shouldn't have told the universe my plans

 gd decided to clean the bathrooms and floors today. i tried to nap for a short while after breakfast, though i really didn't get much actual rest, and then our kibbutz cousin arrived for a visit. it was great to be able to host her for once! it's the first time in the twenty five years i've known her :P

just before she arrived, i registered a flurry of activity on our classroom whatsapp group, and we were horrified to learn that mr smear's homeroom teacher was riding her bicycle to the school earlier this week and was run over by a truck. she's been hospitalized and is in a serious condition, it doesn't look like she's going to be returning to the school this year 💔

we had a great late lunch ordered from jars and bowls, after which i jumped on a bus to pick mr smear up from school. we walked all the way to the light rail, hopped on the light rail, and only then did i learn that he'd left his locker unlocked again. so we turned right around at the next stop, went back into the school and i made him unpack his locker and search for his books while i searched above and in all the open lockers in the same row.

we didn't find anything.

we then took a quick walk to a bus stop to ride to the dentist to join gd, who was very nervous after her last visit. by the time we arrived she was almost done, and we she came out she was (rightly) very proud of herself for having told her dentist exactly how she was feeling and why; the dentist responded professionally, and gd says the experiences were night and day.

i wanted to pick up a decaf coffee on the way home (it would have been my third decaf today), but the guy at the coffee shop took way too long. we caught a bus home, and since we got back i've been struggling to stay awake so as not to have a hard time getting to sleep tonight.

so, braindead, i played slay the spire 2 until dinner, ate a great dinner with my family, showered, and have just tucked mr smear into bed. now it's time to go to bed myself.

adrenaline dump

 i barely slept last night, and i woke up absolutely exhausted. so much so that i thought i might literally be sick. but i revisited the messages, and the advice i got from our friend, and i effectively scrapped my original, well-thought-out but ultimately combative response and made nice, and the response we received was reciprocally positive. i also got a very positive response from the new landlord, when i was being cautious because i know he's not asking anything that isn't standard.

so this morning was a huge relief on that front.

gd and i did the grocery shopping, and then i hurriedly took photos of our big belongings for the mover (i really felt like i was casing my own joint), and continued adding on to the list of things that need doing, then i had to leave for work in the rain, only once on the way realizing i needed to be working from my employer's office.

i called our kibbutz cousin to wish her a happy 70th birthday along the way, then walked in to the office with a dripping umbrella (and nowhere to put it) and tried to warm myself up with a sequence of hot drinks.

i managed to make some progress in understanding the data pipeline project, but i had a lot of trouble staying focused. eventually i got up to take a walk and pick up an early lunch, and sync with gd along the way, who'd been dealing with a bunch of stuff herself.

after lunch, and a long chat with a kibbutznik coworker who travelled africa extensively in the 90s, i finally sat back down for an hour of focus-time. that was when i realized that the chairs in our office are the same as in the wework that i suffered in a couple of years ago. it got so bad i had to move to a couch.

both before, and after, moving the couch, i was having a lot of trouble keeping my eyes open. but i did learn some important stuff. i have to say, if it wasn't for the combination of half-decent documentation and ai i don't know where i'd be right now.

then it was time for the final session of the weekly agentic courses i've been taking. i understand what was being taught, but me and the tools did not get along. when things calm down i'm going to get back in the ring with opencode and ollama and see if i can get them to play nicely. in the meanwhile, no matter what i did - mostly trying to copy and paste the prompts that everyone was doing fine with - my ai agents were playing dumb and i couldn't get anything done.

it was a relief to know that as frustrated as i was, i wasn't the only person in the class, but i think that there might only have been two of us...

my brain was cooked by the time i got on the bus home, and i put on some psytrance and tried to get in some meditation time. it was working, my mental state was stabilizing, when a bunch of big, brutish bus conductors stormed the bus to check our tickets. aside from telling myself "this is fine", i didn't think much of it and carried on being in my head, but a short while later i started hearing strange sounds (the wrong kind of strange) and i paused the track to discover that one of the thugs was having a fight with the bus driver, a big, elderly man, and for too long it looked like they were about to come to blows.

eventually their fight climaxed (to my knowledge) with the bus driver confronting the conductor to take a photo of his badge, and that almost got physical, and then when the conductor asked him his name he responded, in a heavy israeli accent, "james bond".

and then we were all treated to the two of them calling their bosses at the same time to report each other, each one telling a different story and none of us having any idea what had actually gone down initially.

i got off the bus a stop early, even more on edge than before i got on.

i came home to a pile of dishes that needed doing, and i was going to work through mr smear's history test studying with him but he informed me (and it was later confirmed) that he'd actually completed the test earlier already. so we sat down to do his upcoming literature homework, which is the story of pompeii.

it - took - forever. and i honestly felt bad for him, because the language was very difficult (lots of dictionary lookups for me) and every time he got into it he'd start talking about it in wonder, or making jokes, or going off on tangents about things in the text, and on the one hand i really wanted to encourage him engaging in the text but on the other, we had a limited amount of time to get through it :(

we paused for dinner, and then resumed after, and i'm very pleased to report that the second half went much faster. i made sure to give him some encouraging words when i said good night after that, and he seemed pretty pleased with himself.

i was falling asleep myself by that stage, but i still had to shower. so i did, and then i wasn't feeling quite so tired any more. it's now an hour later, i have a ton of stuff to do, but i have to make sure i catch up on some sleep because tomorrow's also going to be a high-pressure day.

ginger rum

 i didn't get any real work done last night. i did manage to get a lot of busywork done, upgrading my macbook and installing and configuring useful apps, and the macos upgrade was a great opportunity for me to lie down and catch forty winks.

and then i completed the installation and went to bed. i mostly slept through the night.

...

right until around 4am, when i woke up from an odd dream about having to have mr smear's bar mitzvah in a mosque, and then leaving over a large boulder next to a platform with a gap between them; i woke up in the act of trying to catch him just as he stepped off into the abyss while i was telling him that he needs to be conscious in his life.

