getting stuff done

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[chokes on a raisin bran raisin]

big week ahead

 guardians of the galaxy vol. 3 was a mistake, and mr smear and i have agreed that we're not considering it canon. gd and i  watched it three years ago and apparently we weren't bothered by the hollywood tie-everything-up-neatly-with-a-bow drivel and the stream of character assassinations at the end. it kind of feels like the grease fan theory, perhaps rocket did die and the end was his ascension fantasy.

also, it manages to be a lot more gruesome than the others and mr smear - surprisingly - didn't enjoy that.

so that was a good chunk of yesterday. i also spent a few hours on my auto-doc side project, which feels like it's on its way to being ready for integration 🤞

mr smear and i put on our rollerblades relatively late in the evening, and headed out for some exercise. the first part was dramatically unpleasant (we keep having to talk about not being disrespectful, and yesterday evening's incident was on the heels of him lecturing me about how i should teach him and whether i was right to make him learn to ride a bike first), but we managed to get through it and enjoy the rest of the ride together. on the way back, we saw a jackal jump into the bushes a couple of blocks from our apartment and i had to explain to mr smear that - at his current speed - he wasn't going to be outrunning anything on four legs and might need to defend himself with his wrist pads if keeping away wasn't sufficient...

the evening was smooth, and included a visit from our upstairs friends. on their way out, big data informed me that our new fluxx packs have arrived, and that the delivery tax includes them playing with star fluxx before handing them over. they're not too interested in cthulu fluxx, though :P

i continued working on the auto-doc until midnight, by which time i was having trouble keeping my eyes open. due to hip flexor issues it took me a while to fall sleep, and i had to wake up and stretch again a couple of hours later, but otherwise i slept relatively well.

i began my day on the balcony enjoying the green and the breeze, invited mr smear over to explain palm tree growth and how deciduous trees' leaves are like tiny palms begging sunlight from the sky, only they wither and die as the tree curls up to hibernate for the winter.

now to start the new week, wondering if and when the war on iran resuming will affect us (especially with mr smear at his day camp for the next couple of week), and resuming the auto-doc work for the next hour or two before jumping on work-work (though the auto-doc is technically supposed to be that too) and trying to get as much done so i can take tomorrow off for the game dev conference with limited stress. oh, and planning for my sister's visit.

homeschooling

 six day war... twelve day war... twelve hour war...

bizarrely, yesterday felt like a return to routine.

שמים את השיגורים בשיגרה 

we put the rocket launches in the routine

mr smear's biggest lesson for the day was helping gd clean the floors; the first half was a nightmare until i got involved, and once it was done we had to have a family meeting and discuss how we help others (mr smear) and how we handle provocations (gd). we then had a bit of a repeat episode when he was supposed to help her with the dishes before dinner prep, but for a different reason, and i found myself explaining to a ten year old techniques for getting off the toilet quickly 🙄

my workday was alright, and ultimately successful. i'm still really behind - way past deadline - but i'm making some progress and certainly learning things along the way. i don't really have a solid mental model for what i'm doing, though, not yet at least, but a big part of that is how uninvested i am personally.

i also "wrote" (AI) a bunch of bash scripts for a CI workflow, and now i'm thinking i really should rewrite them in python...

i got stuck waiting on others in the evening, and mr smear and i took our fluxx collection upstairs to play a couple of games with our upstairs friends. it was fun, but more than that it was intended to be an educational experience for the kids, and as many annoyances as there may have been, overall it went well.

mr smear and i came back downstairs for dinner and macgyver, and gd's mushroom-soup lemonade (she followed the mushroom soup recipe, it's a terrible recipe), and then a hilarious chat with my mom (cemeteries can be dramatic), and then a night of intentionally doing nothing of value.

this morning we woke up (myself a lot more slowly than everyone else), and sent mr smear off to school, and then i read a little bit (a mix of stranger in a strange land and watchmen), and now i've posted this while singing along to synthknot, and now i guess it's time to get moving and go to work.

...

i've been putting off a bunch of preparation work that i need to do for the upcoming hackathon, it's not feeling good. but having published my extension and the related articles, i feel like a weight has fallen off my shoulders.

return to routine

 more war. i mean, back to routine! shit, are we at *war* war or just the usual level? i mean, the kids are home but are adults going to the office today?

gods help us.

...

i got a bunch of admin stuff done yesterday morning, not least of which being registering and paying for mr smear's summer camp (is that even going to happen, now?) after realizing that i'd misunderstood the forms last time and stopped halfway.

