happy 5787!

 our puzzle and board game mission was successful, gd and i picked up a gorgeous zozoville puzzle and a copy of cascadia, which hopefully will be interesting for all three of us 🤞

on the way home we did a last-minute grocery shopping for some items we missed yesterday, and then we returned home.

i upgraded my codex subscription in order to experiment with astra, and the experience of generating my trauma game has been pretty good so far - i initialized it with astra, and have been using terra and luna for the tweaking.

really good news: the work i've been doing on my boss's pet project was accepted this afternoon, with a recommendation to open an upstream PR for it as well 🙌

[pauses to help gd in the kitchen. i've now made two round challot, one choc-chip and the other chilli-choc-chip, and prepared the vegan meatballs]

there was a bit of drama in the kitchen earlier (mr smear wasn't helping gd in a particularly helpful way), but we're just about ready to head upstairs.

shana tova and chag sameach! hopefully this next year will be calmer and more reasonable 🙏

much thursday

 yesterday began with reading more of my favorite thing is monsters (volume 1 of 2, i just learned), which i just completed now.

it's sublime. between the phenomenal artwork, the gut-wrenching stories, and the real-ness of the characters, this is an absolute masterpiece.

the big story from yesterday morning was having the plumber - clearly a devout muslim, making his jewish blessings contrast starkly with his kneeling to bless his cup of water - do a great job of replacing the cistern and a not-so-great job of turning a small leaky faucet into an unusable one. now i've got to get him to come back for the latter before the weekend...

the work day was unusually calm. i had a big, healthy side-dish lunch from the shuwarma place that i picked up on the way to the office, i'd been feeling faint and weak again and i'm becoming increasingly concerned about possibly being anaemic. i got the backfill started, and it went pretty smoothly, and over the course of the afternoon i got the action plan worked out for the work my client team and i have been discussing, all using opus and all far cheaper than using sonnet.

let's pretend that makes sense.

by the time i went upstairs to join everyone for happy hour - a farewell pizzas-and-drinks for the AI team lead - i was ready to trigger the implementation and i left the agent with an instruction to document every step of it and make best guesses that didn't conflict with the established plan.

when i got back to my desk more than half an hour later, it was still running. after about an hour, it was done, and while i haven't evaluated the results yet - i was just waiting for it to finish so that i could go home - on the surface it looks good and i was shocked by how little it cost relative to what i've been spending on tokens since they introduced the budget a couple of weeks ago.

anthropic + bedrock = scam.

i dropped my bag off at home and took mr smear for a walk, a lot of which was spent discussing his game design ideas. i've agreed to help him in a bit, when his first screen time kicks in, to start building his game with him.

what a time to be alive.

gd's chili took a lot longer to be ready than she'd expected, but it was delicious. we watched another episode of the wonder years, and then i worked on my tarot game until i couldn't keep my eyes open any more and went to bed.

...

over dinner, mr smear discovered that he was having another outbreak around his eye. it's been quite a while, and considering the fact that i'd been considering taking him to the pool soon i'm grateful it happened before that, and that we didn't once again worry that the pool was causing it...

i didn't sleep very well, so i'm tired still, but that's just par for the course these days 🤷‍♂️

sleep journal entry + the game of life

 i haven't finished my first coffee yet, it's 10.15 on a saturday morning and all that i've done so far is have a long family meeting that began about mr smear not following instructions, and clean the balcony from the masses of bird poop that's been piling up since the birds decided that our immediate upstairs neighbor's balcony is a great place to hang out.

the architect of this building most certainly did not take birds into account :/

...

i had a pretty good night's sleep, although i did wake up around 5am to stretch because my lower back and hips were giving me trouble again.

last night was pretty cool. mr smear sang with us wholeheartedly (and nicely) for kiddush, and we're all thoroughly enjoying the first season of infinity train, and after dinner mr smear and i had a long talk about the stories in the tanach and our history as a nation and what it all means, and then we ended the day with me segwaying into (re)introducing him to conway's game of life which blew his mind (and gave us some really cool inspiration for a game).

expanding to fill the hours

psychologically, i'm really struggling. it wasn't a bad day, i think, but it was mentally tough and now that it's just about 10pm mr smear's finally gotten into the shower after only just finishing his hebrew homework. it has been extremely trying for me, even though i did finish my first ascension in slay the spire 2 while i sat behind him alternately coaching and chiding him.

i got a surprising number of hours in at work today, in spite of the fact that i had to take two hours to bus to the other side of bnei brak and back for a (literal) two-minute ultrasound.

it's always an experience seeing how those people live. bnei brak, a city as beautiful as its people. i arrived there with the back to the future theme in my head :P

my coworker who i spoke to for a couple of hours last week pitched some ideas this morning. this afternoon, our manager contacted me for a quick meeting and informed me that that coworker is no longer with us :(

the explanation he gave seemed reasonable, but didn't quite match with what my now-ex coworker said in a linkedin message (his company slack had been disabled by the time i found out).

apparently i'm okay? i guess we'll see.

we had a Q&A with my client's COO, which was edifying, but really, really long and boring. i'm really glad my client is not my employer, i'd be nervous for sure.

["i'm done showering!" | "really? the water's still running" | "well, if that's how you define if someone's still showering, then fine"]

i came home to hound mr smear (his homeroom teacher informed me today that he was trolling the hebrew teacher about his assignment which he'd claimed to have completed), and then we took a break for dinner (and highlander), and now...

