grind break

this morning we completed the pokemon puzzle (including a few frustrating minutes hunting for the final piece that was resting, camouflaged, on top of the puzzle), i helped mr smear through the first page of his holiday homework, i did the dishes, and headed off to the office.

it was a weird work day, lots of syncing and strategizing, and keeping my nose out of the bunch of kids hijacking the office, and by the time i got to the important, urgent work that needed to be done i ran into some big issues that thoroughly blocked me. and then it was time to leave the office in order to be able to take mr smear to the swimming pool.

mr smear and i arrived at the pool in good time, only to learn that it was closed. the nice lady printed me out some sheets that are much easier to parse than their schedule boards, so now we have an idea of when we're welcome there...

the past hour or so has been all about helping gd in the kitchen (and being upset to learn - or relearn - that the hand blender we bought months ago never worked), and struggling to update the dell device drivers (i'm typing this on the same machine while i continue to struggle), and being frustrated because i decided earlier that i didn't want to go swimming any more, but now mr smear's all-in and he's never all-in so now i have to go.

*deep breaths*

slow and steady

 the fast itself wasn't hard, but on a normal rest day with caffeine i'm tired and need lots of naps, so yesterday i was tired. 

mr smear wasn't feeling well (he still isn't), so instead of taking him to meet his classmates for a bike ride in the evening we all stayed at home and had a very quiet night. in the morning i went to a service close by that i've been meaning to check out for ages, and i arrived just in time to make a minyan for shacharit. it was a pleasant service, with a bit of a wishy-washy sermon, but by the time one of the leaders said "it's not mandatory to leave for yizkor" i - along with half the congregation - got up and left.

my back was sore, my vision was doubling and i was starting to fall asleep.

we spent the afternoon alternating between reading the story of jonah, napping, putting together an awesome pokemon puzzle (we're more than a quarter of the way through the 1000 piece puzzle), and encouraging mr smear for his day 2 inktober entry.

in the evening, i took mr smear to hear the final shofar blow. it took us a bit too long to leave the apartment - we passed the service in the kikar just before they finished, arrived too late for the other service, and then returned past the kikar service after they'd finished too :/

i broke my fast on pancakes and some healthy leftovers, while we watched and enjoyed futurama. then it was a bit of a struggle to get mr smear into bed (no particular reason), and then it was time to pass out myself.

today so far:

my first coffee was accompanied by a long nap. so far today we've started cleaning our talitot, and mr smear's alternating between finishing up yesterday's drawing and helping us with the puzzle.

aside from cleaning the floor (post-cleaning lady) i'm feeling particularly lazy. i keep fantasizing about picking up a new speaker and possibly a gaming computer, but i'm honestly not confident it's the right timing for the latter.

contemplation

yesterday:

mr smear went to school by himself again, which makes us a bit nervous but i guess it's no different from him coming back home by himself... parenting is weird.

i had a chat with urchin, who's just been laid off along with a bunch of her coworkers due to a change in management. amazing timing, right before the holidays. she's apparently interested in some of our open positions, which would be cool.

yesterday was long. lots of context switching, lots of issues that were supposed to be resolved the day before but weren't. lots of planning with my coworkers (mostly productive and positive). one emotional outburst about procedure that got me called in to a room by the rnd manager to tell me i'd made a bad vibe... i just apologize to her and the guy in question, and i've got a lesson to learn.

on my way into our apartment i picked up a second notice* for the two fluxx games i ordered a while back, which was apparently sent three weeks ago. it took so long to be delivered that they've returned the package, which is really unfair :(

* a first notice was never sent, neither were any emails or sms messages...

i came home just in time for dinner, just in time to see gd almost collapse from the sudden onset of something. i rushed myself and mr smear through dinner while she rested, wished them both a good night, and then headed out to the british ze german's shiva house.

it's always weird and sad walking past my mother and my old apartment.

the next couple of hours weren't unpleasant, the story of my friend's sister's passing notwithstanding. ru55 and the irish ze german were there too, and i alternated between conversation flow and just sitting and listening. ru55 gave me a ride home, i brushed my teeth and showered, and then sat down to do some more testing for our contractor.

it didn't take long to get stuck and stop the testing. and then suddenly there were noises coming from mr smear's room, where gd was attending to him and his suddenly sore throat. when i went in to commiserate he sent me away, but a bit later called out to me, really upset that he'd forgotten to call my mom to say good night 🥹

and then, in the middle of the night, gd decided that we urgently needed to do online grocery shopping :/

today:

i slept alright, but i've been feeling a bit on/off today. mr smear's leg seems to have healed, so we left him to his devices (ha ha) and headed to the pharmacy*, did some grocery shopping and picked up a pokémon puzzle for tomorrow.