UX matters, people :P

it took me a long time to get around to my actual work, but once i did i put in a good few hours and made some actual progress. one of my coworkers reached out for a half hour sync on maintaining dashboards in a healthy way, and i'm very pleased to see that the team is taking it seriously in spite of their initial skepticism!

i was a bit nervous about the "sync" that my manager invited me to - then learned why in a pre-sync meeting yesterday evening and was relieved to have been consulted before things get messy.

by the evening, i hadn't been out of my chair much all day, so i went to the library with mr smear for some exercise and fresh air (and to return a book, and pick up a few more interesting ones). it was a very pleasant excursion.

we watched macgyver over dinner, after which i made my extension look nicer and finished up the articles. then we learned that we're at war again...

... i spent the next hour or two trying to publish my articles (the medium website started throwing errors literally as i was publishing, and the emails were sent out with the articles in an incomplete state), then i played a little slay the spire 2, and then i finally went to bed.

[rocket attack incoming]

untethered

 sleep journal entry: after two hours of fitful sleep, i woke up with lower back and hip pain again and it took 45 minutes of stretching to calm down. this is the first time since i began supplementing with iron and magnesium, and i woke up feeling particularly poorly rested

meanwhile, gd woke up on the wrong side of bed this morning and her temper's on a hair-trigger.

all that aside, my niece is supposed to be giving birth in an hour's time at the latest, and we're all in a weird state of wanting to be supportive while certainly not being supportive of the fact that she's having another kid at all. i feel bad for both the siblings and the little one hasn't even come out yet.

...

yesterday was a day. i took mr smear to school, deciding once i got home that i have been being paranoid. i guess i'll wait for the homefront command to advise.

i did get a bit of work done in the morning, and i had a great (short) sync with my mentor. the afternoon, however, was a complete mess as far as work was concerned. i managed to get a whole lot of personal admin done, and i had a half hour meeting about the urban kibbutz idea that went really well, and certainly gave me some food for thought.

...

mr smear made some drama yesterday. when i dropped him off at school, it was with instructions to find out what work he needed to catch up and to bring home his workbooks. i called him after school to remind him. he arrived home without doing either of those things.

aside from the bad vibes, he's now under threat of losing weekend privileges if he doesn't shape up. i got him to write up what he has to do today in a temporary diary, including the instruction to start using his actual diary, and hopefully today will see him more functional.

after he did his chores, and a whole lot of music practice, he fired up human resource machine before i could stop him. technically i've made it homework, but practically speaking it's a video game, so i kinda screwed myself on that score :P

he spent a lot of time staring - his usual "i don't wanna think" mode - and there was a bit of tension, but i refused to give him the answer even as i gave him all the hints he needed to solve the problem. when he finally put 2 and 2 together (or 8 by 3, in this case), there was much rejoicing!

...

dinner was delicious, shower / bedtime went pretty smoothly, and i went to bed shortly after he did.

brain fogging

 once again, as it gets later and i get ready to go to bed, my nose and throat situation begins to worsen... on the one hand, the antihistamines seem to be helping a bit. on the other, this really can't be just allergies.

i'm enjoying the excuse to accompany mr smear to and from school these days, even though it's awkward and getting more awkward by the day. are we at war? will the bombing resume? or should we be living our best lives?

limbo is uncomfortable.

i told my team what i've been thinking, and that i essentially needed to go back to the drawing board, and they were understanding. in spite of a fair number of distractions, i did manage to be productive today and i'm understanding considerably more than i did before. i'm not quite sure how to formally introduce AI tooling into what i'm doing - i may have to treat it as local harnessing only - but at least i'm feeling a little less lost.

a couple of months ago i began the process of setting up paybox for mr smear, and then a few weeks later got his account set up. since then it's been unclear whether he's actually earning interest, and today i got in touch with their support. after they initially lied to me, it became apparent that children's savings accounts do not, in fact, earn interest. so the whole exercise was one in futility, and i've now withdrawn all the money and we're going to have to find another option. and, just like every other thing we've tried, this has cost us; not just in cash, but i've now got two credit cards that need to be cancelled :/

assholes.

i snacked a lot today. today was all about snacks. even if some of the snacks were essentially just an extended lunch :P

the supplement routine is getting a bit ridiculous, though. it's complicated, and i've kinda given up on intermittent fasting the full 16 hours (though i guess i've been unofficially doing less for a while now) because it makes it even more so. i can't drink tea or coffee for an hour before or after taking my iron supplement (or eating something with a reasonable amount of iron in it), and i've got to take vitamin D in the morning with food, and magnesium at night with vitamin C (but not vitamin D), and i have to have my handful of walnuts (or pancakes, if i'm in time for gd's breakfasts) for omega 3, and not forget to regularly take b12.

after my mom and i picked mr smear up from school, we returned home and then walked across the highway to find the supermarket. it really is well-hidden! mr smear's whole thing for weeks has been hunting for lotus biscoff cookies, and i honestly wasn't expecting to find them there.

