psychological wargames

 omfg. it's 3.40am and i've spent the past hour or so struggling to sleep - i'm tiiiired. at first it was mental restlessness, then it was lower back and hip flexors, i'm a complete mess.

...

it took me too long to get ready to leave this morning, so i had to remain home for my daily. then i headed to the office for a day largely defined by arguing with AI.

the good news: this three-month project that's been dragging out for the past couple of weeks? the current phase is done, i finally got my latest fixes in, tested everything, and it came out clean. this is huge!

the not-so-good news: i'm still working on the golang stuff, which is tiring, but it looks like i'm in the final stretch.

the other good news: i started working on the interruption ticket for our previous client team, and the most troubling chunk of work appears to have been done already.

i had lunch with the client team, which was fun, and then a long chat with sailor; mostly about protoplasm, but i also apologized for arguing when in reality we were both talking about two very different things - it was comforting that even after i explained where we diverged, it still required clarification, which meant it wasn't like i'd missed something obvious :P

i had to cut him short in order to get back to work, but to be fair we were both excited by a direction i'd given him for a therapeutic game...

in the evening, i left the office and warned mr smear we'd be going out rollerblading, which was met with a bad attitude. gd and i together managed to navigate it, i rotated my wheels while he got his on, and by the time we left the apartment he was in a good frame of mind.

he actually did rather well - he's exploring downhill control and becoming an ambi-turner - and it was a fun ride. on the way back we happened past two guys with pit bulls, and omg i miss my brother's twins. mr smear's introduction to one of them was it pushing itself up against him, i think he now has a better sense of what raw power feels like :P

we showered, talked to my mom, and had dinner. dinner was great, but i may have made a mistake dipping a marshmallow into the scorpion pepper sauce. i found the place where melts in your mouth meets melts your mouth, and aside from my tears i could tell you precisely where in my digestive tract the results were located for quite a while after.

i was tired, but i knew that i wouldn't sleep well if i went straight to bed, so i sat down to slowly but surely figure out how to get AI playing with unity. it took me about two and a half hours to get an agent using the unity mcp, and then half an hour to go from being impressed by the results, to being absolutely, literally amazed.

this is a game changer.

[pun not intended]

the stretch / eyeball melting

 sleep journal entry: i was so tired from the night before that i mostly slept well; when i got up in the middle of the night, it was very briefly and primarily due to a stuffed nose.

...

we're just about at the end of the month, and i just looked at my personal timesheets:

20 hours for my employer

50 hours for my auto-doc

105 hours for my client

...

 got up around 6am yesterday morning, and the first thing i encountered online absolutely stunned me (and, soon after, gd as well) and struck a devastating blow: protoplasm had posted a beautiful photo of him and his girlfriend a couple of days ago, but it wasn't at all clear that what prompted it was that last sunday, he woke up to discover that she had passed away in her sleep.

it's so completely and utterly wrong, and i cannot imagine the horror he's going through. we had quite a lengthy talk last night, he's holding up as well as can be expected and i'm grateful to know that he's got friends and family around him supporting him, but i feel bad being so far away and unable to be there in person.

...

from 6.45am until 6pm i was almost exclusively at my desk. the first couple of hours were putting the finishing touches on the auto-doc mvp and publishing my first article on the auto-doc, which was incredibly exciting but also tempered - as has been everything else - by the protoplasm news. the auto-doc is officially out there, and i'm praying it's picked up the way that i believe it should be and i'm fantasizing it will be.

the main thing i'm supposed to be working on for my client has been stuck in a holding pattern waiting on other people to click buttons, so my client work day became primarily about implementing my golang service post-incident recommendations which involved an inordinate amount of getting AI to not lie to me. in the afternoon i invested some time in writing up a one-pager and configuring the auto-doc for the client's infrastructure, which resulted in me stumbling across the SVP engineering's attempt to do the same work i'm doing (in the golang service), and politely messaging him to explain that i've already succeeded, and am simply in testing to prevent any further incidents.

thank god my software engineering efforts live and die by git graph being my primary interface to any codebase, if he'd "fixed" something without my context i might've had quite a time of paying for the merge :/

[though, in retrospect, i *could* have just excised his changes and written them off as wasted effort, but i'm still glad i caught him in time]

nystire came over and we took a walk through the park with mr smear, who'd had a little more exercise yesterday than i had, and i'm still being amused by mr smear's reaction when nystire suggested that we could always sell his kidneys to buy a gaming machine 😂

he's offered to take us stargazing with him in a couple of weeks, and mr smear and i are very much looking forward to it!

my sister had arrived home shortly before we got back, and everyone else helped with getting dinner on the table while i quietly fell apart from exhaustion. i managed to pull myself back together for dinner, then excused myself after a long conversation about protoplasm and my sister's friends and other-side-of-the-family's dealings with illness and death and bad behaviors to shower and talk to protoplasm and then say goodnight to mr smear and go to bed myself.

...

i did kick off the async game jam thing yesterday, but i was so tired there was no way i was going online :P

i've given up on the mastodon experiment and deleted my accounts. not only were they not providing me any real value, but they've become cesspool echo chambers of the regressive left and i couldn't find any communities with shared values or active members.

stopped

 we joined our upstairs friends for dinner last night (pot luck), and it was a lovely evening. my second drink of the day, and their couch was soooo... couch. we haven't had a couch in weeks, and i was - as the quebecois say - bean grease.

we all came downstairs and crashed hard.

...

i woke up late this morning, after a pretty full night's sleep. then i did random stuff - beginning with a painful attempt to upgrade the comics i made two weeks ago (needs a paid gemini subscription, and i couldn't find any easily-installable plugins for gimp to use AI), and then mr smear and i watched an episode of solo leveling on crunchyroll, and then i passed out for another hour and a half.

in the afternoon - aside from eating a lot - i began trying to set up paybox young for mr smear, which meant me signing up for an additional credit card of my own which i'm not happy about. but after doing the math, i discovered that just in terms of pocket money alone (plus doubling any unused for savings) he's already unwittingly earned enough money that the bank fees are covered by the compound interest, so it's worth it.

only... he has to install a different paybox app, and it can only be installed from the israeli app store, and our family account is still canadian and it's not possible to sign in to a different account on a managed phone.

*sigh*

after much digging - again - i learned that the only way to resolve this problem is to create a new family account from a different email, then migrate everyone on our family account. which isn't a huge problem, because we closed our canadian bank accounts last year so we don't really need to be on the canadian store any more, but it's really annoying because child accounts can only be transferred after a one-week waiting period. because reasons.

so i've done half the migration, and i guess we'll see how things go next week.

mr smear and i took a pleasant walk around our "backyard" park - park hayarkon - and after eventually extricating mr smear from the exercise machines we stumbled across what appeared to be a juggling school, which was quite fun to watch.

then we returned home, and i jumped on a call with protoplasm for our first catch-up in forever, and then it was dinner time, and getting mr smear into bed a half an hour late time, and then shower time, and now... i dunno, i'll probably go to bed soon.

not with a bang, but a whimper

 that's how my weekend's ending, although to be fair it was mostly excellent in additional to being wildly successful on the mobile app front. it took me most of today but i've finally got the thing working really nicely and now it's just a couple of features shy - and i believe they're minor ones.

friday was a great and satisfying work day, saturday was a very sabbath-y sabbath and after my mom picked up mr smear in the late afternoon gd and i headed off to protoplasm's where he and his partner had put together a phenomenal vegan meal for a few more people than actually arrived. we had an awesome time, we ate too much, we got home just before curfew and we both passed out soon after (i did try to watch primal, which looks amazing, but i fell asleep on the couch).

today had a couple of rough patches but was primarily about mr smear discovering that he could make stop-motion videos while i made slow and steady progress, and when the miserable weather cleared up the three of us went for an enjoyable walk in the company gardens.

i'm a little disappointed in the tattoo artist, who had forgotten to put me in the book for yesterday, but i'm actually relieved 'cause it would probably have messed up my evening.

gd's just gone to bed, i've just pushed my last changes for the day, and i guess i need a cup of tea and a little decompression before i crash 'cause my brain's still buzzing.