...

at least the video for our kibbutz cousin's 70th birthday came out well. in general the morning went alright, i got some more onboarding work done before leaving for the office.

i was decidedly anxious going to work, feeling overwhelmed. i started my morning warming up in the sun on the balcony again; by the time i came inside i was overheating - as was my equipment - because it was a much hotter morning than we've had for a while. i had a few meetings, which went alright, and then i put together an update to my new boss/client informing him of my progress and of the issues i've encountered. i was a bit anxious about pulling the trigger, but i knew it was the right thing to do and hoped that it wouldn't be unwelcome.

the rest of the morning was studying / reviewing documents, and then i had an unpleasant experience with granola (i thought it was just granola, but then i had a couple of bites and realized it had dairy chocolate chips in it, and then i had the taste in my mouth while getting rid of the stuff without making a mess), and then i came home for lunch.

gd and mr smear were busy cleaning the apartment (we've realized we need him to be good at cleaning because that might be the best he can hope for, career-wise), so i ate quickly and scrambled back to the office, barely making my second meeting with one of my bulgarian teammates.

TWO... HOURS... LATER...

that was a hardcore intro to getting our environments set up and working with a whole suite of new tooling, and by the time we were done i felt much less stress overall, but also i felt like my brains were bleeding out my ears.

fortunately, i managed to write all the good stuff down.

i took a tea break on one of the balconies with an amazing view of the rush hour traffic, called gd to show her, and the two of us decided it would be hilarious to send my terrified-of-heights brother a video.

i hope he took the video in good humor 😈

i spent the next hour tidying up my notes, practicing what i'd learned and bringing some of it into team-friendlier tools, and then joined everyone upstairs for happy hour. happy hour was pleasant, nice people and good chit-chat, and i had a very nice rum and ginger beer that had more of an effect on me than i'd anticipated.

 interrupted my new boss/client and one of my teammates to say goodbye, and i got a really good vibe from them both :)

now that i've come home, unloaded the day's stories on my wife, heard some good news about a cousin who might be able to help us with mr smear, and seen my son's lego helicopter that he built without instructions, and unloaded the day's stories here, i'm about to sit down for dinner, and then go to the monthly comic-book meetup to recommend the complete ballad of halo jones.

snapping

 i didn't sleep much last night, i was super uncomfortable. then i got up, did dishes, had coffee while updating my linkedin profile and email signature for my new employer - which turned out to be considerably more complicated than i expected - and then we did grocery shopping and then i left for work.

i was cold when i left the apartment, i was very cold by the time i arrived at the office. i found myself a gorgeous spot in the sun with a cup of vanilla coffee and a beautiful view over the city, and did some more onboarding (i counted, there're four different onboarding processes and a lot of the material is outdated or irrelevant, especially for a contractor), and then there was a presentation about a new AI integration, during which i struggled to keep my eyes open, and then it was noon and i was tired, and decided to go home for lunch.

...

i was waiting for the elevator when my phone rang. it was mr smear's teacher. he was okay, she said, but... they'd put him in this "social group" - a privilege and an attempt to help him acclimate - but he was so disruptive and disrespectful that they threw him out of it. but that wasn't enough, oh no... one of the girls brought a beautiful cloth banner for the class that said

"HOUSE RULES: 1. BE KIND 2. MAKE ART 3.  LAUGH HARD 4. DANCE 5. BE YOU"

and mr smear decided that it needed a finishing touch with his marker so that 2. became NAKED ART.

i'm so fucking ashamed.

and it's not the first time he's damaged someone else's art.

i contacted the girl's father and offered to try and fix it, he was very gentle in his response but hasn't responded to my insistence to try and make things right (and to get mr smear to make things right).

regardless, mr smear has been suspended from school - tomorrow - and he's going to be responsible for catching up any work he misses... which means we are going to be responsible. 

...

the rest of the afternoon was a mess. partially because i'm obviously distracted, but also because it's now day three and i'm on the back foot with my new job. i feel like i'm drowning, and it feels pretty clear that a) most of my first three days have been a waste of time and b) that their onboarding is a hot mess.

so now i'm entering desperation mode, which means i need to make some progress tonight.

and then i came home to have a "talk", or "family meeting", or whatever-the-fuck, and then help him with homework and get through the dinner and bedtime routine without strangling him.

...

i'm fucking tired, and fucking furiously disappointed in my child, and i've got to come up with a blessing for my kibbutz cousin's 70th birthday by tomorrow morning and we've got to start apartment hunting, and i guess i just wanna curl up and cry but i can't.

being an adult is basically just saying "i''ll get to it in a week or two when things calm down" until you die.

a change in the weather

 i woke up still in a dream-state this morning, i moved from the bed to the couch (under layers of blankets) and half-slept for a while longer, listening, amazed, to mr smear actually getting up and getting ready without a fight, and then - to his amazement - being able to read without anyone bothering him because he'd done all the things we always have to bother him about.

to be clear, this is exactly what we explain to him almost every day...

i started reading hakim's odyssey, and so far it's really good. it's politically problematic, though. no matter how this one man's story goes or ends, it doesn't change the fact that the majority of refugees are not interested in living under western conditions...

i did some onboarding for my client - monday's going to be complicated, because i'll be onboarding with both my employer and my client on the same day - and i helped gd with dishes while she rearranged our wardrobes and did a triage of our old clothing.

i took my computer and found a coffee shop near mr smear's school, where i worked* for half an hour before going to meet him and hunt down his history book. he was right, it wasn't in his locker, and we found a history that he thinks is his friends, and apparently his friend might have his, and i don't know what's going on but at least for now he's sorted.