but find them there we did :)

on the way there, i'd charged him with paying attention to the route so that he can he gd find the place, to which he'd responded in a decidedly uncooperative manner. i warned him there'd "be a test", and on the way back i quizzed him, putting the lotus cookies on the line. he was not happy when i "failed" him and assured him there'd be no biscuits until i got a map, at which point i went home and my mother volunteered to accompany him to give him a hand.

which he apparently didn't need 🤦‍♂️

it really is all about motivation with this kid. he got home, drew me a map, took half a biscuit and promptly forgot about the ones i'd offered him as a prize, and then settled down to try and improve his previous solution in human resource machine.

that was effectively the end of my work day :P

while he didn't exactly post the correct solution himself, he did work through it really well, he made a real effort and stayed focused, made a bunch of modifications that he was pleased with himself about, and when i sat down with him at the end, he was clearly on board with me every step of the way.

this is exciting stuff ^_^

just before dinner his new teacher called me, and our chat was pleasant. funny, even, in a distressing kind of way, because the story she told me was that she'd loaned mr smear a book for the lesson, and he'd somehow managed to lose it by the end of class even though nobody had moved.

my child is certainly talented.

eventually, i got the full story over dinner and everything made sense, nothing had been lost.

dinner was really good, gd and my mom worked together to produce a lentil curry that even anti-lentils mr smear found edible.

bedtime was smooth, i finally read a bit more of the colour of magic to him (we're so close to the end!), and i've now spent a couple of hours doing nothing of value (including some spire slaying). now i'm taking my cough to bed and praying to get some rest.

~3000 + 78 years old

our celebratory dinner was in order, with gd a little jealous of our desserts even though she usually doesn't participate, and the insanely good halva is naturally gluten-free anyway.

we learned this morning that the internet advises not to stop eating gluten until you have a diagnosis, to avoid a false negative. holy shit. so we've just had a talk, and agreed that *if* it matters to the medical establishment that she has a diagnosis on her record then she should put herself through it, and if not, then there's no point in getting scanned in the first place.

...

after dinner, and before leaving the house, mr smear turned our apartment into a dance floor with the bee gees' you should be dancing (followed by some kool & the gang), and then joined me an my mother for a bus ride to the museum to see what was happening. what was happening there - on the evening of a national day of celebration - was a gathering of sadness, all the woke lefties who are so bitterly opposed to our current government that they can't spare a moment to be grateful to be here and alive.

we quickly moved on from there, through throngs of tel aviv revelers going from party to party, to habima, where the concert's music was good, but not very upbeat. we walked about, marveled at the decorations and art installations, and continued walking until we got to a bus stop to come home.

the bus ride was very sweet, the bus driver and a bunch of guys behind us were all in great spirits, and we arrived home quickly and with more than 12000 steps on our watches.

after getting mr smear into bed and showering myself, i slayed the spire (i lie - the spire slayed me) for a while, then dragged myself to bed.

...

i didn't sleep particularly well, and was woken by my poor child at 6.10am (his groans indicated that he wasn't feeling well), and 8am was when i gave up trying to get back to sleep. i had coffee with my mom and mr smear while gd stayed in a bit longer, read a bit more of the day everything changed (which hits really hard), and am now relaxing while thinking about what we're going to do today.

...

from our saddest day to our happiest day, but both very, very strange days this year. to our fallen heroes, our terror victims, and to our persian counterparts: may this war bring us victory, and more than just independence: freedom from tyranny.

chag sameach, am yisrael chai 🇮🇱

frustration + anxiety

 it's been a very frustrating day. gd decided that mr smear was too sick to go to school - he really wasn't - so that gave me a bit of extra time to take care of some adulting admin. unfortunately, not only did i need that extra time, but i had a number of highly aggravating encounters and that really set a tone for the day.

then i dove into work. work sucked. four hours of highly frustrating work, and i'm confident using AI has ultimately made this whole project (so far) take considerably longer than it should have. i feel like i'm wading through a pool of raw sewage, being led by a broken compass that keeps swinging in a different direction any time i get close to an exit.

i've also been hungry / snacking all day, and my stomach's been unhappy.

while i'm going through whatever agitation i'm going through, gd's been having a really hard time. apparently a bit of wine last night has reset any of the healing that avoiding gluten was doing, and to add to that her shoulder's locked up. she's (understandably) pissed off now that my mother forgot some of her meds back in cape town that she really needs right now.

