousness :P

...

eventually, we returned home and settled in as a family to watch pantheon (horseman's recommendation). as far as age-appropriateness is concerned, it's mostly fine with a rare scene where we need to send mr smear out of the room for a minute and then explain what happened afterwards. as far as entertainment / intellectual stimulation / writing is concerned, it's phenomenal, and we're all in, all three of us!

...

the only unpleasantness of the evening was mr smear being upset that we weren't going to watch another episode when it was already getting late on a school night :P

in spite of that, and the subsequent 45 minutes of him not brushing his teeth and then complaining that he wasn't being given time to read, bedtime went smoothly. and then i passed out on the couch, eventually moving to the bedroom, and then eventually moving back to the couch again. now i don't know what i want to do, because i don't want to get into a game, but i don't want to doom-scroll either.

ooh! maybe i should try actually reading again. it worked this afternoon :P

...

this long weekend has been good for me. we're now entering a more-or-less regular work-week tomorrow, and then it'll be ten days off. i'm really looking forward to that.

shana tova 🙏

on wednesday morning we were preoccupied with making sure we were ready for the long weekend, and the afternoon was relatively relaxed. having said that, i must've eaten something bad or picked up a bug somewhere, but i spent a large part of the afternoon running to and from the toilet.

fortunately, that settled down the moment we left in the evening, and didn't return until the following morning.

we went to our friends for the chag, and for the most part it was a relaxed evening with the kids (mostly) being cool and the adults enjoying good food and good conversation, in spite of the fact that we were coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum. it's nice to have conversations with intelligent people.

we came home relatively early, and after putting mr smear to bed i settled in for some shadowrun: dragonfall. until... until pretty late.

yesterday:

i woke up with the middle of my back threatening to spasm, and it was painfully on the verge for pretty much the entire day.

in the morning, gd and i left mr smear to his devices (i think he was playing minecraft) and took a pleasant walk around the very quiet neighborhood. other than that, until 4pm i was mostly preoccupied with the apex mission in shadowrun. that mission was hard, and i needed a restart or two (i made some pretty big mistakes), and goddammit i earned the won't suffer an ai to live achievement. just decided how to handle that story required a few restarts and reading up online, i literally couldn't decide, as a player or as my character, whether it made sense to make a deal or not.

that's good writing.

i completed the mission, saved, and quit. still buzzing from how difficult the mission was and having completed it by the skin of my teeth, i closed my computer and went out with mr smear for a walk and some time chilling in the park.

it was nice. and my stomache was mostly okay by then.

so we had a good time, and i got a good break from the game. after we got back and showered, i decided to fire it up, just until dinner time. and that was when i learned that my save game - the one i saved after completing the mission - did not exist, and i was taken back to the very beginning of my last attempt.

i died inside. that really messed me up, and i'd stay messed up about it until this afternoon.

we had dinner, watching an episode of x-men and an episode of the fantastic four, and then everyone went to bed early.

today:

we didn't know if we'd have guests today or not, but either way our apartment was in dire need of a clean. so, for the first time, the three of us did it as a family. it took a while, but we did well, and we all rested nicely afterwards. (mr smear reading on his kindle, i've just been convinced to pay for kindle unlimited).

with an hour to go before we-need-to-go-outside time, i decided to give the apex mission another try. this time, i was doing alright when the game got stuck in the middle of the battle and wouldn't let me end my turn.

so that's a thing, too.

it's an old game, so nobody's going to fix it. but i did find a forum post mentioning debug mode, and debug mode has a "kil" button. so i reloaded, again, and quickly breezed through the mission using a big, fat cheat.

once i was clear, and out of the mission, i saved, verified that the save saved, and *then* closed the computer and went out with mr smear for a walk.

it was a good walk, and we stopped for ice cream on the way. this evening's been alright, we've just finished showering and are about to eat, and we've played some games together.

today was a good day.

new year 5785

last night was a huge attack on israel by iran, and we were stuck in the shelter for quite a while without signal, so everyone around the world knew more about what was happening than we did, while the sirens wailed and went silent and wailed again, on and off, and we heard massive explosions from near and far.

and right before the missile attack, there was an horrific terrorist attack in jaffa.

and with all the tension from outside, gd and i had a horrible fight last night, that only resolved around midnight. so between that, and worrying about whether we'd have to jump during the night, it was not the best night ever.