...

on the health front, it hasn't been such a great weekend. the back of my head's very tender and a bit swollen (apparently it might be related to my neck) and whatever's going on with my neck has been causing me pain down my left arm into my hand. which for the most part has been fine today, except now that i typed this out my thumb's hurting. well played, me, well played.

one, two, skip a few...

wednesday & thursday:

a blur of work, very interesting architecture discussions and right now i don't recall much anything that happened at home except that i was practicing for yesterday's torah reading and time just felt like it was slipping away. and while i can't recall specifics, this whole week has been filled with feeling very proud of mr smear and having quite a lot of fun with him. oh! it's been really cool reading him the jungle book as well as stories and poems by miriam yelen shtekalis.

friday:

it was a slow start to the day, i worked out of the gym and while i remembered to take a sweater i managed to leave it at the door. it was freaking COLD. halfway through the day, though, i realized that i can (and should) take my swimming trunks with me whenever i go, and just jump in the jacuzzi a couple of times a day! and take a sweater.

i finally completed my first task (pending integration testing) and spent a good chunk of the workday fiddling with git branches. note to the world: setting up sourcetree and meld on a mac makes an enormous difference to resolving merge conflicts!

yesterday:

my neck's really started hurting again.

i got to the temple a little less late than last week, the first part of the service was nice but then someone sat down near me (not sure which of the someones it was) who smelled like perfumed BO, it was a struggle not to gag and i had to move away. after the torah was taken out i sat down thinking "i have some time to go over my verses", not realizing that the rabbi had assigned me the morning's opening verses and when he called me my heart started pounding in my chest, throat and temples. stage fright again. so i started reading, and then something seemed to happen to my eyes and it became difficult to make out the words.

it was only after the barmitzvah that i learned the reason: the torah scroll we were reading out of is actually a holocaust survivor; it was stolen from a synagogue in czechoslovakia, and after world war ii was sent to london, fixed up about twenty years later and then made its way to cape town. so that's a thing.

i came home intending to rest a bit, other stuff happened and then eventually we all went down to the pool for a really nice hour or two. between the pre-pool and us leaving for protoplasm's 40th birthday party, i managed to make some good progress on an app i've been building for the last couple of weeks and i'm really happy with it so far!

my mom came over to deliver a few new superhero books for mr smear and babysit, we went out to the birthday party and had a lot of fun! we ended up having to leave in a hurry around midnight, but not after meeting some very interesting people and possibly making a fantastic connection for the sonnetcomix project!

this morning:

mr smear woke up around 4am from a nightmare, and wouldn't go back to sleep so i stayed with him for a couple of sleepless hours. load-shedding kicked off at 6am, at which point i learned that the UPS i've hooked the modem up to isn't working at all. as it was light, i moved back to my bed and let gd handle mr smear and his new beloved collection of books, waking up a couple of hours later to find the two of them passed out on the other side of the bed with the books stacked neatly next to them.

sshhhhh... he's napping

sunday 15th:

a pretty good sleep, coffee and brunch with my uncle on a perfect misty including a lovely stroll on the promenade and followed by a great walk in the green point park

invoicing, shopping, relaxing
the great washing machine failure

slowly ending the weekend with books and a little gaming

monday 16th:

Getting Stuff Done (mostly making appointments), certified copy magic (the police do it quickly for free), autumnal green, one more thing (before SARS demands biometrics), a long time leaving, washing attempt one, the bank (a bad time to whisper codes in french), noticing mr smear needed a bath, the pharmacy, a quick supermarket run, desperately hungry on the way home, dropping pringles on the way to washing attempt two, working into the night but i think i (or my network connection) irritated the woman doing the remote installation

tuesday 17th:

4am working until night terror time, exhaustion and frustration starting the day

waking up to a busy mr smear, who was turning both ways, the rush to the fascia release specialist, who happens to be our neighbour who was brought into the building by the woman who left our apartment a few months ago, who we were referred to by the chiropractor who we were referred to by the abdominal specialist; at the same time gd was advised to take up pilates days after we found a pilates physiotherapist next door when we accidentally got out on the wrong floor of a building

the raw vegan experience: family unfriendly, active-wear wearers, and although the food was delicious it was - as always - misrepresented. a slice of bread with a pile of food on top is not a sandwich

the rush to the therapist - with a quick stop to drop something off at the tax consultant and make an idiot move her car after she'd blocked off the sidewalk - an encouraging session and mr smear's first proper encounter with dogs (he loved it)

coming straight home, being woken (groggy) to let the technicians in; two days without a washing machine and it turns out it was a faulty socket, an afternoon with an inexplicably unhappy mr smear and gd's agonizing recovery

indian pickup lies enraging me

wednesday 18th:

mr smear crying a lot, but it's never clear if it's for real

meeting the bull (our landlord), a very different experience dealing directly with him, furniture shopping and praying nobody got TB, or fleas, buying a high chair
not just a landlord but an MMA man, work, getting soaked taking clothes to mom's dryer, a little GoT

thursday 19th:

big waves, a sour start to the morning, a disturbing computer issue, pre-breakfast second-hand furniture: the sacrifice of dealing with dishonest, bigoted, creepy people; the delivery (scraped floors and two missing nails from the hinges), rearranging and angry lunch and being tired and exchanging rugs and mr smear on my shoulders for the first time and more rearranging and a big shopping and mom's visit and a little work and protoplasm's visit and a little more work before crashing

friday 20th:

remembering how to stand at work, an emergency egg-run and not wanting to live anywhere else, trying to work, a pharmacy run, prepping for dinner, finding parking with my mother, a lovely friday night dinner with krybabie and co, upsetting his wife about her daughter's resemblance to his sisters, managing to get mr smear home without waking him but needing to change him on arrival

saturday 21st:

tired and busy, returning the borrowed dining room set and rushing lunch unnecessarily and late coffee at my aunt's

sunday 22nd:

a good night's sleep and a restful morning
promenade coffee and oversized sparkling water
john carpenter's cigarette burns
a successful waterfront mission, having my mom over for dinner
GoT, putting everyone to bed and preparing for customs handling on all the stuff pg's been storing for me these past few years

monday 23rd:

becoming frustrated at some ungodly hour when mr smear refused to be put in his crib; my original plan was to be awake all night but that's not looking like such a good idea until we get all our basic needs squared away

hyper emotional wedding video viewing

getting shit done (and enjoying an entertaining cup of coffee) while wait for gd's physio, finding the tailor, the closed restaurant resulting in a spar lunch

the chewbacca excitement and resulting bad-fit disappointment, the positive return experience from takealot (later cancelled), the i'm-not-giving-any-more-details-over-the-phone call from my new bank

backgammon reintroduced
woman down
a long night compiling

tuesday 24th:

not an easy night, waking up to a gd without internet access, the baby centre and baby brain, mr smear's vaccine, newport deli breakfast
therapy and loving dogs
a walk to the doctor
passing out for a quick rest then getting stuff done
getting mr smear to sleep while picking up documents from my mom
GoT and a great dinner
money delays and amusement
pleasant work, foot massage

wednesday 25th:

2am bedtime together, probably not a good idea

pampers pants: a couple of minor incidents followed by a wet bed and a soiled stroller later, we now know what we now know that plenty of other parents have already said online. pampers SUCKS. they have products with micro-beads, gels that leak, badly sized tabs, and dangerous chemicals in certain products that literally burn infants. how do they get away with this? the hot coffee thing?

early up (with difficulty), the chiropractor (though i'm almost certain the relief won't last), formally opening a new bank account

nap time, an outing for diapers but forgetting the diapers, interviewing a maid, the walk / run and return outside for forgotten diapers (again)

dinner interrupted by a major diaper leak which escalated into an unproductively traumatic night

thursday 26th:

waking up hot and bothered
a nap
bank card pickup
turning around in woodstock
lunch downstairs, a quick walk
work, feeling sick, time out from work, dinner and a walkthrough, passing out on the couch,

friday 27th:

transferring to the bed at 2am and a few difficult wakeups with mr smear

waking up with a jolly mr smear just before the maid arrived
running late to the physio again
coming home to a clean apartment and the latest data from nutritionfacts.org

mr smear's first orange, the tailor, coffee, and the fish

the salary fee: my employer chose to pay me as a service, for which paypal takes an enormous fee. according to the agent i spoke to, salaries are meant to go through as transfers to friends or family... fortunately i managed to get my new employer to redo the transfer. thanks, paypal, and thanks government controls for making this harder than it needs to be. at least i now know how effective direct visa transfers are, so next month will be better.

a nap, getting ready for shabbat dinner, and a lovely evening at my uncle's with my sister's and cousin's families

saturday 28th:

a decent night but mr smear waking up early; bringing him into our bed where he was quite chilled until i was ready to get up, when i discovered that he'd filled his diaper and for the first time in a while when it counted it hadn't leaked everywhere

a serious back spasm to start a beautiful saturday morning, a pleasant experience switching out my rentacheapie car
driving back into the mist
nap day + visiting mom
letdown stress
call-a-pizza (solid salad) and GoT and letdown and mr smear's nightmares

sunday 29th:

a rough start, but a good rescue and brunch with airplane; successful furniture shopping with my mom, a rush to prep for dinner
delicious kale soup and bagels, another diaper dis-ass-ter
GoT

monday 30th:

another day of difficulty getting up, then aggression followed by wallowing in depression
the adelphi stalker, hardware non-advice, more breastfeeding complications than a mere winged insect

where did the afternoon go? (as usual)
mom's birthday visit, sealing windows, dinner and GoT

trying to figure out what to do for work

tuesday 31st:

learning how visual studio's unit tests are simple and extremely useful debugging tools (no need to install / uninstall services and attach processes), actually being engaged and working through to 3am

(witnessing mr smear's cutest moment, turning over and ta-ta-talking in his sleep)

sleeping in a little after the maid arrived, quick shopping followed by a quick return followed by some relaxing breakfast business

the "quick" outing to the waterfront, then the cape quarter, then canal walk; finding half of what we were looking for, experiencing the full range of road insanity along the way, mom's visit, rushed dinner, mr smear's refusal to sleep and later cramps

wednesday 1st:

me&you mobile being extremely unprofessional, some more solid hours playing with visual studio unit tests, another 3am night

another busy morning (although considerably more sleep than the day before), the physio, the first preschool call, scheckter's raw - delicious, but not particularly filling and i think i offended the guy at our shared table with my derision of "juicers", back home to go out again, the doctor, the pork pill confession, money puzzles followed by a long work night

thursday 2nd:

calling it a night at 4am
no rest for the wicked, busy morning and a fun hour with the therapist: she seems to be losing it, but her dogs playing with mr smear was totally awesome
a couple of short naps that barely made a difference, an attempt to take a walk to enjoy an incredible sunset that was overtaken by concern for a man on a bench who looked like he was going to die there (but he was too mobile for the emergency services to "waste their time")

mom coming over for a quick visit, helping us put mr smear to bed and giving us a chance to eat dinner and watch GoT

a long night of hard work

friday 3rd:

3am to bed, early up to rush to the chiropractor; fantastic job, but immediately compromised by my having to hold mr smear for gd's treatment

hurrying home, urgent napping, a stressful afternoon working through what i would later realize was me getting sick, missing mom and rushing off to dinner alone, initial awkwardness, a really nice dinner, back to work

saturday 4th:

3am, sleeping like a log and waking up with a horrible sore throat and feeling utterly wasted; whatever illness i've been cooking having been brought to a boil

acupuncturist, plant (shared new parent table), the waterfront, home for a short nap, an attempt to go for a walk but the cold wind sending us to my mom's where i passed out for a while

pizza burn (jalapeño) and lots of ginger (ale)

sunday 5th:

early morning furniture shopping (win! in spite of the dodgy salesmen), baby shopping (win! in spite of the sick kids), terrible drivers and smokers are assholes (a new father under the no smoking sign in an enclosed space next to the baby city entrance and his daughter), a lovely lunch (and the quebec city couple at the table next to us), home for a breather and then off for a walk to enjoy the gorgeous afternoon, the kid's park, smoothies, bumping into the quebec city couple again, another short walk through a different, even cooler park

no energy for date night, a relaxed evening being inspired by the first half of michael moore's where to invade next and then suddenly feeling terrible again and crashing urgently

monday 6th:

mr smear having a decent night but me struggling with sinusitis, waking up to a beautiful morning soured by the realization that the asshole contractor still hasn't done anything about our floors

the good handyman, a slow morning trying to rest, reading a bit, struggling with mr smear (trying to clean an angry, writhing boy is impossible), a shopping mission ending stressed by human traffic, back home to try out our new drying setup - why does anyone use a tumble dryer?! we have a spindle and an electric clothes dryer and they're not only cheaper and better for the environment but they're a far sight more effective and convenient

some GoT and a big dinner and trying to nap before work

tuesday 7th:

but waking up at 1am unable to breathe, about half an hour trying to reset my sinuses and then three hours of work

sleeping in (thanks to the cleaning lady), the asshole contractor making us REALLY angry by leaving early after jerking us around for two weeks; getting him to come back (and being amazed that he's using sandpaper instead of a sander), heading off to the department of home affairs for a surprisingly pleasant encounter and a deep sigh of relief, truth coffee baby talk, mr smear cancelling our trip to the company gardens by passing out on the way

big shopping, settling into our apartment which is really beginning to feel like we're serious about it (even if money's still tight, we're definitely getting more comfortable and are starting to need less urgently)

gd's big dinner just for me, completing where to invade next? (warmly recommended, great documentary), and making some important advances in spite of a sinus headache

wednesday 8th:

on the whole, a pretty shitty day in spite of the lovely weather. the varnish job. mr smear's heavy allergies. the physio visit, the ultraviolet gym inspection. coming home to walk and not walking. sleeping on the floor by the crib. still not walking, the second varnish job and the "no you're not smoking cigarettes on my balcony". the walk cancelled due to sunshine and wind. mom's place stopover, rearrangement stress and mom visit (and pharmacy delivery), the relentless mr smear and an uncomfortable gd and finally getting to work on sore legs

thursday 9th:

around 3am, after realizing that i was on the verge of passing out, mr smear woke with a fever and it would take over an hour and a half to get him back to sleep

things we didn't learn in school: sealing rooms against cold and wind causes breathing problems and mold. extraction fans in bathrooms need to be running both while the bath or shower is taking place and for at least fifteen minutes after leaving the room.

