banana drama llama karma farmer trauma

 today was a better day, even though that's obviously off a pretty low bar. i actually slept through to my alarm this morning, and began my day reading some more alice in borderland - it's good, but the main reason i'm getting through it is because mr smear's read it already and i'm not sure if there's anything problematic in it :P

i prepared a message for the office manager regarding the whole vegan options debacle, but gd and my mother both agreed that it was a terrible idea, and that next time there's an upcoming event i should just tell her not to bother.

just after i arrived at the office and joined my team daily, i saw that i'd missed a bunch of messages from early in the morning - an incident, with me as the primary suspect. fortunately, it didn't take long to figure out what had happened, and while i was the trigger for the issue, neither the action itself nor its resolution were on me.

i proceeded to spend all day fighting with AI to figure out what i was supposed to be doing. the model i used cost a lot more money than usual*, and i'm not convinced the results were significantly better...

* i've seen the company "leaderboard", today, and the top four spenders are my two teammates, and two of the guys i work next to :P

gd packed me a sushi and pancake lunch, which i ate on the balcony, kind of admiring the view while listening to interesting youtube videos. very social.

in the afternoon, while waiting for an AI investigation, i saw an email come in from someone claiming to be a university grad. i had to verify their identity because i initially thought it was one of the usual phishing attacks i received, but it seems like a researcher is legitimately interested in my comic adaptation and wants to ask me about it!

my two primary intentions behind the project are to get the sonnets into the mainstream via teenagers and young adults, and to manipulate the ivory tower of academia to engage with my interpretation. so this has potential to be an important beginning!!

my client's happy hour was far superior to my employer's, the vegan food was so delicious i had to double check the ingredients :P

i came home, picked up mr smear and the book we bought unnecessarily on tuesday evening, and we walked back to book store, experiencing the titular banana drama llama karma farmer trauma that my BDLKF son generates.  on the way we ran into the dad of one his previous classmates, and in our smalltalk i found myself joking that "we can use a few rocket attacks just to give us a sense of stability" and making us both uncomfortable :P

we couldn't get a refund, but we could exchange it. they didn't have any english books for kids or young adults, they didn't have drawing equipment we were interested in, their toys and games selection was pretty shitty, but eventually i found something - a book for gd entitled the mammoth book of bizarre crimes.

...

we paid, left the store, and i decided to take a short detour to look for supermarket / pharmacy underwear (it's the best value for money IMO). while waiting at a red light, an arab wolt driver rammed into the guy standing next to us, then immediately yelled at him to get out of the way. the american oleh immediately prepared to throw down by removing his shirt*, then pointed and laughed out loud when he realized that the delivery box on the back of the wolt driver's electric bike had a his number on it, which he immediately started memorized as the driver tried to get away.

* which i later explained to my son was an enormous tactical error - if he'd done that to intimidate me i would have knocked him out while he was struggling to get it over his head 🤦‍♂️

while we were exchanging details so that i could bear witness, the driver came back and threatened him with a large plank of wood with a nail in it. this big american dude kicked off his flip flops and ran towards him*, and i started recording. when the two of them disappeared around the corner, i felt sure that the guy was going to get murdered.

* yet another terrible tactic, as i explained to mr smear

when i realized they were moving further away*, i followed and told mr smear (who'd been following me) to wait for me. just then the driver started throwing rocks - massive rocks, double-fist sized, one of which whizzed past me and another broke just in front of me and a piece skipped towards mr smear.

* at this point, the american yelled the phrase "yesh li mispar shelcha, dickhead!", which is a simply wonderful catchphrase 🤣

he chased the mad wolt driver away, and another witness (also an olah) came to exchange details and help him call the police*. he asked me to wait a bit for his girlfriend to arrive, he needed someone else to tell her he hadn't started it :P

* some old guy came past and tried to convince him to "let it go", which pisses me right off. 

mr smear and i came back home, discussing everything that took place, with him telling me the story from his perspective and including some particularly funny takes. the first he saw of the incident was the guy taking his shirt off, and then he noticed that he'd removed his shoes, and he immediately thought to himself "what, are you gonna take off your shorts as well?"

later, he quipped: "he has balls of steel. and a brain made of the same material" 🤭

...

we had dinner watching more of splash, though we had to turn it off to get mr smear to actually eat. then he told the story to my mom, and the shower and bedtime routine went relatively smoothly. now that i've got all of this down, gd and i are going to watch some ludwig. ludwig is good.