* we left the first one in a huff because someone was drilling and there was dust everywhere while a bunch of sick and elderly people were waiting

i did some more work with the contractor, and then the new cleaning lady arrived. she insisted on wearing her shoes in the apartment, which gd eventually conceded and which i'm too nervous to discuss with her later when i get home from my voluntary exile at our favorite coffee shop. i somehow got dragged into a political discussion with her, which included a very awkward "we're not going to agree or understand each other" moment, but also her thanking me profusely for oversharing with a stranger.

i've spent the past few hours slowly drinking coffees, eating a sandwich, and trying not to fall asleep in the comfy armchair while slowly reading some more blindsight.

and spending a fair amount of time just staring into space. i guess i have a lot of processing to do.

drips

yesterday:

yesterday was... weird. firstly, my sinuses were busy and i developed a headache towards the afternoon, one which only intensified into the night. i barely slept last night, my head hurt, and i was uncomfortable and restless.

at the same time, i slept really well after my last post and my hips and legs felt much better than usual.

the work day was all over the place, lots of shouting (mostly nothing to do with me) and a few misunderstandings and stress over the work i'm doing. by the end of the day i had a pretty good handle on what was happening, though, which was a huge relief. and i was very proud of myself for bringing home the two extra "happy hour" desserts i'd picked up for gd and mr smear, who definitely enjoyed them.

...

over lunch, a woman from another company made our whole team hate her over lunch when she rudely sat down at our table and invited her friends to join her, when there wasn't any space and we hadn't finished eating.

...

i started listening to the interview with the united nations whistleblower (emma reilly) and it awful, but thanks to UN watch it's not as shocking as it should be. it does answer one of the biggest questions surrounding china's motivation to promote anti-semitic content on tiktok, specifically anti-israel propaganda since october 7th: the chinese are trying to divert attention from the very real genocide that they're perpetuating on the uyghurs, which they're doing in order to secure the particularly resource rich region that they're exploiting as part of their plans for economic world domination.

as much as i was already aware, the interview is an absolute revelation.

...

i've uninstalled the pokemon pocket app. good riddance.

today:

fortunately, i took a tylenol this morning and my head's been alright since then. mr smear had his mid-term today, which apparently went really well 🤞

i left early to pick up a package on the way to the office, but discovered on arrival that it would only be available from noon.

the workday was pretty good. after yesterday's win, this morning's effort went smoothly and i moved on to a surprise "favor" for one of our customers who's still using our pre-pivot platform. i managed to have that code complete by lunchtime, and the rest of the afternoon was a mix of finalizing, and exploring a potential memory leak "on my own time".

i've been using the AI-assisted terminal warp for the last couple of days. it's legitimately great!

...

i picked up one of the three calvin and hobbes compilations i ordered on the way home, and mr smear was very excited - we're all excited to be able to read it comfortably ^_^

i was concerned by the fact that the other two books in the set weren't shipped yet, but as i was trying to contact them about it i received an update that they're now on the way to us as well. awesome!

...

dinner was pretty good, but after dinner we needed to have a conversation - mr smear responded badly to a situation at school today and got kicked out of the class. the first part of the conversation went well, but then it turned to mma and it went... not so well. but as not-so-well as it went, i'm relieved that bedtime was okay.

unfortunately, mr smear's now dealing with an itchy nose and we're worried it might be another herpes outbreak. please god let it be something less exciting 🙏

teeth out

 it was a weird tuesday. it started off simply, but then gd became scared about her tooth extraction so i accompanied her, but i first had a chat with a recruiter scheduled so i walked while she took the bus.

i looked at the scale this morning, and realized i've climbed past 82kg. not fantastic.

i initially thought it was a phone call, but was then reminded that it was a zoom chat, so that was a bit awkward. more awkward was the fact that i could barely here the recruiter, so we gave up and switched to phone calls, which suffered from reception issues 🤦

anyway, we finally got it right, it sounded like she was happy with my history and what i'm looking for, we'll see.