scraping another section of the floor right after finally getting the damage repaired, a mansplaining note, a power nap, waiting for the contractor to fix another issue that he caused and not only did he not show, but the caretaker had the audacity to say to me that we're giving them problems - no more nice and polite, that snivelling drunkard will learn to watch his step with me

gd's first (from scratch) soup, the bananas of wrath, the apology nap, the long good night mr smear with my mom's assistance, the superette run and getting mr smear into bed, dinner and GoT

friday 10th:

working hard but not getting very far, a couple of tough wakings but sleeping *really* well

my first cardio in over ten months: not bad, much needed, difficult to remember not to push too hard

a big lunch (gd's new soup), an afternoon spent absent-mindedly working and trying to take mr smear for a walk in the cold wind and struggling with him after his nap and GoT (okay, we finally know why the world was upset about the wedding) and managing bank accounts and credit cards and worrying about forex

saturday 11th:

a good night's sleep, introducing my wife to yakko, wakko and dot on a saturday morning. my gods, the animaniacs get even better as we get older!

rock on!

örmagörd! gonna see foo fighters in cape town (^_^)

freakin' AWESOME.

not so much resting or relaxing - part v

[... continued]

---thursday:

thursday was consistently crap, beginning with the electricity being cut when i was mid-shave. at least the water was still running, 'cause that would've been way worse. it was a beautiful morning that was properly soured by bnw's husband posting an ugly piece of anti-zionist propaganda on my wall, and what followed would only be (relatively) resolved much later and only yesterday did something positive come out of the whole thing. i don't need to convince you to love israel, i just need to convince you to avoid media bias and misinformation. more on that later, or some other time.

because my phone wasn't working i wasn't sure if the bank had called me to collect my card, so i went *again* and was disappointed *again*.

---on my way to work i bought a headset because i'd read up on my microphone problems. for the iphone 4 there's really not much you can do about it (i tried cleaning the various mics). i made a call i'd been needing to make, the headset worked perfectly for about five minutes and then *IT* stopped working. wtf?!?!

just then, just after i'd tried calling back three times and resetting with no luck, gd contacted me upset because [okay, i'm going to have to leave this out]. when i called her and she couldn't hear me and that made things worse i flew into a silent, seething rage. i furiously messaged her - messaging is NOT an appropriate medium for furious communications - and then told my boss i needed a couple of hours to get myself a new phone. i was originally going to head downtown to the apple store, but he sagely pointed out the bell office across the road.

score!

i walked in, silently suffered the salesman's manipulations and examined my options*. i finally walked out with a two year contract that costs $5 more (for an extra 2gb of data), a two year warranty that includes water damage (i've learned my lesson) and a shiny green iphone 5c.

* there weren't many, really. and i was a little annoyed about aota having taken a new phone with my current contract and leaving me with a refurb, but later i'd remember that the company was paying my phone bills so we're definitely square.

...

örmagörd: in the two days that i've had it, i've realized just how much poorer my quality of life was for the bad performance and utterly shite connectivity of my previous phone. perhaps naming it gir was looking for trouble? the new one is subject b.o.b. and his cover, which is on its way, is a scanner from the purchase menu :D

of course, as i called gd on my way back to the office it started raining. #$@!#$#@$%%!
and she was working, so she was annoyed because she thought it was a pocket dial.

i spoke to my mum quickly, and for that i needed the headset i'd bought in the morning so at least it wasn't a complete waste. i felt a little awkward when i remembered that i was using the corporate network for a personal call, but i don't know why that should bother me.

later, when i got home, i'd be intensely grateful that itunes restores backups so beautifully. it's an absolute blessing!

---i stayed really late to make up the hours, switching from phpstorm to enide because the former is incredibly annoying to use. the latter's just like any flavour of eclipse, only it can't perform a proper search through javascript code. i don't know how that got through, so now i don't know which ide to use and i'm fairly close to reverting to a combination of notepad++ and vi. that should tell you everything you need to know about the current state of tools available for software development.

...

i briefly logged in to crunchyroll when i got home. i love what they've got, even if their selection is rather limited, but it bothers me that they don't have dubbed versions available. i prefer subs myself, but for gd it's too much of a strain :(

i spent the night doing organizing things and finding and customizing images for my phone. its appearance is important to me. it looks really cool now and with the cover it's going to be magnificent!

---friday:

i woke up from crazy dreams. my notes from those dreams were: houseboat saving a book, making servants' lives difficult, conflict in israel over three celebrities posing together, mom pointing them out but i didn't understand

i woke up to see that protoplasm had been to a wolfmother concert. i'm pretty damned jealous. and my music collection's only getting larger as the salaried weeks go by :P
speaking of which, i've just discovered google play music, so gd and i can shared my itunes music library. AWESOME!
well played, google. well played.

[continued...]

return to the poutine routine - part i

it's been an intense (almost) week since i left cape town! i guess i got used to being on holiday. the weird part of being on holiday from unemployment is that it was still, in all senses, a holiday. huh?

regarding weather and snowboarding, it turns out i had absolutely perfect timing! after i left the weather became (relatively) warm and rainy, and the first snow opportunity was on the day after i returned. thank you, montreal!

---last wednesday:

after posting, i went upstairs to pay my uncle a visit. he's really ill and uncomfortable, but he was only too happy to talk and so we did that for a while. it was interesting to receive support for what had only just become my backup plan; later over drinks with my aunt and tgtbt at the winchester mansions my plan would be received just as warmly. so far the only person who hasn't thought much of it is my cousin in england - he had very valid things to say about it. the decision won't be made lightly, though. and life is funny, there really aren't right answers so i can only do my best. and right now, my best is to not need any damned backup plans!

packing went smoothly, there was no pressure and after drinks my mother drove me to the airport: the sunset was achingly beautiful with a full moon just showing over transcendent purples. it's usually hard to leave cape town, but this time? after three glorious weeks of full-being massage?

my mum and i had just enough time to talk and eat (though the wimpy service was so slow we almost scrapped the eating part), and laugh about the woman who appeared to be smuggling jewelry by disguising it as a boot decoration.

...

the first thing i saw on the plane was a guy reading maus, which made me smile because tgtbt and i had been using it to explain to her mother why my "comics" don't need to be funny :P

what a difference being able to read my kindle and listen to music during take-off and landing! i can't believe the rules have finally changed, and now that they're official i'm far more comfortable :)

note to self: never again, given the choice, book a seat that isn't near the back of the plane. i had to share four seats with a man on the other end, and he passed out before we even left the ground. that gave me three seats to myself and i made full use of them ^_^


---thursday:

i watched the fifth estate, which wasn't bad - it's a decent story and didn't feel overly treated. it's also very, VERY relevant. we're in trouble, people.. as i've said many times before, internet access and privacy are the weapons of the 21st century; "the right to bear arms" that the americans are all excited about has nothing to do with antiquated bullshit like guns.

i started watching world war z, which i'd finish on the second flight. it's really not a bad zombie movie, but it's Just Another Zombie Flick. what the hell does it have to do with the book of the same name?! it's a completely different take on zombies, the story isn't even similar to *anything* in the text. whether or not you enjoyed the film, if you're at all interested in humans, zombies, humanity in the face of apocalypse or zombie mythology at it's very cleverest you should read the book. the book is brilliant!

