familia-rity

yesterday:

the last hour and a half of the night was the best hour and a half of the night. i actually slept, and my alarm forcefully ejected me from a dream and got my day off to a (literally) wobbly start.

...

i accompanied gd to the hospital for her toenail appointment that she's been waiting for since april. i think we must have sat in the waiting room, surrounded by wet coughing, for about an hour before we were finally called in. i got a bit of work done, at least.

[stops writing to hunt for and then complain that the kiffness' balkan song isn't available anywhere]

the dermatologist doesn't believe the second toenail incident was fungal, just that gd is susceptible to whatever the fuck is going on. not exactly confidence-inspiring.

on our way out, we took the elevator down and as we were leaving it a 300 pound woman walking out in front of gd stopped suddenly and took a step backwards, landing squarely on gd's recovering toe. un-fucking-believable. after helping gd out of the elevator, and struggling to deal with the combination of her rage and the horror of her toenail likely being re-injured, we parted ways with me warning her to stay away from others for her own safety.

i hopped on a bus home, and was just calling my mother to update her when gd called me to inform me that some old woman had rammed into her in the supermarket - same foot, fortunately missing her toe - jesus fucking christ.

i understand why she felt the need to take a taxi home :/

...

hungry and tired, i stopped at home for breakfast instead of heading through to the office as originally planned, then crossed the bridge and went in for a couple of hours. earlier in the morning i'd threatened my teammates with an openspec workshop, and i took the opportunity to run a private training session with dx and his manager.

...

i returned home for an employer meeting, which turned out to be a presentation by the boss explaining how the whole company is about to experience a massive shift in order to realign with the market trends. i already found our division into backend / frontend / full-stack strange - i've been having difficulty understanding the distinctions since before AI became a thing, probably because i'm a sort-of full-stack engineer, and devops engineer, but not a frontend engineer at all - but now things are getting really interesting and we're going to be divided into the kinds of building we do, and our proficiency with AI and depth of experience with harnesses is going to determine whether we cut it or not.

...

by the time we needed to leave for netanya, gd was certain that she wouldn't be able to join us. she's been properly sick (her stomach, mainly) for days now, and it's really frustrating and disappointing for all of us.

we left the city in heavy traffic, and it took us about an hour and a half to get there, with mr smear complaining about motion sickness the whole way and insisting that using his phone made it better 🙄

the evening with our cousins was just lovely. the food was a big issue for them, but we were fine, and there were soooo maaaaany kiiiiiids which was loud and wonderful. we also walked down the two minutes to the beach for an incredible sunset, and just generally had a great time.

the ride back to tel aviv was quick and whineless, with all of us singing along to my driving playlist (that spans most of a century of good music) and managed to shower and get mr smear into bed around midnight. my first "girlfriend" (who's married to the guy who introduced me to my friends in matric which fundamentally changed my life's direction) finally sent me the summer camp photos i asked for back in may, and they are AMAZING. i can't believe how young we all were!

so that sent me down a rabbit hole of looking through my and gd's photos, which was a trip, and then it was after 1am and i crawled into bed for a relatively good sleep.

destabilized

 i did go to bed, but i barely got much sleep. certainly nothing restful. mr smear stayed in our bed until morning, and then we all got up early ("in solidarity" according to gd), although i ended up lying down for an additional hour afterwards.

the day started off alright, though. i sat down with mr smear and my coffee and introduced him to mad magazine - issue #295, back to the future part ii - and it was really cool. i had to explain a whole lot of stuff to him, which led to some interesting moments. i think i blew his mind describing the difference by how we all dealt with the CFC / ozone hole crisis as a species, but allowed the oil and animal agriculture industries to divide us all on global warming.

i don't know how much "work" i got done today, certainly nothing significant. in addition to my brain feeling wrecked, gd was on a cleaning spree and discovered (what then became unavoidable) a sewer smell coming from the office bathroom next to my desk which we have no explanation for.

between meetings, mr smear and i walked to the hardware store to pick up draino, and did some tea shopping on the way back home. we sat down for a "salad pita" lunch while out, which was nice, and explored a local toy store's lego selection realizing that we never got mr smear a birthday present.