i arrived at the dental clinic, sat down next to gd, and opened my laptop to try to get some work done. gd, meanwhile, struck up a conversation with the arab dentist's six year old. when she finally went in for her appointment, the kid didn't hesitate to switch his attention to me. he's very cute, and bright, but he's in that phase during which kids barely stop for air while telling stories with no point that never end, and by the time we got out of there i felt like my brain was bleeding out of my ears.

at least gd seems to be doing well post-extraction. that's actually quite big news.

i caught a bus to the office, on the way seeing a question from my boss that made me realize that the thing i got stuck on last night and this morning made absolutely no sense, and between the mma blowout yesterday and this morning's goings-on i didn't even register before forwarding a request for help that missed the point completely...

... so that was embarassing. i walked into what i thought was a strategy/update meeting, explained myself and apologized - interrupted twice by my cousin appearing out of nowhere to hand me his laptop to look after it and take it back, for some reason - and only after that was resolved discovered that the actual purpose of the meeting was to figure out where to have lunch :P

i had to choose between gd's delicious (and healthy) cottage pie leftovers alone, or a burger joint with the team. i've mentioned this "new learning" before, but professionally, nine times out of ten lunch with the team should trump lunch alone.

the vegan burger at vitrina was delicious, albeit a bit small. but the chips portion was large, and i shouldn't have eaten all of it. it was at that point that i decided that it was time to rejoin the rollerblading group.

mr smear lost another tooth today!

the work part of the work day was all over the place, although i definitely learned some things and at least moved forward a little bit.

...

i played a bit with pokemon pocket over the course of the day, but i didn't feel quite as drawn to it. a big part of that is the battle matching system, which keeps matching me with players who ridiculously out-class me. when i got home, i rediscovered pokemon live, which is the pokemon i played before, and after reading a bit about the differences and trying out its mobile app i'm pretty confident that it's the "real" pokemon game.

it's certainly the full game, as opposed to the pared-down pocket system.

...

the evening went well until bedtime, we could all have handled it better (a really silly argument over moving a chest of drawers) but it could certainly have been worse.

then i geared up, strapped on my blades, and headed to the group.

it was a really nice night. a good route - an easy one, though by the end of the 17km i was falling apart a little bit - with quite a lot of familiar faces. the last few kilometers i ended up in a riveting conversation with a woman who's just putting together a startup, something that could be really helpful to a lot of women (and something that could have really helped gd a few years back when she was still trying to get pregnant again), and she was really interested when i started talking about gamification.

i made a whole lot of suggestions, and i realized while i was making them that i would love for that to be my actual day job.

i got home feeling pretty good about having gotten a proper workout, and a good social experience, and i'm now stretched and showered and caught up on posting and pretty much ready for bed.

the weeds

 today kinda sucked. i slept a bit better last night, but not great, gd seemed to be getting better and mr smear had a more positive morning.

gd and i had a good parental guidance session with the therapist. this has bcome foreshadowing, it feels like whenever we discuss his (and our) progress we have a major issue on the way...

but i had a really hard time getting into work, i was very sensitive to the cold today and i'm now pretty confident i'm starting to come down with what gd has.

i'm also having trouble with the pokemon app. it's really good at doing what it's trying to, and that's suck all of my attention.

in the afternoon i took mr smear to his jiujitsu class, on the way explaining again why it's important that he goes and he seemed to be understanding and accepting. right until we arrived, at which point he refused to cooperate.

on top of that, he was also pretty rude to me, and that's a thing that's been building up the past little while. i intimidated / scared the shit out of him and we came home is mostly silence. when we arrived, we sat down for a "family meeting" but i was pretty furious and just unloaded. i sent him to his room and gd and i spoke for a bit, which calmed me down a little, then i called him back and we had a proper talk.

on the one hand, it went better than we could have expected. on the other, he's done with mma and we have nothing to replace it with. i've no idea where we go from here and i'm deeply disappointed, not just about the mma, but about his behavior surrounding it.

fuck.