...

changing clothes in london was easy enough. i was asked loads of personal questions coming through immigration, just like before, but again i played nice and they let me through. the long tube ride was just more reason to keep listening to the techno protoplasm had provided me with - that would keep me going for days. it's so good!

it was a beautiful day in london! it did rain a bit, but mostly it was sunny and not very cold :)

the helpful guy at the station didn't know how to get to the specific place i was looking for, but he directed me to what he thought was the right area (turned out it would have been far quicker to walk than take the bus). i loved the fact that he seemed to be caught off-balance by my obvious tourist demeanor and my suddenly british accent. my south african accent may be off, but at least i still have something not-americanized :P

i found myself at a bp station (having just been in one in cape town to fill up the rental, that felt odd) asking for directions, and the guy working the shop was really nice but couldn't find my destination using google maps. fortunately the shop had map books for sale, and he had no problem letting me grab one for a minute - i found the place in a second and thanked the man profusely before heading out. while there, an israeli came in to buy chewing gum. it seemed the most arbitrary place to hear half-asleep hebrew...

i had coffee with my cousin and his son; it was great to see them and we talked until they had to get back to work. i walked back to the subway, decided i needed a bathroom and entered a subway; i'd already ordered my lunch when i realized that they didn't have washrooms at all :(
my brain was mostly offline by that point, i was embarrassed when i realized that i'd asked the guy behind the counter if the veggie patties were vegetarian when i'd meant to ask if they contained any dairy. no matter, he probably wouldn't have known anyway...

[continued...]

farewells

since sunday's trip up platteklip, my legs have been as sore or more than my attempt on the elliptical. so i'm feeling like an old man and i'm satisfied with myself simultaneously :P

the "saying goodbye" phase of this visit is both depressing and comforting! my head's spinning with all the last-minute information, such as a job offer and connections i've received which would cushion my fall if i had to leave montreal, the rediscovered family and some exposed familial skeletons that have fallen out the closet; on my way here i was consumed by thoughts of mail-order husbandry, on my way there it'll be by thoughts of french and work and backup plans.

monday:

getting lost in obs treated me to an excellent vegan sandwich and good coffee. protoplasm's workshop is very cool indeed, i know he's not in full swing and profitable yet but it's great to see that he's on his way :)

he completely blew my mind when he informed me that he was recovering from food poisoning - which he'd gotten before the party on saturday! he was horribly sick and had to be so in chemical toilets, but he wouldn't leave or say anything because he didn't want to ruin our fun! that's insane, even if he did manage to enjoy himself and the music in spite of how he was feeling. i will never be more impressed by a designated driver in my life.

neil gaiman's commencement speech which i watched on airplane's insistence - okay, he didn't have to insist too much - is brilliant and funny and validating; he's saying what i've been saying for years but in a much better way and with more authority :)

my mum and i went to say goodbye to my niece and her husband, my sister's husband and kids and the new sisters-in-law, then returned home for dinner with my aunt and uncle puberty. i then headed off to visit an old friend i haven't seen in years, met his wife and glimpsed his daughter before settling in to chat until it felt pretty late.

---yesterday:

i went to the cape quarter early to look for a specific piece of jewelry for shadowslight's mother's birthday, and walked in to a store manned (or womanned) by a girl i went to school with and who claims only recognized me because of facebook. it's funny, she wasn't good-looking at all as a teenager and has become quite attractive; we chatted for a while and then i left to meet my mother for coffee and be introduced to two of her co-workers.

there's something deeply entertaining about hearing my mother referred to as "battle-axe" :D

i filled the car with petrol and returned it, then walked to the comic / game store to spend some time with another old friend before hyperviper picked me up and we went to the wellness center for lunch. i thought we were going to eat together, but he disappeared and i ate alone. the food was really good, anyway, and i ran into a guy i knew from the dance crew who i'd seen on saturday night.

i went to rick's for a couple of drinks with hyperviper, who then drove me back to sea point to have coffee with my brother. i walked hom from there along main road, my mother picked me up and we went to the golf course (metropolitan is gorgeous) for shadowslight's mom's birthday party. i was introduced to a woman who's apparently my first cousin once removed, who was very excited to meet family she likes. i jumped in on a conversation about psychology not knowing that the woman speaking holds a chair in a psychology department; i told her about my zombies thesis and she was so excited she invited me to teach a seminar. hah!

after a great dinner and more alcohol, we went home and my sister picked me up and we went to call-a-pizza. the pizza was delicious and the music was great (though i expected to purchase more than one disc, but whatever), and we talked about a couple of things that really upset me.

1. my niece's new husband did and does things that are deeply disturbing, and unfortunately my niece is so stubborn that nobody can advise her. all we can do is hope for the best, or at least that if she gets hurt that it's not too badly, and support her as much as we can. i really, really hope that our fears aren't realized and that they're happy together.

2. my brother's behaviour has been even worse than i thought.

in other news, my sister's had some interesting paranormal experiences since her mother's passing that are inexplicable, i don't know how much is coincidence and charlatanism or how much is for real, but if it's the former nobody will ever be able to prove it and if it's the latter it would destabilize my world view. fortunately for me i don't need to worry too much about that right now.

protoplasm rocked up and we went to rafiki's for drinks after deciding that heartache & vine wasn't the place to be. amongst the other topics of discussion he proposed a stupidly simple way to get around the infuriatingly silly laws about working for compensation without a permit*, so if things get interesting i might have an option to earn.

* working for entities outside the country, that is

---today:

languishing in bed, enjoying my last proper sleep until i get back to montreal. walking to my niece's mother-in-law's salon for a pedicure after which i barely recognize my feet, they're not so hippie anymore. getting a cheap (R45) haircut at adelphi center (not very professional, but decent enough) and then lunch at xiang yuan (what an insanely dodgy place!). i shaved my beard for the immigration officials, showered and am now about to make a couple of calls and pack my bags.

aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

reset, re-rooted

how do i describe the indescribable? this weekend was defined by magic, an introduction to the ledhedz bus, a small subset of the afrikaburn community and what's apparently called techno but doesn't sound anything like what i thought was techno. i'm officially a convert!

chasing that with a hike up to the top of table mountain on a gorgeous day only served to reinforce my reconnection to this city's power.

the past couple of weeks have been incredible, i feel reset and reconnected, and i'm quite bummed about the fact that there're only another couple of days left before i'm out of here. i love montreal and i know i can't stay here, but i really don't want to leave!

---friday:

i was going to go shopping but decided to spend the stunning sunny afternoon on the beach with sagirl instead - a much better idea! after an incident a few years back when i got burned during a really quick beach visit, i was a little concerned in spite of having put on sunscreen. after a while lying on my belly facing away from sagirl, enjoying the sun on my back, i suddenly felt like my skin was tingling and just at that moment sagirl piped up: "totalwaste, are getting paranoid about being burned? well you can stop, i'll let you know when you need to worry."

whoa (O_o)

...

granadilla lollies cost R20, which is ridiculous. they're also a little smaller than i remember, even if they're just as awesome.

...

my aunt and her kids came over for drinks and debate, which was a lot of fun, and on tgtbt's recommendation my mother and i went to takumi for dinner. firstly, the place is beautiful and the service is excellent. there weren't any vegan options but everything looked really good so i decided to do the sushi experience properly: boy, am i glad i did! everything was absolutely delicious and well presented, by the end my mother couldn't eat any more and i finished everything only because it tasted so good. win!