...

monday:

monday feels like an age ago, it's all a bit of a blur.

i woke up really tired (my own fault, i guess), and i had an uncomfortable stomache pretty much all day. i worked from home, took mr smear to his hebrew tutor and to jiujitsu. the work turned out more complicated than it should have been - as always, i ran into a wall of "how does this piece of software that everyone uses not do it's one job properly?" (a combination of fastapi and openapi tooling, with everything failing), but i essentially got the job done.

yesterday:

i really didn't sleep well at all, my lower back and hips were hurting. so i was quite tired.

the work day was interesting, i managed to get my task done as well as could be expected - using some quirky hacks, which of course we'll clean up later - and got a fun little side quest taken care of while avoiding working on my new task, which is another yucky frontend one.i was very happy to walk out of the office for the very long weekend, and i'm looking forward to the next few days being a bit of a break.

...

i've been fantasizing about us going all out against tehran for months, i keep thinking about how the US went into iraq in 2003 and how everyone was expecting it to be a serious war, and then the americans walked right through them. i have a feeling that if we hit tehran directly, we could be looking at a post-ayatollah iran which would immediately change the face of the entire region... so that's what i'm praying for.

may this new year be full of success, and relief, and reasons to celebrate 🙏

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.

ugh.

i rollerbladed to work this morning, after a relaxed start to the day. i arrived at the office and realized i'd forgotten my wrist pads, and sandles. so that's where my head was at, at the beginning of the day.

fortunately, the security guard let me roll into the building.

i don't recall how many "i hate my life"s came out of me today, but let's just say that me and frontend dev are not vibing right now. and it didn't help that for about three hours - between lunch and "happy hour" - i was repeatedly disturbed by sudden and aggressive needs to go to the toilet every few minutes. wtf? i was trying so hard to solve a real life puzzle (which i didn't really manage to solve by the end of the day), by the time i left the office i was done in multiple ways.

i got home, showered, and played rayman: legends with mr smear until dinner. then we continued watching x-men, and then it was bedtime, and then it was pay bills time, and now it's i-don't-know-what-i'm-doing-or-want-to-do-but-i-feel-shitty time.

tomorrow's the last opportunity to sort out school shopping for mr smear. tomorrow evening i have an exciting call scheduled with sailor. right now, though?

ugh.

luna park ftw!

 this morning was AMAZING. i slept pretty well last night, and spent some time organizing my google drive folders now that i've switched from sync. so far, so good. then mr smear woke up (he'd moved himself to the couch in the middle of the night 'cause he couldn't sleep), and after breakfast asked to be (re-)introduced to iron maiden. happy to oblige, we both enjoyed it.

then his friend rocked up, and we headed out to the luna park. getting there was easy, finding parking was easy, getting inside was easy, and getting on the rides was easy - it was the *perfect* day and time to go! out of the couple of hours we were there, the kids got to have fun and do almost all the rides they wanted (except the 140cm minimum rides) without waiting, and they even went on the anaconda!

i "dadded" well for both the kids - mr smear got freaked out by the black mamba, and his friend by the anaconda, and i managed to get them both back on track (mr smear psychologically, his friend physically and psychologically) - and i'm feeling really good about that. i even went on the final ride myself, which was great fun ^_^

everyone had a fun morning, and i dropped mr smear off at his friend's place on the way home so now we've got the afternoon to rest up before taking my mom to the airport tonight.

we're sad she's leaving us, but happy we got some good times in in spite of being sick for a lot of her visit (as always).

