saturday morning eye of the storm

 i just sent scrapper an overshare response to "how are things on your end" and i feel it's worth recording for myself:

from my side, i guess these are the times the chinese always threatened us with (“may you live in interesting times”)…

mr smear managed to close out his first year in the arts school without getting kicked out (though he managed to come close on a number of occasions), and in general he’s been maturing in front of our eyes and he’s doing infinitely better than this time last year. he just started learning to rollerblade this past couple of months, and he’s enjoying our rides much more than he was on a bike which is awesome. also, he’s joined one of his friends at a keitana which turned out to be a survivalist school-themed LARP where they learn how to construct and use weapons and have lectures on pyrotechnics 😛 

gd’s been having a rough time, we discovered recently that she’s either been celiac or has had a really intense reactions to gluten* for a long time and it just got much worse the past year or so. the good news is that a couple of months gluten free and her mind and body are in a much better place than they’ve been in years.

* this is obvious karma for us describing ourselves as “allergic to gluten free” for most of the last decade 😅

as for me, 2026 so far has been pretty wild. i’ve been getting deeper and deeper into AI both at work and in my side projects, and i can tell you that the entire industry has completely lost its mind. the tools are at the same time amazing and utter garbage, everything is hype and we’re watching tech leaders making the most ridiculously foolish plays right in front of our eyes. it’s mass psychosis and it’s disturbing as all hell. 

aside from that, i’ve been struggling on and off to figure out how to print my comics and i'm becoming more and more frustrated that none of the indie comic creators in israel seem to be interested in banding together and making it easier for everyone…

otherwise, the financial strain of living hand-to-mouth in tel aviv is “business as usual” stress, and so far the summer weather has been relatively kind, and i’m sitting on a balcony in a cool breeze and life is, somehow, pretty damned good.

...

last night was rough. emotionally and psychologically, gd and i had an argument about how we each see the world (when it comes to defining "normal" behavior in other people after the very upsetting start to season 3 of infinity train) which resulted in the always-uncomfortable "agree to disagree". that was followed by a particularly rough night, first with the hip flexors and then with indigestion that forced me upright when i desperately needed to be horizontal and took about two hours to calm down enough to let me get back to sleep. then it was morning, and after about half an hour trying to sleep in i gave up and got up to make myself coffee and sit on the balcony and make peace with my life.

...

rough night or no, rough times or no, in this moment right here and now i feel particularly blessed. the weather is beautiful and calm, the birds are singing, and our highway intersection and its surroundings are full of greens (and bright yellows), and interesting tall glass architecture (which i love because it almost makes the buildings camouflaged against the sky), and in spite of all my anxieties i seem to doing okay right now.

not enough drama!

 it's late, and i was already tired a while ago, but i've spent the past couple of hours putting together messages for our current and future landlords and i'll send them in the morning.

...

last night would have been far less stressful if i hadn't seen the response from our current landlords to my earlier message, which was offensively stupid. i wish i hadn't seen it then, and i wish i hadn't read it to gd, because we were both shocked and furious. we rushed to get to our friends (soon-to-be neighbors) with the freshly baked challah-peño (it was a bit of a flop - great challah texture but unexciting taste), realized when we finally got there that we'd left the ice cream at home, so i rushed back to grab it and chatted with my mom along the way.

the evening was great, largely cathartic, dinner was excellent and i drank just enough wine for my nervous system to calm down a bit. mr smear had a great time with the kids, all was well.

we got home late, and sleepy, and everyone went to bed pretty quickly.

today:

this morning i got up early-ish, pretty much finished ping-pong (it's great) and got most of the dishes done. gd and i were both surprised when mr smear woke up and informed me that he wanted to go to the swimming pool. NOT by bike.

so i had a quick breakfast, grabbed my second coffee and off we went. it was a very nice walk there, through a park we weren't familiar with, and we spent about an hour and a half in the pool, mostly just splashing about. before we left the pool to brave the cold air between the pool area and the locker room in order to shower, mr smear told me he might be willing to go back to jiujitsu training if he doesn't have to do mma.

i'll take it.

the showers there are great. once we were done mr smear decided that he really wanted a laffa for lunch (breakfast, really), and the only place open was the shuwarma place by the port.

it was a loooong but entertaining walk to the port, and then we had two huge laffot, preceded by mr smear eating pickled carrots without complaining  (he usually hates carrots) and even about half of a really hot hot pepper.

[omg my hands are so freaking dry, my skin's cracking all over]

halfway through my laffa i had a suspicion that i may have overpayed - google pay doesn't show you the amount when it verifies - and after an only-slightly uncomfortable back-and-forth we determined that he'd charged me 200 shekels for an 80 shekel meal... at least i caught it while still there.

we both enjoyed the meal, but mr smear really shouldn't have forced himself to finish his. we had a long walk home (with a couple of minor incidents of being rained on), most of which was him complaining about a sore stomach...

gd prepared the bath before we arrived, and he warmed up and soaked for a long while. then scrapper's niece came by to pick up his bass guitar and amp, which i'm sad to say i've barely touched since he left it with me, and after sorting out mr smear's toenails scrapper called, and we both had a lot to talk about (during which time, i later realized, mr smear was sitting in his room, drawing and listening to tool on his phone). then it was dishes time, during which time we discovered a really gross mold situation that needed a lot of cleaning, and then i cleaned the area where the guitar had been sitting for ages and accidentally pulled out one of the hooks for the fibre cable.

neither mr smear nor i really needed dinner, so we ate some fruit and the three of us played pictionary for a while before he had to go to bed.

another really good saturday together, he said ^_^

now it's my turn. tomorrow's scaring me, hopefully i'll get some rest before it begins.

...

the situation in iran is horrifying. the fact that nobody's swooping in to help the persians is horrifying.

post-proc

tues:

most of tuesday is too far away to remember.

mr smear and i having a reasonably good time accompanying gd to the hospital for her nerve block, and doing our usual laffa dinner.

gd's nerve block going well, but her being kicked out to the waiting room by an ignorant nurse

high-stress on arrival, trying to keep gd from interfering with her own recovery and mr smear going from uncooperative to downright nasty

a really shitty bedtime followed by a really shitty evening - otherwise pleasant, but ended with a literal poke in the eye when things were finally feeling calmer

yesterday:

interesting spring rain start to the day, gd feeling surprisingly good

a very intense day, our first release of the tool i've been working on

picking mr smear up from school and taking him to the therapist

afternoon tummy troubles, suspecting the barrista oat milk

dropping mr smear off at home, returning to the office for an hour or two

arriving home just in time for dinner after bumping into an old teammate

another rough bedtime and bad feelings

falling asleep on the couch

today:

moving to the bed at 3.30am

a better morning, "hot mama takes smooshy poo to school", gd starting to hurt again

fetching half the pharmacy

pod coffee

trying to help move stuck military equipment

losing an hour to forgetting to connect through my phone

the excitment of mr smear passing his first jiujitsu grading and being given a grey belt

finding and reporting an abandoned kitten, mr smear running off to sob while i tried to help

scrapper surprise, with a challenging conversation

putting mr smear to bed after a pretty good day

exhausted. brushing teeth and showering cost me, but i really needed to get this all down. i need to help mr smear finish his homework tomorrow morning, and i need to make up some work hours once he's in school. i'm stressing about a million things that need doing and i'm trying and failing to avoid thinking about the geopolitical situation.

gods help us all.

unplayful

jesus fuck. mr smear's friend just left a short while ago, and we had to have a talk. i don't think he realized how mean/unfair his behavior was, even though he eventually did listen to us... parenting is hard, man. trying to raise a kid who can function in a society is just hard.

...

in the evening i had a quick chat with horseman - who very excitedly reported the first real success in the investment enterprise he's been working on - and then watched some of the looney tunes show over dinner (it's really good).

i crashed early last night, and i crashed hard. i woke up feeling a bit better, though still a bit stuffy, and spent most of the day reading scrapper's war-outbreak journal (he copied it into a doc for me to be able to add comments), playing bloons adventure time or napping. or running interference on my son's unwitting attempt to lose another friend.

oy.

wtf wodan and thor days

 it is the end of thursday, the beginning of the weekend, and i'm pretty sure my thursday - from a work perspective - was an almost complete waste of time.

wednesday? wtf was wednesday? i was still struggling with the extreme exhaustion. otherwise, i don't remember much but i did actually get my main task accomplished. and we had a couple of rocket attacks.

