compressed

 today was weird. i don't know if it's related to me getting more sleep than usual, but i felt buzzed.

after seeing mr smear off to school, gd and i had a conversation about whether he really needed a new round of therapy or not. i checked in with his teacher, who assured me that he's participating a lot more in class, and communicating much better, even though academically he's not doing so well*. all things considered, i think the incidents from the beginning of the year can be attributed to him adjusting, i really don't believe anything's nearly as urgent as the school team thought.

* did i really need to tell her that if she lets me know where he's struggling, i can try to help him?

i lost my temper a little bit with the support agent who called to request further proof that the stove isn't working properly. as in, in addition to a photo of a quarter of an element clearly not heating up.

gd found my watch strap, but now we've lost the watch charger. she found the adapter for mr smear's keyboard, though! in addition to getting back into his music "homework", just before bedtime he was reading an illustrated harry potter book (the fifth one) and came running into the office to try playing the sheet music in one of the illustrations - and it was pretty good ^_^

i decided to start my work day by going past the hardware store (i picked up a shower head holder, but the other two items on the list were a no-go), arranged for a technician to install an internet point in our bedroom on thursday, then sat down* at a coffee shop for about an hour of work.

* i sat down after a disappointing service experience, being ignored for a while before i could order. then i sat down next to the coffee cup lid and sugar stand, which was close enough to smell the other patrons (one of whom i described to gd as "smelling like a heavy, sick fishy down-there infection", but fortunately out of line of sight of the large homeless guy who charged in demanding that someone buy him a coffee)

i downloaded gd's id thingy (sefach), then had it printed at the art supply store (all-round, it was cheaper than going to the ministry of the interior), then returned home to work a bit.

i snacked and ate too much today. surprisingly, my weight's been pretty stable lately, hovering around 77kg.

i wrestled both with and against my AI copilot today, and spent a lot of time thinking about the AI vampire article i read this morning.

i lost a half hour this afternoon to mr smear's allergy appointment being brought forward a week without anyone contacting me. and then, when i tried calling the clinic to resolve the issue, someone kept lifting the phone and putting it back down again 😡

i discovered that yesterday, when mr smear was in his room with the door closed, he'd been using the browser on his phone which gd has accidentally left unlocked :/

okay, look - it's not alright, but his reaction IS funny 😂

i took a bus to the clinic, had a funny altercation with the security guard (poor guy was only trying to help, but in a clumsy way), and managed to get gd's prescription and authorization sorted out relatively quickly before returning home.

more work, more of the same.

speaking to my mother after she received the email i forwarded her from yad l'olim, understandably and justifiably furious because they're continuing to mess her around, but making out like it's her own fault.

a "family talk" with mr smear, generally going well (explaining to him that integrity is doing the right thing when nobody is looking).

a very nice dinner.

chatting again with my mom, then reading more of the colour of magic to mr smear (he really enjoyed the gods playing dice with rincewind and twoflower), then showering (with the new showerhead holder), and now... getting ready for bed, i guess?

costume shopping rescue

did i sleep well? not really. but i definitely slept better. i'll take it.

today started with dubstep, setting up gd's sewing station / mr smear's keyboard station. i don't know where the power adapter for the synthesizer is 🤦

i had a positive service experience with the municipality regarding mr smear's school fees, and then an awful one with the car rental service - i still don't know if i was talking to an AI chatbot, or a really dumb human.

work today was difficult, in a different way. an entire workday spent shut up in a phone booth on a really, really boring call that i only occasionally had anything to contribute to. i would say my biggest contributions for the day included writing up a review of my previous explorer on glassdoor, and reading reviews on my current employer, and using AI to dig up some really worrying stuff in the codebase i'm working on.

i mean, in addition to the really worrying stuff that my team was finding along the way.

i feel bad for not joining the team at the farewell lunch for the guy whose last day today was - though my vegan presence would probably have complicated things for them - and i feel bad that the new guy who joined today seeing my help-i'm-trapped-in-a-cage face that i was incapable of taking off my face all day.

there was some stuff that i should have paid more attention to in our never-ending meeting, though, i regret not being present for the random gems.

i left early, and came home to pick up mr smear and head to dizengoff center to look for purim costume stuff. he wants to be harry potter - in addition to our love for the franchise, apparently some of the kids in his class call him that, between his glasses and his hair - and we were disappointed by what we found. i mean, mr smear was disappointed, because we found a proper set of robes but he didn't like that the gryffindor symbol didn't match the movie.

at least we both enjoyed onigiri on the way. and there's a new "retro gaming" store with a very expensive arcade cabinet with three thousand classic games...

he insisted that we go to azrieli to the harry potter pop-up store, so we hopped on a bus (and took a short walk) and arrived to discover that the store's been closed :/

but in any event i'd warned him that i wasn't going to spend stupid amounts of money on a purim costume.

fortunately, the shitty costume pop-up store at the center of the mall had a harry potter set! just a tie and fake round glasses (and a wand), but i took a dracula-style cape and mr smear was happy, so who cares?