and that's on top of a shitty work day in which i barely got anything done, and the shitty feeling of having blown three workday hours on a failed mma class and three months of mma fees for barely any classes. on the way to school mr smear had expressed interest in playing the drums, and that's about the price of a low-end electronic drum kit :/

gotta catch 'em all (again)

 what a weird freaking day. the primary thread winding through it is the pokemon pocket mobile app, which my coworkers (easily) convinced me to install this morning, and i've made considerable progress at random intervals (travelling by bus... sitting behind my manager... lying on the couch after gd went to bed...).

otherwise, i managed to get more than my 12000 steps in again today, but i don't really understand how.

i took mr smear to school this morning, had a cup of tea and ordered groceries with gd, went to work, had a frustrating morning after discovering that two of us were assigned the exact same work, picked up mr smear from school, wolfed down lunch, and took him to his therapist, had coffee and made zero work progress while waiting for him in spite of my best intentions, brought him home, returned to the office, worked with my manager for a bit, hung around for absolutely no reason while he tested (that's when i got bored and played pokemon), came home for dinner (we waited until mr smear finished eating before watching the simpsons, much smarter), got him into bed (without too much fuss), watched an episode of arcane's second season (it's beautiful art, but it feels a bit soulless), played some more pokemon, and am now deliberating on going to bed.

i slept very poorly last night, again, and i'm pretty sure it's the mattress topper not doing its job.

post-nap

ah, i forgot about my call with a dermatologist yesterday - he gave me satisfactory answers to my questions, and i'm pretty sure i'm almost done with the treatment now.

...

i posted, i napped. i didn't nap enough, but sufficiently to spend the next couple of hours playing around with winkill and considering retrying unity development.

for a while before mr smear and i left the apartment, something i'd chewed on had triggered The Pain in the back of my jaw and it got so bad that i needed to take anti-inflammatories for it. they kicked in about forty five minutes after we left.

i coaxed mr smear outdoors with pokemon go. at least, he came out for the pokemon, but had to have an apple before he could play (he doesn't like eating fruit, it's a thing)... that gave us plenty of opportunity for chatting before i lost him to the phone :P

we walked all the way to the beach, at which point i convinced him to hand over the phone and put his feet in the sand:

are you having fun in the sand? yes. can you explain why coming onto the beach had to be a struggle? yes. because my feet weren't dirty then. now i don't care.

we had a good time at the beach, followed by the usual struggle in getting him off the beach once we were there. but the walk home was nice, the last stretch was physically taxing, mostly good fun with a "tickle fight" turning into a proper chase. i didn't feel good when we got home, though, and i think it was partially the anti-inflammatories on an empty stomach, partially the chase maybe moving stuff in my neck around and putting pressure on my vagus nerve. whatever it was, it calmed down shortly after we began eating and i'm feeling alright now.

i'm reading the wind in the willows to mr smear, i feel like he's actually ready for it this time. he's been really into bugsnax lately, i'm quite impressed by the depth of the game, and only after typing this thought to look up some reviews and realized that it's in the horror genre.

huh. do i tell my 'fraidy cat son?

the cough

 gd's still coughing, and my mom and mr smear have been coughing pretty badly too. i've been a bit post-nasal-drippy myself, but i'm doing somewhat alright. the three of them did rapid antigen tests yesterday just in case, so apparently it's not covid. that's something.

this has been a HUGE week, and i have to work backwards because just trying to remember what happened a few days ago is overwhelming. so i'm writing the rest of this post from the end, but trying to keep it in chronological order nonetheless, so i'm feeling a bit like a detective right now :P

tuesday:

we started the day pretty early, my mother needed to get her phone sorted out (she'd been here three days already) and gd and i navigating legal cannabis. that turned out to be surprisingly straightforward! our next step was trying to sort my mother out with a ravkav card, which we failed to do. i took mr smear with me to work while my mom and gd went to ikea, and i was quite nervous about how the day was going to go... the last time i took him we had an incident.

it proved to be a corrective experience for both of us: he started the day with blockbench, and then when he got bored of that he moved on to video games. we took a break for lunch, and in the interests of expediency (he just wanted to get back to the office) he elected to get sumsum for lunch, and was very proud of himself for putting together his own salad. although he has since admonished me for interfering with his selection, even though i know that if i hadn't "helped" him it was just have been a giant bowl of pickled cucumbers :P

so he ate well, had a good time, and when gd eventually arrived to pick him up he needed to be coerced rather aggressively to leave :P

gd, meanwhile, had had a brilliant idea after she and my mom had picked up curtains and a small desk for - that it might be much cheaper and easier to bring the stuff home by taxi than to get it delivered. and she was totally right!