it's been a year. or two, or three.

i just got off a long call with horseman, most of it discussion the terrifying state of AI-fueled propaganda and the last fifty years building up to the west collapsing in on itself because its people have all been brainwashed to love their enemies more than themselves.

now to drag mr smear away from spore and get some exercise.

buzz

 yesterday:

i felt better, at least. made more progress on the language project. waited twenty minutes at the store to pick up my "neon-nazi"s only to discover that i was supposed to wait for an sms update, but they sorted me out anyway. had a pretty productive day at work, with the biggest achievement being a coffee walk interview with someone we've been courting and who signed later in the afternoon. good for him (as a new oleh) and good for us! ate too much cake at the happy hour, brought home too much cake and nobody else wants to eat it. went through possible summer day-camps with mr smear (whose preferences surprised us) and tried to book it, but we're now waiting for them to get back to us :/

the bug zapper in mr smear's room is super bright and may have been a mistake.

a couple of hours work in the evening (to protect us from a mysterious bug that we encountered during the day), a little more of the language project, then finally passing out.

this morning so far:

getting up early, catching and crushing a fat, slow cockroach, being blown away by the dor brother's AI short film. fighting with mr smear (but winning, apparently) because i'm taking him swimming but he wants to go to his friday computer class. more progress on the language project. now getting ready to head out...

...

i hate the spice girls, abhor wannabe, but i've had it in my head the whole morning and am somehow enjoying the nostalgia of it 😶

making memories

 phew.

last night i told mr smear we'd go out early this morning and head to the beach. he wasn't too enthusiastic then, but in the morning he absolutely refused to go to the beach. i managed to talk him down, compromising on the beach itself but not on going for a ride.

we enjoyed a fun ride down to the beach. when we got there, mr smear didn't follow my instructions to use the stair guide for bikes and dropped his bike, obliterating his front brake.

so that kind of sucked. but at least the rear brake was still good.

then, as we got to the bottom of the stairs, on a beautiful, perfect-beach-weather morning, with relatively few beachgoers and fantastic conditions, he said: "dad, i wanna go to the beach."

godsdammit.

we didn't have beach gear, because we'd gorram agreed not to the go to beach.

anyway. we rode down the promenade for a bit, then he decided he was ready to turn back. on the way, we stopped to get him a fanta, and then a fruit shake. we ended up sitting on a bench for quiet a while, just chatting and enjoying being where we were.

it was pretty cool.

eventually we decided it was time to go home, and by then it had gotten a lot hotter. by the time we got home, we were sweaty, and ready for some a/c, and three hours had gone by.

it was a good morning.

after showering, we enjoyed a big breakfast (neither of us had eaten, he hadn't been interested when i offered), and then settled in to watch gremlins 2, which we'd agreed to hold off on until it was daytime so he wouldn't be scared. he made it through about half the movie before decided to nope on out, primarily because it was too gory (all the slime :P).

he and gd then watched the aristocats, which they enjoyed. i didn't see much of it because i was passed out on the couch for the most part.

the rest of the afternoon is a bit of a blur, but then we had some drama: mr smear had agreed to go out again, and we'd reminded him for about two hours beforehand that it was happening, and then the time came to go and he was not interested in going. it took a combination of convincing and coercing to finally get him out the door, but although the first minute or two were quiet and uncomfortable he suddenly opened up and started talking about the games he remembers from the ps3 back in south africa. that led to a conversation about nostalgia, and about how our moments together now will be something i already know i'll have nostalgia for, and about rebelliousness and teenage hormones and how no matter what he feels we'll always have his back.

we ended up taking a rather long walk through the park, and we both enjoyed it. it was a very good end to a very good day. we got him in time for a second shower, a delicious dinner and the first part of the seventh harry potter movie, and a pleasant bedtime.

and then some more inscryption, act iii. i just discovered the mycologists for the first time 🤯

*sighs deeply*

i think i'm in a better place today than i've been for a while. hopefully that translates to a better work week. regardless, today was a day full of stuff i'm grateful for.