(gd cares. she's not the one wearing the costume, but she's upset by the red collar and wants to cut it off. gods help me)

we then took a stupidly packed bus back to dizengoff, getting off a stop early because mr smear was suffering so much.

on a whim, i took him into "the fairy forest" and asked if they had any harry potter merch - they did. the young woman working in the "magic" store who hasn't read or watched any harry potter (!) unlocked a disorganized cabinet and we managed to find a "proper" gryffindor brooch, and we were done!

we went down to the vegan market (i'd intentionally gone with mr smear on a wednesday for this), and mr smear selected a bowl with surprisingly healthy home-cooked foods, along with two giant kubeh. the kubeh really weren't nice - too hard, and not very tasty - but we both tucked into the healthy stuff and enjoyed it immensely, even though it contained a few things mr smear usually despises :P

we did a little home center shopping, took a look at another new "game" store (gambling and claw machines), and then picked up a chocolate from vegantino. again (i picked up an egg last time, which was amazing). long story short: the chocolate is beyond decadent, it's expensive but absolutely worth every agurah, and omg mr smear and i were in dessert heaven and dessert hell at the same time, both trying desperately to make the exquisite experience last as long as possible.

our old landlords sent transfer confirmation of our deposit! ^_^

after all that, it was time to catch a bus home, shower, and get into bed. big data came downstairs to pick up something of his, and informed us that everyone's preparing to take shelter... we prepared our bedroom (shutting the steel window, readying our go-bag and a bottle of water), and then i crashed soon afterwards.

i woke up a couple of hours ago, and after watching some random videos and writing all this down, i think i'm almost ready to go back to bed.

nagging (feelings)

 today was... calmer? i mean, gd and i were not vibing this morning, she was upset with me for asking her to do two things outside (that she had to do, but we ended up deferring the misrad hapnim visit), and i was upset with her for harassing me about building furniture.

the weird typo is on gemini☝️

...

i killed another silverfish last night, which led to me doing a lot of research. we're currently serving their favorite meals - books and clothing sandwiched in cardboard boxes :/

so i began my day building a malm desk of drawers and one of its drawers, then off to work i went.

work was weird. firstly, i arrived late for a meeting that had been extended, and i must have joined just after the others signed off, so i was basically alone in a zoom meeting for a while.

then i resumed my investigation, quickly determining that there was a chain of services doing a lot of very silly things. i explained my findings to my client team, who asked me to verify them with my teammate who was also on the case.

"i have good news, and i have bad news."

"we're a bit overwhelmed right now, i only have bandwidth for the good news."

"the good news is that my teammate and i came to the same conclusions. that's also the bad news."

my salad lunch was boring, after i'd been frustrating getting it by crowds of inefficient people (including one guy who was trying to evenly shake canned tuna over the top of his salad).

i excitedly shared my new comic and process with my client team, then made myself a coffee, and then did relatively little (reviewing PRs, mainly) until i realized that i didn't have much to do, but also that i had a small window to pay the mattress store a visit.

the guy tried to convince me that what i'm missing for a good night's sleep is coffee with turmeric and honey before bed. i tried a bunch of mattresses, but had a difficult time determining the harder from the softer ones, and eventually he put in an order for what we have, but customized with something called "super soft".

it took a while to get out of there - he kept chaining his (interesting) stories together, even after i explained that i really needed to go - and i bussed home in time to put together another drawer. mr smear, who had irritatingly refused to take the bus home from the library, arrived just in time for us to grab a cab to gd's dentist appointment.

we waited a long time. we played, roughhoused, and napped in the waiting room. mr smear farted while a woman on the next couch was tried to rest, and she almost immediately got up to get some fresher air 🤣

the secretary who helped us was very kind and helpful, and she explained things clearly, and gd has a treatment plan that seems to be on a reasonable timeline.

we caught the bus home, had a delicious* dinner from jars and bowls, and a long chat with my mom, and a pretty smooth but late bedtime ritual.

* mostly delicious, the mexican bean stew was a little too heavy on the liquid smoke and i overcompensated with hot sauces

i have no idea how tonight's going to go. hopefully alright.

overload

 well, i made a thing: short-fuse at the ball (originally titled "prosthetic cinderella"). it's far from perfect (and required a bit of interference with gimp), but i'm nonetheless very pleased with the result ^_^

i did it more as an experiment with notebooklm than anything else, but i'm very happy to be able to share the story in a fun way!