game theory

yup, it's a definite nose & throat thing, i'm not feeling *sick* sick (yet?), but i am feeling a bit rough...

after posting yesterday morning, we went to the 24/7 to do a little shopping and then our friends came over for the afternoon.

the good: a fantastic game of goodcritters, with us two dads teaching the three kids game theory experientally, and we opened both the math fluxx and mystery fluxx decks which are a lot of fun.

the bad: mr smear and the little brother griefing the sister, resulting in tears, and a no-good lousy shit-attitude afternoon and evening for mr smear. which then led to a pretty shit morning experience as well.

so this morning gd and i had a long discussion about what our options are, and we're now waiting for mr smear to come home so we can sit down for a "family meeting"... probably the first of many more on the topic of our familial relationships and roles...

gd and i finally sat down to watch 10 things i hate about you, which is one of my favorite shakespeare adaptations and has aged phenomenally well. i then pulled out my copy of the illstrated stratford shakespeare and read/paraphrased the induction scene to the taming of the shrew, which i *wish* had been included somehow in the movie.

and then i (finally) purchased balatro, and sunk about three hours into it. i don't understand if this is the whole game or not, but it's addictive already...

bumpy ride

 wednesday:

waking up early and sending mr smear off to school, still broken from lack of sleep

arriving to the office really early (but still with time pressure) to discover that my installation station had been stripped of all its cabling (amongst other things), and it would take about an hour and a half to get that sorted out.

at least the installation itself went relatively smoothly.

one of the aussies gave me and another aussie's cousin (he's helping out) a ride to the test site, where the story of the afternoon was hours of set up for very little payoff - not only were there loads of hardware issues, but the issue that i'd resolved by midnight the previous night turned out to be not fully solved, and it cost another three hours to understand what was wrong and resolve it.

and then cursor started bugging out, because we use devcontainers and microsoft (fuckers!) are now preventing vscode clones from using their extensions.

i don't know at this point how much of the solution to the problem is an actual solution to the problem, or a workaround for ms (and docker) fuckery.

anyway. at least i figured out the cause of one of the other issues we had (aws syncing syncs impossibly slowly if you have debug logs being printed)

anyway.

after wrestling with a bad router/switch setup, and waiting 90's download times for an OS installation, we were finally able to leave one of the machines in a state where i should have been able to continue the installation remotely, and we hopped in the car and rode back to tel aviv.

i arrived home around 11pm. signed in to attempt to finish the deployment, and discover that the machine was offline.

very frustrated, i went to bed.

yesterday:

i feel like the whole city woke up feeling more rested. mr smear went off to school again, i took care of a bunch of things that had been piling up over the course of the week, went past the clinic to get authorization for gd's procedure next week, and continued on to the coffee shop where astérix gladiateur was waiting to be picked up.

of course, i had to pick up a coffee and nurse it all the way to the office.

it was an exciting day in the office. the two most significant pieces of work i did were recording an online demo from a contractor (who threw up a little in his mouth halfway through 🤢), and taking a couple of guys with IT / devops experience into the warehouse and beginning to get a workshop set up there.

another highlight (in addition to the workshop, as opposed to the not-highlight of the demo) was a department weekly with lots of enthusiastic new faces, and a happy hour making a new convert both regarding shakespeare's sonnets and my vision for our software solution.

after putting mr smear to bed, i had a call with my boss; i suspected that i was going to be answering for having been a bit miserable the previous day, but it turned out to be a discussion about how to go about doing a deployment we'd had to defer and arguing over when to do it. we ended up settling on tomorrow night, so 🤞

today:

i guess i slept alright last night, at least better than has become usual. i was avoiding screens before mr smear left for school, and reading a canticle for leibowitz, or trying to at any rate. some of it i've really enjoyed, but the last quarter is proving to be a slog and with everything else going on i've decided to give it up.

while going through that, i realized that even if i'm not on screens i'm still focused very close to my head, so i decided to walk mr smear to school in order to give my own eyes an opportunity to "stretch". surprisingly, gd had had a similar idea simultaneously so we all walked together, which aside from an  encounter with a brazenly irresponsible dog owner was an enjoyable experience.

i had some important stuff to take care of, which generated a fight with gd that put more shitty vibes on the morning, but eventually worked through it and we hit the mall to do some grocery shopping and upgrade my phone.