...

by the time 2pm rolled around, i decided i was done for the day. it's been an absolutely gorgeous day, so i took a walk with my mom and mr smear through the park to get some exercise before turning back, picking up coffee (decaf for me) and a malt beer for mr smear at our favorite dog-friendly coffee spot, then passed a supermarket and did some shopping on the way home.

and then took another short walk to the 24/7 for the stuff we couldn't find at the supermarket.

after mr smear and i had some chocolate weetabix (not bad for a "boring" additional iron source), i lay on the couch and finally started reading the day everything changed. then i got up, antsy as all hell, to post this.

it's independence day (shortly), i've no idea what we're doing tonight, and i've no idea what we're doing tomorrow. it's a very confusing time. the ceasefire is supposed to be over tomorrow night, but i'm more nervous about it being cut short than i've been since it started, and i haven't trusted it in the slightest.

sleep diary / politically asleep

 i've been using the consensus sleep diary for the past couple of days, and i've just gotten stuck on the fact that you can review your sleep stats dashboard, but not the comments you made - unless you're adept with the developer tools. so, for myself, i'm copying my comments here:

i'm not sure how long before 6.30am i woke up, i feel like it was a long time though. yesterday was my first time using both iron and magnesium supplements and i didn't suffer from the usual discomfort, just a bit of restlessness

on multiple occasions throughout the night i giggled at trump's absurd and acerbic humor.

...

then, first thing this morning, i woke up to respond to an instagram thread with a highly intelligent, educated man whose political extremism has been distressing me for years:

him: A blockade is an act of war. That's why during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis the US referred to it as a quarantine. Both the action, its intricacies and the specific wording were discussed and debated thoroughly. Oh well. Clip from Thirteen Days. I like it.

me: did you know that the irgc was blockading the straits up until a few days ago ? why didn't you post this then?

him: Of course I knew. I don't know of any historical analog, especially one with a dramatic Hollywood adaptation that includes the US principals discussing the blockade. Is there?

me: interesting - the timing of your post suggests that when the americans do it it's nefarious

him: nefarious means wicked or villainous. If you consider war as that, then yes. I don't. I think it's an act of war. Which requires approval from Congress.

me: ah, so it's okay that americans are using force to protect american interests, it's just an issue with protocol? cool, cool

...

[i'm] just perpetually curious how someone so intelligent and educated always seems to be pushing an anti-west agenda 🤷

him: Showing the lunacy and abhorrence that is the Trump administration is anti-West? Color me anti-West then.

me: if you can only see lunacy and abhorrence, then yes, you're anti-west. a pity.

him: I see much more. Terror. Abuse. Fascism. Sadness. Democratic decline. Mental decline, not to say dementia. Fear. Spinelessness. Systemic failure. At a glance.

...

what are you seeing that I don't? (I forgot grift and open corruption on an unprecedented scale, just came to mind as well)

me: a whole different side to the internet, and history. it begins before the end of the cold war, with the kgb inventing "active measures", and evolves into decades of unholy alliance between the russians, chinese, qataris and iranians to destabilize the west and create a massive, well-funded disinformation army that infiltrates western institutions and makes the media (traditional and social) push out propaganda at a terrifying scale. and that all rides on the back of social media algorithms that are financially incentivized to raise engagement by any means necessary, generating mass psychosis on all sides of the political spectrum as we learn that "folie à deux" scales. i recommend trying to balance out your media diet, the other side isn't all lies like you've been led to believe. also talking to your fellow israelis without assuming that everyone with a different understanding is either brainwashed or a bad actor (that's a general statement, i'm not accusing you of anything - it's possible you just don't happen to have people with different opinions in your circles).

the last opportunity?

 i went to bed late last night. i finished with the button a little after midnight, then climbed into bed and found myself entirely unable to sleep. i don't know why, but i was completely wired and spent the entire night miserably uncomfortable.

the 6.30am alarm was painful.

i accompanied mr smear to school - again, because i'm worried about when the war's going to resume - and we had a fun conversation about the drawing for our front door. on the way home, i stopped at the pharmacy to pick up something for gd, and had a chat with my mom about whether she'll be able to land here next week, and what we should do about her laptop (i'm thinking of giving her our windows machine).

i came home, and struggled to get started with work; primarily because in addition to exhaustion, my back and feet were really hurting. i eventually remembered our foot/back massager, though, and i have to say i'm quite grateful for it!

[turns it back on again]

i prepared a scary bit of work last week, and this morning i pulled the trigger. i nervously monitored the dashboards, but a half hour later i was convinced that a) the deployment had gone smoother than i'd hoped and b) i've discovered something quite bad (a memory leak) that's been causing disruptions, probably for years.

i also helped the team lead of my previous customer team navigate the airflow interface - that shit is hard!

in addition to working, i assisted gd with a wolt driver who couldn't figure out how to find our address on a map and was unable to follow directions. not only was he shockingly dumb and incompetent, but he had the nerve to tell me that we shouldn't be using our correct street address and should go for the (essentially) illegal one instead.

we also managed to figure out how to return a pair of shoes she bought online, and it was much easier (albeit much more expensive) than the other site.

in the afternoon i returned to the school to pick up mr smear, and managed to buy raisin brain (for the iron fortification) along the way. mr smear made me wait for a while, so i took off that same amount of screen time, but the journey home was mostly pleasant and once the timer began, he grabbed watchmen off the shelf and started getting into it.

