scratched record

it's almost 1am, and the last 4 hours have been a thorough waste of an attempt to sleep. partially because of indigestion - i'm still feeling the laffa i ate for dinner - and partially because of my hips :/

is this also not the mattress for me?

...

the day began alright, i left one time to catch a different bus to ra'anana than the one i'd planned on, and i ended up arriving ten minutes early instead of a little late. which gave me the opportunity to sit down with the older devops guy i'd been teamed up with during the course a while back, which ended up being fascinating as his mode changed from laughing about tailscale and bash to unpacking his entire life story.

then we were all herded in to the presentation, and that's when my phone started buzzing. mr smear complaining about me not unlocking his phone for his art class. then proceeding to whining and begging, even though i was making it very clear that he was disturbing me "at work" and that he was going to get punished if he didn't back off. then incrementally punishing him until he lost all his privileges (again) until next week, and then shutting his whatsapp down.

after which he actually had the nerve to call me.

when we went out for a break, i called gd to tell her what had been happening and then sent her screenshots. i was livid.

the second half of the morning was a lecture about body language. it was interesting, but towards the end i was literally falling asleep and having a hard time ensuring that i wasn't snoring, or falling off my chair.

i rushed out to catch a bus back to my client's office, having to run the last fifty meters or so, and on the way back to tel aviv i spoke to gd who was just as irate as i was about the unfairness of encouraging kids to use their phones in art class. i wrote a message to his teacher to inquire, and tomorrow morning i'll be writing to the school counsellor.

i arrived at work in dire need of coffee. i spent most of the afternoon in a seemingly endless loop trying to resolve a devops issue with AI, and beginning a set of test scripts to determine whether the issue my teammate identified yesterday is real, and then gd - who's been on a "white diet" the past couple of days and had been on a proper "liquid diet" the whole day in preparation for her colonoscopy tomorrow - asked me if i could take mr smear for dinner.

mr smear, who'd called me after school to tell me that because i'd been so unfair with him, and blocked his phone for no reason, would be stone-walling me until 2027. that's kinda funny now, but omg i wanted to throttle him at the time!

i fast-walked home (mainly in response to the retard rat mix - oh! youtube music has a history page!) and we sat down for a family meeting that went pretty well, which i understand to mean that gd had had an effective talk with him when he got home. by the time we left the apartment my mood had already improved, and mr smear was cool, and we had a very pleasant dinner before skipping home in the light rain.

i tried and failed to find the skipping bit from some random comic where he talks about saving time. it's not michael mcintyre or demetri martin.

the bedtime ritual and getting everyone into bed went smoothly. but then... see the beginning of this post.

communities

define irony: i just got permanently banned from the southafrica subreddit for commenting that the southafrica subreddit has become an echo chamber just like the rest of reddit. 

apparently saying that violated their community rules 😂 

...

getting to ra'anana was straightforward, apparently i got lucky finding parking as easily as i did. i got a little bit lost getting to the synagogue, but i made it time to witness ru55's barmitzvah boy doing his thing. all in all it was a great being able to be there with the gang, especially as it's the first simcha for one of ze germans' kids that i've been able to attend. it was also interesting to run into a couple of my aunt and uncle's friends that i have seen in about 25 years.

the evening was pleasant. i passed out on the couch again, and then struggled to sleep once i eventually moved to the bed... i think? last night's a blur.

...

today started off alright for me, but gd's neck was still in a bad way (and it still is). i got to work at a normal time, spent a little while with the exercise again, and finally sent them a message apologizing for the last week being a wash and including the following (translated):

i have to say that up close the code looks pretty clean and tidy, but without a real familiarity with everything it's pretty hard to understand how everything connects and who is responsible for what. i would be happy to sit down with you to get some guidance.

at that point i had some ideas about what needed doing, but i was missing some pretty big pieces of the puzzle. before i clicked send i thought about it, and i figured that either they'd be willing to walk me through what i needed to be able to do the exercise, or they'd reject my application, and either action would give me important information as to what kind of people i was dealing with.

well... a while later, i got the rejection message. i took it politely, but it did sting. it bothers me because on the one hand, i don't think what they set me was a reasonable task and i don't think their code is well organized enough to expect an easy onboarding. on the other hand, i'm plagued with that voice inside my head: "is it me? am i not good enough?"

i really hate interviewing.

...

after lunch with my now ex-bosses i received an urgent call from gd to inform me that i needed to take mr smear to his therapist, which was very last-minute. i grabbed my gear and walked home, met him outside and bussed to the therapist. had coffee, had a chat with my insurance broker, picked him up and took him home.

walked past our apartment to a nearby park, dropped him off with his friend (chatting with his friend's mom for a few minutes), and the returned home. followed, shortly after, by the two boys.

the next couple of hours were a mix of messaging recruiters / headhunters, doing dishes and (healthy) snacking, while the kids played nicely. that went on until we had to rush to get to the school for mr smear's two parent-teacher meetings, dropping his friend off at home along the way.

the rush turned out to be for nothing, because both the teachers were behind schedule.

between the two meetings, we learned that, by and large, mr smear is doing relatively well academically and socially. unfortunately, we also learned that he's being totally uncooperative with his hebrew teacher to the point where she doesn't believe he can read 🤦

so that's a fucking thing. he's promised to start playing ball, but we'll see... we'll see...