...

on the one hand, things for us seem to be normalizing even though the entire country, the entire world is being plunged into madness. on the other, it's difficult not to read the news / social media and realize that the real world is suddenly much scarier and much more bizarre than it should be.

i'm scared for jews all over the world, in particular in south africa right now when the kids at the jewish school now have to hide their identities (incl. not wearing uniforms) for their security. and the stories coming out of the top western universities are extremely discouraging.

...

oh! yes. and something made me realize that i hadn't spoken to scrapper since the war broke out, so i messaged him and discovered that he just happened to be in israel and getting off at our train station. so he came in for a surprise visit (and a berating over not having told us he was here), while a lot of the subject matter was unhappy it was good to see him.

thursday? feeling much better, though still very tired and consistently unmotivated. i dropped mr smear off at school, paid a quick visit to the clinic to sort out some admin,

gd seems to be doing better.

mr smear was mostly fine, until we had an incident this afternoon. on the one hand, it was something ridiculous that i could have just let go of, but on the other - he was being extremely rude, far beyond the line, and we had to establish the boundary. things got heated and emotional, but i managed to pull him back (even while he was still angry) and after some time on his own he came out and everything was good.

i feel really bad for him, but in spite of how outrageously insane he can be i'm relieved that he's developing the ability to re-center. i also feel like i'm levelling up in how i handle these things. far from perfect, but definitely improving.

...

i've been playing a lot of inscryption. it's addictive, it's fun, it's infuriating. and according to scrapper's spoiler, the bit i'm struggling to get through that feels like it's closing in on the end of the game, is only just the beginning. that's insane.

harvest time

it's shavuot! our harvest festival that's been co-opted by the dairy industry, and now we're taking our dairy-allergic son to a family gathering where everything will be touched by cow juice. so we've eaten early and we're taking our own snacks...

...

this week was much more reasonably paced than i've gotten used to. the work we pushed on sunday was the culmination of months of incremental achievements under fire: our company bleeding money on ci/cd infrastructure that i've been busy overhauling for the past year. the work isn't complete, but we've finally got all the pieces in place and staunched the wound, and the past few days have felt like stopping and taking a breath.

mr smear's week improved, in spite of a couple of rough moments. monday morning was the low-light of the week, though, and the rest of the moments (so far, i guess) have been pretty minor and manageable in comparison.

yesterday:

scrapper's last day in town, so i jumped on a bus to meet up with him. someone cut the bus off and the driver slammed on the brakes and swerved, throwing me into a woman standing by the windscreen and smashing a mirror in the middle of the packed bus and showering everyone (including someone in a wheelchair) with glass.

fortunately, i walked off with one cut finger and a couple of sore ones, and nothing more, and the woman i slammed into seemed to be okay (i asked a second time to make sure, but to be fair she could also have been in shock).

scrapper and i sat and chewed the fat for a while, then he joined me for a quick grocery run and stopped by to say hi to the fam for a few minutes before he had to run. all in all, it was a nice catch up full of interesting stories and i'm glad we got to see him.

today:

a half-day at work, somewhat productive. then we went for a walk to pick up a gift wine for tonight and have a delicious lunch and coffee at cafe ava - it's awesome to have an excellent vegan coffee shop/deli within walking distance!

the afternoon was lazy, mr smear and i tried out untitled goose game, which was a lot of fun, and we've got a bunch of new downloads to try :)

i'm very excited to have a couple of days off. chag sameach!

our last of us

the last of us shares a vision of what the world could look like if cordyceps evolved to infect humans. we're currently struggling with ringworm, and i can't help but imagine what the world would look like if tinea corporis was impossible to treat.

...

i've been chatting with scrapper over the past couple of days, i'm sad to learn that he and his partner have experienced a similar fallout to me and pg since they landed in canada. traveling and trauma test one's relationship, emigrating definitely combines those two and the effect is greater than the sum of its parts...

...

i finally got back to the rollerblading group on tuesday night! i drank a cup of coffee before i left, had a good time, and got home feeling pretty good (aside from a blister on one of my feet). but then... i couldn't sleep. i was thoroughly wired. after a very long wednesday, i climbed into bed in the hopes of recovering and then... still couldn't sleep. not as bad as the previous night, but insufficient.

(in lemongrab's voice) unacceptable!

boy, was i looking forward to sleeping last night, but i spent most of it uncomfortable, hot or cold or imagining things that bother me...

...

speaking of which, since gd's been able to smoke cannabis she's been able to wean off a whole lot of her pain medications, and she's going through withdrawal symptoms. that sucks.

...

this week i was hyper-focused on work. i'm not happy about that, but i guess i'm not unhappy about that either. i did enjoy some successes, although quite a lot of frustration, too. i learned a lot about some of the more esoteric stuff i've been working with. it's definite progress.

i'm excited and nervous about the next week and month. assuming all goes well, my first options are scheduled to vest in the next ten days. assuming all goes well, those options will actually be worth something at some point.

...

mr smear has lost another tooth. he's generally doing okay, and we're learning to pick our battles, but there was an incident on wednesday with a particularly slow and violent kid that made him refuse to enter his classroom yesterday...

...

we're off soon to join an earth day march in an attempt to raise awareness for our need (as a species) to get off animal agriculture. we figure it's a good idea to take mr smear with us, hopefully this will be fun! 

on gender identity and transitioning

scrapper just posted a link to a very, very long article on the state of transitioning research. fortunately, he advised me to skip to the conclusion and it pretty much summarizes what i've come across of late.

from what i've read i've begun to believe that "educating" children about gender is not only unnecessary but confusing to them, and that both encouraging (more than just accepting how your kids feel) and discouraging (just accept how your kids feel) are both forms of abuse. if there's a serious body dysmorphia issue when they're older, then make sure they have the support (family and professional) that they need.

what we really need is to - as a society - stop caring about an individual's gender preferences and behaviours. seriously, who the **** cares if a boy or girl behaves like the opposite sex or what kids wear or any of that crap. constructing identity based on these kinds of things is precisely why we have such messed up identity politics in the first place.

build your identity on things that matter, like values and principles and tastes, and let's move the **** on! as gd says: it's time to step out of the anal phase.

pinched nervous - part two

[... continued]

we watched a whole bunch of shane koyczan while i ate a grilled not-as-good-and-not-really-vegan cheese which gd bought thinking it was vegan. daiya is it, people. daiya is it.

---yesterday:

i slept well but woke up with weak arms. i hope that's because i'm still recovering from last week's hard training and not due to neural damage. otherwise, i enjoyed a perfect wake-up, which set the tone for a short while before it was destroyed by someone being wrong on the internet.

a friend of gd's had come over to trade a singing lesson for a haircut and she helped me tone down some of my posts a little. the feminine touch is apparently all in using words like "perhaps" and "necessarily" in the right places even when you *know* you're right.

the half-hour singing lesson i stayed for was quite fun! and then i missioned back to the clinic for x-rays. i was told they'd be ready within an hour, so i found an italian place for great pasta and returned to play the waiting game. this time i took a face mask as i sat down, only this time there weren't any coughing kids so i struggled with keeping it on and looking silly versus playing it extra-safe. i passed out for a bit and when i awoke i worried that i'd missed my name, but the receptionists refused to check the list.

a lot of us were frustrated and angry, i don't see why they can't have a queue system like everywhere else so that we can see how many patients are ahead of us. i fretted like that for an hour, feeling like my time was being thoroughly wasted. those are minutes of my life that i could have spent having coffee across the road in a place that has internet access, dammit!

i eventually got in to see the doctor, who went over my results and informed me that i have mild degenerative disease in my neck. fan-tastic. so i guess i should stop doing jiu-jitsu, and sparring - i wasn't really doing much of those anyway, but they seem an especially bad idea now. gd and my mother have both convinced me to see an osteopath and i have a referral to a sport orthopedist.