i spent the next few hours drowning in a task that's heavy on the AI because i only vaguely understand what needs to be done. so while i'm constructing (hopefully) a mental model, i'm casting magic spells and praying they don't backfire...

and then mr smear had homework to do. fortunately, he worked through it pretty well, with only one short episode of me losing patience (he couldn't understand the problem, but wouldn't pay attention while i tried to help him), and he managed to score himself some game time before dinner.

dinner: delicious corn soup / corn on the cob combination, accompanied by the next part of ready player one. i've been avoiding spoiling the chest-burster scene from the alien movie because we're planning on watching it soon, so i was pretty bummed out by the disguise scene! at least i know mr smear won't be traumatized by it, though. he thought it was funny. (though he still hasn't plucked up the courage to continue with terminator 2, which he finds too intense)

we managed to get through shower and bedtime pretty smoothly. i didn't have energy to read to him (and it was late), but instead i recited the slam. the last time i recited something i received some pretty harsh feedback from him ("i HATE your poetry!"), but tonight? he was riveted, and actually praised it ^_^

...

i'm going to try to get to bed earlier tonight (ie. soon). it's clear that the "cease-fire" with iran is officially over, so if there's an attack we're moving mr smear back into our bedroom immediately.

gods, this is a really confusing time. strategically, it seems like the americans have really done an amazing job, but right now being in the moment and in the IRGC's crosshairs...

wtf wednesday (ceasefire?)

 i really don't understand if there's really a ceasefire or not. or if it means anything or not. none of what's happening makes much sense.

...

yesterday:

we managed to get up at a reasonable time, and i woke up with an itch to reinstate public access to my comic pages and post an update to my patrons.

then i jumped on our daily call, and my manager reminded me that i was supposed to be on holiday.

i dragged mr smear along with me to the mall after learning that home center had not sent me the items i'd ordered. their in-store staff was just as useless. mr smear's friend met us there, and we paid a visit to the candy store, where i picked up a "hot mama" flavor of van holten's pickle-in-a-pouch, which still makes me giggle.

i dropped the kids off at home and continued on to the hardware store, but 100m out got trapped in a sudden heavy electric rainstorm. when it calmed down i jogged further on, arriving (wet) at a synagogue just as our missile alert system kicked in. i spent the next ten to fifteen minutes in their shelter, surrounded by people and animals with heavy smells, and i was half-asleep by the time we were able to leave.

i made my way to the hardware store, picked up a tape measure but not a garden hose, then paid a quick visit to a nature store to pick up a protein bar, passed one of my ex-bosses on the way to the grocery store (i didn't greet her, she didn't see me and i'm still sore about her and her co-founder back-stabbing me and not even having the decency to try to speak to me on my way out), picked up a bag of carrots and made my way home.

gd had let strangers into our mamad because she didn't know that it's safe enough for them to use the stairwell. weird people, apparently.

the kids had a great afternoon (mostly playing rayman: legends), we all tried the pickle (it wasn't that hot, but made for a great matzah sandwich) i had an emergency coffee and the put up two of our maps (a real world map, and our map of ankh morpork) in our office, and later i put up some clothing hooks too. and also managed to get our new sound system set up, and it's SO much better than our previous one!

i did, however, almost fall off the ladder doing that (i mis-stepped after forgetting i was on the top rung) and i managed to hurt my hip again, which had finally been feeling better :/

our upstairs friends came downstairs with wine, and we sat talking negligently late, which included some uncomfortable expressions by gd about some of their friends... not that she's entirely wrong, mind, but how one says stuff... :P

we had a nice dinner, chatted for most of it with my mom, and then watched the final episode of strip search. gd had had enough of the day (and parenting) by that stage, so i handled shower and tooth brushing, and i went to bed exhausted before mr smear had himself fallen asleep.

today (so far):

sleeping late, napping, reading and loving most of the importance of being earnest, eating a pretty good breakfast of matzah, peanut butter, banana, vegan nutella and tabasco. i tried watching jujutsu kaisen with mr smear but i passed out, and i woke up to spend a frustrating half hour or so trying to fix our microsoft / minecraft accounts so that i could reinstate his birthday present (the marketplace pass).

now we're heading out to try and make the most of what may or may not be a peaceful afternoon.

the square hip

 not so restful, but i did eventually manage to get my hip to stop bothering me enough to get some sleep. but then, when i was woken up by the third alarm for an all-hands event that had nothing to do with me, i got up to find that my hip was totally locked up, front and back.

i started my day on the carpet on the floor trying to stretch it out while sipping coffee and reading the importance of being ernest - i've owned my copy for years, how have i never opened it before?