...

i'm still feeling overwhelmed with the move, there's still a fair amount of admin to get through, and at the same time i'm fighting with social security about unemployment, and dealing with a painfully incompatible mattress, and the temporary fix for the balcony door really does seem to be rather temporary, and gd and i have to go to the ministry of the interior in person while she's really struggling with stomach issues, and i have to take care of the authorization for mr smear's next allergy test, and our apartment is still in a state of chaos and gd's pressuring me (gently?) to build the furniture so she can put things away...

mr smear apologized again to his friend today and apparently things are fine. i hope they are. i hope he's learned from this, though i'm very pleased that he knew to try and fix things without us having to intervene... but he's a bit concerned that he's turning into his parents :P

work today was bizarre. it's become very clear that nobody knows what's going on when it comes to architecture and data flows, but everything i've been told has been said to me with authority. i explained to my client team's lead that it seems to be better if i just don't take anyone's word for anything and do my own research...

halfway through the day i took the train (and walked) to my employer's office, where i was presented with a cute lego representation of myself. i spent half an hour first talking to a lawyer about my mother's aliyah case (he blew my mind asking if she was a messianic jew, and suggesting that from the sounds of things the jewish agency might actually be playing games), and then having an argument with someone from social security (apparently, i was about to be paid more than i thought for january and she stopped it, which is good because it could have caused me real trouble).

then we settled in for a workshop creating an AI agent, which was quite interesting in spite of my fatigue, and a birthday celebration for which i got my own vegan cinnamon cake and vegan cream.

[goddammit, the neighbors' super cute dog is on their balcony barking non-stop]

i didn't have time to go to the mattress store, so i returned home for dinner. after reading some more of the colour of magic to mr smear, and "completing" the comic, and posting this... i'm just about ready to try sleeping again. hopefully i'll manage tonight.

shabbos

 the first week in the new apartment is over. it's peaceful, the air-conditioner is on, gd's on the balcony smoking a joint, watching the highway traffic, mr smear's in bed (he told gd that since we've moved, he's excited to go to bed - i suspect it's the combination of his door not closing and him enjoying the night-light view of bright skyscrapers), we've all eaten well (or, possibly, too well) and the apartment's feeling a step closer to home.

gd managed to cook us dinner on the borrowed electric plates, we lit candles and made kiddush and mr smear joined me for benching (he started falling asleep at the end, i guess he totally caught the vibe) before showering, and i just got out the shower feeling pretty darned good and just about ready for bed.

...

it was a busy morning, lots of stuff about aliyah bureaucracy. and old trance friend (one of the doof crew) who's a lawyer called me to give me some advice (gd was bothered by the fact that he barely let me finish a sentence, but i got useful information out of it), and i had a chat with one of my cousins who's trying to help my mom out as much as she can and might be able to connect me to someone who can do or say something.

...

gd came with me to the ace hardware store, first stopping by the pharmacy. we subsequently had to return to the pharmacy because she didn't realize that the protein in the "protein water" she'd picked up was dairy 🤦‍♂️

we didn't find the main thing we were looking for - insulation tape - but we taxied home with a full kit comprising of "babushka" bins (they had toilet brushes inside), a complex-to-assemble stand for fruits and vegetables, a drying rack for dishes that i made sure she wanted but she now doesn't seem to want, and a couple of small things. then i hopped on a bus heading to south tel aviv, but we were on the highway when half of us realized we weren't going the right way.

"i didn't have the energy to yell at you all to get off the bus," the bus driver said when i asked him why he hadn't told us he was taking a detour. [there was a bad bus accident this morning]

after being encouraged to stick with my current mattress for another week or two, i ended up walking quite a ways around the area and happened to find a hardware store with insulation tape!

i grabbed a coffee, caught a bus to dizengoff center, looked around a bit for cheap air tags for mr smear's new key, gave up, took a bus home, and then we went shopping.

our local supermarket is completely shit. our 24/7 is great, but expensive :/

we came home, rested, coffee'd up, and i began building one of gd's kitchen ikea units as our upstairs friends arrived, and gave some much needed help. aside from putting together furniture, and our kids playing nicely for a while (in both apartments), we had a pleasant afternoon of adult discussions until eventually it was time for our respective dinners.

i built another small kitchen unit by myself - taking breaks to help mr smear put together a birthday card for gd - and that was all i wrote.

fiero

this move has possibly been the most prolonged intense physical and mental exertion i’ve endured since officer’s course.

[redacted: a photo of me in full fiero mode holding a toilet seat over my head ("why's dad making a war cry?!") taken by gd, who had to be convinced to come back and support me after being thoroughly disturbed by what i was putting my body through. as well as by me accidentally lifting the entire bowl slightly off the floor in a moment of lost composure.]

i just won a tough jiujitsu match against two manky old toilet seat screws that were jammed right up into the holes by an incredibly sadistic or incompetent worker and i may need a few days to recover.