* i instructed the LLM copilot, in a more structured way than usual.

i gave him permission to join his friends on a library mission, and on the way to meet them he took me by surprise by asking me how my day went. after updating him, i asked him how his hebrew class went and if he had had to hand it in, and he responded that he hadn't, and that that meant that we didn't need to have such a horrible night last night. when i explained that it wasn't a waste because the homework was done (never mind the importance of him learning to be cooperative and following rules), and that none of us enjoyed the experience... he argued that in his opinion, i *did* seem to be enjoying myself 🤦

gods help us all.

anyway, the vibes were mellow, and i saw the kids off at their station, then returned home to get some more work done.

when i got home, however, there was a nationwide network outage. while i waited, i ate lunch and fired up inscryption for the first time in a while. after finishing eating, i realized that without any network access i had no way of working, or communicating with mr smear, so i headed off to the library.

i was about halfway to the library when i realized that without network access, i wouldn't be able to work from there either :P

fortunately, the network was back online by the time i got there, i could pay for something to drink with my phone and use my mobile hotspot to make some more progress on my project. an hour later, i verified that mr smear was on his way home (without him knowing i was in the same building :P) and then i packed up and returned home too.

homework today was different; his matific exercises have moved into trigonometry territory, so instead of trying to figure out all the things at once, i taught him pythagoras' theorem and we watched a youtube history (puppet history) on how weird the dude was (not exactly age-appropriate, but fine).

dinner was nice, the evening was uneventful. after chatting with our kibbutz cousin (i've been meaning to call her back for two days now), i jumped back into inscryption and a short while ago completed the first act again.

i'm not sure if i'm ready for bed or not, but i need to watch more about what's going on in iran. maybe things are going to (finally) change...

holy dad joke

hello darkness my old friend...

it's now 3.45am and i haven't been able to sleep for a while. but i'm really tired. i actually feel like i have legitimate reason to be, but in addition to everything else i believe that this morning (or during the night) the flu vaccine side effects kicked in and i spent most of the day feeling weak, slow and irritable.

i accompanied gd to the clinic for her flu shot (reading blindsight on my kindle app whenever the opportunity arose). we walked to the mall to try and get mr smear's school shirts printed, but they didn't have the correct logo so they referred us to a different branch. we headed to the bakery for a coffee and a sandwich, and picked up a couple of yummo's vegan protein bars (which are delicious!). we returned to the clinic so that gd could get a prescription made, then returned to the mall to pick it up. on our way out, i was inspired to write a post to my israeli "hive-mind" asking for assistance with the comic printing.

by this point i was long over the morning and feeling shitty and impatient.

we returned home, then almost immediately left again to get the shirt printing done at the other mall. and then finally return home, dragging in the delivered groceries when i arrived.

by that stage, mr smear had already finished school for the day. i tooled around until he got home, and the rest of the afternoon was a combination of napping (crashing), helping him with his reading and tanach homework (which went relatively smoothly), and doing dishes.

...

for years, i've been begging gd to make challah-peño: challah with actual jalapeño in it. this evening, in addition to giving her a hand in the kitchen because her shoulder's out, we actually made the thing and it came out beautifully. i'm extremely proud and excited: not only did we invent a fun idea, and actually execute it, but the execution was a raging success and the challah-peño is spicy and delicious ^_^

...

during the afternoon and evening, i began receiving some solid advice and leads regarding the comic printing, so i've got homework to do but it's feeling positive. amusingly, a friend put me in touch with someone, who it turned out i had a conversation with trying to recruit him to the project in 2012!

i also had a chat with our kibbutz cousin, who's finally given notice and is going on pension soon. and her eldest son (a few months older than me), with his severe learning disabilities, just completed his bagrut for a job which is pretty darned impressive.

...

i tried watching the charlie kirk and netanyahu southpark episodes with gd after getting mr smear into bed, but i passed out about three quarters of the way through the first one. in theory, i should have enjoyed a good night's sleep...

shifting gears

 yesterday:

we walked. we dropped off gd's sandals for repair, found the bike shop closed, and walked up the road to the next bike shop. we dropped off the bike, then walked to a small grocery store, then continued on to the big one, did an annoyingly long shop and carried it all home.

loop one.

we stopped for a bit, but the clock was ticking so we walked again, picking up gd's sandals, then grabbing a laffa for mr smear, picking up his bike and walking it home.

loop two.

the good news is he was very happy with the repair job.

the remainder of the afternoon was pretty quiet, with lots of napping and reading.

one of my upper teeth has been really, really hurting the past couple of days, and it's getting worse.

in the evening we all went to our friends for a delicious and very entertaining dinner. the conversations were all over the place, but i'm struck by how diametrically opposing our political views are becoming.

we came home very late and i slept surprisingly well.

today:

we got up pretty early, and ended up leaving around 10am for the kibbutz. gd and my mom prepared and brought all the food - there was plenty - and we had a very nice time visiting our kibbutz cousin and her daughter (who i haven't seen in many years, and suddenly looks so much like her dad), and an excellent time by the pool.

on the way home we stopped in netanya to see my cousin, for whom the move (and the leaving of her husband) is very new and overwhelming (and i also realized that the connection to one of my bosses is that he was her landlord, which is a whole story). she suddenly looks so much like her mom that my mom and i were both blown away.

gd was having a tough time by then, so we came home. it's been a very long day, mostly very enjoyable, and i think i'm going to crash soon.

after a gin and tonic, with my mother and i realizing that i've been joining her the past couple of days and it seems to be helping me sleep...

weekend vibes

 i eventually got to sleep after posting, and was rudely (and bitterly) awoken to a rocket alert. it was my mom's first time in the shelter, and we encountered some new neighbors for the first time.

getting back to sleep for an hour or two was hard, not least because mr smear decided this was a great opportunity to brush his teeth so he could get screen time earlier 🤦

i had a meeting with my insurance broker which was supposed to take ten minutes, but by the time we were done a full hour had passed and i needed to join our daily meeting from home. the first few minutes turned into a private sync between me and the new devops guy, who's giving me weird vibes. he seems really antisocial and i'm feeling like i can't get him to focus. he told me he was also coming in to the office, but he didn't :/

on my way to the office i was presented with an opportunity to speak to the guy who'd called the evening before and who i thought i'd offended, so we cleared the air before i got to work.

the work day was... interesting. it turned out the drama the night before was due to something i did that we all agreed should have worked, so i had to write a script to reset my change. most of my focus for the rest was on developer methodology, and i was pleased to be a part of a whole bunch of things coming together, as well as feeling like an authority in our organization.

there are days (like the day before) that i have to deal with a sense of imposter syndrome, so it's nice to have some balance to that.

the last couple of hours were busy, but not too intense, and included an interesting theological discussion with a religious contractor.

i came home to a full house - mr smear's friend was over for dinner. we all had a good experience, some interesting conversations in english and hebrew, and then we all took a walk to get him home and chat with his mother. on the way home gd expressed frustration with me sometimes speaking to her in hebrew, which i'm conflicted about.