it turns out the issue with my (old) phone has been that it's only got 4GB of memory, and with my "new" phone (the display unit, i got a significant discount for that) it's clear why it was so unresponsive; my baseline usage with nothing open is 4.6GB, and that's after uninstalling and disabling every app i don't need on a daily basis...

i'm a little concerned about the battery usage, but i'll give it a few days before i decide whether to complain or not.

on the way out of the mall, an older guy came out of the retirement home and lit up a cigarette while still inside the mall. i asked him to please not do that, to which he made stupid excuses and then started calling me a quibbler (not sure if the translation is good). so i called him a jerk, but he continued to act like a jerk and although i succeeded in walking away, it only takes one asshole to ruin a good day, and i'd already had some shitty experiences, and he occupied more brainspace than he had right to for the next while.

it was hot (summer's here) and i was sweaty and tired by the time we got home, but i had to rush off to pick up mr smear and help carry home all the books from his locker. i spent the next while napping on the couch listening to the audiobook of the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, waking up to gd reading asterix to mr smear.

i spent the remainder of the afternoon and most of the evening getting the new phone set up, while listening to insane AI covers like system of a crown and neon maiden.

we went to our friends for friday night dinner, which was a really pleasant evening, both for the adults and the kids.

it's now almost 1am, mr smear has just gone to bed and i'm about to jump in the shower and probably also go to bed.

almost restful

yesterday:

we all went out to pick up pillows (the ones we bought a few weeks ago are expensive but shit), a bunch of nature store groceries and treats, and then "opened a table" at the hummusia. it was great.

but all the while we were on the clock, trying to make arrangements to get mr smear and his friend to cinema city to see a minecraft movie (in english with hebrew subtitles, as they instructed, because his friend's trying to learn english and they both agreed that it's always better to see a movie in its original language 🤣)

we caught the bus home just in time for me to be able to pick up the first car (our "usual" vehicle wasn't available), figure out how to start it (?!), pick up the boys and get them there just in time, and only almost taking a wrong turn once. i turned the wrong way for parking, though, and we ended up having to walk quite a way... his friend's mom had organized the tickets which were supposed to include concession stand items, and figuring that out when they were already running a bit late was stressful.

i eventually got them seated, then headed out to the car to get it back before the reservation ended feeling somewhat liberated by them being okay and somewhat nervous about them being alone (i was thinking about the off-chance of mr smear somehow coming into contact with dairy)

i drove back to the car's parking spot, parked it, and had just left the building when the sirens went off - a houthi attack.

good grief.

i managed to get into a bomb shelter nearby, one full of extremely loud neighbors, while frantically talking to mr smear's friends parents and explaining that they were alone in glilot but that it was probably okay (because the theatre should be a protected area). then i walked home, grabbed a cup of tea, and began the journey to the second car, which was much futher away.

just before arriving there his friend's mother called to say that she'd called him, and that he'd complained that she was disturbing their movie :P

i drove back to cinema city, found a closer parking, and got to the theatre just as the two of them were walking out, full of enthusiasm and joy ^_^

it took a while to get out of there, but it was all good spirits and they decided that mr smear should go to his place for the evening. the drama that followed was him refusing to take stuff for the night (insisting that he didn't want to sleep over), even though he eventually did end up sleeping there.

god knows if he brushed his teeth. i know for sure he didn't shower :/

gd and i made kiddush, ate a very simple dinner, and watched the rest of nightcrawler (meh. also, have i seen it before? but mainly meh - it's a good movie but not something i'm ever in the mood for)

today:

it's weird waking up without mr smear at home. not unpleasant, but weird. after much not-much-ing (including a fair amount of slay the spire), gd and i took care of the humungous pile of dishes, and around lunchtime i called mr smear and heard that the parents were out and that he hadn't eaten. he was "peckish", he told me, but not hungry.

i walked over there (it's a half hour walk) to pick him up, and arrived in time to find them being fed. i ended up being coerced into staying for lunch and extra coffees, while the kids continued with their screen-time marathon, and the adult conversation was excellent and ended in me passionately describing the magic of shakespeare's sonnets to people who really appreciated it.

after that, i finally managed to extricate myself and my boy, and we were off on our way home. in very good spirits.