...

gods i'm tired. and sore. and parched. [goes to get some water]

i couldn't sleep last night, i spent most of the night "eating movies" [translated from the hebrew] about the damage, and the costs to fix the damage, and a million things that all need to be taken care of.

by 4am i was out of bed and on a ladder, slowly and methodically dusting all the surfaces of the kitchen. and discovering and cleaning chunks of revolting sticky grime on the top of the cupboards. it took over two hours to get everything clean enough for gd to be able to get mr smear ready for school.

then i dove in to a whole lot of admin, but at the same time posted about the ridiculous new obstacle that's been set in front of my mom's aliyah application. i've spent a lot of the day receiving advice and commiseration from strangers on the internet.

speaking of internet, we have fibre in our apartment now. gd oversaw the installation, and as long as the bomb shelter's door isn't closed we have decent wifi access from all corners. we should probably find a solution for when the door's closed, though.

apparently, begging for the technician to install the hob to be scheduled earlier worked, and he's coming on sunday instead of monday. in the meanwhile, our friends upstairs have loaned us a couple of small plates.

...

the window guy said he'd be here around 10-11am, so i marked my calendar for 2-4pm. he arrived just after 1.30pm.

he kind of fixed the broken cupboard. i'm not satisfied, but the doors are working. i didn't hide the damage from the landlord, but i didn't highlight it either, and he seems okay with it.

he fixed some of the bomb shelter window, but not the sealing strip which was gd's primary concern, and which he somehow convinced her hasn't been necessary since the 90s.

he totally fixed the broken, rotting board under the kitchen sink.

he fixed the kitchen window and balcony door, so they can both now be opened and closed. i say "fixed", but it's more like "patched". good enough for now.

apparently gd *really* pissed him off by insisting on compulsively checking for leaks, when he hadn't touched anything to do with the plumbing, and i'm still giggling at the thought of it. 'cause he was pissed before he arrived, which i'm assuming was a combination of having done a lot more work than he quoted for last night, and making an embarrassing mess, and having to clean up said mess.

that said, by the time he came to pick up his cash he seemed to be in a much better mood.

...

my work day was weird. it's certainly not what i'm getting paid for, but as long as it's short term i'm fine with it. i got reassigned to unblock my "customer" team by doing QA for their latest updates, and

a) it was an extremely long, complicated manual process.

b) i was falling on my nose from before i arrived at work today, and i had to have a lot of coffee to compensate. the lot of coffee wasn't as effective as i'd hoped.

c) i had a mojito at happy hour. half an hour later i got a little work done, and then had to bail before i passed out at my desk.

...

our neighbor's eldest came downstairs to take mr smear to get his first ever house key cut. now i need to find out about smart tags for android phones...

...

[yawns]

[gets more water]

i figured out how to update my cibus card on wolt, put up shower curtains, reported the courier for leaving the food without so much as knocking on the door, and we ate a huge hummus meal (for the second time this week) with both mr smear and gd enjoying the potato kubeh just as much as i did. then i went around the apartment replacing toilet seats.

i'm not 100% convinced that the seats i got are good, but they're definitely better than what we had.

[suddenly realizes he was supposed to take the old toilets seats out the building, they've been sitting outside the front door for hours]

[washes hands on return, hands are so messed up that washing them hurts]

once that was taken care of, and mr smear had been put to bed, i climbed in the shower and between the shower curtains, the shower head holder, the hot water and the good water pressure, i had a proper, decent, pleasant shower for the first time in... a very, very long time.

though i did feel a bit faint a couple of times.

now everyone's in bed, i've posted this, and i think i'm about ready to bundle up and get some rest.

moving day +1

 okay, this is going to be a combination of point form and whatever-the-fuck, but i have to start with the fact that i'm typing this looking out over a major intersection that's been under heavy downpour for an hour or so, after three days of unseasonably warm and dry weather that was absolutely perfect for our move. i'm also nursing a throat infection (that i've clearly been cooking since at least sunday morning) and i might be nursing an eye infection that could be caused by many things over the past day, but probably dirty sawdust from me and - i think i'm going to start calling our friend from upstairs "big data" - big data attempting to use a jigsaw to cut out the bottom from the hob space.