i guess today was pretty constructive, all things considered. i think i've finally nailed down the upgrade of a service to the latest golang version (from 1.11), and i think i handled my RCA ticket being irrecoverably deleted by someone who didn't know what it was quite admirably.

i took mr smear with me to witness my very painful limp and call me a cripple pick up the internet cable outlet plates and return the comic books to the library, but arrived at the library to discover that they'd been closed for half an hour. because holidays. and war.

getting through the mall gauntlet was alright. there were a few cosplayers doing their thing, but i don't think mr smear noticed much.

after we got home and dropped off the box, we went to our new 24/7 to pick up a couple of things, then returned home for more work, to receive the new soundbar, and then to dive in to a dramatic homework session.

ultimately he did well, and he was pleased with himself, but the journey there was fraught with him doing everything he could to sabotage himself. i truly believe he can do anything he puts his mind to - and i don't believe that of many people. but omg getting him to put his mind to anything is nigh impossible.

dinner (and strip search) was great, gd rushed him through shower and toothbrush time surprisingly rapidly, he read while i showered and brushed my teeth, and then we said good night.

gd and i spoke for a little while - mostly she's feeling bad about stuff that's totally normal for all of us right now - and i tooled around (mushing my brain with trash) until posting this, and now i think i'm going to try to get some rest.

again. my hip's still acting up.

extra-innings

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

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

we shall see.

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

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

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

passover 2026

we're approaching midnight, and for the first time since this afternoon i'm feeling a little better, after spending most of the day with a neck issue causing a massive headache, nausea and dizziness. now i've showered, i've made myself a lavendar/chamomile tea, and i'm hoping to get some rest tonight.

...

i was so relieved to be on holiday and turn my brain off. feeling extremely ill and sore is not relaxing.

yesterday:

we didn't do so well when it came to coming up with april fool's pranks, but i did have a fun idea inventing an elevator that detects smells; if someone farts in the elevator alone, it emergency stops until the extractor fans clear the air. if there are multiple people in the elevator, it immediately lets them off on the next floor.

it was erev chag, so of course we had last-minute shopping to do. gd sent me and mr smear off to find stuff i've never bought before, and we ended up on a serious mission, tired, and frustrated by all the other last-minute shoppers as well as the shops themselves for largely being disappointingly crap.

we did manage to get everything by the end of the mission, though.

aside from helping gd out a little bit here and there, mr smear and i spent the afternoon resting or reading or playing games. nothing intelligent. gd, on the other hand, had a very dramatic afternoon and evening cooking for the pesach seder for her very first time.

as unhappy and stressed as she was during the cooking - not helping by a long series of rocket attacks timed perfectly to mess with everyone - she was as happy as we were with the results and the seder with our upstair friends - which included reading and singing in their shelter - was great. the kids were generally well-behaved and involved, we got through to the meal in pretty good time, and dinner was delicious.

today:

the first part of the day was perfect. i finished reading crumb's kafka, which unfortunately has a few too many inappropriate things for me to be able to suggest that mr smear reads it, but is thoroughly brilliant and engaging. we all enjoyed a huge leftover breakfast. mr smear and i walked to the gas station to pick up the new playstation controller and charger; neither are amazing, but they'll do.

that got us into resuming our latest replay of rayman: legends, and it went really well with some exciting invasion runs!

and then my day fell apart. everyone else seems to be doing okay. i managed to eat some dinner while we watched another strip search elimination, and then lay down on the couch stretch my neck and watching random shit until just after mr smear (finally) went to bed.

i hope tomorrow's nicer.

the needle

[currently battling a mosquito and losing]

 well, i did sleep last night. i had horrible dreams, though. involving really gross public toilets, amongst other things.

i gave up on reading dragon ball. it's like a pre-teen fever dream. combined with dragon ball: rick & morty i'm now pretty confident i never missed anything important.

our subwoofer situation: i was so excited the past couple of days, because it looked like the subwoofer was finally stable for the first time since we bought it. but today? garbage. i finally bit the bullet and ordered a new one, which will hopefully hook in to the shelf in the same way 🤞

work ownership mystery: i asked my manager to investigate, and he managed to get someone to approve my pull request. but then we learned that they didn't have the authorization to merge, either. a bunch of us (virtually) ran around trying to find out who's in charge, and so far the answer appears to be "nobody".

in the afternoon, my employer team had to sign in to a presentation that went on about an hour longer than it should have. i had to turn my camera off halfway through so nobody would have to keep seeing me rubbing my eyes and yawning.

mr smear had a regression today, and homework turned into a massive, unpleasant thing that got him punished. as part of the cooldown, i took him to the park to use the exercise equipment (i was too pissed off with him to train him, and i'm pretty sure he wasn't in the mood either), and then we continued on to do some sweet shopping.

i'm not doing to well with my weight situation lately. something about war and lockdown and yada yada yada.