... i have so much stuff to do, but i'm tired, and i don't feel like it. also, it's been two days and i'm sooooo damned sunburned it's ridiculous.

a calm before the farewell

my mom and i caught a bus to azrieli, we picked up a couple of things and then moved on to try and meet up with the mongoose. we got off the bus at dizengof center, walked up to the square to pick up a coffee, then walked all the way back to the square to meet up with the mongoose, only to end up having to leave again to meet him on the way back to the square again :P

at least we managed to see the baby and deliver her gift! the catch up was quick, and then we were off to do some last-minute shopping before coming home for the afternoon.

gd wasn't able to go anyway - isn't able to go anywhere, with her toe being so bad - so my mom, mr smear and i walked to an unfamiliar synagogue (relatively) nearby.

at least i wore pants and not shorts? i was hands-down the least appropriately-dressed there, everyone else was in white button shirts. the liturgy and nusach were familiar from my youth, and it was really nice not only to have a shared singing experience but to hear mr smear singing along as well :)

for mr smear, his reaction to the baby right behind us and the woman with tourette's on the other side of the mechitza was (relative, for him) admirable, my mother seemed comfortable enough from her side, and although i did feel like an outsider it was overall a good shul experience.

i'm not sure how gd would handle it, though. she's softened on the sitting separately thing, but i think she'd find following along a bit tough with her own marked siddur (she wouldn't be the only one) and i think the biggest obstacle is how far away it is.

kiddush and dinner were quite late, but both were lovely. even though my mom's been here for two friday nights, this was the only one where it was just us doing it our way, together as opposed to on a video call.

we were all pretty tired last night, but to keep things interesting my mom started getting sick and we have to take her to the airport in less than half an hour... FFS.

and gd's toe is only getting worse...

and mr smear still not 100%...

i just finished reading starship troopers:

"Controversial". I've read some suggestions as to why it may have been called controversial. I'd heard many times before how one of my favorite movies was intended to be satirical, and failed.

I've also served in the military, and am living through a crisis in the west where the people yelling loudest "for" democracy and "against" fascism have no idea that they've succumbed to communist, terrorist propaganda and are, in fact, begging for the opposite.

With that in mind, there's nothing "controversial" being peddled in this book. What is in this book is a phenomenally accurate depiction of military service, warts-and-all, a compelling notion of civic duty, and - barring one technically heavy pre-battle scene - it's a thrilling glimpse into what galactic war could be like.

...

someone proferred the name of the 2D side-scrolling aerial combat video game where you battle waves of enemies and shoot down ducks in between levels that we used to play on the ps3: minisquadron!

it's difficult to wage war on reality...

 ... because reality always has the home team advantage.

it's been a long day, but not unpleasant - bar the lower back / hip issues that usually plague me at night, which today, after leaving me in peace last night, came back with a vengeance and harried me all afternoon.

i generated a comic this morning that i'm pleased with, and another one this evening that i'm somewhat pleased with.

i arrived at work a minute late for my team's daily, and i regaled them with the tale i'd been planning on telling our manager, with which they could all identify. i very fortunately was able to keep my head down and work hard today, and ask the right questions, and by the time i had my meeting with my manager i not only had real progress to report, but also additional information that i'd luckily stumbled upon that made the required business decisions much clearer.

it's a mess, but it's clearly a mess, and my manager understands why i've been struggled and what our options are. i took full responsibility for "falling in the bin", as we say in hebrew, by being caught out again following documentation and paying attention to what other developers and managers say. the saddest part is that aside from getting through my own poor AI usage, the architecture, the data and the code are all completely misaligned.

i guess if there's one thing to be grateful for - assuming they like me and don't terminate my contract before i do - it's that this is one hell of a training ground for learning to work with AI when the stakes are low and the state of the entire organization's a complete disaster with or without me :P

my mother took our hypochondriac mr smear to the museum today, though he was "too sick"to go to the museum she wanted to go to (but managed to walk a while after they got lost on the way there). he just did a RAT and it came out conclusively negative, he spent a good chunk of his time before bed trying to convince us that the control line showing clearly means he's done for 🤣

my neck's been giving me trouble, i'm hoping my time with the massager makes a positive difference. it certainly feels good, at least.

dinner was great, progress with starship troopers was great, bedtime was particularly great - not just laughing at the colour of magic, but segwaying into a talk about sacrifice, cain and abel, and the value of the old testament (and our mission as a people to carry it into eternity, just like shakespeare's sonnets).

and now, physically and psychologically, i'm about ready for bed. which means another couple of hours of reading, gaming, possibly torturing myself by watching the news for the first time in at least a few days.

passover 2026

we're approaching midnight, and for the first time since this afternoon i'm feeling a little better, after spending most of the day with a neck issue causing a massive headache, nausea and dizziness. now i've showered, i've made myself a lavendar/chamomile tea, and i'm hoping to get some rest tonight.

...

i was so relieved to be on holiday and turn my brain off. feeling extremely ill and sore is not relaxing.

yesterday:

we didn't do so well when it came to coming up with april fool's pranks, but i did have a fun idea inventing an elevator that detects smells; if someone farts in the elevator alone, it emergency stops until the extractor fans clear the air. if there are multiple people in the elevator, it immediately lets them off on the next floor.

it was erev chag, so of course we had last-minute shopping to do. gd sent me and mr smear off to find stuff i've never bought before, and we ended up on a serious mission, tired, and frustrated by all the other last-minute shoppers as well as the shops themselves for largely being disappointingly crap.

we did manage to get everything by the end of the mission, though.

aside from helping gd out a little bit here and there, mr smear and i spent the afternoon resting or reading or playing games. nothing intelligent. gd, on the other hand, had a very dramatic afternoon and evening cooking for the pesach seder for her very first time.

as unhappy and stressed as she was during the cooking - not helping by a long series of rocket attacks timed perfectly to mess with everyone - she was as happy as we were with the results and the seder with our upstair friends - which included reading and singing in their shelter - was great. the kids were generally well-behaved and involved, we got through to the meal in pretty good time, and dinner was delicious.

today:

the first part of the day was perfect. i finished reading crumb's kafka, which unfortunately has a few too many inappropriate things for me to be able to suggest that mr smear reads it, but is thoroughly brilliant and engaging. we all enjoyed a huge leftover breakfast. mr smear and i walked to the gas station to pick up the new playstation controller and charger; neither are amazing, but they'll do.

that got us into resuming our latest replay of rayman: legends, and it went really well with some exciting invasion runs!