after work, i walked to firefighter's office for an informal chat. everything was going great until his two "officers" asked me about my professional history, and i finished talking about my previous employer. at that point, unprompted and unplanned, my jaw continued flapping and i just blurted out how unhappy i was with my present employer. not only unprofessional, but a couple of the things i said were far from accurate. i was mortified, and that was while my mouth was still working.

ugh.

i'm still cringing.

the follow-up conversation apparently went well in spite of that, and firefighter helped me put a finger on the root cause of my complaints: i may like the people i work with and get along with them, but we do not have a good culture fit. and the main reason for that is that they're a thoroughly reactive culture.

i came home to recover with my family, simultaneously buzzing with excitement and shame. i spent quite a while thinking about what transpired and what was potentially on the table.

i also put together the new desk, and i'm sitting at it right now - i'm very happy with having a proper space of my own to operate ^_^

wednesday:

the day began with gd and i going for an extended hour and a half of guidance, which proved very helpful, but made me a bit late for work.

the workday began with two revelations: the first, that our italian colleague is leaving, and the second, that a few months ago he ripped out a whole bunch of functionality that i needed in order to complete my work.

in the middle of the day i met up with gd and mr smear for his initial consultation with the public mental health people. we were taken by surprise that the meeting was just for mr smear alone, and we were very concerned that he wouldn't be comfortable with that, but he handled it just fine and actually had a good experience.

this is good.

the next couple of hours were me finally completing the work that i'd spent three days suffering from, and i left the office when i realized that i was effectively done with my week and didn't need to be looking for anything else to do. it was a really, really good feeling.

i did a decent-sized grocery shopping and arrived home just in time for a call with copywriter, who i haven't chatted to properly in years. we had a very interesting chat until dinner time, and he opened with one of the biggest points that is a lesson that i definitely needed right now: it doesn't matter what you're going through, you give positive vibes when you start talking to someone. even if just to set the tone. i've always had trouble with the question "how are you" when i'm having a bad day, and that conversation really clicked for me.

yesterday (thursday):

i needed a vacation day to get my head right, i started the day by chopping a number of items off my to-do list and it felt good.

gd wasn't feeling up to leaving the apartment, and nobody was feeling up to the planned jerusalem mission, so my mom and mr smear and i went on a shopping mission instead. we began by sorting out her ravkav card, which was a bit of a story but we got it right eventually. our first stop was bash gal, where we picked up all of mr smear's mma gear, all right-sized for him, and for much cheaper than getting it through his gym.

i cannot tell you how proud it made me to see him wearing his jiujitsu gi! (even if i've never worn one myself, it looks really good on him ^_^)

then we picked up (apparently) exactly what we needed to get our curtains sorted out, and checked out the gadget store where i thought we'd pick up a pokémon starter kit. 1. we didn't pick up a starter kit, and in retrospect i'm glad we didn't. 2. mr smear may or may not have broken one of the toys on display (i'm pretty sure it was broken already), but the look of abject horror on his face and the deep understanding of why we don't play with items we haven't bought? priceless.

we got to the mall and immediately found the pokémon battle academy, which is what i was looking for. and the sales guy threw in an extra booster pack to wish us luck :) we got slushies, and then i managed to pick up exactly what i needed - a proper usb hub and a simple keyboard that's a) got hebrew letters and b) way more comfortable than my other one.

[GROSSNESS WARNING] on the way out i threw something into a bin with a flip-top, not noticing that someone had spat a giant gob with chunky green snot on the other side. that slammed into the back of my hand. i couldn't get to the bathroom fast enough, and i was incapable of taking the disgusted look off my face for a while.

between our morning adventures and the evening ones, we had a couple of hours to rest at home. mr smear cracked open the new pokémon battle academy and we had a great time following the tutorial! our play was interrupted a couple of times, as i spoke to our neighbour's sister about my mother's aliyah obstacles. hopefully she'll be able to help, but it can't hurt having someone in the foreign ministry aware of the madness that real people (ie non-politicians) are experiencing.

on the way to the shuk, i was chewing gum. on the right side of my mouth, to avoid The Tooth. at one point towards the beginning of our journey, i got adventurous and chewed, twice, on the left side.