dinner (we were forced to order in because my employer doesn't let me use my food allowance to buy vouchers) was much calmer, getting mr smear showered and toothbrushed and into bed proved stressful and stretched our patience completely, and that was on top of two attacks launched in that exact window. and i still had a little more work to do after he went to sleep, so i was even more annoyed.

now i'm playing catch-up and calm-down, as i type this i realize it's already past midnight :/

...

gd's friend (the glassblower who made us massage tools and gifted us with some bitcoin a couple of years ago) has been contemplating suicide for a very long time, and gd's finally reached a point where she can no longer bring herself to keep trying to talk him out of it. she's upset about this, and she wants to be a good friend, and i told her to just make her feelings crystal clear and deal with whatever may come.

you can't help everyone.

the masses move through the tent city

 the nights have been relatively quiet the past few days, but i've been sleeping worse. physical nerve discomfort, primarily, but also mental disquiet.

we got up yesterday morning at 10am, which felt wrong somehow. it was only in the evening that we learned that it was wrong, because daylight savings time. it took us a remarkably long time to get out the house, by which stage the weather had turned to cold and wet.

we were nervous about traveling across the city and getting caught in an attack while outside, but fortunately we were caught once while at the mall, and the second time while waiting for the bus home, so we had time to get down into the parking lot.

man, the tent city is an experience.

between the mobs of mall people, and mr smear being generally disagreeable, and a siren catching us before i managed to get myself a second coffee when i was already feeling twitchy desperate, i had zero patience by the time we left. but we had managed to get the two things we needed the most: a kettle cord* and a smaller (and less permeable) shower curtain.

* how the hell did we end up with one less than we have appliances that need them?!

and gd's hair-care products, and also a large container of cholent, which mr smear finally tried and liked ^_^

once we got home, i spoke to two cousins, declining the still-open invitation to a pesach seder because there's no way we're traveling far with the war still on.

big data's been doing a lot of work on the building these days, and in the afternoon he came over with his tools to give me a hand with putting up a shelf to tidy up our modem / router situation. not only was he a great help with getting the shelf up easily and neatly, but he had a brilliant idea of attaching our sound bar underneath it, and we now have the solution we should have had for the past four years - it's awesome!

unfortunately, while we did get the projector set up "well enough" (using polystyrene from the electric hob's box that we hadn't tossed yet), it's clear that it's seen better days and that at some point we're going to need to upgrade it :(

i mean, it's served us well for a decade already...

a bit later we went upstairs to join them for dinner. good food and plenty of it, and aside from some issues with mr smear we all had a very pleasant evening. it was very late by the time we finally went to bed**, but between the achievements of the day, the company, and a fair amount of alcohol, i went to bed feeling quite relaxed.

** after watching the first episode of rick and morty with gd so that she could be reminded of why mr smear shouldn't have seen it

so it would have been nice if i'd been able to sleep better.

...

it's been a peaceful morning so far. i sorted out the playstation in preparation for mr smear's friend coming over, and i've watched some random things, and maybe i'll do something productive now or maybe i won't.

getting out the house

 it's almost 1am as i begin writing this, and i'm sitting here with my usual sore lower back  / bum, and indigestion. i guess this is the price to pay for trying to go to bed earlier. or just for being me.

...

we had a quiet night last night; the day was full of attacks, but it was a quiet night last night. i started the day sitting on our couch with a cup of coffee and the first volume of dragon ball. and arguing with gd over which side of the living room the couch or projector or future television need to be. my primary concern is not being able to look out a window from the couch, and my eyes have been strained and my vision blurry for the last couple of days so that's kinda front of mind (just like my eyes).

...

if there's something that set the tone of the day, though, it was putting together a whole lot of my old jokes and scripts ideas just before we had to shelter from a strike, and while we waited out the attack i used notebooklm and gemini to put together a two-panel comic that came out really well!

...

my client / boss invited a few of us to the office for lunch and beers, and i decided it was worth it. gd packed me a sandwich and some salad, which turned out to be a good idea as the guys ordered vietnamese with zero vegan options on the menu, and i managed to get to and from the office without any alerts (i was a bit nervous crossing the massive bridge over the highway).

it was nice to be in an office with my coworkers, it was a good vibe and in theory it was more comfortable to work than from my home "office". but in practice, the moment i left the apartment i felt weird, a bit dizzy and "off", and my stomach was uncomfortable the entire time i was there. by the time i left, i was nursing a pretty serious headache and i needed to lie down.

while i lay down, my sister sent us messages informing us that she's finally got permanent residence in the UK! this is great news; even though she's nervous about what a shit-hole britain has become, it's a much better class of shit-hole than south africa.