...

which i'd forgotten i'd asked our landlord permission for already, so that was an embarrassing conversation. but not as embarrassing as the guy who delivered the electric hob this morning. by 8.30 - key handover time - gd and i still had quite a bit to do, and while we were scrambling, exhausted and sans caffeine, i got a call from the delivery guy saying he'd arrived. i told him i should expect to be back at the new apartment within twenty minutes, but twenty minutes later i called him to say i'd need more time and he wasn't answering.

meanwhile, we'd handed over the keys, i'd warned the landlady that "airing out the cupboards" wasn't enough to prevent mold from coming in through the walls and that they'd need to remove them entirely, and i'd warned her to deal with the pipes which miraculously held even as we held our breaths for two years, and gd was staying in the apartment to finalize the packing and finish tidying up without letting the auto-close door lock us out.

so around 8.50 i hopped in the van with a load, and on my way got hold of the guy. this time he was upset, and i reminded him that he hadn't warned me he was coming and he hadn't contacted me at all to set a delivery time. this was where the argument went off the rails, because he claimed he did arrange with me to meet at 9am, and i don't remember this happening.

okay, shit, now it's my fault. then i realize, to my horror, that my wallet is empty and i need to pay him cash. so i'm panicking, he's freaking out, he's waited half an hour for me and he's not going to come back later to get paid... i suddenly remember that we now live near a gas station, so i drove there and ran inside the shop asking desperately for the ATM. they told me where to go,  i went around the back, and... it wouldn't let me insert my card.

after a wasted minute with that, i came running back into the shop like a madman, begging them to let me buy something and give me a 100 shekel note as change. i don't know what they were thinking, but it was all very dramatic. the manager kindly explained that i could use their tills as ATMs, i went through an painstaking but brief identification process, got my hundred and ran out the door thanking them profusely.

i arrived at 9.05 - so technically only five minutes late, handed the miserably lug the money, took the plate, and thanked my stars he didn't want to fight me for yelling at him when i was at fault.

BUT.

later i checked my phone records, and now i think he was gaslighting me. i don't think we ever spoke the day before.

...

when i picked up the van, it had a lot of recorded damage, the most shocking of which was that the side-mirror and window controls sections had been ripped out. during the haul, however, emergency icons started lighting up on the dashboard, and then this message:

i still had one last haul to go. i prayed, and raced to the old apartment. i'd been carrying heavy things up and down too many stairs for too many hours over a span of two days, and my back was sore and my legs hurt and i was exhausted. every time i took the stairs they seemed to get steeper.

i picked up coffee for me and gd, regaling our neighborhood coffee shop owner barista with our morning tale as if she was a bartender, and returned to carry down two more heavy sets of boxes and items.

gd made a video of the apartment before we stood together in the hallway and locked the door for the last time, having spent a week slowly-then-rapidly peeling back layers of our last four years and thanking the apartment for providing us safe haven from the storm of early '22.

...

we returned the van, complained about it's unroadworthy state, and demanded a refund and a small car to do our ikea run. they sent us a taxi, and after we arrived at the parking lot we walked to a coffee shop, used their facilities, and stopped for breakfast and coffee. then we drove to netanya, which didn't take too long.

but time dilates in ikea. we were pretty good, we didn't get distracted, we had a budget (the relief from getting our last two months' cheques from the landlady was palpable), but we also got turned around a couple of times and it was a while before we made it downstairs to the warehouse.

after everything we'd been through, that i'd put my body through, what followed was madness. three trolleys filled with HEAVY boxes, an insane workout even when i was in good shape. gd was worried i'd injure myself, or have a heart attack considering i was running exclusively on fumes and adrenaline.

...

after a long time in the line (making friends), we got hit with a new cashier. and an enormous bill, and i'm still embarrassed that i said the amount out loud to gd in front of other shoppers. and then both our credit cards were declined. twice. i called my visa service, and learned that it was simply a case of not having enough credit left, and what's infuriating is that in israel you can't just pay off a credit card even if you have the cash. and i was panicking, because mr smear was out of school already, we were in netanya, and it was the only day we had to do the shopping.

then i thought - cash! they had an ATM, so i withdrew my daily limit. then i thought, i wonder if gd can draw the same limit even though we share the same account? so she did, and it worked! just as i was being informed by the manager, after they'd carefully counted out a stack of bills, that over a certain amount ikea will only accept ten percent of the amount due in cash 🤦‍♂️

fortunately, after much drama, we could at least split the amounts so between gd's card, the ten percent cash, and my card, we managed to complete the purchase.

but then we had to run the customer service gauntlet.

on the one hand, if we'd had a van we could have just grabbed everything and left, on the other - there's no way i would have managed that without injuring myself, so it was a blessing in disguise that the van we'd rented had been in such poor condition.

i was terrified, because i know that customer service can take forever. while we waited, we texted and called furiously between mr smear and our friends upstairs, and all of a sudden our number was called!! i jumped to the counter, and was informed that if we wanted delivery, we had to pay upfront and take whatever time slot was allotted to us. and if that didn't work for us, then we'd have no recourse.

i don't understand how that can be a thing.

but also, delivery in one to two days, but helping construct everything up to three weeks? never mind that part, then. so i paid for delivery, and after struggling to get the illiterate cashier to find our address wrote it down for her, and then we were off, just as the weather was beginning to turn.