the evening went smoothly, minus me discovering a problem with one of my toes that definitely needs a doctor (i hope it's just an ingrown nail).

while trying to help my mother with her iphone (i detest iphones now), i was convinced to finally - after three and a half years - update my country of residence in steam. i did so by purchasing minutescape, the testing of which cost me a pleasantly entertaining hour of my life.

and (pretty much) then i went to bed.

today so far:

i slept surprisingly well, dreamed long weird dreams, and this morning so far has been good. in addition to visiting our kibbutz cousin tomorrow, we're making a stop by a cousin i spoke to a couple of weeks ago (the one with lots of kids) and we're collectively supportively shocked to learn that she's finally left her husband.

right: shabbat!

days off

i'm currently waiting for mr smear with a cup of coffee and my laptop, so i figure this is as good a time as any.

yesterday:

yesterday was absolutely brilliant. we started the day in good spirits, and left roughly when we intended to get the car and drive up to the kibbutz. gd's on meds that require drinking plenty of water and stopping frequently to pee, but we only really needed two stops and one of them involved the acquisition of a quantity of snacks.

the weather wasn't hot yesterday, it was a bit cloudy, which for the current season and mission meant it was perfect. we arrived at my cousin's place, chatted for a short while, and then walked to her car and headed out to an entirely vegan hummus 90 on the way to the kinneret.

the food was absolutely delightful, as was the vibe. we definitely ate too much and enjoyed every morsel ^_^

we then drove on to beit gabriel, which is an absolutely gorgeous place to sit and chat over a coffee while enjoying the view of the kinneret. our initial impression was solid as we walked into a really nice photo exhibit, but my brain wondered "do i smell popcorn?" and i was confused because i'd forgotten that we'd been told there was a cinema inside.

the stunning view of the kinneret on a perfect day with almost nobody else around was wonderful, only marred by the massive screen facing the entrance and showing the trailer for the a minecraft movie movie trailer. i was a bit disappointed that mr smear literally didn't notice the lake because he was so excited by the screen :/

at least - once the trailer was over - i was able to drag him outside, and he pulled out his kindle (to read minecraft books), which is as close to just enjoying being in nature as most children get these days.

from there we drove back past har tavor (mount tabor), and gd was really excited to see another location made famous by the bible. unfortunately, on the drive back gd's back began to hurt... we also got to witness just how little patience our cousin has for the ultra-orthodox :P

we got to see one of our kibbutz cousin's kids and family and spent a few minutes chatting with them, but by then sunset was approaching and we were starting to feel the pressure to hit the road.

it was dark by the time we left, and the drive back home was mostly gd suffering from discomfort and pain and waze leading us in a round-about way (which i believe was the best way, but it was completely unfamiliar) while crazy drivers bobbed and weaved amidst other crazy drivers.

we made it back to the parking spot with ten minutes to spare, very grateful that gd was (relatively) in one piece and hadn't needed a pit-stop. we all ended up going to bed very late, but by and large everyone had had an amazing day out, mr smear had been really cool for its entirety and we were all glad to have spent such good time with our kibbutz cousin and seen new things.

today (so far):

i didn't sleep particularly well, but i did sleep. in the morning, i finished reading of mice and men, and although i generally enjoyed it from the start, the end really blew me away.

i was disappointed to learn that mr smear gave the original dune book a try, and found it boring :(

...

after getting a few things squared away, i accompanied gd to the hospital to try and organize an appointment for her to get her foot seen to. after waiting our turn, the receptionist informed us that there was no point to speaking to her and that we needed to contact their offices.

when i told the woman who answered the phone what gd had been going through, she immediately became bizarrely defensive, and there was a mix of yelling at her and trying to reason with her before she agreed to book gd for an appointment that was only in a month's time (as opposed to a half a year's time that she'd threatened).

i then spent about twenty minutes on the phone trying to arrange a private consultation, eventually giving up (the phone menu system is rigged) and heading to our clinic, where we were fortunate to receive a personal recommendation from one of the receptionists.

so she has an appoint for three weeks' time, instead of a month. it's better than nothing.

...

herding our cat of a son to working on his hebrew class' holiday project was exhausting, so i piled some blankets over my on the couch and enjoyed a beautiful nap, which i was wrenched out of to bring him to his therapist. and now it appears to be time to go and pick him up and see what the rest of the day brings.

revelation

i'm too tired to write much down, and i'm driving a lot tomorrow. lemme just drop some notes.

yesterday:

mr smear's last day of school before the two week holidays. i finally remembered to move the furniture around so that gd could cut his hair in the afternoon before leaving for work. i struggled to make an appointment for her foot :/

i got to the office and took the opportunity to have coffee with someone, and he's doing what i think most people would describe as a dream job. (there're a few of those with us)

while i was explaining what i'm working on, we had a really exciting moment of inspiration (we're both into gaming and simulations) that chained into a podcast one of my bosses suggested and that led to a couple of really exciting conversations (with some other bosses). in addition to that, we had a retrospective during which i managed to connect a whole bunch of dots and received a literal "amen". and then, just before leaving the office but after managing to get something really tricky working, i overheard my lead grumbling (very loudly) and i literally took command of the situation and told him how we were going to handle it - in that moment it felt like a weird but significant shift in power took place.

i like working in an environment where our power structures are fluid, and i especially like being a part of an organization that might be making a sci-fi fantasy i've had since i was a teenager become a very real thing. and it's interesting to be feeling so aligned and in the right place when the beginning of this very week started off with me feeling frustrated and out-of-place.

i was super-excited by how the day had gone, but it wasn't over. after dinner chatting with gd and mr smear (they'd already eaten by the time i got home), i still had some work to do - it began with teaching one of my coworkers how to deploy something, but something went wrong. and then i learned that what i'd thought was working perfectly was missing an important piece of the puzzle.

today:

i slept rather poorly last night, mainly because the new pillows we bought suck.