and then my day fell apart. everyone else seems to be doing okay. i managed to eat some dinner while we watched another strip search elimination, and then lay down on the couch stretch my neck and watching random shit until just after mr smear (finally) went to bed.

i hope tomorrow's nicer.

lackluster

 today was a weird one. not a bad one, mind. lots of it was comfortable and comforting.

i got up tired. i read a bit more of mairowitz and crumb's kafka (it's amazing, with a very interesting perspective of ghetto life), i worked, with shenanigans around code ownership, and i eventually ended the work day in the middle of making some progress but also ready to put everything down because i'm officially on leave for the next couple of days.

i left the house around noon to get to a blood donation site, but for the first time in my life was rejected because my hemoglobin count was too low. so there's that to stress me out now.

mr smear tried desperately to get as much screen time as he could even though he was under punishment from calling me a jerk yesterday. he did music homework - garageband, he's making cool stuff - and later we sat down on yesterday's human resource machine problem and had a positive experience.

i'm not sure if his "performance" of being sick just as we started training was real or not, but whatever. he's the one concerned about his weight.

actually, that's not entirely true. mine's been climbing a bit, too.

but he did join me for a very serious mission hunting down matzah meal and healthy snacks, which proved surprisingly difficult to find.

either way, we watched strip search over a delicious dinner, spoke to my mom, and then got through the evening rituals and a bit of the colour of magic before calling it a day.

...

i've engaged in three or four different, toxic arguments on facebook over the course of the past day. people are fucked. i've now watched a whole lot of random youtube videos (some news, some not), and now i'm going to play some more balatro and have one last cup of tea and then climb into bed.

the time cluster bomb

 today was weird. the deployment didn't go smoothly, but was ultimately successfully.

a religious family came downstairs to present us with mishloach manot, which i explained was very much appreciated, but as we've got a dairy allergy and we're vegan we simply can't accept. an hour or so later they knocked again, with a whole different arrangement, including baked goods with the ingredients handwritten.

so now i feel bad that we haven't reciprocated - we had no way - and we've had way too many sweets today.

also, mr smear's molar fell out.

he spent most of the day dressed up as harry potter, he did his own scar amazingly well, and was very disappointed that it wasn't a school day and there was no one to show his costume to but us :(

we literally walked around the block twice today for exercise.

i eventually managed to complete my investigation into whether my screw-up last week had any undetected impact, and spent an hour talking to a new coworker - both at my employer, and my client - about both of them and giving him the details i wish i'd had. i then followed that up with a complaint to the woman who brought us both in because he was also supposed to start both jobs on the same day, like i did, and that's messed up.

my most productive time today was spent on my phone control solution, which i've gotten to a point that i can start playing with the more interesting ideas.

thanks to AI.

the war goes on. it looks like however the next couple of weeks play out, we've essentially already won: the IRGC is effectively finished, the middle east has realigned itself. the attacks today were fewer and further between, but louder and scarier.

mr smear was a bit difficult today, on occasion, but also a lot easier to get through to (eventually). on the one hand, he's been cooped up, but on the other, he's refusing to leave the apartment to do anything social, and gd's sick and unavailable and i'm working and unavailable.

i'm tired. but also antsy. i barely have bandwidth for the stuff that needs brain, but distractions? i don't even register time passing.

the purim decree

 today is tuesday? yesterday was monday. it is purim today, i read (the translation of) megilat esther last night and mr smear is dressed up - wildly successfully, especially the scar which he did himself - for a day in which we are following mordechai's edict to the letter, destroying our enemies before they can destroy us.

sunday night was a lot quieter than saturday night or sunday (i'm obviously not speaking on behalf of those who've been affected, an ex-coworker of mine lives next to a building that was struck, and another missile landed next to mr smear's school, and iran is using cluster bombs again, which is a real war crime), and i got up yesterday somewhat in shock at having rested. it was mostly a work day, which was weird, but i did manage - between attacks - to get to the store and buy a "mickey mouse" cable so that i could set up a mesh network because switching from wifi to wifi was driving me nuts.

unfortunately, the speed of my now-stable network is disappointingly low :(

i got mr smear to come upstairs to our friends, where he and their daughter got on well but the younger son was having a very emotional evening... us adults had a reasonably good time, though. and gd stayed downstairs and got a bit of a break.

oh, yeah - the technician arrived yesterday morning to look at the electric hob, which was playing nicely, of course. he fiddled with the triple-phase outlet, hopefully it'll remain stable.

i'm going to be diving into work soon. i'm very disappointed about the state of my hair, which was supposed to be cut on sunday evening. i'm sporting harry potter vibes of my own :P

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.

weekend vibes

 i eventually got to sleep after posting, and was rudely (and bitterly) awoken to a rocket alert. it was my mom's first time in the shelter, and we encountered some new neighbors for the first time.

getting back to sleep for an hour or two was hard, not least because mr smear decided this was a great opportunity to brush his teeth so he could get screen time earlier 🤦

i had a meeting with my insurance broker which was supposed to take ten minutes, but by the time we were done a full hour had passed and i needed to join our daily meeting from home. the first few minutes turned into a private sync between me and the new devops guy, who's giving me weird vibes. he seems really antisocial and i'm feeling like i can't get him to focus. he told me he was also coming in to the office, but he didn't :/

on my way to the office i was presented with an opportunity to speak to the guy who'd called the evening before and who i thought i'd offended, so we cleared the air before i got to work.

the work day was... interesting. it turned out the drama the night before was due to something i did that we all agreed should have worked, so i had to write a script to reset my change. most of my focus for the rest was on developer methodology, and i was pleased to be a part of a whole bunch of things coming together, as well as feeling like an authority in our organization.

there are days (like the day before) that i have to deal with a sense of imposter syndrome, so it's nice to have some balance to that.

the last couple of hours were busy, but not too intense, and included an interesting theological discussion with a religious contractor.

i came home to a full house - mr smear's friend was over for dinner. we all had a good experience, some interesting conversations in english and hebrew, and then we all took a walk to get him home and chat with his mother. on the way home gd expressed frustration with me sometimes speaking to her in hebrew, which i'm conflicted about.