---i got home, ran laundry, got news from scrapper that my books are selling, and all the while stressed more and more about everything. i was angry, and the causes of the anger were great and small. the employment situation, horseman failing to update me about the workshop we're trying to organize, the new artist not getting back to me, the morning's argument going on until the evening, the miserable weather and having to go shopping in it without an umbrella, and severe clumsiness when i returned all came together all made it very difficult to stop, breathe, and get perspective.

fortunately gd's happy to let me rant and when i'd finally made dinner and taken it to her i spent about fifteen minutes getting it all off my chest. then i felt much better, and then we had an argument about feminism and sexual abuse that upset both of us until we'd sorted out what it was we were trying to say, and then the evening got better though we were both knackered.

---we had an excellent night's sleep and i woke up from an epic dream ending with two giant towers in a desert, one for purification and the other a set of challenges. another group was speaking in a language with lots of "ng" sounds and my partner (i don't recall now who he was) was really slow and useless.

i started the day watching my old dean give a beautiful ted talk about working with juvenile delinquents. it's inspirational!

it's afternoon already, and i've achieved nothing of import. i'm not impressed with today at all, here's hoping it improves dramatically.

self destruction

tuesday:

kickboxing was killer. i received a nasty, tender bump on my shin when i was checked at the beginning of the exercises, i've iced it since but it's still not good. the really slow guy was in our class and i was really happy that i barely had to work with him. i've got a lot - a LOT - of tuning to do, our instructor told me that i was doing great before he left and that i've regressed considerably. that kinda sucks...

... he called on me to demonstrate one of the stations - told me to protect my head and proceeded to hit me pretty damned hard. i'm not sure if my forehead being tender is from that or from the following evening's sparring...

gd and i had dinner while i introduced her to freaks and geeks (yay! an excuse to watch it again) before we resumed watching rick and morty. this series is astoundingly smart and crazy!

---wednesday:

comixology: i eventually ended up purchasing qui a besoin de la lune? and neil gaiman and charles vess - stardust. since then i've read the first issue of the wheel of time (great rendering into comic form!) and the third volume of kill shakespeare, which is gorgeous and very, very clever.

...

i dreamed of having to land a plane remotely, which, i thought, is just like what psychologists do; suddenly i found myself transported on board, but the seats were somehow constructed around the center of the fuselage and we were spinning around with a deep drop in the middle, i had to somehow navigate my way out of there without falling...

...

wednesday morning was chilled, i spent it clearing emails i've been meaning to get around to. for weeks. and months. that included going through pictures from pg of all of my cds and dvds to figure out what i want her to keep and what she should give to scrapper to sell on my behalf. that's been a lot of work.

gd and i watched the video for solar roadways and got into a heavy argument about the nature of humanity. and the differences between our perceptions of reality. this went on for some time, eventually ending well but hitting some stressful points for the both of us along the way.

...

my nose was still running and my legs were very sore from training the night before.

...

the cleaning lady arrived, which led to some funny moments as she and gd ganged up on me on a couple of things; one of which was my treatment of the plant that pg left me, because i was following her instructions to the letter and i thought they were doing well. apparently the vase needs to be cleaned at least once a year.

---retarded people shouldn't own dogs. sorry. we passed a woman with down syndrome on the way to gd's place and gd wasn't the only one on the street to be disgusted by the fact that she's walking her fourth dog in a year. she keeps killing the poor things, obviously not maliciously, and nobody's doing anything about it. gd tried talking to her but she's, well, handicapped. she couldn't be reasoned with.

---i agreed to sort out gd's computer, which was running xp and was so filled with malware that it was barely functioning. we spent a stressful hour or two trying to figure out what she needed backed up before formatting...

the weather has flipped from winter to summer in a single day, and the afternoon was warm and sticky.

after i was supposed to have finished eating i suddenly found myself absolutely ravenous; between that and being stupidly relaxed after a massage from gd (she's really, really good with them and i needed it after the kickboxing) i was precisely NOT ready for the boxing class, but i forced myself to go anyway.

i arrived early enough to spend twenty minutes or so kicking my legs into gear and stretching, doing some good bag-work in spite of my runny nose. the warmup started and i hopped to it with my jump rope (sorry), figuring something out with our coach's assistance (he was being nice?!) and deciding that if half-way through the warm-up i was having difficulty raising my arms then i couldn't hope for a good class to follow...

... but i was wrong. i worked with the assistant holding pads for me and did so well i quite impressed myself, and on the last exercise on the bags when everyone else was giving up and bowing out two of us didn't hear "time" being called and carried on until someone came to stop us :P

i stayed for sparring, and went three rounds. i wasn't amazing, but i definitely wasn't bad. i'm glad i managed to keep up and i felt as good as i felt exhausted by the time i left.

it was shirt and sandals weather, and that's how i went shopping. my body was so stiff and sore that it was almost as hard to get to the supermarket as it was to get back. i felt old, and very slow indeed.

gd was supposed to come over but her back was still hurting her, so i had most of a salad and then headed over there.

---yesterday:

the moon was full and appeared far larger than usual, its light followed me through the dark streets to gd's. i was totally bombed even before i arrived, and we watched episodes 8 and 9 of rick and morty while i thoroughly enjoyed a vegan grilled cheese.

...

i slept incredibly well, though i still woke up sore and slow in the morning. i had a worrying headache but i assumed it was just my sinuses still and not related to my tender post-punches head.

[an amusing moment meeting a family friend of gd's and her saying precisely the wrong thing]

we'd finally organized a copy of windows for gd's computer but it couldn't be read... then it struck me that ubuntu might be a good option for someone who doesn't really tax her pc very much.

what a pleasure installing it off my thumb drive! almost everything she needs was a breeze to configure, and in some cases - like input languages - i managed to set things up in a far more usable way than windows would ever let me. the only complicated things is updating grub, which i'm not prepared to do until i have the time to focus properly and not make any mistakes...

feeling pleased and really hungry, we went out to midi 6 for lunch. the asian waitress has never heard the word "vegan" before, and started explaining to us that there's no difference in the menu between weekdays and weekends.
not "weekend", i said, and we sent her off to the kitchen to find out if i'd be able to eat. eventually we came right, but i do wish they'd add their option to the menu already...

we walked out into proper summer, sated and happy. we said goodbye at the metro station and i came home to fall onto the couch. my death nap was interrupted by the balcony door banging in the wind. then horseman called to say he was on his way. i wasn't sure about that until i'd gotten some coffee in me, after which i felt much better.

we played tekken and i gave him a speech about his life choices. because that's what friends do? for months he's invested himself in finishing high school and has given up on the last exam. it's statistics, and the reason he's given up is because he can't make sense of it. which is fair, because it's a bullshit subject. i just hope he gets over himself and then the exam, because the longer he waits the less chance he'll have of finishing.

statistically speaking, of course.

---i've spent some time thinking about organizing poetry evenings during the summer while the throw poetry collective's dormant, an idea which rabbit instigated. i asked horseman what he thought about it and he added a surprisingly good idea to the mix: he's working with youth from the projects and we could bring them in for a workshop each month. now we just need to secure l'artere and figure out how to get to break-even, then we'll be good to go.

---i was far too broken to train yesterday, so i finished going through my discs that pg's holding. just before heading out to gd's i received a message from the office saying that the legal team is putting together my permit application. i think this means that things are progressing well.

...

on my way there i remembered something important about poetry: if it's not accessible enough to please everyone to get high scores, then it doesn't deserve them. so sayeth shakespeare, or at least that's how he rolledeth.

...

gd put together a delicious dinner and we had so delicious ice-cream from dessert: we're in agreement, soya ice-cream is better than dairy. it's a texture thing, the taste is about the same. every ice-cream should be available in soya! just sayin'.

we finished season one of rick and morty. it's so profound! i think the world is better for it.

---today:

i spent the night in total discomfort. this morning i woke up feeling accordingly shit, but once again felt much better after some coffee. i wasted half an hour or so at the walmart on my way home, looking for items that they didn't have in stock, then crashed on the couch reading comics.

aside from reading comics, eating and breaking glass, today's been about posting and relaxing. now that i'm done with the former i'm going to spend some more time doing the latter.