steps forward

yesterday:

a really exciting meeting with gco and an extremely interesting writer/comedian, which went so well that i blabbed to one of my teammates and instantly regretted it. but, at the same time, got immediate and very enthusiastic feedback for my idea ^_^

it was mr smear's final "play therapy" session in the afternoon, so that's a bit sad, but he was cool about it.

my mom, mr smear and i took a very crowded bus to the beach to meet with the mongoose and his family, it was a beautiful evening and we all enjoyed it immensely, although his daughter was very upset by something (twice) and i strongly suspect it was me - but we don't know why. possibly my tattoos? or just me being awkward? who knows.

i hadn't intended on eating dinner when we got home, but i ended up eating rather a lot.

today:

sleeping really badly last night, waking up in the middle exhausting and with a stiff neck

picking up gd's clippers on the way to work

sorting out - or assisting gd with sorting out - luna park tickets, mr smear's friend's mom really did manage to wrangle us half-price tickets

a busy and positive day at work not taking care of my urgent task, but after hummus for lunch just wanted to close my eyes (or play inscryption :P)

dubstepping home later than planned

a good climbing wall session, both in terms of his performance and in meeting a sweet guy who wants to be a councillor/guide - mr smear was really cool with him, and he got mr smear to give a new wall (with a real incline) another go

mr smear getting into bed really late but adorably asking us to give my mom permission to read to him anyway

inscryption degradation (i feel like i lost some dignity over the second run)

bailing on sync -> google drive

planning

i'm all over the place today. i began the day trying to sort out my mother's computer, which doesn't seem to be in as much trouble as i initially thought - it's mainly a question of setting up her browser profiles properly and introducing her to the onetab extension.

then i headed to work, worked a little, then walked to the hospital to help gd with her orthopaedist appointment. after months waiting for the appointment that was recommended by doctors and nurses, he informed her that she first needs to see a dermatologist.

good grief.

on the way back to the office i stopped at tiras to pick up lunch (breakfast). it was *really* good.

the rest of the workday was pretty productive, and good vibes. things between me and our devops guy were cool, which was a big relief.

i've spent arguably too much time playing inscryption tonight - or every night - but tonight in particular my mind's jumping and i'm feeling antsy.

it's my mom's last few days here, and we're trying to figure out what we're doing going forward. it doesn't look like mr smear's going to have a birthday party, so we're talking about taking him to the luna park on saturday... we'll see.

long weekend started

 i think an apt description of my mental state over the past while is "spiritually exhausted". i'm just coasting from one event to the next, living from coffee cup to coffee cup and trying to maintain sanity in the face of increasingly difficult challenges. some things are great. some things are amazing, even. but years and years of perpetually living on the edge of a chasm have really worn down my nerve sheaths.

...

yesterday was a particularly intense work day. and although it end with a surprising success (i'm code complete even though i didn't get to look at my planned work until two hours before leaving) it also ended with a shit feeling about a stupid, entirely avoidable incident during the day that may have done damage to my relationship with our devops guy :(

at lunch time i walked to pick up my new knee pads, and i bought an inflatable mattress and an automatic pump. the mattress is perfect, but the pump turned out to be with a car charger which isn't apparent at all from its packaging :/

one of my coworkers came to work *clearly* sick and infectious. i really, really, *really* hope i don't get sick like everyone else in my home.

fortunately, after wasting many minutes hurting my arms trying to inflate it with a bicycle pump, gd found the old automatic pump that she'd apparently looked hard for earlier...