the evening went smoothly, minus me discovering a problem with one of my toes that definitely needs a doctor (i hope it's just an ingrown nail).

while trying to help my mother with her iphone (i detest iphones now), i was convinced to finally - after three and a half years - update my country of residence in steam. i did so by purchasing minutescape, the testing of which cost me a pleasantly entertaining hour of my life.

and (pretty much) then i went to bed.

today so far:

i slept surprisingly well, dreamed long weird dreams, and this morning so far has been good. in addition to visiting our kibbutz cousin tomorrow, we're making a stop by a cousin i spoke to a couple of weeks ago (the one with lots of kids) and we're collectively supportively shocked to learn that she's finally left her husband.

right: shabbat!

calm

i'm tired, i'm posting this and drinking my "good night" tea (chamomile and lavender) and then hopefully i'll be ready to get a full night's sleep.

thursday:

it was a relatively calm work day. one of my coworkers was particularly condescending to me and another guy, and i'm quite proud of how calmly i handled it.

lipgirl organized an insanely rich, delicious vegan cake for the happy hour and i ended up bringing most of it home. i've eaten too much cake over the course of the last three days.

i was inspired by some of mr smear's homework questions to try teaching him math from first principles. he was so excited by how much easier it is to understand what's going on!

yesterday:

yesterday was the first day in a long while that i've had bandwidth for stuff other than my day job. i installed the windsurf IDE - which i'm so far quite pleased with (it feels more comfortable than cursor, but i haven't got lots of experience with the important stuff yet) - and recalibrated myself with some of my side projects.

some of the morning was just spent doing nothing.

after mr smear came home from school, i took him to meet gd and urchin at the sarona market for lunch. overall it was great, although it would have been better had mexicana not screwed up my order and given me chicken when i'd asked for vegan. yecch.

by the time we left, our buses weren't running anymore and it was searing hot at the bus stop. fortunately, while we were waiting for a taxi to accept our fare, an unexpected bus arrived that worked for us and we got home without further stress.

the rest of the afternoon was pretty relaxed. i looked up an alternative synagogue - we don't like the politics of the one we've been going to - but the only one that's close by and checks all the boxes doesn't hold friday night services which i find really confusing.

gd experimented with yuba for dinner, which came out really nicely.

today:

i started the day by initializing a language learning project, and then by reading more of a canticle for leibowitz when out spare mouse turned out to be broken and mr smear demanded (begged) to use our main computer.

and then i rotated my rollerblade wheels (which i've been meaning to do for ages) and mr smear and i rode to the beach.

it was a glorious beach day. the rides there and back were good (minus a minor incident where i tried to give him a boost and accidentally pushed him over), we found a spot in the shade for our gear, and we spent plenty of time having fun in the water.

i did get slightly sunburned, but not painfully.

the afternoon was spent reading and napping, and in the evening (after doing a whole bunch of dishes) i walked to our friends to deliver the barmitzvah present two weeks late, and we were all very awkward about it.

it was a very pleasant evening.

i've just bought tickets to a family-friendly trance party next weekend in honor of shavuot. we're praying that gd can come with (she's got a nerve block procedure on tuesday), but even if it's just me and mr smear i think it's going to be awesome ^_^

,,,

tomorrow is towel day! which in my book is synonymous with DNA testing day.

שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְּמַן הַזֶּה

un-holy

 unholy shit. the past few days have been thoroughly exhausting, i've got twenty minutes to type this up before taking mr smear to shul and hoping for a smooth evening.

i've been playing a lot of slay the spire, as much because it's an awesome game as because i desperately need some kind of escapist meditation.

gd and i left mr smear at home with cubase and tinkercad and did a quick pharmacy run before rushing a lunch and packing and heading for the train to jerusalem.

for the past two days, it's been near impossible to get mr smear "present" in any sense, all he wants to do is play games on his phone.

the train experience: just great, although managing mr smear's phone addiction wasn't easy.

the light rail experience: omg, so many people. so many low-iq, unwashed, neglected/neglectful people.

mr smear became progressively angrier and more upset about moving between the masses on their way to the wall, and about us trying to help him navigate his feelings, and by the time we arrived he was pretty much a lost cause. but in a way that really tied in to all the shit we've been dealing with lately, the rudeness and the belligerence and the defiance and the anger.

the ingratitude.

oh, i left out the shitty experience at the armenian quarter museum where we just wanted to use a bathroom.

the way back to the light rail was better, the ride back to the train station less unpleasant, the train ride back to tel aviv a relief - although a lot of that was just mr smear knowing that we were on our way home :/

we had some talks, we had dinner, and then i said goodnight and headed to the mongoose's to chill and decompress. he called me a taxi to get home because i was falling on my nose, and it didn't even occur to me to just order one myself :$

today:

another couple of talks in the morning, but him actually finishing his hebrew book report. a shopping mission that only had a couple more incidents. a mission to find an english copy of munchkin (didn't find one), introduce gd to the teva castel, eat a nice little meal off our favorite vegan cart, and take a long, slow stroll home (we were too impatient to wait for the buses).

oh, and lots and lots of dishes between last night and today to make up for a few negligent days.

days off

i'm currently waiting for mr smear with a cup of coffee and my laptop, so i figure this is as good a time as any.

yesterday:

yesterday was absolutely brilliant. we started the day in good spirits, and left roughly when we intended to get the car and drive up to the kibbutz. gd's on meds that require drinking plenty of water and stopping frequently to pee, but we only really needed two stops and one of them involved the acquisition of a quantity of snacks.

the weather wasn't hot yesterday, it was a bit cloudy, which for the current season and mission meant it was perfect. we arrived at my cousin's place, chatted for a short while, and then walked to her car and headed out to an entirely vegan hummus 90 on the way to the kinneret.