---i keep finding myself surprised by the surreal nature of my relationship with gd. it's weird how perfect everything is, how good we are for each other! i keep finding myself feeling elatedly grateful and worrying that there's an imbalance somewhere. and then she convinces me that's all's right with the world.

huh.

t minus one day

the temperature in the apartment kept dropping last night, so much so that for the first time this winter i've actually needed my duvet. fortunately that was enough to sleep decently. mostly. at least the problem seems to be sorted out now... i can't believe it took them two days to take care of it.

i don't know what drove me to look at the featured apps page on itunes: pre-exam distraction-seeking when i already have tons of other distractions available? i downloaded stack rabbit, mini ninjas and another case solved. the first is a bit crap, the second is pretty and fun but the last is stupidly addictive - no, make that cleverly addictive! it's balanced perfectly so that the in-game purchases are enticing but if you want to keep it free it's not an issue. it's based on tile-matching, but it's so much more than that; the hints aren't enough to get the hang of the tools and tricks, but the more i've played the more i realize what i'm supposed to be enjoying. and it's great :)

...

dreams:
1. in a synagogue, realizing after quite a while that i hadn't put my "kippah" on. someone was making a noise and a crazy red-headed cousin of mine almost got physical with the offender trying to "keep the peace".
2. i entered a gym, the cheaper, shittier one with a dodgy locker room that reminded me of pub toilets that i suspect had been derived from another dream. i didn't feel like working out.
3. on a mission to break in to a nuclear facility. there were written instructions i couldn't carry and which i had difficulty memorizing; i was extremely hesitant to enter through a safety window (?), but a helpful japanese girl demonstrated how to get past the airlock system which involved getting naked. i was still uncomfortable.
4. standing in front of a mirror examining a visible upper tooth when it cracked. i slid it off an ugly rotten core that remained, and was quite upset.

i had trancentral five loaded up and listened to it while reading this morning. it's like a time machine: while it played i was nineteen years old and enjoying a sunny post-party afternoon with protoplasm at the apartment i lived in before emigrating from south africa. "was", not "thought about being" or "remembered being".

horseman's two hour chat this afternoon was smoother than yesterday's. we ended it with a couple of rounds of tekken, after which i continued reading before heading to dinner at godmother's. dinner was really nice (uncle hate's away), i watched a bit of gladiator with yang until it was time to leave. yang gave me a ride to vfmp's where we watched another episode of house of cards. a pretty good one.

when i left it was -13 and pretty darned cold. as in, it felt cold, i guess i've gotten used to being indoors... on the news earlier they were saying that this has been the coldest winter in twenty years. it doesn't seem *that* much worse than the last, though, which was apparently one of the mildest in years...

...

my thighs and hips are hurting from last night's training.

my junk food habit is expensive. i just did the math in my head. not good.

---pulse's friend has officially referred me for a couple of jobs i'd like. *holds thumbs*

scrapper has invited me to join a small group doing collaborative world-building via email. so far, fun!

broken valentine

as i mentioned last night, i ran into pulse on the bus to godmother's, and she was polite. polite. that's not at all what i was expecting. i didn't know what to make of it, but this morning she sent me a message so i figured things might be fine... but then she ignored my response (which included a question). later i wrestled with an email letting her know how i feel (i put way too much effort into it not coming across too heavy), and since then i haven't heard a word from her. i feel like i deserved something back, at least. even something negative. i don't know what i did or didn't do, but this is obviously not working. which makes me sad, because aside from whatever the hell's going on (or not?) she's awesome. but not so awesome that i'm okay with being ignored. nobody's that awesome.

---the hours flew by pretty quickly today, i spent most of them on french and some on random shit. including reporting a phishing attempt to bell that's apparently been driving them crazy: an sms with a link to a legitimate bell.ca url that's been hacked to steal account data.

i spoke to somebody today who seemed positive about employing me... that felt good.

i went to the french conversation meetup, and was far more confident! i also learned some helpful things. and that i have lots more to learn and practice.

i took my frustrations with pulse into boxing class with me, which i knew wasn't cool, but managed to offload them quickly enough. or put them aside, at least. i worked with army brat, and we did impact at the end of the class. she seemed to be hitting me pretty hard, and expressed shock at how much tougher i am, but i didn't really feel much even when she hit my soft spots (solar plexus and liver) and i can't help but question if it's me who's tougher or her who's weaker. and then i felt super embarrassed when i hit her so hard that she apparently peed a little.

*sigh*

i chatted with her and the girl i gave the chocolate to on friday after class, mostly in french. i suspect that the girl who got the chocolate might actually have taken it as a serious romantic gesture. that would be awkward!

i've been working on memorizing the first two poems that i posted last week, and i'm quite pleased that they're already feeling ready to be shared on stage ^_^

i chugged a protein shake and went to vfmp's to watch another episode of house of cards. vfmp, his boyfriend and his brother are all 100% vegans, and it was most validating to hear them enthusiastically agreeing with me in response to their reading my vegans unite! post. it seems we are united!

episode seven of house of cards is a clear improvement and i feel like the season is almost back on track.

---scrapper has introduced me to the idea of chess boxing. certainly not for me, but interesting nonetheless. hmm. perhaps if tekken replaced chess...

this video gives a little perspective on the bds movement.

not so hot

awww, man. i was invited to take a test for a company i'd love to work for; they're using this really cool online tool called interview zen whereby they can watch you code as if in real-time. no pressure. the questions they asked were interesting but not mind-bending, but it's been so long since i've actually done any serious coding that combined with the time pressure i simply crashed and burned. i made an effort to demonstrate my intentions and i really hope that my methodical approach and attitude to problem solving shines through, but i'm not expecting an enthusiastic response.

what a bummer :(

but my curiosity has been piqued and i just solved the final part (that i didn't get around to) for myself. i really should be playing more.

---
scrapper's been in touch and he sent me some of the texts he's been working on - it's really good! but i kinda expected that.

it felt like i woke up, had breakfast and then suddenly it was afternoon already. time is seriously on a mission this week - i can't believe it's friday already!

i'm very awkward about sending emails about work to people i barely know asking for favours that i'm neither certain they can perform nor whether i actually need them to.

i braved the extreme cold to go to the distant supermarket yesterday, primarily to pick up turkish coffee. which, inexplicably, they no longer seem to stock. nooooooo!!!

on the way i ate the very last subway falafel they're planning on stocking at the local branch. nooooooo!!!

after the perfect nap - and by perfect i mean not only that i enjoyed it, but that i woke up without an alarm and felt very, very good for a long while afterwards - i chatted with k-twang who had exciting news and rushed out to the closer supermarket to pick up two items i'd forgotten earlier.
i then met with badger at the gym and we did four drills, three of which changed my game and left me with a *lot* of practicing to do. moving forward and backward while striking, responding to crowding and fighting off the ropes or out of the corner is bloody exhilarating!

i watched a fair amount of television while eating and then went to bed. today was relaxed until i did the test... and now it feels like the day is blown. or the week. ah, shit.

de-stress

or re-stress. through a series of intriguing random links i stumbled earlier upon kelly mcgonigal's how to make stress your friend, one of the single most directly useful and important pieces of data that i personally need. you might well need it too. watch it!

---yesterday:

i woke up from a lucid dream of fighting scrapper gladator-style in an arena with an evil and violent relentlessness and horrific self-awareness. i don't recall the context but it set a dark tone for the day. the darkness continued lightly with my "new" headphones breaking (the right ear's cable's damaged), and deepened when i found myself responding impatiently to a problem newk'd was having. granted i was stressing out about the work i was doing and was irritated by his imprecision in describing the issue, but darn's assessment and report the day before brought to the fore a level of intolerance that i was quite ashamed of after i settled down.

that led to even greater distraction when i tried to get back into my work and could only think of "the newk'd problem". i tried discussing things with him over messaging while getting some work done, which ultimately proved to be a bad idea. now that i've heard darn i'm a lot more sensitive to his petulance. trying to get past this and find a fix, i came up with a solution that i'm pretty sure offended him even though it's in his best interests; i need him to start investing himself in studying theory - data structures, algorithms, design patterns and alternative paradigms and methodologies. and then i need to coach him personally.

either way, i feel poisoned by megaman and darn. if we're going to add significance to the jewish new year then this has been an ugly way to begin it.

---the end of the workday felt like an epic fail. while explaining to darn the situation i was leaving for the two-day holiday in, i thought about how i would hear the words i was saying if i was him, and as the words left my mouth i thought "credibility blown". it didn't help that he misunderstood my description of a bug that could be treated as a feature and was left with the impression that i'd been wasting my time implementing the "feature" instead of focusing on the core design...