it took me a while to get my day started. gd went to her sewing lesson and i left mr smear alone to go get my hair cut in a very fancy place. it's not an amazing haircut, but it's okay. gd's happy with the front but hates the back ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i didn't realize how much longer her lesson would be, so i sat around having coffee and listening to a podcast and reading random articles for a while, then rushed home when i couldn't get hold of mr smear (his phone was on silent) to pick him up and drag him out to join me and gd on a quick shopping mission... but to be honest, most of the time was spent in the harry potter pop-up store and with much enthusiasm on his part :P

we'd been trying to arrange a gift for our kibbutz cousin, who we're going to see tomorrow, and just as we left and were waiting on a bus i had an idea, said goodbye and rushed off to the sarona market where i found some south african sauces and spices, along with some of the saborito hot sauce range!

it was a great haul, albeit quite expensive.

the afternoon was spent eating delicious food, helping mr smear with his homework, and enjoying a glorious breakthrough with the work problem. i've handed over a working solution to my coworkers and in theory should be able to take sunday and monday's vacation without interruption ^_^

mr smear and i went to shul, and between the service itself and the walks there and back it's become a really nice way to close the week / start the weekend. after kiddush and a nice chat with my mom, we watched an episode of the simpsons, had a fun shower / teeth / bedtime ritual, and gd and i have been doing nothing ("parallel play" :P) since. but i think i'm going to go to bed very soon.

oh, look - i wrote a whole bunch of stuff.

chores and childhood

saturday:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

yesterday:

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

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

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

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

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

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

all good ^_^

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

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

ay carumba.

today:

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

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

it feels good crossing things off my list.

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

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

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

color me frustrated.

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

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

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

a moment of appreciation

 first, but not foremost, the thing that triggered me stopping my game of inscryption to post this: on my current run, i've built a really solid ant deck and acquired an ouroboros, and i have an insect totem with a beehive sigil.

my ouroboros has a corpse eater sigil, and my ant queen has an unkillable sigil, and because of my totem if my queen gets hit, the bee it produces is unkillable too. what this means is that as long as i have the ant queen and the ouroboros out, i have a perfect cycle where i sacrifice my unkillable bee and the ant queen to bring in the ouroboros, then sacrifice the unkillable bee and ouroboros to bring in the ant queen.

inscryption is a rogue-like game where every run is different. what this means is that i'm very likely to build an awesome deck exactly like this again, and i'm nervous as hell that i'm going to make a misplay and stuff this run up.

...

last night:

sadly, gd wasn't up for coming with us, but my mom and mr smear and i took a car and arrived on time, although we needed a few minutes before going upstairs to contact the previous driver who'd left his wallet in the car. he seemed very relaxed about it, whereas i'm pretty sure i would have been losing my mind...

dinner was lovely. mr smear put into practice all the things we've been talking about, he was super cool and really polite and he had a good time drawing with his similar-aged cousins!

we got home really late, and i got into bed really late because i dived into inscryption again.

today:

i slept well, until i didn't. i woke up a bit tired, restless, and with visions of inscryption floating before my eyes... but i held off playing more. instead, i started off with my usual combo of bloons: adventure time* and youtube, and only later fired up inscryption to play a bit before heading out to pick up the car for the day.

* yeah, i haven't really stopped playing that, but i'm much less rushed to complete daily quests etc.

the last thing i did before leaving was add the corpse eater sigil to ouroboros, so i left with a burning desire to see how it played.

the first part of the trip to the kibbutz was a bit stressed, for a variety of reasons, the biggest one being the tire pressure indicator lighting up and my mom and i having a hard time figuring out the pressure pipe station at an entirely self-service gas station. i ended up unsure of whether i got it right, and prayed the rest of the way there and the whole way back that we wouldn't suffer a blowout.

it was *hot* today. it was great seeing out kibbutz cousin, lunch was lovely, and i napped fitfully on the couch while everyone talked, dreaming of inscryption. of course. i'm not obsessed, you are! anyway.

later on we drove through to the swimming pool, where we not only had a great time, but mr smear tried and mostly succeeded to learn the crawl stroke! this was a huge level-up, both for him as a swimmer and for me as a parent encouraging and teaching his kid something new. so i'm still riding high on that, definitely the highlight of the day ^_^

coming home was a bit of a story - lots of protests throughout the country generating lots more traffic than usual - but we eventually got home in one piece, had a very late but very delicious portobello mushroom and seitan (and cauliflower) dinner, and it's been inscryption since.

right, back to the game 🤞

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.

entrances and exits

 friday afternoon is coming to a close. [as of me beginning to write this] we're waiting for the challah dough to rise, which for the first time i helped (inspired by the big family cooking showdown. some of the contestants made me feel that if they can do it, so can i). mr smear has just put together the most gorgeous pixel art sprites (he was originally going to try his hand and making harry potter, but got distracted), because we now want to make some kind of 8-bit harry potter game. we're still reading prisoner of azkaban, and he's now understanding just how different the book is from the movies. i had to explain to him why they're so different, and that it's okay, and i think he gets it.

i was also inspired to read the first book to gd, because she has difficulties reading for long enough periods of time. so far, she's also beginning to understand the difference and is really enjoying it.

my only issue with this arrangement is that i find it incredibly difficult to read out loud without reading myself to sleep. every goddamned time.

wednesday:

wednesday's workday began with an argument with my boss, and there was a lot of back-and-forth before we reached the conclusions that a) i need to tone down my enthusiasm, because every time i broke through a wall and thought i was almost done i reported that i was almost done and b) i needed to split my ticket every time a new required sidequest entered the arena and c) i needed to write more tests.

in any event, i finally managed to get the task complete by the afternoon. like, for reals. and it looks really good.

i did that while organizing a spa voucher birthday present for my mother, who spent her day on her feet volunteering (as usual) with the DA for the south african elections.

yesterday:

the morning started off rough, but mr smear had a good day in spite of it and was actually able to let go of it when he got home and remembered. the afternoon with him was positive.

it was my mother's birthday. mr smear made a really nice card, and by the time she got the voucher she was feeling the results of the previous day's on-her-feet-ness and the gift was even more relevant :)

on the way to work, i accompanied gd to the bank to pick up her new credit card, which went pretty smoothly.

i was on-call, and had an annoying task first thing. i left the office around lunchtime to have breakfast at home, and gd and i watched my cousin's funeral together on zoom. we now know that our original suspicions were incorrect, and that he got through his surgery and was recovering well. then he got up to go to the bathroom and collapsed, and that was the end of him.