the food was absolutely delightful, as was the vibe. we definitely ate too much and enjoyed every morsel ^_^

we then drove on to beit gabriel, which is an absolutely gorgeous place to sit and chat over a coffee while enjoying the view of the kinneret. our initial impression was solid as we walked into a really nice photo exhibit, but my brain wondered "do i smell popcorn?" and i was confused because i'd forgotten that we'd been told there was a cinema inside.

the stunning view of the kinneret on a perfect day with almost nobody else around was wonderful, only marred by the massive screen facing the entrance and showing the trailer for the a minecraft movie movie trailer. i was a bit disappointed that mr smear literally didn't notice the lake because he was so excited by the screen :/

at least - once the trailer was over - i was able to drag him outside, and he pulled out his kindle (to read minecraft books), which is as close to just enjoying being in nature as most children get these days.

from there we drove back past har tavor (mount tabor), and gd was really excited to see another location made famous by the bible. unfortunately, on the drive back gd's back began to hurt... we also got to witness just how little patience our cousin has for the ultra-orthodox :P

we got to see one of our kibbutz cousin's kids and family and spent a few minutes chatting with them, but by then sunset was approaching and we were starting to feel the pressure to hit the road.

it was dark by the time we left, and the drive back home was mostly gd suffering from discomfort and pain and waze leading us in a round-about way (which i believe was the best way, but it was completely unfamiliar) while crazy drivers bobbed and weaved amidst other crazy drivers.

we made it back to the parking spot with ten minutes to spare, very grateful that gd was (relatively) in one piece and hadn't needed a pit-stop. we all ended up going to bed very late, but by and large everyone had had an amazing day out, mr smear had been really cool for its entirety and we were all glad to have spent such good time with our kibbutz cousin and seen new things.

today (so far):

i didn't sleep particularly well, but i did sleep. in the morning, i finished reading of mice and men, and although i generally enjoyed it from the start, the end really blew me away.

i was disappointed to learn that mr smear gave the original dune book a try, and found it boring :(

...

after getting a few things squared away, i accompanied gd to the hospital to try and organize an appointment for her to get her foot seen to. after waiting our turn, the receptionist informed us that there was no point to speaking to her and that we needed to contact their offices.

when i told the woman who answered the phone what gd had been going through, she immediately became bizarrely defensive, and there was a mix of yelling at her and trying to reason with her before she agreed to book gd for an appointment that was only in a month's time (as opposed to a half a year's time that she'd threatened).

i then spent about twenty minutes on the phone trying to arrange a private consultation, eventually giving up (the phone menu system is rigged) and heading to our clinic, where we were fortunate to receive a personal recommendation from one of the receptionists.

so she has an appoint for three weeks' time, instead of a month. it's better than nothing.

...

herding our cat of a son to working on his hebrew class' holiday project was exhausting, so i piled some blankets over my on the couch and enjoyed a beautiful nap, which i was wrenched out of to bring him to his therapist. and now it appears to be time to go and pick him up and see what the rest of the day brings.

the perfect beach day

yesterday:

we all went off to dizengoff, which was a lot less festive than anticipated. having said that, there was plenty festive outside, and it was a gorgeous day. we took care of a couple of minor things, including picking up a bunch of hebrew comic books, and then took a slow meander up to dizengoff square, where we stopped for a very nice lunch.

we all enjoyed the food, and we all had a good experience.

then we caught a bus home and had a pretty relaxing afternoon.

in the evening i took mr smear to the synagogue, he came without a fuss and in addition to some generally pleasant talks along the way, we had a pretty serious conversation about the weekly portion (which includes the story of the golden calf), why we're supposed to pray so often (specifically, the shema), and how those two both ultimately have the same moral: no matter how smart we may think we are, that we *get* the lessons from the torah, we're descended from the same morons who *forgot* about god after witnessing his miracles directly, after hearing his voice directly, and we need to keep playing our history on repeat so that we don't forget it and lose our way.

today:

i slept horribly last night. i hadn't taken my new nightly pill (alpha lipoic acid) and my hips hurt constantly, so i was in a lot of discomfort and i barely got any rest.

i started the day a bit antisocially trying to catch up with private instagram messages - the result of ignoring them for most of the week - and then i put down for satisfactory which is on sale right now and sat with mr smear while he got into it. so far, pretty damned awesome.

without a fight - remarkably - we began moving out for our ride to the beach around 10.30am as planned. it did take us about 45 minutes to actually start riding, but there were no bad feelings and it was turning out to be another beautiful day.

we enjoyed a good ride to the beach, which was easier now that half of arlozorov is open again and with decent bike lanes, found a good shady spot, completed the sunscreen ritual and headed into the water. the side of the beach we were sitting on was too rocky and cold, so we went to the other side which was easier on the feet but absolutely freezing.

we had fun in the water for a little while, then returned to our spot where mr smear insisted on me burying him a couple of times (it's his favorite thing), and after a lot of time trying to convince him to come into the shade i got to lie down for a bit. after we had agreed that it was a good time to go and find food (and coffee for me), it took about an hour to get him into the water to rinse off some of the sand, then out of the water, then through the showers, and eventually we were ready to ride again.

we tried a very busy coffee shop near the corner of dizengoff and ben gurion, but the service was shit and the menu vegan-unfriendly so we pushed on to eazy cafe, for our favorite salad and a generally good vibe.

we eventually got home quite late, took turns showering and then chilled the remainder of the afternoon away. the evening was pleasant, dinner was good, and after getting mr smear into bed gd and i watched a lot of andrew schultz - life, which is mostly just amusing but does has some really good stuff in it. we're a bit disappointed that monk's been taken off...