...

right until i explained that due to the excessive screen time, there would be none until dinner (which at that point was only an hour or two away). what followed was pretty extreme, not just the fighting over screentime and rudeness and consequences, but also me having to physically drag him half the way home.

it was all just fucking awful.

there were big feelings and strong words and angry silences. also a couple of funny moments, but they didn't last. i explained to mr smear that we're going to mark today - the 10th of may - as the last day that he gets away with the bad attitude.

i didn't know whether gd would be supportive or not, but it only took her a minute to realize what he was doing and how and we agreed whole-broken-heartedly that real measures needed to be taken. so while he showered, i figured out how to block specific sites on the computer, initiated an account deletion for roblox, deleted almost all the games of the ps4 (except for my games) and unsubscribed from their plus program, and disabled his access to our steam library.

it's cold turkey time.

there was still some lingering nastiness over a very quiet dinner, but afterwards we all had a family talk and it really feels like we got through to him. in addition to everything else we discussed - and we discussed a lot of stuff - i instructed him to start working on a gratitude journal, which he did with gusto.

bedtime was smooth, and pleasant.

post-bedtime? gd and i are absolutely drained following all the drama. it was a beautiful, restful weekend that was marred by car rental issues, terrorism and a massive parenting failure, and it's pretty hard right now to focus on the good stuff. i'm going to go practice that now.

i might be coming down with something

i don't feel sick, i feel wired, but i feel like i might be in a holding pattern with a bug or virus waiting to land. then again, it might just be general fatigue, physical and/or mental. it certainly doesn't help that i've been having trouble sleeping the past few nights, nor that there've been a lot of incidents of emotional stress, both ups and downs.

...

getting mr smear to school this morning was good, but then i got a message from his teacher that he wasn't cooperating in geometry. and he wasn't: he was insisting that drawing pixel art of a circle was geometry.

jesus, fuck 🤦

hopefully that was the only incident. while gd was at the doctor getting prescribed more antibiotics and meds because she's got a full-blown lung infection in addition to what looks like a virus, i was at home doing online chores (like reapplying for her cannabis license), juggling a bunch of recruiters, and trying to get something productive done.

it almost feels like the most productive thing i got done today was snacking a lot :P

i picked mr smear up from school, brought him home to switch bags, then took him to his therapy session. i headed to the cinemateque for a coffee and to work, the barista was curious about my tattoos and i ended up on a tear about the injustice of how shakespeare's sonnets are taught when her initial complaint was that she hates the sonnet form. i hurriedly scribbed sonnetcomix.com on a piece of paper, grabbed my coffee and hid behind my laptop :P

i picked mr smear up and we took the light rail home, where i got some work done but i also crashed and burned in a chat with a recruiter about expectations (which i'm still feeling a bit gross about). then gd needed help with the washing machine, and got angry with me because she thought i'd broken it while i was trying to help, and that made a pretty gross feeling too :/

anyway, my son's sitting across from me and playing beautiful melodies on the keyboard, and i've managed to complete a piece of work that wasn't trivial at all, and gd's making pizza for dinner, and i think i'm done trying to be an adult for the rest of the day.

out of office

 yesterday:

starting the day at the mental health clinic, for an appointment which took most of the last year to arrange. heaven forbid that should be drama free - mr smear and i were waiting outside when we heard lots of shouting, and it turned out that the psychologist, who's supposed to be dealing with people with psychological issues, greeted gd both rudely and aggressively.

WTAF?!

so gd was upset, the "doctor" was behaving like gd had done something wrong, and i had to jump in to the rescue... fortunately, the manager made every effort to fix things and, miraculously, an english-speaking shrink with a good attitude and a free slot arrived and the morning (and months of waiting) weren't lost. mr smear and i parked ourselves outside, reading and chatting, and gd was able to use her time and we're one step further down the road.

...

a surprisingly productive day at work in spite of the fact that i did *not* want to do any work. also, i was still in a mind-blown state from the vr experiences from the previous evening. i did have an argument with a coworker in the afternoon, and i was honestly really irritated by him not seeing things my way, but eventually i was able to put my finger on why each of us felt the way we did and realized that he was, ultimately, in the right.

it was a huge relief to leave the office, and (on-call notwithstanding) switch off for the next ten days.

i don't remember whether we tried to watch anything last night.

today:

i slept a bit better last night, but that's off a really low bar.

today was a big day, we set out to buy mr smear a proper synthesizer and we achieved our goal! we also tried to pick up some vr games along the way, but nobody seems to be interested in stocking them. we also looked at some books, then decided to get the entire bone collection on kindle instead.