we spoke for a bit until there was another attack; i'm beginning to lose my mind, because the last week or so there's been a problem with our shelter wifi. then i saw a message about the state of our garbage bins, and realized that a large part of it was from the couch guys yesterday... so i headed downstairs and literally got my hands dirty, so much so that i needed to jump in the shower immediately after returning to our apartment.

i had a chat with my mother, and then gd ordered dinner and i sat down with mr smear to help him through another level of human resource machine.

getting him to think through problems out loud, and guiding him without giving him answers, is tough. but i'm extremely pleased to report that he's doing it!

over rainbow burger dinner, we watched another couple of episodes of strip search, then it was shower time for mr smear, after which there was some drama (gd called the shower "condemned").

and then suddenly it was 10pm, and we apparently agreed that that was a valid pesach holiday bedtime for mr smear, so i read some more of the colour of magic from my bed (his bed has been next to mine for the last while) and then we both fell asleep.

...

i'm listening to the latest tousi tv report, the news is completely insane. i played a bit of balatro last night before going to bed, perhaps i'll do something similarly braindead now.

terror storm

ever since i was a child i've loved electric storms, and found lightning and thunder comforting. but last night's lightning strikes were so close that every single one sounded like an iranian attack had caught us by surprise and that there'd been another impact nearby.

thanks a bunch, mother nature.

so, ironically, during a night with no actual attacks i got a whole lot less sleep and a whole lot more anxiety. fuck you, headless chicken that remains of the IRGC.

 ...

so i was a bit rough around the edges today. in spite of that, i feel like i got *some* good work done, and i helped mr smear through his programming "homework" (human resource machine), and he did (with a little bit of shouted encouragement) do a reasonable amount of music practice, and we continued to use in-shelter time-outs to learn zoology with ze frank, and while we didn't train this evening, we did do some serious stretching.

we received two deliveries today: a small care package from my client, and a slightly bigger couch. we're happy with the care package, but we're particularly happy about the couch.

the post office saga was embarrassing, the guy who i'd sent it to had to go twice to the store to pick it up, and i'd had to have a real fight with the representative who eventually ended the call because she was upset that i was upset and taking it out on her. specifically, because she started saying "the next time you use our services" which i immediately cut off with a tirade of why i would never (voluntarily) be using their services again.

what's it called, when you pay for a service and they don't provide it to you? it's on the tip of my tongue...

slightly more reasonable snacking levels today, but a big, late leftover lunch after the couch was delivered, and gd made latkes for dinner (for the flax), and mr smear and i had vegan nutella on the last of the marshmallows.

we watched another strip search elimination, unfortunately mr smear loved the sex-adventure comic and "sass" a little too much and it was an ordeal to get him to not repeat it all to my mother 🤦‍♂️

omg it's really late again. we keep eating late, and mr smear's been going to bed really late, and it kind of throws off my clock.

when life gives you a permeable shower curtain...

 ... double up. as i begin this post mr smear is taking a turn after me, after we put in another one of the same on top of the one from yesterday. so far so good, and i'm enjoying him singing to himself and having a good time 🤞

today began with a boom - a building or three a few blocks away got hit with a missile, a few cars got hit as well, and the next hour or so was an orchestra of emergency service vehicles. but, miraculously, the building in question was evacuated a while ago for reconstruction or renovation, so while there was a lot of damage, there weren't any serious injuries 🙏

not-so-small mercies.

so the morning went straight in and hard on social media and news.

my work day was far better than yesterday, even if it ended on a droopy note with me listening to a recording of someone who mumbles monotonically with a difficult accent.

three call-outs for the day: losing the spider we weren't sure was venomous (we don't think it is now, but we weren't sure), and way too much snacking, and trying to find out where our new couch is, and losing my temper after learning that the package i paid to have delivered to a specific address in ramle was delivered to a store nearby and they want the addressee to pick it up.

from a mr smear point of view, the first day of holidays went quite well. i cancelled his matific subscription - he hasn't used it in months, and it's a great practice tool but not very good for learning - and his "homework" for today was to play human resource machine. (on gog, so i'll link that edition too).

[the shower experience was good and didn't wet the floor! score!]

i was so proud of him! especially of him being proud of himself whenever he figured stuff out ^_^

the evening training was mostly really good - checking and roundhouse kicks - but the biggest challenge was him not responding when told to stop responding. i honestly couldn't tell if he was trolling me, or literally couldn't control himself, but he eventually got a hold of himself and we had a constructive conversation about it while stretching.

overall, he's doing really well.

dinner was delicious. dinner was interrupted by an attack. dinner was extended to include an extra episode of strip search, and more of panda's dubai-style chocolate with vegan marshmallows. it's kinda like peanut butter and marshmallows, but even better!

i'm not making any plans for tonight, but i'm tired and sleepy and i think i might go lie down soon.

life is like a permeable shower curtain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

also, physically uncomfortable. and i snacked constantly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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