...

at this point i was afraid of the traffic into tel aviv, which i see every evening from my client's offices, and i was surprised and unbelieving when waze told me it would take 38 minutes. we let mr smear and our friends know that we were on our way, and zoomed through to tel aviv, arriving at our apartment literally about one minute before mr smear arrived!

i took a break for twenty minutes to charge my phone (it was almost dead), and stumble around with gd with neither of us knowing what we were doing, and then driving the car back to the parking lot. it took longer to get to the parking lot than it had to get home from netanya, and i was having a hard time keeping my eyes open.

i felt like i was driving home on a come-down after a festival.

after a ridiculous series of chaotic events, obstructions and miracles, i made it safely to the parking lot, took a light rail and a bus home, and we'd officially (essentially) gotten through the move. our apartment is complete chaos, and everything is going to be hard and complicated for a while, but we're home.

after a good hummus dinner, making more noise than i'm comfortable with with big data and the jigsaw (i felt like he was parenting me, which was cool but weird, but the experience itself was fun), showering and climbing into bed, i finally got myself a decent amount of sleep.

nose, throat and eyes notwithstanding. my eyes seemed to have calmed down a bit since i got up earlier 🤞, i've managed to get all this down, i'm trying to get hold of a handyman to do the hob preparation for me (i'm amazed i managed to find my old post for a handyman on facebook), gd's gotten coffee made and mr smear has just left for school, and the sun's coming out.

moving day

moving day was yesterday , and a bit of today as well. it began with a long walk to the (actual) 24/7 for mr smear's breakfast and lunch that should have been a bus or a taxi ride. then coffee, saying goodbye to mr smear and launching into a day that was full madness.

- finally getting to the van to find it with a flat tire just as the movers arrived

- the movers finding half the furniture they needed to move covered in items

- giving the movers a run for their money, i'm in better shape than i thought i was. but i am *really* tired and sore

- being dehydrated and particularly dry all day (i suspect i'm cooking something.

- dealing with cuts on a prominent finger of each hand all day

- lots and lots of stresses and fighting but also lots of calming things down and reconciliation

- the new mattresses arriving in time

- losing 100 nis but covering both movers somehow

- getting the paint mixture right the first time, but failing the second. doing a lot of painting. a lot.

- and mold cleaning. a lot.

- our favorite vegan cafe doesn't deliver to our new apartment, so delivering to our old and taking it back with us.

- gd discovering some horrible things about our bathroom. all the bathrooms have real issues. our plumber is an asshole.

- the electric hob never arrived, i called and they never called me back

- having trouble finding the next van at reading. GPS getting lost in all the detours at 00:55 with 10% battery and me miraculously recalling / figuring out my way without it

- a complicated shower, finally getting into bed after 2am.

now it's 6.30am and i'm about to arrive at the parking lot for today's van, we still have at least a full load to take care of before handover.

and gd hasn't slept a wink, in spite of her pain and exhaustion, because in addition to horrible bathroom smells we killed two... silverfish? millipedes?

t-1 (shoes in the house)

 i'm sore, i'm tired, and i'm in awe of gd who's been getting through the past week and today and arguably carrying a lot more of the can the me or mr smear.

i woke up this surprisingly summery morning and booked a car for the day, which was very useful. after breakfast we began round after round of scraping walls, priming walls, cleaning, packing, taking loads of awkward or sensitive stuff to the new apartment, removing the projector shelf, and stretching because my sciatica is flaring up again - not debilitating, thankfully, but it's making things uncomfortable...

i've managed to cut myself on the tips of two fingers so far. the plasters are getting in the way and without the plasters i have two pain / infection magnets :(

some additional good news to the guy taking over our last two months' rent is that he's also taking the couches.

i think i'm ready to go to bed. tomorrow's moving day.

t-2

 i finished reading moon knight this morning, it is legitimately mind-boggling and brilliant. then mr smear went off to school after we'd had a very serious conversation invoked by the disappearance of the imagine channel - where we got synthknot from - which resulted in me posting the following:

a really amazing youtube channel got taken down, and it's almost guaranteed that it's due to unjust copyright strikes. watching content producers like rick beato fighting off lawfare trolls makes it clear that google/youtube really don't care, and that there're no humans in the loop...

and then my facebook marketplace experience earlier this week, also no humans in the loop...

and all the people who fled toxic twitter to make just-as-toxic mastodons and blueskys...

and china using discord and tiktok to spy on us and brainwash us (effectively)...

and roblox pushing kids into dark corners and actively preventing people from fighting off predators...

with everything else that's going on, i feel like the biggest, scariest, most dangerous issue of our time is social media. it's not just dangerous for kids and teens, it's dangerous for everyone. and most of us are just going with it because we don't have much choice. and all the good people who try to make alternatives are just creating more of the same, because we haven't figured out a model for connecting people that encourages good, healthy behavior.