the afternoon was spent playing with the new toy, and trying to watch a 3D movie on the psvr. that proved way more complicated than i was hoping... no success yet :/

mr smear played a vr space simulator that made me queasy, which led to a shitty mood, but eventually i got over it. kiddush for sukkot with my mom (virtually), followed by a nice dinner, interrupted by a hilariously crazy call from my sister who got herself into a particularly dramatic situation with multiple job applications and in addition to being entertained, i was actually able to give her some useful advice.

i hope she takes it :P

we put mr smear to bed, and i mindlessly/compulsively played did an idle run through kaycee's mod (only the final challenge enabled), and now it's anyone's guess what's next for the evening.

...

i've been doing holidays wrong, so i don't know how this one is going to turn out. my first priority is to rest my mind, kind of. and spend some quality time with my family. my second is to make some progress on the side project that i discussed with dod. my third is to try to arrange some test prints for my comics.

anything else is bonus.

winding down

 it wasn't too bad a day. i rollerbladed to work, which was very quiet because i was the only one in the office. in spite of things getting a bit hectic at one point, i managed to complete the frontend work that's been upsetting me for the past couple of weeks and returned home for lunch before taking mr smear to his jiujitsu class.

while there, i did a little more work - but nothing too serious - and when his class was done we returned home. as we stepped off the bus, the sirens sounded and we scrambled through narrow stairways into a deep bomb shelter along with a large number of coffee shop patrons, most of whom were clumsily wielding their dairy-based drinks in a way that made it anxiety-inducing to navigate to a safe corner while keeping mr smear out of contact.

god damn.

anyway, it was unpleasant but we didn't have an incident, so that was a win.

we both showered quickly when we returned home, and there was time before dinner to fire up the vr.

gd and i agreed that we could afford to get him one of the vr games, and he decided on battlezone, then he discovered that i'd downloaded a bunch more vr demos, so instead of buying something we dug into those instead - and we had a really good time. there were two games in particular, which caused a bit of a fight at first because we didn't understand what was going on or why mr smear needed us to tell him what was happening, but once we did get it they were brilliant. and then i took a turn, and i was absolutely blown away by how good the vr experience was!

after dinner, mr smear went to bed, i posted my two books on gumroad, and then gd and i settled down to re-attempt deadpool & wolverine. we made it a bit further before we were both falling asleep. it's really fun, we're just really tired...

i haven't slept well in a while, and i know that going to sleep early will cause problems, so i carried on fine-tuning all my online offerings and i'm now pretty happy with how things look. i think i'm about ready for bed now. i hope i am.

i'm very excited that i'm going on vacation tomorrow evening.

fingers crossed

 it's just past 1am, and i've managed to splice together the new video for the podcast. using clipchamp and the sound recorder that comes with windows, i've managed to do it far more easily than using the macos tools! the quality's not perfect, but that's me and my not-studio conditions, and when i wanted to do something interesting with the audio i jumped back to garageband for its effects.

[this post was interrupted by a phone call, my heart started racing in anticipation for an on-call page. nope, it was a spam call. wonderful.]

the only thing left to do is review the completed video in the morning with my wife. i'm pretty happy to put the video out there, but i have a suspicion that there might be a couple of things that i should probably clean up... at least i know that if i do need to update something, it's really not going to be too big a deal.

imperfections

 today was mostly great. a couple of points of friction, but mostly great. we all enjoyed raiders of the lost ark, we went out for a bit and hung out at a local park, we watched a bit more of wolfwalkers at dinner time (after a tricky negotiation to get mr smear showered before dinner), and after he went to sleep gd and i finished watching serenity which really was brilliant in spite of the rushed start.

it's just past 1am and i've just finished the recording for the podcast episode. during the week i'll try to stitch it together, along with the update of mr smear and me singing the chorus of the pretender (which we might have to re-record because as amazing as it is with everything else, clipchamp tends to clip the first sounds when recording... thank the gods they haven't broken the sound recorder. yet.