---on my way home i picked up wine for dinner gifts and added a bottle of rum, downing a solid splash on arrival the same way i used to do during my interrogations. it was through a light haze that i got dressed, feeling awkward about putting on nice clothes for the first time in almost half a year, and walked out to a mind-bogglingly stunning sunset, all bright yellows and pink clouds streaked across the lightest blue of skies.

dinner was great, if a little awkward. there were a couple of interesting conversations amidst all the regular smalltalk, a significant note being struck by someone telling me that it's somehow possible for me to begin the canadian citizenship process directly bypassing the quebec one. something involving interviewing across the border (the us border) that wouldn't require me to speak french.

i strongly suspect that that's not a relevant avenue anymore, and in any event i really need to learn french so i don't know if i'd care to add layers of complication to the process.

by the end of the evening everyone was sleepy, so the goodbyes were said spontaneously and quickly. i was, as usual, very uncomfortable with waves versus handshakes versus kisses, on the way out i thought i'd gotten it right for once but then suddenly realized that i'd kissed another guest i'd never met but skipped the hostess. aw, crap :(

---today:

the windows are open and i'm sweating in spite of it only being fifteen degrees. during the night it dropped down to six, and while i pulled out my duvet cover i didn't actually use it. oh, canada: what have you done to me?!

i think i like it ^_^
as i walked around running errands today, i was struck emotionally by how the weather exposed a sense of spring that i can only connect to cape town on its best days.

...

i woke up to a chat with pg culminating in her holding up all my israeli clothing to the webcam for me to choose which to throw and which to keep. the video quality was terrible and some of the items were hard to recognize, but either way i sent most of it to be donated: we were both proud of my ability to let go. heck, of all my band / experience shirts and hoodies i think i kept only one. my claws shirt, because it's an awesome shirt and it's the fraternity that i will always identify with the most.

when she turned the light on at the end of the chat the video quality improved drastically...

*sigh*

it looks like we have another potential buyer for our apartment! i hope this all goes smoothly and quickly, may the best (first) man (couple) win.

i walked to the computer / surveillance store next door to discover that a simple, good motion-detection / video camera solution costs $150 (should i waste my time pitching it to the building manager?) and that their keyboards are *way* cheaper than what i'd find at walmart. on the way to walmart to price-check i discovered that there's another subway and it's much nicer and cleaner than the one i usually go to that's only marginally closer.

...

i tried to get something done at the post office and was surprised to hear the woman ahead of me explaining to the guy how to do his job. good thing for her she knew all the ins and outs of international postage, he was utterly clueless and wouldn't even admit that he was lost. he could easily have cost her the package she was sending! when i stepped up afterwards and asked for something simple, he asked me to come back in fifteen minutes when his manager would be around.

huh.

he was of middle-eastern origin with a heavy accent, i suspect there was an honour thing going on there.

...

i had a quick cup of coffee at the starbucks, did some serious supermarket shopping and then arbed around before napping an hour or so. i woke up with more of a headache than when i'd started...

---i think i'm addicted to penny arcade: gamers vs evil. seriously.

...

i'm listening to the new nin album i pre-ordered. i'm not blown away :(

---happy jewish new year, everyone.

a week to reflect - ii

[... continued]

pg called last week and it was really nice speaking to her. she's decided she's done with england and resigned herself to being israeli... oh, well.

---dating:

i've been keeping an eye on the dating sites; i've so far seen a couple of profiles that were worth trying to communicate with. most of the girls online are either totally unattractive physically or entirely uninteresting.

last week at ju-jitsu i was paired up with a sexy, large girl with a great attitude and who's so naturally flexible that she's practically impossible to submit. i was almost too attracted to her to focus on the task at hand, with jiu-jitsu things get pretty intimate...

a really cute girl "claimed" me in boxing friday night, and i'm kicking myself for have missed two perfectly good opportunities to ask her out. dammit!

---training:

hayfever makes for difficult training.

our boxing instructor made me feel like shit last week, but this week he made it clear that the grief he was giving me was actually his way of saying i've established myself. when i realized that my enthusiasm returned even stronger than before. so much so that i've been happily working through my jump rope issues: my new rope needs to be whipped down on every stroke and it's an insanely tough workout. by the time we've warmed up my arms are already strained and then i add actual boxing... i'm already feeling a lot tougher after just a few days of that!

one of the guys was sweating profusely the other night and our instructor was giving him shit for it. i couldn't resist:
"oh my god, that's disgusting! i've never seen anyone sweat so much!"
as soon as everyone realized what i was referring to we all had a good laugh :)

i was surprised to learn that the beginner mats' jiu-jitsu instructor's jewish - i heard him talking about the birthright program with another guy and felt like i was in the twilight zone.

i'm gonna miss boxing with scrapper. there's a noticeable difference working with a friend who you know you can push and who knows can push you. one embarrassing incident, though - he was talking to the substitute instructor and i thought he was done. i made as if to strike him and then realized that all eyes were still on him...

...

friday night a couple of the guys invited me to spar with them after the class. the primary objective was for me to learn to defend myself. i didn't really get that far, but it was a bloody good start. i gotta say that it's terrifying to see or almost-see a punch coming for you and it's really hard for me to keep my eyes open and feet grounded. every moment is breathless anticipation of being tagged, and with these guys tags are pretty jarring.

even more upsetting was taking an opportunity to beat up on one of them and realizing too late that i'd thrown all my technique out the window and didn't have my hands up. shit!

...

i began today with an awesome sparring session; it was my first time in the octagon and while we started with boxing we ended up with muay thai.

i do not have what it takes to stare down a spinning backfist.
i do not have what it takes to stare down a spinning backfist.
i do not have what it takes to stare down a spinning backfist.

---last thursday (august 22^nd):

it appears that the metro braking system isn't automated. i witnessed a train stopping too late, and all the people waiting to get out got to watch us for a minute before continuing on to the next station. what a bummer!

...

how 'bout that? all it took to make a shitty day great was an early happy hour, great jiu-jitsu and killer kickboxing, and a stupidly delicious chinese meal out.

---friday:

waking up: muscles relaxed, brain relaxed, window fan whirring, the perfect combination to make me want to just lie in bed and slip in and out of consciousness. but alarms. and crunch time. and reality.

i left very late on friday night, picked up scrapper and took him for indian on the way to vfmp's with thunderstone. the meal was delicious, and thunderstone was brilliant. we played until 3 or 4am with vfmp and his buddies, great beer and games, fun attitude and non-stop funny commentary.

the pre-dawn air was wonderful! it was a little chilly, though, and i was ready to crash. on our way home the taxi driver tried to gas us (he closed the windows before letting rip with a most offensive fart) and drove so fast we were sure he was suicidal.

---saturday:

scrapper and i went to see kickass ii, which was especially cool because we'd seen the first one together. we both enjoyed it immensely, although it wasn't quite as wonderful as the first one. i was surprised by how great jim carrey was and it makes him even more of an asshole for hating on the film.

we went to sports experts so scrapper could pick up some things and i saw a lumogreen hoodie from under armor that was so brilliant i wasn't sure i could pull it off. it would take some mulling over later before i decided that i had to have it.

godmother told me that things were happening on monkland and we decided to check it out, very fortunately running into newk'd. we enjoyed the little street festival, then went to maz for a night of booze, awesome pool and air hockey, breaking to have dinner at shaika across the road (nice place!) and to catch the tail end of a pretty good hip hop performance.

newk'd's girlfriend was defeated in pool by a psychotic dude who took himself way to seriously, and they asked me to please avenge them. getting the rules sorted out was a negotiation, and at one point he became certain that newk'd had talked shit about him and i needed to calm him down. i kicked his ass in spite of large quantities of alcohol and my focus difficulties, and walked out feeling like a hero.

...

i'm not at liberty to share who scored the quote of the day:
"my ex-girlfriend, who was black - i mean she's still black but she was my girlfriend..."