at least he didn't suffer, but was a devastating blow to his immediate family, and to the rest of us.

in a way, it's kind of brought a lot of the cousins together (also literally, in a whatsapp group), and it's a little weird to be in a group with both my brother and my big sister. (it's funny how little things like cheating an inheritance can split a family)

the funeral notwithstanding, i found it very hard to concentrate. all day.

this morning:

i had a long chat with our kibbutz cousin, she's really having a hard time, especially as a travel agent in the current circumstances. they have about 25 displaced families on their kibbutz, so there are things about the war that are front-and-center for them which we aren't always thinking about down in our little tel aviv bubble...

i took a really big step this morning, and decided to just go ahead and post the videos i've put together on the war on the west so far. on tiktok, and on youtube. am i doing this right? i don't know if i'm doing this right, but i have to do something.

i'm really nervous about putting myself out there like this.

mr smear had a pretty good day at school, in spite of the fact that another kid showed him something scary and apparently he's now learned to stay away from the dark stuff (which is what i've been explicitly suggesting for days now). overall, i have to say he's doing okay. we're doing okay.

more cough

i began writing all this down at the end of a long day, which mainly felt long because of the coughing. it's exhausting. it's the only symptom of whatever the heck this is, but it's hardcore nonetheless. i got about halfway (and it's not even a long post) and urgently needed to lie down. i've just gotten up, it was a night that was part coughing fits, part vividly weird dreams, and i'm a bit confused right now because i'm not sure if my cough has lessened or not. i'm also not sure if my neck's okay or not (i've been having trouble with my left arm going numb, right now it's only threatening).

friday:

we began the day with a shopping run at azrieli, then took a break, and then my mom and i walked to pick up gifts and coffee.

we went to our cousins on friday evening for a really nice dinner in spite of our coughs.

saturday:

we all got up later than planned, but got through to our cousin's kibbutz at a reasonable time. we had a delicious lunch and then headed to the pool for an absolutely lovely afternoon that really did feel like vacation. then we drove home, returning just in time for dinner.

sunday:

i worked from home, while my family tried and failed to get to some museum in holon and then accompanied mr smear to his mma class. it was a difficult day, primarily so because i wasn't feeling great and had exactly zero motivation. partially "just because", but partially because i needed to do something big and complicated without any way to verify that i was doing the right thing. i eventually managed to build out what i needed, but kept hitting brick walls trying to get it to run. 

and then it was time for a meeting with one of firefighter's team.

it was a fascinating evening of oversharing in both directions, and by the end of it i was convinced that i'd like to join them. apparently he feels the same way, so i'm waiting to be informed about how we proceed.

i came home feeling very good about things.

yesterday:

i slept badly and woke up badly. in spite of that, it was a reasonably good morning and i managed to take care of our holiday reservations for tomorrow and thursday. yay!

i had something to take care of at the clinic before work, and arrived there just as a blind man entered, and he was having trouble and needed assistance. i sorted him out with a ticket and showed him to a chair, then left him (with other people who i assumed could help him) to get mine. i heard them call his number and saw him move towards the door, but then registered that he was going in the wrong direction.

i went to go and check on him, and then registered something really messed up - he'd bumped into a woman who'd been standing at the door, and instead of helping him, she took his turn! i was stunned, and i told the pharmacist what had happened, and then i walked out trying to put together a narrative that made sense.

but i couldn't. and it's still bothering me that i didn't do what i *should* have done, which was a) yell at the woman for being a piece of shit and b) tell the pharmacist to stop serving her immediately and give the poor man his turn.

the day at the office was alright, with a funny interlude for lunch. i'd brought leftovers and ghost pepper hot sauce (not as hot as the scorpion pepper sauce, but still pretty got) and was offering it to everyone. the american girl who works with us is also a fan of hot ones, she used a lot of sauce, and the results were amusing 😂

the next hour or two were spent with our feisty italian, the time was spent constructively and there was a revelation at the end because he hadn't understood why i wasn't phased by a problem that he'd thought he'd conveyed effectively, when in fact i'd thought he was talking about something else entirely.

context matters.

the end of the day was triumphant, i finally managed to get my code running as intended and left just in time to pick up mr smear and my mom and head to the shuk. we picked up some things, we had a beer, it was a pleasant evening.

...

i'm no longer confused about my coughing, it's definitely back with a vengeance.

double stand-up

my morning was kinda slow, and then i went to work. i got through all the important stuff fairly efficiently, then came home and decided to chill because ric bailed on our get-together. then my kibbutz cousin called to cancel our plans for tomorrow evening...

i'm reading sarah glidden - how to understand israel in 60 days or less, and it's really, really good. accurate, to a very large degree, even if it's not the most ambitiously artistic comic attempt ever.

after lots of food, rum and two episodes of romeo x juliet, i'm super-relaxed and not sure if i'm going to read some more or pass out.

results, a confession pt 1

[post re-divided retroactively]

a big week has gone by. mostly, it's not over yet. i'm not even certain i'm ready to post this right now, although it really must be done. i'm using the fact that the youtube upload is taking *forever* and audacity's so bad with silence detection and maintaining the sound's quality when left alone that i'm now ripping tracks from my minidiscs one by one...

---
monday:

the bus changes have been chaotic, but mostly alright. the one glaring exception is egged - they're totally new to the electronic card system and when their machines don't work, their drivers don't know how to respond. or they respond a little bit too pedantically: the card reader read me as empty, even though i have a full year pass. after rubbing the card's magnetic strip on his trouser leg, which bothered me, he began investigating. "show me your receipt," he said. i was surprised, i've never thought to travel with it and don't really want to. i have an electronic card, you see. that's what it's for. "take a look at my photo, on the back. look at what the card says."
he read it out loud, which was unnecessary.
"so you see, i -"
"where's your receipt? who travels without a receipt?! you need to bring your receipt."

i'll tell you who: nobody i know. tahoma laughed at me when i called him to find out what that was all about, but the damage had been done and i was uncomfortable getting on egged buses the entire week.