gd wasn't up for making dinner so i took mr smear for falafel, which was a great experience. we got home quite late, though, and it was a rush to get him ready for bed in time because we wanted to log in to a private Q&A with an ex-mossad agent who was involved in captured eichmann, and was a consultant on the netflix movie operation finale.

he told us some stories that aren't in the movie, as well the fact that the doctor in real life was a man, but apparently the movie's an extremely faithful adaptation and the true story has some elements that are completely nuts, with truth truly being stranger than fiction.

the last couple of hours were spent chatting with my mom, playing a bit of inscryption (act ii), doing random things. it's now 1am and i have an exit interview in the morning and an important double interview at noon. and i'm nervous about going to bed because i haven't been sleeping well.

wish me luck.

wackier thursday

 i'm starting this post at 1.30am on a friday morning, after tiredly and restlessly flopping around on the bed for the past couple of hours unable to get comfortable. i'm so freaking tired, but so freaking wired, and lower-back sore to boot.

...

after my previous post, i fired up inscryption, which turned out to be a big mistake. i got sucked in, and ended up going to bed a couple of hours later, which was way too late.

so getting this morning was rough.

i got mr smear to school, came home and updated my resume and sent it to my bosses, then shot out towards the train station to meet dod in ra'anana. trying to make sense of the train times via the app, i decided to chance taking the bus instead, and was given a stark reminder that tel aviv is the only city in israel that really *gets* public transport: an hour and a half by train(s), vs half an hour by bus. and when i arrived, dod explained how the train stations in ra'anana are effectively inaccessible to the people living there :/

travelling through my old neighborhood of gan rashal was a trip, seeing how the area's been completely renewed even though it's generally retained its layout, then seeing how shavit hasn't changed one iota. at least not from the outside. then seeing how the hillbilly farmland behind gan rashal was turned into a highway and train station, then entering ra'anana's ahuza and finding it looking pretty much identical to how i remember it.

the nostalgically gentle spring fresh-air smell of ra'anana as i stepped of the bus into the heart of suburbia was overwhelming.

we sat walked to a coffee shop where dod placed his order in french, and we had a good, long chat over good coffees. the relief of hearing that - by-and-large, in spite of his inability to find work in his chosen career - he and his family are doing alright, was big. we then aligned on the side project we want to build into a business, and our way forward seems pretty clear.

and then it was time to go home. i quickly and easily caught a bus home, and spent its entirety catching up on personal messages on instagram (which has recently become my answer to its algorithm). i had a hearty breakfast when i arrived, then walked to the school to pick up mr smear.

the plan was for me to take him to the first session of his evaluation, but as we arrived i suddenly felt sickly and faint, and i was grateful that gd could take him and i could lie down for a while instead. i eventually got up, made myself a cup of turkish coffee, and headed out in the wishy-washy kind-of-rainy-almost weather to meet with a friend of my CEO's who'd gotten in touch the evening before.

i thought i was running late, but as i stepped out of the light rail i found myself facing the sign on their build with five minutes to spare. thank you, light rail!

just before leaving the house, i noticed something strange - the invitation for the meeting had been updated by someone with the same name as lipgirl. i'd shaken it off, but when i walked inside their offices lipgirl was the first person i encountered! what a bizarre situation for a reunion :)

the boss man handed me a strong cup of coffee, and we sat down to chat.

what was supposed to be a 45 minute discussion ended up being more than an hour, and i cannot begin to describe how utterly amazing the fit would be if i could get this job, the alignment with my values and interests is simply unreal! i then chatted with lipgirl for a while, catching up* as well as diving into our ridiculous aliyah story, and she may have a contact who can help us expose it.

* there was an awkwardness talking about a friend of hers passed away half a year ago from cancer, i didn't remember her but i *think* she might have tried to set us up once upon a time.

anyway, in addition to how incredibly enticing the company is from a business / tech point of view, i have it on good authority that it's a great bunch of people to work with.

i left the office buzzing. partially from the excess caffeine, but in large part from what an amazing opportunity this is - i'm praying that i get through their evaluation rounds 🙏

i sent a thank you to my CEO, caught the bus home, unloaded the story on gd as i did the dishes, helped mr smear with his math homework, and then sat down for dinner, not once having looked at the exercise i was supposed to be dedicating the afternoon to... this exercise has become A Thing. A Heavy Thing.

hopefully i'll get it done tomorrow. maybe even over the weekend, even though i try not to do any form of work on shabbat...

we had a long goodnight chat with my mom after dinner, and after getting mr smear into bed gd and i finally finished watching beetlejuice beetlejuice.

it's... it's not a good movie? although it kind of is? from a plot and engagement point of view it's really meh, but at the same time it feels like a horror stoner movie that's parodying itself. and it has some redeeming moments. it feels like an art house movie, the kind that might have been produced by the character of delia deetz herself. in a way it felt more like a play than a movie.

i didn't enjoy the movie, but i also didn't not enjoy it.

...

good news on the OB/GYN story! earlier we received an email from him directly, with a proper summary of gd's care along with exactly the prescription we were looking for and that he denied prescribing when i spoke to him directly. it was clomiphene. i've passed that on to my rollerblading friend, and i'm relieved that this rather uncomfortable little story doesn't have to been dragged any further.