---sunday:

waking up late and hitting starbucks to Get Shit Done without disturbing scrapper or being distracted by him. we did some major shopping at loblaws where i managed to piss him off (my reaction to his not hearing me wasn't particularly considerate), and we proceeded to saint laurent which was supposed to be like monkland the day before but it kind of sucked. i picked up dodgy indian food as we entered and i regretted it almost immediately - the experience of it, not after-effects. to make up for that we went to aux vivres which was awesome.

we walked through la fontaine, sitting down to chat for a while, and i was surprised to see it actually filled with water :P
on our way to piknic electronik scrapper had an epiphany relating to a philosophical point we've been discussing for years now, and he took that with to the party. piknic wasn't great, something about the crowd was a bit weird, but dj bliss was bloody amazing and we enjoyed that.

we got home late, watched devilman: the birth and then passed out. the movie was entertaining, but it's totally weird that the biggest action sequence was boring.

i went to bed feeling the purest exhaustion i've felt in a long time.

---monday:

morning: "beauty snooze" - i was very lucky to wake up on time without my alarm...

after training: it was great training and weather that made me feel good. the indian place was closed so we did chinese, i burned my mouth and was pretty upset with myself because it would have tasted even better otherwise.

we spent the evening discussing biological technological applications and capped it with a reading from ryan north - to be or not to be. it's genius!

---tuesday:
epic dreams of revolution. wearing wednesday socks threw my sense of what day it was out of whack.

there was a dinner fail, we didn't find anything to watch on netflix and closed the day playing a card game scrapper'd picked up that was pretty good.

---wednesday:

a sense over the whole night that i wasn't quite sleeping, just waiting. i woke up hurting badly and exhausted, and dragged myself to the office to meet with moonlighter and then escape. the meetings took longer than expected, but i returned home and napped for about forty five minutes and that made a world of difference.

even so, i attacked the code that i was supposed to be manipulating and after hours of struggling still couldn't figure out if i should write it from scratch or just keep trying. i was most unhappy.

boxing: sweaty yet relaxed, practicing defense. i need a lot more of that.

we just made it in time for a big and delicious indian dinner, then went downtown for an uninspiring beer before returning home. i was properly tired and even fell asleep on the metro...

---thursday:

scrapper's alarm failed so it's good i was planning on seeing him to the airport. i'd discovered a taxi iphone app and organizing the ride there was nice and easy. we had coffee, said goodbye and i went straight to the office.

three coffees and i was still feeling weak. i left late and was feeling wasted, i was on my way to kickboxing and i simply couldn't understand why i was still going... i must be seriously addicted. most of the lesson was disappointing, but some of it was useful and we had a good finish so we i left it was with a sense that it had been worth it. my evening disappeared in the internets and i went to bed relatively early.

---friday:

i woke up feeling pretty good.

happy hour: excellent lunch money game! i'd bought it based on a vague memory, the kinds of things that came out were a lot of fun.

there's something magical about walking in the rain all the way to get food at subway and finding it closed. i learned about twerking and hurriedly finished my application to mars one.

i watched the second episode of black mirror on scrapper's recommendation and was blown away by it.

---saturday:

i began the day realizing that nobody cares about my laundry problems. and i'm not the only one with them. and the dryer doesn't work again.

i posted the previous entry, took a slow meandre downtown with a decent cup of coffee, and bought the luminous green hoodie i'd seen with scrapper the week before. apparently retail therapy doesn't work if you don't like shopping. i'm glad i got what i needed, but that's as far as it goes...

i ate a crappy tofu meal, and between the ride downtown and back played plenty of penny arcade: gamers versus evil. i love that game.

vfmp and his boyfriend came over for thunderstone and lunch money, i made a quick salad dinner and we headed to the village to watch the ufc fights live at a sports bar. it was a pretty awesome night.


---today:

i'm now hurriedly finishing this before heading to godmother's for dinner. i woke up early for sparring, and walked out of the gym into the most beautiful, hot summery day of blue skies and pleasant breezes. i had a quick subway lunch and am proud of myself for not getting involved in the ridiculously uninformed bible debate between two women sitting near me, then took my snowboard to poubelle du ski for renewal.

in retrospect, i should have bought the board but it was too late by the time i realized it. in the meanwhile, i'll enjoy another year of any damage being their problem. i got groovy new boots - bright orange with "nitro" written across them. so my new boots tell me "memento mori". how appropriate...

gir's in the house!

how is this possible?! how can it be half past midnight as i write this? online dating websites take an inordinate amount of time, as does preparing food and getting started with awesome crossover fanfic. it involves gir, that's all i'm saying :)

---today began with a much better wake-up than yesterday. i was still tense from yesterday, but aside from an unprofessional slip or two i managed to keep my feelings in check. even when i was being shouted at by an irate cto who berated me for not using functionality that nobody told me about and that hasn't been implemented yet.
it didn't ease my mind to learn that we're in artificial overdrive / crunch mode because megaman and darn have realized that their planning was unrealistic. i have training and scrapper to attend to, i told them i'd do every second day.

it was one of those days. i couldn't make a move without someone either waiting for me or popping up with an emergency, so of the list of things that i had to do in the morning i achieved absolutely nothing all day.

the only positive things that happened at work were
1) getting over the unpleasantries with the cto and having a productive meeting after he realized who was at fault
2) receiving my custom gir iphone case

i was supposed to meet with bnw this evening but she caught something at the convention: i had to choose between using that time for work or running off to training because after yesterday i'd rather do tuesdays and thursdays if i have to choose. sod that, i thought, and made a hasty exit.

i rushed out, then suddenly remembered throwing my life-proof case out with the cardboard box the new case came in. i rushed back to find the recycling bin empty, and was all "oh, shit!" until i hurried off and stuck my hand in my pocket. then i was all "no, shit!"
i've been doing things like that for the last while. it's not cool.

---i returned home to find that scrapper had managed to sort out the keys. awesome! and now we know why the building demands such a high deposit, the damn things actually cost $25 (O_o)

it was a super make-up-for-yesterday kickboxing session, i worked exceptionally hard and sorted myself out a bit. i worked with a boxing kid who calls himself prince, who was gassed out by the time i was finished drilling him. it was his turn next and he decided i deserved to feel the same; he completely exaggerated but i refused to give in, i took inspiration from the beast and went absolutely beserk. it took me more than five minutes after the class ended to get my breath back! the beast and prince invited me to join them on the punching bags, and i spent half the time kicking and the other half fixing prince's kicks.

overall, i feel good about my earlier decision to abandon ship.

scrapper and i had planned to meet up for dinner on the plateau, but he called to say he needed some time alone. after briefly chatting with my mom, i went online and the night disappeared.

scrapper's back, it sounds like he had a productive time. i'm now ready to go to bed, all is okay with the world. for now, and that's all anyone ever has :)

down with sickness

this morning darn informed me that i'm responsible for improving morale.
"oh. you mean i'm good cop and you're bad cop?"
"yeah."
i looked into his eyes and saw that he was soulless.

---my day didn't begin right because i got up early and exhausted to make up for the hours i'd take off later. the work day began with aota, she was stressed and i bothered her by asking for help with something she felt i should know and i walked away feeling guilty and irritated. the morning sped by and i headed off for my month and a half follow-up eye exam.

i skipped lunch because i had shit to do and was going to be losing hours anyway, so i arrived on time for my appointment but really hungry. i asked how long i'd have to wait and was told a couple of minutes. half an hour dragged on by, i got up and asked what was going on because by that stage i could've left, eaten something and returned instead of sitting burning time on an empty stomache. on the one hand i didn't want to be an ass, on the other i wanted them to know that they'd done me wrong. they told me another few minutes, which annoyed me even though this time it really was just a couple of minutes. then i went through the eye exam and my eyes couldn't focus at all when i was using both of them.

this is becoming a thing.

eventually the surgeon got to me and he told me that it all makes sense and that i should come right eventually. my next appointment is in four months. we'll see. to be fair, though, while i am having trouble with my sight it's so much better than before! i can see everything well but i just can't do detail in a hurry...

i returned to the office, wolfed down lunch and got sidetracked by a design review and an intern who'd built something on top of a major logic fail that i had to talk him through slowly just to explain where the problem was.

*sigh*

suddenly it was time to leave already and i'd barely achieved anything.