---saturday:

dreams of airports after america enforces anti-modesty laws to filter out the religious, and about staying in a small community in a generically foreign country.

...

my mother and i went shopping in town. from the parade through grand central and golden acre, we managed to find a pair of shorts for me. it was only when we hit st george's mall that i found a hat i liked, and we did a full browse of greenmarket square before i figured out what beads to buy.

---i hate markets and i hate bargaining. i hate the fact that a conversation about price begins with an outright lie in an attempt to cheat someone out of as much as possible. the whole experience offends me... but somehow, in spite of my feelings of disgust, i seem to have picked up a thing or two while in israel. apparently i've become a tough negotiator, because i walked off with what i wanted at only slightly more than my initial shock-value offer!

the moment that most entertained me was walking away after telling a seller that i wasn't interested in arguing and that i'd give her two minutes to consider my proposal. she changed her tune when i returned.

i can't say i enjoyed doing that, but at least i'm not feeling jipped about my purchases.

---on the way we saw some amazing artwork in the area! we would have gone to crave for lunch but they didn't have vegan options and the guy behind the counter was totally disinterested, so we went to kauai instead where the food was great and the staff pleasant.

the sailors were barbequeing on the beach but that didn't really fit with my other plans, so i decided to go with protoplasm to the party in hillcrest quarry. that didn't actually fit with my other plans either, but i didn't really think about it properly and in retrospect i'm rather glad i didn't :P

---i'm not sure where to begin with the ledhedz bus party. i hadn't thought to bring a sweater and when we arrived the wind was up and it was too chilly to swim, so i'd worn boardies under my shorts for nothing. fortunately we kept warm on the dance floor :)

the subset of the afrikaburn crowd was something i couldn't get a handle on the entire afternoon / night, every now and then i'd register that the only odd man out was me because it was my first event. the crowd included people i went to school with and my niece's new sisters-in-law, which was quite funny and cool.

the music when we arrived was terrible, and the dj after played a lot of empty beats which was boring. after that, though, things got real. the fact that i had deeply entered an alternative state of mind made my introduction to what techno has evolved into an insane experience, i simply could not get a handle on what i was hearing and i've been informed that that's more or less the point. there's something so incredibly strange about dancing to a beat that changed two seconds ago but in such a subtle way that you're not sure why you're off, and something very cool about music that involves such a wide range of electronic that within a single minute you can be standing and nodding your head, dancing like it's disco and stomping like it's psy!

my hippie feet served me well the whole night, i'm extremely glad that i've maintained them so nicely :D

using the public toilets barefoot wasn't too bad - they were kept pretty clean - but there was a moment towards the end of the evening when i was standing by the urinal:
i was in the act when an arm shot across my vision in a most disturbing manner. the guy next to me was trying to settle a can on the sill of the window above us, and i was certain that it'd fall on me the second he let go. eventually he got it right, though, but i still kept an eye on him - peripheral vision only, of course - and was horrified when i registered that he was swaying wildly and struggling to unzip. once he got that right and started to pee, he was too far away from the urinal and swaying too much to not miss at some point.
urinal etiquette be damned, i thought, i'm not having this guy wet my feet!
i told him that i would be very grateful if he would just take a step forward. i was so relieved when he obliged - i was so worried that in whatever state he was he might get aggressive - and i walked out of there with dry feet.

there were only two upsetting moments at the party:

the first was when a dj dropped a tune with a religious sample about jesus' second coming, there were a lot of people on psychedelics and that's *so* unfair whether it was done in jest or not... it actually ejected me from the dance floor for a while :(

the second was me telling protoplasm that i didn't know how i'd feel about the music if i'd been sober. i realized as i said it that it was the stupidest statement of the night because i'd feel exactly the same way, but he suddenly disappeared before i could take it back and i stressed about it for about five minutes until he returned and laughed at me :$

there were plenty of fantastic moments to more than make up for those, though, so that's alright :)

---yesterday:

i was most amused by the sexy german girl we'd gone with passing out on my shoulder while we waited for protoplasm with the car keys - you'd have to be pretty tired to find it comfortable enough :P

i was still high when i returned home at 4am, and only a little concerned about how i was going to get up four hours later to go hiking with airplane. i knew i needed to eat but the peanut butter on toast i made was far too sticky. my mother introduced me to coating it with marmalade, which i'll definitely remember next time as a bloody good idea! we talked for a bit before she went to bed, and it was then that the penny dropped that i only have a couple of days left to say goodbye to everyone...

... how did three weeks pass by so quickly?!

i got into bed but my subconscious was too busy turning imagined white noise into techno for me to sleep; i plugged in to my ipod and that drowned me out of consciousness pretty quickly. good timing, too, because in the morning the battery was drained so i finally remembered to charge it for the flights :P

...

i had no problem waking up, it was an absolutely stunning morning! i drove to airplane's and we headed out together to table mountain. it's cardio up (heavy breathing) and skeletal down (stressed knees), we didn't stop talking the entire way and had a really good time. we went to hudsons for burgers (their veggie burger's good even if it's crumbly) and drinks afterwards; about halfway through the meal the past day caught up with me and my system downshifted. we said goodbye and i drove home, showered and rested for fifteen minutes until my mother came home and we went out for drinks with cousins.

twice, with different cousins. and lots of drinks.

by the time we got home i was completely broken. i had just enough energy to eat my mother's first attempt at cooking tofu - not bad - and lie down on the couch, but suddenly i realized that i needed to brush my teeth and get into bed. i'm so proud of myself for not passing out on the way, i was that exhausted that i was sure that might happen!

---regarding david foster wallace - infinite jest: the whole marijuana addition thing is ridiculous, and it bothers me that people who read the book will have their understanding skewed. tgtbt is a case in point, i had to explain to her that even in such an extreme case, the marijuana is not the culprit. it's psychology, the person has a problem with or without it, and blaming a herb that isn't addictive is irresponsible especially when the world is finally beginning to wake up from the nightmare that the war on drugs and its disinformation have kept us in for the past forty years.

to be fair, the book was written in the nineties, but it still upsets me.

---listening to the news always bugs me. i think america should conquer syria, set up a puppet government and slowly turn the country into another of its states. considering the country's instability they wouldn't need to pretend to be doing anything else, like they are in iraq and afghanistan...

ushering in 2014 - the private party

[... continued]

i returned home to pack, and got some rest too because i couldn't get hold of protoplasm. when he finally returned my call he gave me directions that seemed simple enough and i jumped in the car and rolled out. driving along the coastal mountain road into the sunset was magnificent!

a slight mistake in the directions had me in the right place convinced that i was completely lost, but i soon found my way. the venue was a beautiful house in the heart of hout bay, i arrived just in time to jump in the pool to cool off and begin meeting all the really interesting people. it was awkward at first, as meeting new people usually is for me, but within a couple of hours it was clear that protoplasm's assessment that we'd all get along famously was entirely accurate. there was even one guy i went to school with who finally realized that i've evolved since those days and could be talked to without reservation :)

moments:

the actual countdown and cheers and things wasn't particularly interesting, loads of handshakes and hugs and cheers and chugs.

in mid-conversation standing next to a table beneath a ledge, someone on the ledge accidentally kicked over a crate filled with glass bottles in our direction. nothing broke and nobody was injured, but for a time i was trapped in a surreal state wherein i existed both in this timeline and the one in which there were terrible consequences.