...

i'm on a water-only fast now for blood tests in the morning. i hope i sleep alright.

the night owls

 as i begin writing this post, it's 2.20am and everyone's awake. me, because i woke up an hour or two ago with indigestion (we had pizza for dinner, and every day since wednesday has been a celebratory cheat-day), mr smear because he woke up thirsty and coughing, and gd because i went to pee and him calling for me woke her up...

anyway. it's been a crazy couple of days, now seems as good an hour as any to get it down.

wednesday:

i walked home, furiously messages everyone who needed to be updated with my news. on my way, i picked up some rum. well, i picked up a bacardi mojito, to be precise, and the cashier expressed her disgust which reminded me that gd had asked for whiskey. but the whiskeys there were way overpriced, so i ended up taking the bacardi while she muttered "disgusting" under her breath 😂

gd had ordered from our favorite vegan burger joint, and i ate my entire meal which was twice as much as i should have :P

as part of my celebration, i also picked up a copy of final fantasy vi (pixel remaster) and car mechanic simulator 2021, but unfortunately the latter proved unplayable after mr smear and i enthusiastically gave it a go this evening after talking about it for almost two days :/

thursday:

i dropped mr smear off at school and then continued on to our clinic, where i finally received the authorization that gd's been waiting on. i walked through to the hospital compound to deliver it, then returned home.

by the time i entered the office i realized that i hadn't received any sign of my contract, so i signed in to the signing app and found it waiting for me - it had been sent immediately after i'd approved it the evening before, and gmail had filed its notification as spam :/

i immediately skimmed through it to ensure everything was as expected, signed it, and it was done.

HOORAY!!

nystire called and we had a quick chat, which began with us trying to remember the name of the ultra-orthodox guy we'd served with that i bumped into on my way to the office, and resulted in him suggesting something that bolstered my confidence that i was making the right decision.

for a while i had a live-stream open of the hostage release, though eventually i realized that it wasn't constructive and i just waited on occasional live updates instead.

everything about how hamas is behaving with the hostage release just seems completely unhinged. who is their footage aimed at, and what kind of bizarre narrative are they trying to convince people of? what the hell do the goodie bags and framed certificates even mean?!

and how does it help them to show such cruelty to an old man while releasing him?? make it make sense

two of my coworkers came in, and one of them is interviewing for the same company. i enjoy working with him, but he's a particularly quirky developer so i'm intrigued.

[half an hour later and mr smear's really struggling, gd's taking care of him but it's unsettling]

...

i received a dramatic message from mr smear's homeroom teacher informing me that the kid mr smear hit with a rock, and whose artwork he's torn up on a couple of occasions, was very upset because mr smear had insulted his mother by calling her fat and saying she was unable to move. made worse by the fact that those statements are true 🤦

he claims that he and this kid were playing a game that involved generating drama, and that he immediately recognized and regretted his going to far. considering the fact that his teacher told me she had to give him a talk and ask him to apologize, i have my suspicions.

to add insult to... insult, he took a pack of oreos to school today to give to the poor kid as an additional apology, and then ate them himself :/

...

while i'd already signed the new contract, i put a lot of effort into making sure that i rejected my other offer in as constructive (or, non-destructive) a way as possible. while it was true that i'd made up my mind before i got the one i signed, it was surprisingly easy to honestly express the aspects that i'd had to weigh (especially as it wasn't an apples-to-apples comparison) and how much i valued their offer and would enjoy working with them. 

it was a relief to get back warm, sympathetic responses from the three people i emailed my letter to and it feels like they're keeping the door open too, which is comforting.

...

i'd intended to get my chair and monitor home before taking mr smear to the second part of his evaluation, but it proved too tricky, so i walked home, fired off the aforementioned email i'd been preparing, and the bussed him to the evaluation. i enjoyed a decaf coffee while waiting for him, resuming learning about the dangers of localStorage and coming up with a potential mechanism for using it securely. 

while there, gd went to the dentist and finally got her first crown sorted out! it's a huge relief.

i picked mr smear up, we grabbed hummus at a hummusia close by, i showed him the building i'm about to start working in and we took the light rail home.

i didn't need to eat so much of the pita, but it was delicious.

...

it having been unseasonably warm the whole day, i left the apartment after dinner without a sweater and barely regretted it. i took the train to the office (i'd been misled by a bus stop display to believe that there was a protest causing traffic), picked up my chair and wheeled it out, then called a taxi. fortunately, the taxi driver not only had no issue with transporting a chair, but was able to jimmy it into the front seat in a way that i definitely wasn't capable of.

i'd originally intended to use an hourly rental, and i think i would have deeply regretted it.

yesterday/today (friday):

i got mr smear to school, and from there caught a bus to the office to pick up my monitor and drop off my key and keycard.

i was amused by my reflection in the elevator mirror when i realized i was taking office equipment out the building wearing a hoodie that says "pirate king" on the front 😅

i took the train home, and set up my workstation, which i'm happily using now and it makes an ENORMOUS difference to the experience of using my shitty windows machine!

i kinda regret not setting something like this up before.

i picked mr smear up from school, came home, helped a woman pick up a whole bunch of mr smear's unwanted books and toys, then walked with mr smear to one of ze germans' son's street exhibit on ben gurion, which was simply astonishing. what's just as astonishing to my mind is that most of his artwork was sold by the end of the afternoon!

amazing kid. even mr smear found his work riveting, and at some point told him "i'm good, but you're waaay better than me" 😅

...

we were supposed to meet up with the mongoose but hadn't heard from him, so we walked around until we discovered market vegan and stopped for lunch. i had a thai curry soup that came with glass noodles, mr smear wasn't a fan of the soup but enjoyed the noodles, then decided to try adding soup to the noodles, and at that point decided he could enjoy it properly :)

we also picked up one of their desserts, which was delicious, but mr smear looked like a chocolate version of heath ledger's joker so we stopped in at a bar/restaurant to clean up. on our way out, we stepped on broken glass that had simply been abandoned while whoever dropped it went to get something to sweep it with, and we were about twenty meters away when i realized that mr smear's shoes had a massive glass spike in it that almost went through to his foot :/

...

we met up with the mongoose and co. (wife/daughter/some friends), his daughter's really starting to speak! and i just realized that i never put her birthday in my calendar and we just missed her 2nd birthday 🤦

it was nice seeing them, but mr smear really got in my face and wouldn't let me talk, which not only infuriated me but also lost him a chunk of privilege time - it took three increments of 15 minutes to finally get him to stop. on the walk home i explained to him how bad that was.

we were almost home before he realized that his punishment was going to be carried out immediately, and we sat on a bench and had a massive fight about how punishments work, and how the punishment itself is his fault and not mine, and how what he was doing to me was assault and if he wasn't my kid he could get into real trouble for it.

eventually, with only an additional 15 minutes added on top for rudeness (he did try hitting me a couple of times, but i responded in kind so that stopped quickly), we returned home in surprisingly calm spirits.