---i left for boxing and continued to bury myself in walter isaacson - steve jobs. it's as interesting and readable as everyone who pushed me to read it insisted, but it intrigues me that i see so much of myself in descriptions of his behaviour. not only in my underlying attitude to life but in the way i've always seen the world: my mother has always complained about my inability to see shades of grey. i'm definitely not as much of an asshole about it, though. at least i don't think i am...

---scrapper and i headed off to boxing. i forgot that he wouldn't be able to join the advanced class until we were already on our way and i felt bad about that. then we started warmup with the jump rope and i was failing and getting frustrated to the point where all the suck from the rest of the day focused into laser beams of anger and self-loathing that washed over me everytime i saw my reflection. and by self-loathing, i mean that "screw you!" look you might give yourself if you're staring at the mirror and seeing someone who looks just like you and is making you look bad.

the instructor walked in and when i asked the instructor if scrapper could join he responded in a way that made me feel small and stupid. for the rest of the class it was as if everything i did was pissing him off, i just couldn't get shit right and he was noticing it all. i felt like i was disappointing him as much as i was disappointing myself and my frustration levels kept rising. in restrospect, i think i actually did quite well but it doesn't matter.

he paired me up with a guy i'm friendly with but who's a beginner and doesn't really seem to be into training. a part of me felt that i was paired with him as a punishment. if it wasn't a punishment, i made it so by bringing my shit into things. i pushed him the same why i push everyone (and everyone pushes me, that's what training's all about) but he doesn't want to improve so we were both aggravated. the situation kinda improved, but then towards the end we did an uppercut drill. i got really annoyed with the way he was holding the pads, and then when it was his turn i got really annoyed with how he was hitting. it was only at the end that he pointed out how unfair this was and he was visibly upset; i realized he was right and i apologized profusely but you can't take stupid back.

fuck.

it was on that note that i left training. i'd gone to a dark place and i was seething all the way home. fortunately, talking it out with scrapper helped - it was about all sorts of things, obviously, not just a single day. it was about work and sacrifice and lessers of two evils, about expectations and outlooks and reality not being precisely what i need even though i'm aware of how ungrateful that may be considering that *knocks wood* things are going really well for me. sometimes i feel like i'm all the toys of the hundred-acre wood rolled into one.

---on a positive note my left leg is still tender and sore but it's definitely better.

...

this online dating thing is weird. according to match.com i'm missing out on all sorts of action by not subscribing, and the only way to find out if they're messing with me is to pay $20. FINE. but how come the other sites don't require cash up front?

profiling

this weekend has been all about anime, with a short break for mixed martial arts and a little bit of sightseeing and family. overall, it's been great!

---friday:

at 5am scrapper walked in, two hours earlier than expected. i wasn't in a state to greet so i'm glad i'd left him a note the night before.

in the morning i'd spent some time preparing for otakuthon by going through the schedule to highlight points of interest. they used the guidebook app which is really clever.

when switching trains on my way to work one kid sprinted across, not realizing that the other train would leave at least five minutes later. even so, the transport system is reliable and i don't feel that it's worth one's dignity to run.

---when i got into the office i spoke to megaman about my contract. i don't know what his deal is, this is the fourth time i've spoken to him about it and the third time that i've explained to him that the issues i originally had with it are non-issues and that we can proceed. it's weird dealing with a director who doesn't recall important details. in the afternoon i finally got a copy of it and we signed it: i'm finally officially working. and now i can get my options package :)
[now i just need to hang in another half a year until some of them vest]

---i walked in on darn giving the developers a hard time, and i'm annoyed that we didn't discuss it first. he's taking a hard line on the team and in one fell swoop he's flipped our culture. not necessarily for the worse - i won't say it's not good to have someone crack a whip - but i'm worried that the suddenness might over-stress the already stressed.

regardless, i think my role has been de-facto redefined and that's actually okay with me.

---ceh wanted to move because he claimed there were too many distractions on his side of the office, so i invited him to make the cubicle next to mine his. later he approached me and darn to complain that he couldn't work under those conditions, and we followed him while sharing puzzled looks as we suspected that he was hallucinating. it turned out he wasn't, but what was bothering him so much that he simply left the office was an intermittent and soft electrical snapping noise coming from the ceiling. he was shocked that it didn't bother me. we were shocked that it was distressing him.

---i went in for a massage, and about halfway through the massage therapist and i both registered that there were muscles in my back that when pressed were causing me to reflexively raise my legs. it was weird. anyway, it turned out that i needed that massage even more than i thought.

---i opened up thunderstone for happy hour and we had a good game. afterwards scrapper and i headed off to the convention. forget the videos, the stalls, the events, the panels, the videogames, and the karioke cafe. the biggest draw by far was the cosplay! it was unreal. literally. some of it was jaw-dropping, so ridiculously well-done that it seemed to distort reality! there were plenty more reasonable attempts that were clever or entertaining or both, some inappropriate or boring and some that were so bad and so wrong that we couldn't help but find them endearing.

we went to a panel entitled "the bad fanfiction panel: whathastobedone" that was, for me, quite disappointing. i was expecting it to be led by authorities who had something to offer and it was basically a handful of nobodies who weren't really good with talking to an audience. they didn't really share the horror stories, they just explained how much the horror stories had horrified them. such a tease! some of the readings were funny but they focused on "bad english" and not on "bad writing".

we focused more on a gorgeous jill valentine in the row in front of us. i was attracted even though she was vocally reminding me of annoying girls i've studied with.

i did walk away inspired to write some very specific fanfiction, and talking to scrapper about it had the two of us putting together a crazy crossover universe that works beautifully and would be so much fun to write! added to the list of things i really need / want to do. maybe it'll serve as a distraction from some of the others :P

---we got home really late and hadn't done shopping, so we ate at harvey's again. it's insane how slow those people are. i appreciate that it's not a bad burger at stupid o'clock in the morning, but still... they made us feel that if you want a reasonably good burger done reasonably quickly you'd do better to make it yourself.

i was exhausted but scrapper had been talking about a "dib shirt"... so i headed to vistaprint to put it together. between vistaprint and pixlr it really is fun and easy to put a good shirt together :)

---saturday:

i got very little sleep, i don't know why. i went downtown for a quick haircut and received very positive news about some offers on my apartment. after sending back instructions scrapper and i had lunch at subway and i picked up some good coffee before we headed back to the con.

we walked into the 404's improv, some of which was funny and some of which sucked. meh. we walked out of that and into an interesting-sounding panel covering academic enquiry into anime. the first panelist was interesting but the second spoke in french, which was unfortunately a deal-breaker. we walked in to a screening of fan parodies: some of it was unintelligible, some of it was cute and amusing and a couple of things we saw were absolute masterpieces, brilliant and hysterically funny. we had to skip the "masquerade pre-show" to reach the other side of town in time.

as the weekend progressed i felt less weird about ogling beautiful girls dressed up ultra-sexy. i (wishful thinkingly) feel like we're getting closer to a time when dressing that crazy will become normal...

---switching to fight night mode was awkward, but manageable. from giant herds of nerds to tough guys and mafiosos with real-worldly well-dressed women. it was a night of great fights, very few disappointments and some incredible action: all but one tristar fighter won, and seeing as we were there to support tristar we were pretty excited! it helped that we had excellent seats right near the octagon and could actually see what was going on without looking at the screens.

...

scrapper and i took great pleasure in coming up with inappropriate nicknames and entry music for fighters. like calling oneself "the hobbit" and stepping into the octagon to michael jackson - bad, for example.

---it was a surprisingly chilly night. we were tired. we went to a pizza place near saint laurent for "dinner" (i ate crappy fries) and then went home. as we walked in scrapper realized he'd lost my spare keys... serious bummer :(

---sunday:

a good night's sleep, but it only felt that way after i woke up early and went back to bed.

we left the final day of the con having arrived at the following conclusion: overall, the lesson learned this weekend was that buying tickets was a waste of cash as most of the fun can be had in the public areas where all the cosplayers congregate anyway.

we walked around the port for a bit and then headed up to the plateau. we walked through the tams and it's the first time i've seen it! it's really, really cool. i love how montrealers celebrate summer and just generally being in montreal :)

i may have gotten a bit too much sun. i went to godmother's for dinner, i joined yang for a long walking of the dog that included excellent sorbet from yeh, and yin drove me to the metro station and we said goodbye as she'll be returning to vancouver tomorrow morning.