one of the guys is an advocate for israel and he initiated a political discussion that got more involved and interesting as the night progressed, others joined in and things took a more philosophical and psychological turn, and by the end of the night we were discussing love and relationships and i realized that i'd never spent party-time in such an enjoyably cerebral fashion. very cool people indeed.

one guy wasn't being cool, though. i was sitting in front of the fire after sunrise and he was popping balloons by holding them over the fire. every pop led a cloud of ash to rise and blow into my face, which bothered me and i let him know. he picked up a water pistol and proceeded to shoot the fire, which had the same effect as the balloons popping. i moved to a different seat and rediscovered my innate ability to generate a large amount of guilt verbally with little effort. he finally stopped that shit.

after a glorious three hour nap on the couch, i got up to breakfast and help with the cleanup, along with protoplasm and a couple of the girls (one who lives there and made breakfast, the other who appears to be in protoplasm's sights). the black keys were playing in the background, it was all very perfect for a post-party january first.

and then it was time for a cup of ricoffy (quite the nostalgic taste) to get me ready to drive home and then out to the farm.

[continued...]

ending 2013 - part ii

[... continued]

sunday:

after a long while talking to sq i put myself to bed, enjoying deepest slumber. and crazy dreams of high adventure and war. i don't know if "enjoying" is the right word for the latter.

i woke up to a discussion with my mom that saw me entering rant mode; she questioned something in a way that irritated me and after getting defensive i looked it up and found that she was right. so that was an entirely unnecessary negative start to the day - fortunately it didn't continue in similar vein.

yang and i had some gift shopping we needed to do, so i picked him up from town and we headed to what used to be the sunday flea market. it's now the saddest little collection of uninteresting junk, we walked through utterly disappointed. fortunately, yang made a call and we learned about the gardens flea market so we headed there. still not amazing, but certainly closer to what we were looking for. i did see a few things i liked, and i found some cool t-shirts for myself, but i'm going to check out greenmarket square before making any final decisions.

we returned to godmother's best friend's house to relax by the pool with yin and yang and our cousins from london, and soon i received a call from airplane so i drove over to his place to spend a couple of hours with him and his girlfriend and a couple of ciders. it was really cool chilling with them, enjoying the view and the summer evening breeze on their balcony :)

i returned home wondering at how comfortable i am driving in cape town. i made a quick stop at home to get ready, then protoplasm rocked up to pick me up just as my mother returned home. we chatted for a short while, my mother telling us about some wedding drama*, and then went to town for visit.

* the groom was causing shit with the wedding because he wanted to put up a divider on the dance floor in order to pander to my niece's biological father's wishes. her biological father has never been there for her nor added much value and most of us don't like him; we were all horrified and angered by his interference.

---monday:

protoplasm and i went to fiction. fiction... is fiction! little has changed, though the music on sunday night only got really good towards the end. we spent most of the night drinking and enjoying the company of strangers, we had lots of laughs and a jolly good time. a notable moment was buying a round of rum; six rum shots and a beer for R120, which was a pleasure, but not as much of a pleasure as describing the importance of pirates in hamlet and having one of the girls joining me in the punchline: "everything... is better with pirates!"

after a good last dance protoplasm and i walked to the old shell select - it's tradition - where i picked up simba salt and vinegar to complete the nostalgia trip before returning home. i then chatted with sq for a couple of hours of sunrise and finally went to bed.

i dreamed crazy dreams until about 1pm and was woken up to go for a massage my mother had booked for me. usually i pass out at some point, but this time i was totally engaged in conversation the whole time. it intrigues me that over the years we've developed a rapport in spite of the fact that i only see the guy every few years.

afterwards, my mother and i did some quick shopping for the festival and i went to cape quarter to meet with sagirl. we ended up at cafe manhattan for a few drinks, the weather was perfect and after montreal's meeting being overtaken by shared nostalgia and introductions to her friend it was nice to discuss more current affairs! amusingly, we're sharing strikingly similar dating stories, though she's not able to physically meet the guy...

sq and i chatted one last time prior to new year's and then i took my mother out to postacino for dinner. my mother has a great relationship with the owner and it's always nice to arrive at the restaurant and be greeted so warmly :)
it's the first time i've eaten there as a vegan, and they don't have too many menu options available but were only too happy to do any of their pizzas without cheese. their "postacino" pizza without cheese was ridiculously delicious! so much so that in spite of my certainty that i'd need to box half of it there were barely any crumbs left.

i watched ronda rousey vs miesha tate, which is one of the most intense fights i've ever seen! not only in the attitudes of the combatants, but it actually freaked me out every time tate tried to take rousey down. like, holy shit!

i spent some time blogging and fighting mosquitoes before going to bed.

---tuesday:

i didn't get nearly enough sleep. my mother was the one who overslept, though. on the morning of the wedding which made for an interesting morning.

the strangest thing? the dreams that i woke up from, long dreams, were boring. i've never experienced that sensation in a dream before.

the other side of the DOOF

okay: just got back a couple of hours ago from neverwhere, the doof / paganka party up north. neverwhere also happens to be an incredible book by neil gaiman, which makes it all the more amusing that the similarities to it didn't end even after we left, when we heard a report on the radio about which destinations where most popular this weekend and ours didn't get a mention. we were a LOT of people!

i have a bit of a headache but that's because i worked my body really hard having so much fun and then took responsibility for driving three out of four of us home.

---
thursday night:

after dinner and before bed we ended up playing pirate fluxx after pg got bored with WOW. at least we tried... and the fluxx game was fun :)

---
friday:

we spent a horrible morning (well, the weather was great and we did start in good spirits) trying to renew our student passes at the dan bus lines office. the ministry of transportation has decided that having a valid 2012 sticker on the student card isn't enough, even though that's all that we've received in the mail. so first year students had no problem, but we had to go to campus to print out our registration authorization.

but it's holidays, so campus is closed. when i called up the ministry of transportation they informed me that this was by design, and screw you. well, they didn't say "screw you" but that was the gist of their response. the worst part is that this is all happening the week before icon, a week-long festival all around tel aviv that requires a lot of short bus trips.

ASSHOLES!!!

anyway, after a long, complicated mission (and having to pay for a full bus ticket for the dog both ways), i managed to print out pg's but the machine that read pg's card wouldn't read mine and the other one i found that does read mine was out of paper.

figures. and this isn't the first time that's happened, either.

so at least we organized hers, but the day was lost, our feelings towards dan and the ministry turned to sour, and i think i might have to sneak my way using her card... it's not like i haven't paid my fees, either. but them's the rules, and those are narrow-minded do-as-you're-told kind of people.

---
we stopped at cafe henrietta for lunch - kind of to make up for the crappy start to the day (and i hadn't even had coffee yet) - and there was some inexplicable delay with our meal after we'd had to wait a bit to be seated. i honestly don't think i would've noticed in the state i was in, but our waitress (who'd been pleasant and professional from the beginning) saw to it that we'd get a bonus dessert. not only a bonus dessert, but she threw in my orange juice too.

that *did* make me feel a bit better.

unfortunately, that much chocolate after last night's killer vat o' mousse didn't do much for my stomache... i slept the sleep of the dead for a couple of hours after i got home. after waking up, being dragged outside to park the car (it's such a pleasure when you can find a parking nearby!), and snacking, i spent a long while learning how to sort kindle books and then we played a bit more fluxx until on-my-honour arrived.