...

we rushed out to meet the window guy, who was "almost there" for about forty five minutes. but in addition to him proposing very satisfactory solutions, something made me ask him, on his way out, what it is exactly that he does for a living.

it turns out he's a contractor, and a carpenter.

gd and i looked at each other, and showed him one of the bigger issues we've been worried about, and which for him turned out to be null sweat ^_^

we then went to our new local hardware store to pick up a whole bunch of things - mostly to make sure we can fix and paint the walls in the old apartment properly - and stopped in at the nature store for hydration and snacks.

we measured the gas hob - the underside was revolting, and i cut my finger on it - and then rushed off to buy antiseptic ointment and an electric hob. they weren't in stock, so it'll only arrive on sunday, and it needs an electrician to install it, so it'll only be installed by tuesday or wednesday, and the hole in the counter isn't deep enough, so we'll either need a handyman to build up the area or, i realized later, to cut in a little deeper.

turns out we know a guy.

gd returned to our old place, i went to pick up mr smear from school and show him the "new" way to get home, and then we went to the new apartment to meet up with our new landlord and give him the cheques, and get the keys, and remove a couple of doors and the old oven and carry them down to his storage, and then our friend arrived to speak to him and was shocked to see that the electrician who installed the three-phase plug did something wrong (both from a regulations point of view, and ethically from a cheated-us point of view).

so that's another thing we need to deal with on sunday...

from there we returned to the old apartment, i had breakfast and mr smear and i took a bag of clothing to the donation bin, and the next while was spent fighting over how to proceed, and then proceeding. by the time the new tenant came by to examine our things more carefully, we had a load of sensitive stuff ready to go.

he might take our sofa, he might let us leave the big shelf up, he might take the curtains. but he's not taking the projector. and when i turned it on to demonstrate his response made me sad: we've gotten used to it not being able to focus properly, and not being particularly sharp to begin with. our little projector probably isn't worth much, and i don't think we really have place for it in the new apartment, but it's been with us for so long and we've had such good times with it 😭

i booked a car for an hour, and in that hour managed to pick it up, drive it home, load it with all the things while mr smear "stood guard", drive it to the new apartment, unload it, get everything upstairs and into the apartment, drive to the city market, pick up a bottle of wine, and get it back to its parking spot. and mr smear and i had a great time rocking out to slipknot and synthknot along the way 🤘

...

it's shabbat, and even though tomorrow's going to be tough, we made a point of stopping in the evening, lighting candles and making kiddush for the last time in this apartment, singing loudly and drinking wine and eating vegan burgers and reading the colour of magic (even before bedtime)...

t-3

 the morning was pretty smooth, then we had a guy come over to look at the apartment, in a hurry to find a place to live by sunday and seemingly a decent dude. so with much enthusiasm, we all seem to be proceeding and i'm praying it "takes" and things go smoothly 🙏

not only would this relieve us of two months' costs, but he also might buy our sofa, which would make our lives easier.

the rest of the day was a back-and-forth between the new apartment, the current one, and the office; the electrician did a huge, really good job of installing a tri-phase plug underneath the hob (going over the entire cabinet to minimize drilling into it, and he sorted out a bunch of other things.

unfortunately, while he was working gd discovered a leak - unrelated to him, and apparently unrelated to the plumber. but the plumber had been in the day before, so it was a whole story getting him to come in again... at least it seems like he gave us a discount on the replacement tap (he keeps trying to upsell us, it's kinda unsettling).

i had a chat with the new landlord, and it was such a positive experience - in spite of the costs he's really grateful that we're taking care of his property, and he's shocked to learn what his previous tenants haven't been reporting. meanwhile, while the apartment still has a few things that need fixing up, it feels like all the urgent stuff has been taken care of.

tomorrow we're meeting there with the window guy (just for him to evaluate the situation), and then we're going to buy an electric hob, and then we're going to make sure we have all the primer/paint and equipment we need to ensure the (🤞) incoming tenant is happy, and then we're going to do an early handover with the landlord, which means we might even be able to get a chunk of the awkward-to-move stuff across over the weekend.

...

even though i spent so much of my day juggling between the apartments and the office, i managed to evaluate the n-gram package against a much larger sample set and was ready to report high confidence just in time for the status meeting. the "customer" team lead asked me to try to make sure i'm not going to come back on tuesday to any big surprises, so i had a sync with one of my teammates and we came up with a strategy that we're both interested in seeing happen, and he agreed to "do me a favor" and run some tests in my absence.

i also had a really interesting conversation with the slipknot-not-synthknot guy, who i learned was actually a film student originally.

after putting mr smear to bed, i sat down to try and log my hours for my employer for the first time. i initially did it accurately, but it looks like i won't get paid fairly if i do, so i've normalized my days and i guess i'll find out if i did something wrong in the coming days.