---after a couple of conversations today i decided to try dating online. i spent ages setting up an account at match.com only to discover how expensive their subscriptions are and that you can't do much without them. jdate at least lets you make initial contact without paying them...

ripped and bearded

two things noticeably ripped today: me and my mr. price '99 specials. the latter on a desk drawer as i got up, i'm really unhappy about it. the former i might be exaggerating somewhat but i'm definitely feeling strong, solid and muscle-y.

on a style note, i've been under pressure and lazy this week and i'm sporting a light beard again. i'm trying to decide if i should keep it or not.

---i started the day by confronting the poor building secretary with my laundry issues. apparently the whole reason for the closing hours is for security and that it's security from whoever's tampering with the machines. it's 2013, FFS, i told her that security cameras are super cheap to install and their closing hours obviously aren't making a difference anyway. i hope she'll pass along my complaints as she promised.

on the one hand, dealing with shit like this is why it's easier to own one's own condo, but on the other i've now heard things about the hidden costs of ownership that make me wonder if it's truly a good investment in montreal...

---before leaving for work i checked my email and was disturbed to find a message from megaman informing me that an urgent case i opened yesterday was about to be delivered into the dark clutches of our backlog. i couldn't understand what wasn't clear about its relevance until i read over what i'd written and realized that i'd taken a pre-approval email and copied and pasted it, and without context it had ceased to be the explicit task i'd had in mind at the time.

it's been that kind of a week.

dealing with that made me late for work... nobody cared, though.

---jira fail: a predecessor had custom-defined a resolution called "unresolved", which atlassian specifically advises not doing. rescue seemed really complicated and unpleasant from the few sources i found online and i was super-proud of myself for finding a sneakier, simpler way to handle it ^_^
[if you've read this far you probably care, all that was needed to untangle things was to rename the custom resolution. i don't know why nobody else thought of that]

i caught cls struggling with a method i'd asked him to implement, and we got to play on the whiteboard for half an hour until we figured out how to handle it. it's the most complex issue i've worked on in ages, and it was a lot of fun!

during the past week i've asked dang for the task list for the current project a number of times and today he finally sent it. once i'd looked at the wireframe, i realized that i've actually been assigned a huge task requiring skills i haven't exercised since last october. hah! i spent an hour or so visualizing use cases and designing the underlying data structures, all the while trying to figure out how i'm going to handle my regular responsibilities in addition to actually developing software. i'm only half-complaining ;)

i was already in a hurry when the ceo called me in for a personal chat; he wanted my opinion on where we stand and how i feel about things, but he also wanted to discuss the secret project i was introduced to yesterday. the evangelist in me came out. i explained to him that he shouldn't even think about what we could do with it until i've had a chance to study it and figure out what it really is: he appreciated it when i told him that while our current plan would be served by it, it could produce a whole other business and anything he learns about it now will only serve to pigeonhole what might be capable of breaking the box.

i hope i'm right about all this.

---i arrived a bit late for training, and there was only one guy kickboxing so i joined him for the warmup as we'd be sparring. but then the slow guy showed up a few minutes later and we certainly wouldn't be sparring with him around, so i changed shirts again and hit the bjj mats. the kid instructing us put me with two real beginners so that i could help him out; amidst all the advising i did actually learn a thing or two.

a cute girl from the bjj joined the advanced kickboxing class (there's a half-hour with no overlap) and threw the numbers out, so i volunteered to do impact with her. she wasn't hitting me very hard so the instructor came over to demonstrate... until now, that's meant knocking me out. while he did wind me with one of his liver shots, i was totally stoked to find that i've toughened up enough over the last couple of months that i can now take his soft punches. i'm pretty sure i'm not ready for his real ones yet, but it's a big improvement nonetheless :)

the beginner's class was good, i worked with the beast and after the way he finished his ten straight minutes of power kicks i felt ashamed with what i'd done with mine. he was visibly wiped out and then suddenly went into beserker mode, each kick harder than the last and i was so taken by surprise he almost broke through the thai pads into my face!

that shit was inspiring.

i got home to a very slow evening. i called bnw to plan our next meetup, and finally got a working version of a prototype for horseman delivered. i've been listening to all sorts of music (finally adding linkin park - hybrid theory to my earlier purchase of godsmack - good times, bad times) and i really don't understand how it's now 1.30am already O_o

my salads are perpetually improving; it's funny how washing and chopping leaves bothers me but chopping the green beans and broccoli from the microwave stir-fry doesn't.

anyway, scrapper's returning in six hours. gotta crash.

---(slowly) rebuilding my music collection on itunes gives me some startling insights into what i truly value and what i merely enjoy listening to. one of those insights is that nostalgia plays an enormous role in deciding whether something will make the cut. case in point: foo fighters. i love a lot of their stuff, but for me nothing beats their foo fighters album (1995), which was how i discovered them.

and that i'd rather buy an album that individual songs. i think that points to me being a bit cheap.

tango

allow me to elaborate: darn upset me yesterday by dismissing my concerns out of hand. i confronted him this morning, and when he reacted even more offensively i realized that that was a mistake. aota advised my going to the product manager, but i thought it'd be best if i tried megaman one more time before going over his head.

i didn't get an opportunity to say anything until we were already presenting our work so far at an all-hands. i knew that this wasn't the time to bring up a conflict but i couldn't see any other way, so i suppressed my irritation and "innocently" asked the product manager what he thought now that he could see what was already done.

he responded that we'd need to do what i'd been arguing against, and at that point i felt that i'd potentially antagonized darn for nothing as my question would no doubt be taken as a slight. either he didn't realize that i'd pushed past him or he's just good at keeping his feelings to himself because i didn't notice any signs and the rest of our interactions for the day were just fine.

once i'd accepted that they all really want to do this thing that i totally disagree with (i have my team's support, too), i came up with a way to implement a fail-safe so that if and when the executives realize the mistake we'll be able to undo the counterproductive logic without unraveling anything. i was quite proud of myself for that, megaman agreed immediately and darn allowed himself to be convinced in megaman's presence.

words for the week: "lackey" and "minion". aota was surprised that this is the first time i've thought of darn that way.

---wednesday:

it occurred to me this week that on the days i leave early for muay thai i should go to work earlier too - for the first time since i started working for this company i don't have a bank of overtime hours.

morning weather: drizzling pleasure. i'm so excited for winter!!!

our marketing head is a surfer, and i've been invited to join him surfing in san fransisco if we find a reason to get me down to our offices there :)

i spent large parts of today quietly getting shit done. other parts were spent going over designs with my team and it was really nice to get them onboard and to receive our cto's approval for everything. i think he's really beginning to trust us.

---so, while we've gotten him off our core development he's been doing r&d, and he called me over to see what he's been working on. when i realized what i was looking at my mind started doing backflips: he's secretly been doing some incredibly cool stuff and it's so crazy i'm actually going to have to study it and write a manual just so that we can introduce it to the team. as it doesn't fit in with our corporate plan, we're going to have to do this all off the clock and behind everyone's backs, which is pretty surreal and strangely motivating.

i told him to his face, explaining that it was a compliment, that he is truly crazy. you have to be crazy to build ridiculously ambitious things that generate new development paradigms.

---i found a large box waiting for me on my desk in the afternoon - thunderstone has arrived ^_^
that was really fast!

muay thai was interesting and was either relatively relaxed or i'm that much stronger than before. boxing was awesome and i learned a lot. the state of my shin is scaring me a little and i think i'd better play it safe and visit the doctor again. i really can't tell what's damaged and if it's the bone i'm going to have to do something about it...

---i was all excited to find the washing machines available when i got home, but when i returned downstairs with my laundry there was an "out of order" sign on the door again. wtf?!?! i'm really pissed off now, and i'm going to speak with the building owners tomorrow morning. it doesn't make sense that i'm not allowed to have a washing machine in my apartment, i'm not allowed to do laundry during the only hours i'm at home, and that for the second time in two weeks the only chance i've had to do laundry has been when the machines were out of order. that's bullshit.

---i was taking out the recycling when i found a can that scrapper had opened. i've never seen anyone botch opening a can before, i'm going to have to show him how to use the opener.

*shakes head*