my mouth proceeded to HURT for the next couple of HOURS. it was deeply upsetting.

my mom and i sat for bit over coffee and iced tea after dropping mr smear off at his therapy session, and i made plans to meet with one of firefighter's guys who seems to think we're on good footing - this is very exciting! we walked around the shuk for a bit, picking up a french press along the way. i could probably have paid less for it, but it seems good. i'm still a bit nervous about the glass exploding.

we stopped at kongress bazel for falafel on the way home, mr smear ate most of a huge laffa and my mom and i had pitot. it was delicious.

i went to bed almost immediately after saying goodnight to mr smear, because when i bent down to say goodnight my hand suddenly hurt intensely: nerve pain from my neck.

i would wake up around midnight due to reflux (or something similar), caused by me going to bed after eating such a a heavy meal... 

this morning so far:

i woke up feeling a bit better, but nervous about my neck. mr smear's voice is almost gone, so in the interests of protecting it he's taken a page out of the adventure time playbook and he's writing notes to us. so far, it's hilarious!

all the nerves

 it's been quite a while since i had me some good ol' fashioned nerve pinch pain. this morning (so far) it's my left shoulder, yesterday was my lower back, and for about a week now my neck's been griefing me on and off.

every night i go to bed wondering how my sleeping positions will mess me up for the following day.

this kinda stinks.

at the same time, though, i got caught in the rain yesterday and *ran* home (okay, probably more of a brisk jog for most people) all the way from the train station, which is a just-less-than-a-mile-stone for me and my knee. i managed to clear the distance just as the thunderstorm lightened up and got home just as it resumed its fury, so luck was with me.

sunday saw me working from home, and also saw mr smear having an unexpectedly emotional day with disturbingly self-destructive behavior. it started with me trying to sort out a piano app after he "showed interest" (ie. begged me passionately) in a synthesizer, when i was trying to figure things out and i didn't select one of the genres he might have been interested in (neither of us know what genre it was, only that it had a lightning symbol). he decided that an appropriate punishment for me would be to throw every toy and book he has onto the floor, roughly. i was focused on my work for most of the day and i don't remember what else happened before dinner time, but at the end of dinner he wanted to watch an additional episode of adventure time and would not take "no" for an answer...

i guess i'm very grateful that i got an apology and good night wishes from him just before he went to sleep, and yesterday morning began wonderfully as he walked in on me playing pokémon and decided he wanted to play too. when i left for work he was still thoroughly engrossed.

i picked up a document for gd from the clinic on the way to work, and found myself staring at a green shredding bin with a pink plastic bag in it and the hebrew for "information security". "security" has the same letters as "watermelon", and i can't stop myself translating "information security" to "information watermelonation"...

yesterday was a long day in the office. everyone else was amused when i asked if there would be a selection of matzah on the breakfast tray, but i was disappointed to discover, when i walked into the kitchen area, that there was no tray at all :/

i've spent a considerable amount of time trying to find a solution to getting us and our friend's family to a nature party at the end of the month, i cannot believe how expensive it is and it's all revolving around the fact that it's shabbat and there's no public transport available :(

i'm still dealing with fallout today from the past week or so of ci/cd mayhem, but it's a half-day before the chag and i feel like we're pretty much stable again. my boss gave me admin rights on sunday, along with the uncle-ben speech about power and responsibility...

mr smear and i both had trouble going to sleep last night. neither of us had trouble waking up this morning, aside from the nerve pain which caused me to scarf down some matzah and take anti-inflammatories and have gd set my shoulder and neck on fire with deep heat...

appreciation

 today was a day in the office. it was mr smear's last day of not-school before the passover holidays, so he's now off for a week. an ex-coworker came to return her computer and brought us a huge bag of lego that her kids don't want any more. another co-worker got very emotional because she's the last man standing in her team while she's struggling with the "usual" immigrant blues.

the work itself today was a mixed bag. one thing that was really nice was receiving a voucher for a show as a token of appreciation for the burned hours during the recent crisis :)

i went to bed early after putting mr smear to bed late, but woke up an hour or two ago with bad indigestion. so i've been doing the pokémon online training, of course. i'm a little sad that they're stopping development on the online game, because i'm planning on picking up a starter kit for mr smear at some stage and one of the cooler features is being able to use codes from the physical cards to import them into your digital collection...