---i'd been on my way to the old office. as it turned out, it was to discover a better way of handling time-zone differences - every time i have to deal with something, i realize how little thought my predecessors put into their work... i spend far more time overwriting rubbish than i do solving real issues. it's good for my ego, at least.

i found pg in a great mood, and i was exhausted and stressed but pretty much satisfied with the day, so we went hunting food. up and down ben gurion we went, unable to find anything suitable, eventually giving up and taking a bus to the frozen yoghurt place - but she spotted an interesting looking place across the road, and we ended up there instead. it was pretty good, but we both ate *way* too much. and the beer and the coffee on top of that crossed the line.

the apartment looked... different. pg had taken it upon herself to paint the table i'd wheeled over green, and it took up a lot of space. i set down my bag, then took a walk to see my family.

on the way, an odd thought struck: words have power, and they shape the way we think. perhaps it would be wiser to speak in the imperative, and decisively?
"you will care, things will change"
as opposed to
"you should care, things have to change"?
yang came back home with me to meet pg and join us in watching the darwin awards - a surprisingly entertaining movie. i thought some of winona's acting came off a bit contrived, which is unfortunate because i really like her.

...

on going to bed: i scored a 93 for the shakespeare course! *phew*. and YAY!

---
tuesday:

waking up early to drive up north: but not too early; half an hour later than intended, in fact. my alarm clock decided that i'd meant to set it for the next day :S

we had coffee and a pleasant drive north, going through afula by mistake but fortunately coming out on the right side and then arriving on the kibbutz for breakfast. it was a very sweet reunion - i think our kibbutz cousin was a bit overwhelmed. it was a very pleasant morning, and then we were off...

the ride back was a bit stressful. not necessarily good stress, although i must say that my aunt can certainly dish it out and she posed some very interesting challenges. we were primarily arguing about the value of fiction and fantasy, and exposure versus choice. that last all the way back, and made the driving time feel like a few minutes :P

i was exhausted, so i decided to take a nap. i set my alarm, and again it didn't go off - that was when i discovered that my iphone was selecting my "schooldays" alarm by default even though i haven't used it since the semester ended. and that alarm never works on tuesdays.

wonderful.

so i was late, and irritated about being late. i'd wanted to take them to see the university, but there wasn't enough time left so i went with them to the palmach museum next, saying goodbye and then discovering that they couldn't get in because they didn't have their passports on them - i flashed my reserve duty card and the gate opened. very nice. a very weird sensation.

[continued...]

poetic justice

it's sunday night (mostly), and i'm fasting, and i've just been disappointed at the cinema - not by the new x-men movie, but rather by its lack of a final ending after the credits. that was a freakin' cool film, and i had fun!

i'm sitting here trying to figure out what order to sort this post in, because i don't think chronological will do my weekend any favours.

---the studying properly began on friday, and i ended up spending most of the weekend immersing myself in all things british (historically so) and not just shakespeare. i somehow managed to go over almost all of the material, and i remembered pretty much everything, so i guess i did a good job of hitting my target. this in spite of the disastrously hot weather. and getting stuck into abe's exoddus around midnight when i had to be up at 7am for the exam, leaving me going over notes until 2am...

*sigh*

i'm not, however, entirely certain that i'd aimed correctly. my impressions upon walking out of the exam today?
"uh oh" is not the feeling i thought i'd have when i walked out of the exam. [exit, pursued by a bear]
to be fair, i barely slept at all last night because my legs were too painfully stiff for me to relax at all, and in addition to the exhaustion i was seated beneath the ice-cold air-conditioner and i found my nose dripping in response; my lack of tissue paper left me a tad distracted on that score too. frozen, stressed and full of mucous. great conditions for a paper.

the paper itself was great - perhaps a little too challenging, but that's not a real complaint. i don't remember when last i found myself furiously scribbling after hearing "time's up", if ever.

and that was supposed to be my last exam. to make matters darker, i just found out that my poetry professor wants a word with me - i'm pretty certain that means that i cocked up that exam too. this is not comforting at all.

---the mundane: friday

why is it that when i tell windows to cancel copying / moving (especially when the OS has misinterpreted my clicking on "copy" as "move") it takes longer to cancel than it does to copy the file there and back? that's really, really annoying - especially if it happens when someone's waiting for you.

i have not seen the movie titus. i have only seen the trailer, and the intro sequence. and the intro sequence is bloody brilliant, IMO, and i'm now aching to see the full film.

the language being shakespearean, we switched over to mr nobody.
a) pg recognized jared leto and i didn't, and i wonder if i hadn't put up a mental block after the traumatic experience of watching requiem for a dream because she made the connection easily and i'm usually better at that.
b) it's a great concept, a beautifully made film, but... i don't know. it was entertaining, but not really mind-blowing. i think the report i'd heard made me expect more.

the mundane: today

after the exam i went to my old office.
a) the mail sending i bitched about the other day *did* work, and that's why there were no reports to be found. it was automatically filtered from my inbox... i don't know if i should feel thoroughly embarrassed, or just very embarrassed and angry with exchange + active directory not knowing what was going on.
b) i set a test to run for 24 hours, and my initial impression is that it works, first time. i like the fact that i built in a fail-safe device because it seemed like a good idea, and on my first test got to see it in action.
c) my boss has asked me not to come in to work on thursday, because he doesn't want the ceo to get the wrong impression that his staff are working so much. i'm guessing this doesn't happen a lot elsewhere.

on my way to the new office, i switched the left and right earbuds of my ipod headphones and the sound's better and they don't fall out as easily. are my ears backwards?

i picked up a falafel on the way in - last time i immensely enjoyed it, this time i think it made me ill. i felt horrid and nauseous for the remainder of the workday. positive work experience: having my boss just as confused as i was about something that really should have worked. negative work experience: having mmf suggesting that he could have had an indian do the same work quicker for cheaper. that kinda hurt, even if the work i've been doing is good.

---he gave me a ride back, and we argued over gilad shalit. i started posting here and then got a little worked up. this is what noam shalit was saying to us a while back; it's something that needs to be heard.