...

the only real choice i got to make today was taking mr smear out for a laffa. not only did we both enjoy the walk and the meal, but we had some interesting conversations along the way. which led to an hilarious moment after we got home: he'd asked me about estrogen ("is estrogen real?"), and i'd ended up explaining to him how fetuses begin both male and female. but gd didn't know that we'd talked about this, and the look on her face when he suddenly yelled from the bathroom "DAD! I CAN FEEL WHERE MY VAGINA CLOSED UP!" was absolutely priceless 🤣

...

gd has been doing an inordinate amount of physical work, and it's worrying me. i understand that she's very sensitive regarding hygiene, and that she wants things to be "just right" when we move, but she's also been doing all the packing and sorting and i'm worrying about her back and pain levels... and she's been struggling for a while with some of the medications she's been on :(

t-4

 there's so much stuff happening, i'm sure i'm forgetting important notes along the way.

today began peacefully, with dishes, and moon knight, and interesting conversation* with mr smear.

* although we did have a serious argument when he told me i'm a hypocrite. i'm a lot of things, but i'm pretty sure i'm not a hypocrite. and besides, i'd only just explained to him what a hypocrite is.

it ended peacefully, with mr smear laughing until he choked multiple times while i read some more of the colour of magic to him (i'm thinking he's finally ready for it), and completing my employer's onboarding, and dishes, and having gd wake up to my howl of distress to advise me to put a glove on to retrieve the sink filter that i dropped into a particularly gross bin situation.

...

we arrived at the new apartment just before the plumber's brother did. we walked through the work that needed doing, and he pointed out that three taps needed replacing, not just one. and then he and his brother quoted me for the work, and my jaw dropped.

the landlord agreed to him taking care of the pipes, but didn't want to replace the taps... "right now", he said. so i asked him if we could make an arrangement, that i'd pay for the taps now and he'd pay me back later. and he agreed, and i rejoiced.

our friend/neighbor came down (she brought coffee) and joined us for a while, and when i felt i wasn't needed any more i headed to the office. when the plumber's brother was done and they were all heading out, she noticed something wrong with one of the kitchen windows - it doesn't latch, and we're currently in the middle of a storm with high winds and plenty of wet.

the good news (to my mind) is that the landlord's acknowledged this issue, so i guess it's clearly (again, to my mind) his fault if the floors get damaged. in the meanwhile, i managed to get our window guy from a few months ago to come in tomorrow afternoon, hopefully he'll come up with a solution that makes everyone happy 🤞

at the same time, while i was in the apartment i managed to get the electrician we used a while back to agree to come in and install three-phase under the hot plates. the "under" part will be tricky, but that's a tomorrow problem...

also, the plumber's brother came up with a great suggestion that makes installing our water dispenser much less messy.

work was crazy today. i got in 45 productive minutes after i came in, but then immediately had to return to the apartment to help gd with the unpleasant woman who came to take another look. i arrived to a not-unpleasant vibe, and after she left gd informed me that of all the details of her life to come into play, this woman grew up in the same neighborhood in turkey that gd lived in for a year. apparently, that's a reason to play nice with us. or maybe it's just because she's desperate for the apartment...

i paid the plumber (who'd become antsy), i ate, and i returned to the office. i had a long meeting trying to explain to my bulgarian teammates what i was doing to fine-tune the model's guesses and enable them to share the workload, and then a shorter meeting with my local teammates (kind of), and during that meeting one of the guys (the slipknot-not-synthknot guy) confronted me about the n-gram detection. we agreed to work together to see if maybe i'd missed something.

by the end of the day - an hour and a half later, because i had to go home again for another viewing - we'd determined that while the "gold standard" n-gram detection that i was using was as shit as i'd remembered, that there's another one he'd used before that was much less shit. but more important than that, he'd revealed that the company officially supports a very specific set of languages, and his n-gram detector proved 100% accurate (on our small sample set) for all of them!

so that's very exciting news, and tomorrow's mission is now to test this detection on as many production samples as we can to establish its "good enough-ness".

...

gd's done an incredible amount of packing and cleaning (even if, in my opinion, she really doesn't need to invest so much in the cleaning) over the past few days, but we're now getting to a point where there's not a hell of a lot to eat or eat with :P

it's very strange seeing the layers of our lives that slowly built up over the last four years being rapidly peeled back to eventually reveal an empty apartment that shows practically no trace that we were ever here.