...

we tried out the new vegan sachlav that's being advertised everywhere, and it is good! it's one of those things that i've missed every winter since i went vegan (so... almost 15 years now) and i really enjoyed it :)

after doing some dishes while mr smear served his sentence (some sentence, he just chilled and read for an hour), we headed to the synagogue. along the way i talked to him about prayer, that there are different forms of it, and that there's power in communal prayer (whether in synagogue or on a dance floor) and power in being connected to our ancestors and our history.

the chazan was in a bit of a droning mood, so it wasn't as vibrant a service as usual, and there was a weird choir thing as the end, but otherwise it was a pleasant experience and i'm glad that mr smear's going with the flow.

...

between getting home and saying kiddush, we had time to try out the mechanic simulators, and sadly our windows machine just isn't up to spec :(

at least i could get a refund.

[gd just went to bed, and mr smear's now up and reading todd strasser's the wave on the couch behind me]

we enjoyed the pizza dinner and the simpsons, and then mr smear got an extra half hour to play an FPS during which time i taught him how to strafe and not stand still when engaged in a fire fight. i then jumped in the shower, where i heard him yelling excitedly from the living room after he won his first game ^_^

after getting him into bed, i played a bit of final fantasy vi and then went to bed myself. it's 4.15am and i'm not feeling particularly tired myself...

performance

yesterday:

the big deal in the morning was getting gd to her follow-up therapy session (i mean, it's been more than a year since the war broke out and this was her third actual meeting). while i waited for her, i worked a bit from the hospital food court. she arrived afterwards feeling rather proud of herself - with good reason - because as part of unpacking All The Things for a new person she realized that she's been through a lot of crazy stuff and she's still trucking.

...

the work day was pretty "standard", although it was interrupted by a message from mr smear's teacher informing me that he and his bully had had to be separated physically. i called him and asked him what had happened, and he told me his version, and i sent an angry message back to his teacher.

only to discover that his version of the story had been missing some important details.

it turned out that he'd done the instigating, and "happened" to wander to his bully's side of the class, allegedly not realizing that he was really close to his desk. so the bully got upset and yelled at him to go away, at which point he decided that he should stand his ground because - as he put it - "technically, he doesn't own the whole class".

🤦

parenting is hard.

i made it very clear that he was in the wrong and that he's supposed to be helping me get moved to a different class, not tricking me into making a fool of myself to his teacher.

but, in the evening, i couldn't help myself: "did [your bully] really cry?"

"yeah, he always does when he doesn't get his way"

i feel like there's a grey area in there where i'm allowed to enjoy this mean-spirited moment with my boy.

...

we had vegan shuwarma for dinner, but gd apparently overcooked it because it was a bit too tough and chewy for both me and mr smear.

mr smear was feverish last night at bedtime. gd medicated him as much as she could.

today:

4.30am rocket attack, i slipped and skidded on my way to make sure mr smear was up and on his way to the bomb shelter and hurt my lower back a bit. it's manageable, but uncomfortable.

i neither know or care who these godforsaken "houthis" are, but they're making me genocidal. after the last jew in yemen passed away recently, after yemen successfully and completely ethnically cleansed us, i honestly don't understand why we shouldn't simply erase it from the map. i keep imagining god's hand wielding a giant hand-saw and just sawing that hellhole off the rest of the mainland.

...

we all struggled in the morning, and it was a rush to get mr smear out the door and to the school on time to prepare for the ceremony. i returned home, finished my coffee, and then gd and i went to the school to bear witness.

i made sure to get a (relatively) good spot to record mr smear, but i had no intention of taking any other photos or videos. unfortunately, it looks like the other parents saw me getting ready and assumed that i was doing the class photographer thing, and therefore didn't feel the need to take photos themselves, so i think i might have pissed a bunch of them off :P

anyway, mr smear was GREAT. i was so proud i was shaking, and he was cool as a cucumber! that was awesome.

the next forty minutes was a full-on show by their class, and i have to admit it was pretty impressive for a bunch of fourth graders. one little boy was hilariously flamboyant, and i *knew* (subsequently confirmed) that it's the same kid who sings (in mr smear's terms) "cringey" songs all the time :P

that kid definitely stole the show. otherwise, mr smear did all the things he was supposed to and everything went smoothly.

afterwards he convinced gd that he was too sick to stay at school, but i strongly suspect we got played because he literally skipped and ran all the way home.

i headed out to the office, and spent the rest of the morning fighting with aws credential caching. after a big leftover lunch (the vegan shuwarma tasted much better, somehow), we figured out a workaround for the credentials and i started making some actual progress.

then, half an hour before i was supposed to meet with the VP R&D of a company i've applied for, everyone sat down for a status meeting. i couldn't have been more obviously in a rush to leave if i'd tried, but fortunately i only ended up a few minutes late...

as soon as the meeting was over, i surreptitiously sneaked into the stairwell and let the guy know where i would be, and he met me a few minutes later. i was a bit nervous because it wasn't *impossible* to see us from my office floor, and when a guy walked into the area we were sitting in wearing a similar shirt to my boss he laughed at how terrified i looked :P

anyway, it was a really exciting meeting. i love what they're doing - my current employer could make good use of their services - and it sounds like they're looking for people like me. we agreed broadly on a way to make a technical challenge meaningful for both of us, and i left with a solid sense of alignment. 

let's see how this goes.

the rest of the afternoon was successful, the bones of the project i'm working on are complete and i've got a day spare to make it meatier.