... f***ing troll :P

anyway, the evening was pleasant, after mr smear went to sleep we all watched another episode of unchained, and then i went to bed.

today:

mr smear and i looked into fortnite's creative mode, which i've agreed to let him play. his argument for letting him play the battle modes? "violence is already in my head, you let me watch hunter x hunter".

he's got me there :$

gd admitted being too sick to come with to the museums, but my mother refused to. in retrospect, that was a big mistake and it was hard for her to get from the bus stop to the museum in the heat. i left her and mr smear there to go to the october 7th "exhibit" at the intelligence center, but i'm still not sure what that means because halfway there gco contacted me and asked if i would prefer going on sunday or monday instead. so i agreed, hopped off the bus, and then spent the next half hour frustrated waiting for buses that weren't coming or walking a long way in the heat.

public transportation outside of tel aviv sucks.

i joined my mom and mr smear for a short walk through the museum, he'd had and continued to have a very enjoyable time (aside from not liking being "helped" by the volunteer with no sense of personal boundaries on the fourth floor).

we caught a bus home, and have spent the past hour or two resting (my mother's been passed out on the couch for most of that time).

what's in store for the rest of the day is anyone's guess.

not down with the sickness

everyone but me (so far) has been sick, so lots of being stuck at home, not doing much of anything other than coughing. i'm praying i stay okay, and we're all hoping that everyone'll be feeling good enough to do a museum tour on thursday.

yesterday:

yesterday was a work from home day, and it wasn't easy. i think i've blanked a lot of it, because i'm sure we had some parenting issues, but work-wise i was on-call and struggling to get my own tasks done while trying and failing to understand what the heck was going on with the weird mysteries we're seeing in our logs.

oh, yes. i remember: mr smear was "very sensitive" (in his own words) yesterday and pissy about just about everything. i think gd and i had a fight about something as well, probably related.

oh, and handling finances: this has not been a good couple of months :/

in the evening i took a walk to the grocery store. i had an ulterior motive - finding a replacement LED bulb - but all the stores which might have had what i was looking for were closed.

after getting mr smear into bed, we settled in to introduce my mom to unchained. i don't know at what point i passed out, but when i came to and realized i'd fallen asleep on the couch i took myself to bed.

today:

woke up this morning to an already-awake mr smear, who's inflatable mattress sprung a leak in the middle of the night. he's going to have to sleep on the couch tonight, because none of us were able to find the leak (not even under water).

the morning was going alright, and then suddenly took a shit turn with mr smear. he recovered after a while, but i took much longer to get my own head right.

work was pretty good. i ate too much throughout the day, but i got the job (for the day) done and enjoyed receiving constructive feedback, both positive and negative. we had an interesting all-hands, too: sadly, our marketing wizard (witch?) is migrating soon, but the company's in a good place and i was surprised to learn that my current project is the central item everyone's betting on.

...

during the day gd sent me a video of mr smear's piano lesson progress: he seems to be making good. yesterday, when i was home, we had a talk about how to approach it and why it needs to be done in a certain way, and he seemed to *get* it.

as always, we shall see.

...

i left the office later than planned, then remembered that we hadn't done anything about a replacement mattress. i went to store after store (gas station after gas station) trying to find it, and after about ten places spanning (according to google maps) about 7km, i feel like i'd worked off enough of the office eating to enjoy a big, delicious dinner.

it looks like i've lost a couple of kilos over the past few weeks, so that's something.

i've spent most of the evening playing inscryption, now i've written this up, and now i'm planning on trying to get some sleep.

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.

shabbat

today's been pretty chilled. a lot of video games, and mr smear and i just finished watching (and enjoying) battlefield earth.

gd's been struggling - there's nothing like being woken up with a coughing fit to the face - but her rapid antigen test was negative and hopefully she'll be clear to visit our kibbutz cousin tomorrow. and hopefully the rest of us will be too.

around noon my cheap watch's strap broke dramatically, so i rushed out to dizengoff center to the store i bought it at, who referred me to the mi store itself. who couldn't help me, and recommended buying new straps from ali express. so now we've got straps, new hair clippers, a dance dance revolution-style control mat and some mesh food covers on order.

i'm so glad i'm posting this now, because i just realized i ordered straps for the wrong model!

i didn't get a haircut today. i desperately need one.

we're going to try going to shul in person tonight for the first time since coming home.

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.