---i spent the evening sorting papers, and received a very sweet gift (a cute robot with a clock head and clip arms) from pg (she assures me it's not for driving me crazy earlier). this was interrupted by a long conversation with the guy from my unit who's getting married in a week or two, which was actually interesting after the initial awkwardness :P

---pg met me after the exam, and we hunted up and down for the student travel services. the map is marked incorrectly, i needed to use the toilet, she was in a hurry to get things done before her exam, and eventually things got really intense just as we'd gotten the last bit of useless direction from a random caretaker.

well, it turned out to be good direction but i only discovered that by accident. i'd given up and was crossing the road when i noticed the sign out of the corner of my eye, hidden exactly not where indicated on the map :S
i sat down with the agent, who said some helpful things - especially helpful being that there are no student discounts for mature students. in a country where most people only begin studying at 24, i find that supremely stupid.

i managed to get hold of my cousin, and we booked the tickets. later on, harried between two intermittent conversations with my cousin and my girlfriend (neither of whom was available whenever i needed to speak to them), we eventually managed to sort things out and the tickets are now purchased.

yes, purchased. that means... i'm going home! for a little less than a month, maybe, but it's been so long and i'm pretty excited. i *neeeeeeeeed* this.

what kind of a day is tuesday? [part iii]

[... continued]

the creative writing workshop's poetry evening was sweet. there was a little amusement beforehand (some people can't hold their liquor, and by that i mean to say that they exhibit tendencies to spill it on others), and there was a little awkwardness as well; i stood reading news feeds until things began. the readings were interesting - a couple of really good ones - but once they were done that was it, and i skipped off to (old) work.

quora. what an interesting idea.

i sat at work for over an hour, and aside from a ten minute chat with my kibbutz cousin i sat poking and prodding and teasing the code... i can't figure out what exactly is causing all the discrepancies (i'm porting the application to a new server), but i have understood that the primary issue is a complete lack of exception handling. wrapping each offending particle in try / catch clauses, rebuilding, redeploying, testing... slow going.

pg called to threaten me with dinner, so i hopped to and caught the bus back home. i spent most of the way with my eyes glued to my phone (i haven't been reading the news in years, now that i have feeds on my phone i can't stop), only pulling them away when i had to cross a busy street and then walk through alleys - i had to go the long way around, because a water mains had burst a street away from our apartment...

i was really tired when i got back. we ate, i showered, i passed out. i almost got up to go blading but realized that i wasn't quite up for it, so i slept in until 00.40 (a few minutes before pg returned) and got onto this post, emails, etc.

now to get some reading done before getting back to sleep.

---kkk counter-protest: funny or sad?

a new beginning - part i

[this post divided retroactively]

wednesday aftermath

okay, the jordanians are some of the best pilots i've seen in my travels. the indians are the worst, hands down (we suspected them of being drunk). our flight back from amman was hell; it was a forty-five minute trip with no air-conditioning (it was about 35ᵒ) and the stewardesses made a point of ignoring us.

landing in israel... strange. i've been gone so long it feels like i'm on holiday here :P

pg was the only person who remembered what date i was due to arrive... i thought i was landing on thursday, my kibbutz cousin (my travel agent) thought the weekend. i grooved while waiting for the baggage, said goodbye to a couple of fellow travellers and found my pick up :)

she dropped me off at home, i shaved and showered and felt weird about being in what feels like someone else's life, then went to pg's new place.

holy shit.

it's AWESOME.

i presented my gifts - whoo hoo! majimaji patchouli survived all the way from tokyo! - and even got one in return from her trip to london, i opened a bottle of johnny walker and she a bottle of wine and we sat on her roof - crap! she has an awesome rooftop in *our* area of tel aviv! - and talked under the stars (now a few less than i'm used to seeing :P) for a while.

we went for dinner at cafesito, but we were too tired to stay there long. i walked her back to her place then continued to mine, spoke to a few people (including my mum) and handled some internet urgents, then went to bed. umm... not before having an awful line pop into my head:
"did anyone else notice that indians talks about green vegetables like the germans talk about their parents?"

it was getting into bed that a spider bit my knee. i didn't see what kind it was, but was fortunate enough to catch it in time to squeeze out all the poison. however, being as paranoid as i am, i spent the next hour online fact-checking until i ascertained that one only really needs to worry about a spider bite if it doesn't start getting better within 24 hours.

cool.

i realized that new moon rising is wanna take you higher (from 7:16): sweet!

i crashed.

---i woke up yesterday morning at 7.30am to backup my photos from my phone and find my computer dead. bummer. i went to the bank to sort out my account; all the problems were solved but i still haven't found a satisfactory explanation for dollars being treated differently :S

i met urchin for coffee at cafesito; not only was the service lousy, her health news was as well :(
at least her exhibit went well, though, and i'm really glad she's opened a door for her career!

i took my pc to the shop for repair, then strapped on my blades and headed to the doctor. it felt good to have them on again!
i was overheating when i arrived, so a bit sweaty but that *was* the first proper effort i've made since the bronx... the old lady next to me was a bit creepy, though. the secretary and i both stared in horror as she made horrible noises scratching her feet on the couch.

i have perfect timing - the doctor and the clinic's nurse were going through some things when i walked in, and i heard them discussing what to do about the clinic secretary's farewell gift.
"mind if i interject?"
"sure."
"did you guys have a house-warming for her new apartment?"
how did i remember that?? they were well pleased for the suggestion :)

the doctor provided the referrals for the last (hopefully) of my tests, allayed my fears regarding the spider bite and sent me on my way. once home, i got ready to roll out to the university... on the way, i called up ze british german to arrange to meet.

and lo! he was on his way to visit his accountant. so we met up and i joined him. he was quite surprised to see how much hair i have :)

the accountant and i consulted in trade for me fixing his printer. he explained to me everything i need to know about freelancing, which is a lot simpler than i expected. now to see how things play out.

i walked past my office intending to say hi, but nobody was around. good thing i remembered the security code - that could have been embarrassing! i spoke to the it dept (embarrassing myself by not remembering their names) and got reinstated, quickly scanned email then left for campus.

registering for my courses was EXTREMELY exciting ^_^

i ate a crappy meal while reading wired (with a great big smile on my face) before heading back to work, this time catching the boss and main manager and spending an hour and a half reintegrating and sorting out my study schedule. aside from an embarrassing incident involving a forgotten password and mild irritation with google's calendar - repeated events are problematic to move - i have discovered that one of the girls from the rollerblading group will be taking most of my courses with me! and wr may or may not take the same seminar... i really hope he does.

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