...

oh! at some point during the day i realized why the crypto money hadn't hit our bank account! it's because i'm an idiot, and i withdrew it to my old bank account that i closed down. after a proper bit of panic, i spoke to my bank (who were surprisingly responsive for christmas day) who assured me they'd return the money to the sender. i then tried to get the sender on the line - luno - whose support chat is entirely "AI" automated, and figuring out how to submit a claim was hard. i eventually managed to get it done, though, and hopefully i'll get the rather sizeable sum of money back within the next week or two.

...

i headed home just after dark, picked up a couple of things on the way, and came home in time to make my son finish his math homework (which he continues to claim he already did, but the dashboard says otherwise), take turns showering and still have time to play his first "chanukah gift" - pikuniku - together.

it's a lot of fun!

i was really pleased that mr smear now knows some of the chanukah songs and joyfully sang them along with me ^_^

i read a little bit of the magic pudding to him at bedtime, after we'd spend about half an hour being amazed together by chino moreno and maynard james keenan's screaming abilities, and hopefully tonight won't be disrupted.

channukah gelt

"when i'm older, i'm going to become a christian" - my boy, whose only reference is that christians get to celebrate christmas.

well. if you think we're above "channukah bushes" and channukah gelt bribery, think again.

...

today was generally okay, but long. and weird. after dropping mr smear off at school, and helping gd with the grocery shopping, i headed to the office, arriving just in time to find a phone "booth" and join gd and mr smear's therapist for a guidance session.

it went well, but we had a breakthrough moment about our influence on mr smear's fear of the dark that made us sad.

i heard back from the company i interviewed with last week: nope.

i yelled at a HOT sales representative for calling me, and someone on our floor who overheard tried to help... it was a funny moment.

i consulted with horseman about whether or not to trade thursday's bitcoin, then got involved with messages with mr smear's teacher and tutor, and by the time i was ready to get some work done, everyone was leaving to get lunch.

after lunch, i needed to sync with my boss, but he and my coworker were busy, so i tried to find a way to withdraw. i eventually ended up so suspicious that i gave up for now, and went to sit in my boss's office thinking that he'd get to me when he was done.

the two of them carried on talking until my boss put his backpack on, at which point i interrupted to ask if he was leaving, and they both expressed surprise to learn that i'd been waiting patiently for them to finish...

... in parting, my boss asked me to do one more investigation.

i spent the remainder of the afternoon doing two things: sending some of the crypto to my south african bank account, and performing the investigation. it was roughly 6pm when i realized, while checking my results, that there was a much easier way to show that the investigation was pointless...

i walked home, we had a pleasant evening / vegan pizza dinner / chat with my mom / virtual tour around krybabie's mom's new apartment, which ended with mr smear's assertion (above).

we had a talk, and it's not clear if i handled it well or not. then we informed him, in the most confusing ways possible, of our new channukah tradition. at least he seemed happy about some of it :P

i didn't sleep well at all last night - both physically and psychologically - i've no idea whether i should go to bed soon or deliberately tire myself out.

day of atonement

friday:

aside from grocery shopping in the morning, we were pretty much at home all day. the biggest achievement of the day was finally (finally!) setting up the psvr system, only 2.5 years after the mongoose loaned it to us. the pad at the back of the headset is falling apart, but otherwise it's in good nick. unfortunately, the paddles won't hold a charge so we're limiting to games that work with the regular gamepad.

either way, mr smear is over the moon and we both thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and the biggest challenge is going to be finding good games that don't cost an arm and a leg and being solid about limiting time with the headset on.

...

gd prepared a feast pre-fast, and after dinner we put together a very basic 200 piece puzzle, and mr smear actually participated fully for the first time. afterwards, i managed to convince him to come out on his bike. we met up with his re-friend / her dad and brother for a little, but all the kids were being whiny, so we went off in different directions. mr smear decided he was done earlier than i'd hoped - but apparently that's because he needed the toilet and didn't want to go outside - but overall he got the yom kippur "vibe" and we had a pretty good experience.

yesterday:

i slept really, really badly. i barely slept - although i did sleep a little, because i remember having some weird dreams - but i got up in the morning almost as tired as when i'd gone to bed.

firstly, we're really impressed that yesterday went as smoothly as it did. not only did we not have issues with a day without screentime, but we had constructive conversations about what we were doing and why we were doing it.

secondly, i spent most of the day resting, or following the morning prayer service with gd, or reading. i was tired, and a bit dehydrated, but i didn't have the usual caffeine-withdrawal headache and i wasn't feeling hungry.

in the afternoon we went to a park to meet up with a new friend of his, by which stage i wasn't feeling too fresh. the kids were getting along great, which was a relief to witness, although at some point mr smear wanted to leave because he was being harrassed by mosquitoes. he ended up staying in spite of that, though, because he was having fun... right until he wasn't. his new friend's little brother accidentally bumped him off an installation, and he was hurt and angry.

the resulting outburst was thoroughly embarrassing. i made my apologies as i followed him out of the park, and about halfway home managed to get him to listen to reason (i'm sad that i needed to threaten privileges for that, but it is what it is). things escalated when we got home and i explained what had happened to gd, but refreshingly quickly he managed to figure out what we were trying to get him to figure out and the tone of everything changed.

i sent off messages to his friend's mom and hopefully there'll be more playdates...

we logged in to the prayer service for the ending of the fast + blowing of the shofar + havdala + singing of hatikva, then dug in to a big meal. mr smear decided that he'd rather vr than fantastic four, so we tried out some of the other demos and we both had a *really* good time. then it was bedtime, and bedtime went smoothly.

gd and i tried to watch deadpool & wolverine, but as much as i was enjoying it i started passing out quite early on.

...

so far, the day's begun well. i slept alright, woke up and did a lot of stretching (my hips and lower back are still really sore), and we've had a long a constructive conversation with mr smear that covered the plans for the holidays, and a big discussion about gambling and other addictions that ended up with all of us agreeing that if we had the money, we'd establish and run a doggy hotel.

now it's time for me to go to work. *i* still have a couple of schooldays to go before my vacation begins :P