---
today:

i have to admit, as long as i don't expect her to be anywhere near on time we have no issues whatsoever. we had a great time together on the drives and at the party, and i have learned to accept that we have completely different perspectives when it comes to all sorts of things... we still get along like a house on fire :)

we arrived around 3 - 3.30am, found a good enough spot for our tent, mulched around a bit and crashed. i got up to the tail end of zirkin's incredibly powerful wake-up set, having slept pretty well considering that my bladder was full and i'd been conforming my body to the location of the rocks beneath me :P

we'd picked up a very pretty swiss girl on the way up north - i thought that she and on-my-honour were friends from before but it turned out they'd never met. a pity for on-my-honour that the swiss girl has a sharing problem: she drank almost all the vodka, and on-my-honour had brought the vast majority... have i mentioned before that i don't like babysitting drunk people? i did the barest minimum and felt absolutely no discomfort for abandoning her. we were in a more or less safe space, and i think i succeeded in making our neighbours feel uncomfortable about taking advantage of her.

aside from running into anti-1 and finally having a proper chat (she seems to be doing great, actually), i spent the morning contemplating the wonders of how my life is on track (even if i am on break) and how it all began at my first trance party. neverwhere? these gatherings give me hope. slowly, maybe, but it feels as if we're impacting the world around us for good. and the world has so much to learn.

for a good while the beats from loud and laughing buddha made me aware that my prayers on the dance floor are nothing short of my submission to a higher power, the beat. and protoplasm's sentiment that "trance is electronic music with a sense of humor" echoed over, and over in my mind. too true. in particular, one of those sets was making fun of us, half of it was total retro and pure goa trance, and old-school rebirth samples were being mixed in with the newer stuff and it was all magic ^_^

i'm still amused about running into my kibbutz cousin's younger son in the morning - i'd wanted to visit them afterwards, but i had to drive the others...

i'm well pleased with myself. and well pleased with my hair, i think i know what it's going to feel like when it's dreaded. i'm now in desperate need of getting to bed.

solid farewell stomp

i just got back from protoplasm's farewell - i joined him at neighbourhood after wine and coffee at my cousins (the dog hated me from first sight, i've never had that happen to me before), and walked in with springer and mmm. in addition to chatting with protoplasm and his buddies, mmm and i had a series of awkward moments, and springer and i had a really good talk.

protoplasm's sister and i shared an important talk - it seems i've found another soul on a quest to find god and she has some interesting ideas as well :)

we headed off afterwards to roots (after everyone had left and springer had been robbed of a fair amount of cash), where the music was crazy and the redbull sugar free. we dropped the girls off at mmm's mom's place - a scene of shushing and giggles that seemed dragged out of a movie, and said a quick goodbye.

now i've got to shower (i'm disgusting) and sleep a bit before heading off to the synagogue. hooray for biltong snapsticks before bed!

a markéd improvemént

top of the news - vaudeville is fantastic! anyone in cape town who reads this *has* to go see it, it was an absolutely wonderful experience - slick, professional and magnificent ^_^

it's the first time i've seen sagirl in action, and that was pure pleasure: it's nice not only to be treated by one of the performers, but to discover just how amazing they really are!

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the day began on the beach, disturbing uncle hate with my piercing and tattoo, having The Talk with yang and trying unsuccessfully to dip into the ocean while the waves were being decidedly uninviting. he didn't see the angle i took coming, and i hope i managed to get across the important bits.

he then joined me and dirk diggler (and a short while later, mmm) at newport deli for lunch and smoothies, and dirk diggler and i were on a roll so the other two (and half the deli) got to enjoy a meal and a show :)

after lunch, mmm and i returned to the beach to meet with springer, protoplasm and his sister; the waves were ridiculously high and directly onto the sandbar (i dived straight into the ground when the water was being pulled back). we had fun chatting, eating granadilla lollies and being amused by springer's little one, right until mmm noticed that i was going to be late.

it was while planning the evening that we suddenly realized that protoplasm was supposed to be with us (we'd booked for him, too) and due to a miscommunication had thought the night was off. i'm well impressed at how fast he managed to get his sister home and return in time for a quick shower before we all left.

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the after party was nice, although there weren't enough people. i managed to find an in with a really cute girl at the bar, but was distracted by sagirl (happily, we never get to talk and we have a lot to catch up) and so missed out. oh, well.

we then moved over to fiction, where the music was mostly pretty good (until the last set, at least) and there was quite a bit of talent. we didn't make much headway women-wise but we did drink and dance a lot.

in preparation for driving, we took a walk to the 7-eleven. a couple of street-dwellers provided random encounters that got us a bit on edge, but to make up for it i had a whippy and a ffwd, and the coke that washed them down picked me up fairly quickly.

i'm home, about to shower and get into bed. it's gonna be 5am by the time i do, so i think i'm going the right way already :)

breakfast shine

good heavens - i went to bed early last night (after a couple of episodes of battlestar galactica), and woke up at 6am. not cool. i forced myself to stay in for another five hours, even though i couldn't do more than lie restlessly. maybe i passed out, but i didn't appreciate it as sleep.

i woke up, had coffee over a quick chat with protoplasm (with one eye on punch and judy - specifically the jan svankmajer - 1966 brainmasher), and headed out to coffeeholic armed with the iliad, the copy of sophocles i that i've been trying to return for a month and a half, and wearing my "if i could choose i'd be gay" shirt. the weather is absolutely phenomenal.

a) breakfast was great, two new waitrons. both were enthralled by the shirt, the girl is super cute and we kept making eye contact.

b) i didn't really get a chance to open the book, because a couple of people caught me with interesting discussion. specifically:

c) the professor. not only did she laugh when i told her i was returning the book (it was a gift, apparently), but we sat for an hour discussing philosophy, owner-pet look-alikes, shakespeare and tiramisu. i walked away with a couple of must-see productions, and a smile ^_^

coughing, hacking and doing silly things with energy cells

this chest infection has got to go. it's driving me nuts, but i'm not really so keen on antibiotics.

i was a bit hungover this morning when driving to the farm, but i successfully introduced my young canadian cousins to decent house. once at the farm we did the leisure thing for an hour or two, including a visit to the goats and consumption of the aforementioned goats' extremely delightful cheese.

we got caught in the traffic caused by this fun piece of news, and made a quick detour by my place to close the garage door (oops) before meeting up in town for lunch.

godmother and i said goodbye with a twenty-minute conversation wherein i pretty much sorted out my next few steps. i joined the kids on the beach for an hour or so - i out-frisbee'd myself - and then said goodbye and went home to shower... and returned to the highway in the middle of rush hour to pick up my mom from work.

after driving home and doing some shopping (i felt a bit faint after that), i spent some time fighting with my mother's flatscreen monitor (which seems to have come right all by itself, eventually) and my sister (i'm expected to fake a smile for her boyfriend's benefit, and i don't do that), and then met up with protoplasm and a friend at call-a-pizza.

i bought a new album, amoeba records - bundu bashers, had dinner, and then we all moved off to fiction. the first dj was complete shite, and when slug came on he began with a house set to smooth the transition. good house, but not trance, which he inserted into his set on numerous occasions due to popular demand :S [the psy-trance is where he's at]

so we drank, and we danced, and i hoarsely attempted to communicate, and i've just got home now... all ready for my four hours of sleep before saying goodbye to my mum for the weekend and taking my second mum to the hospital.