11th level of awesomeness

 i did it! i finally got the trophy i've been working towards, and it does feel good. it wasn't the only trophy for this week, either - yesterday marks the first day in about three and a half years that i've been able to put together the script for a new podcast episode. to be fair, it was half-complete this whole time, but i'm finally ready to record and i'm a bit nervous in anticipation.

thursday:

from a mr smear perspective, it wasn't a perfect day but there wasn't anything major. in the evening we took him to see the therapist, and were surprised to learn that his parents weren't invited. so we got a "date hour" milling around a cool area, and then had dinner at a hummusia close by. sitting at a table next to a bunch of south africans with thick joburg accents, trying very hard not to eavesdrop.

work-wise, it was a good day. i completed a hugely impactful task over the course of the day, and ended the day feeling pretty good about having a clear desk for next week's on-call. not that i'm excited about going on-call again, but it's better to not have additional pressure.

yesterday:

i'm glad i listened to gd and did a very early grocery run, it was about 40 degrees centigrade and the world was baking. one of mr smear's friends came over after school for a few hours of minecraft, and i managed to get the podcast script completed in spite of that noise. i'm also very pleased that mr smear's friend convinced him to (finally!) get into survival mode :)

last night gd and i watched quite a bit of serenity, it definitely gets better.

today so far:

mr smear and i got up early (as usual), and i played around some more with clipchamp. it's REALLY powerful, and intuitive, and i like it. a lot. i had a good chat with my mom, who's saturday morning golf was cancelled due to the opposite weather we're having. mr smear and i played a little bit of mr. robot, and so far it's a lot of fun!

the big plan for the day? we're going to watch indiana jones: raiders of the lost ark. it's time.

acceptance

 the mongoose said something to me today that struck a chord: not just that i need a holiday, but that after everything we've been through i actually need to stop planning on doing things and give myself a breather.

he's not wrong. absolutely not wrong.

having said that, it's approaching midnight and i've just fired off the next three pages of the comics script to the illustrator, and i'm quite fired up about it. not least because both my wife and my son think that the concept's really cool and none of us can wait to see how mr cat puts it together, and he's just promised me that he'll be starting very soon on the last page i sent him and the minor corrections to a couple of earlier ones.

...

today was a good day. i took mr smear to meet the mongoose and his partner for a walk in the park, and i spent a large part of the day being very grateful to be here, to be home, to be safe and secure and developing a sense of stability and "rightness" with the world. well, *my* world, at least, regardless of the dumpster fire humanity's facing right now...

mr smear had a fantastic time today as well, it was just a really nice day. less so for gd, but at least she got to stay in and rest. hopefully tomorrow will be better.

we finished watching the "live action" (yeah, right) remake of pinocchio, which was surprisingly good. gd and i played a bit of rayman after putting mr smear to bed, and i watched the expanse until i couldn't keep my eyes open any more. then i went to bed, but couldn't sleep, so i got up and worked on the script.

now i don't know what i'm going to do. and the beautiful thing is that i don't really feel it matters much.

half the tattoos, twice the stress!

we didn't have time to do sonnet 5 today, but i'm really happy with sonnet 4. i'd be even happier if there wasn't a good chance that i damaged it already due to misunderstanding the aftercare instructions - caring for a new tattoo is pretty straightforward, caring for a new tattoo that's right next to two week-old tattoos is another story altogether. it still looks amazing, i hope it's fine.

so my day went to a bit of work, lots of time being very present for the ink (i'm totally over youtube for live-streaming, though), posting about it on social media (i just want to attract people to my graphic novel project, and that's really hard), a long shopping trip, a few episodes of hunter x hunter with my boy (gods, i love chilling with him and he's happily learning the japanese songs), showering him, saying goodnight, and then fussing about at random and not really getting anything productive done. honestly, 'cause i just don't feel like it.

on the job - part ii

[... continued]

today:

my sleep was perfect and desperately needed, with crazy dreams i can't recall. i got up slowly, twice, spoke to my mother and rushed out for a meeting with the throw poetry collective. i arrived just on time and the meeting was interesting and motivating; also, résonance's chili on rice with its sour cream made of cashews and their latté with home-made almond / coconut milk made for a great lunch.

after two hours of that i visited godmother for coffee. on my way home vfmp and his boyfriend cancelled their plans to go see shakespeare in the park; i understood, seeing as the weather was a bit iffy, but wanted to go anyway. later, when gd and i were getting ready to go it started raining and then suddenly it didn't seem like such a good idea after all :P

saturdays are supposed to be gaming days for me, but i got in about ten or fifteen minutes of ffix before gd returned home. they weren't very good minutes, either :/
i then invested a bit of my soul responding to my unfunny south african comedian ex-friend... it's not a regular duty calls, this is a case of an otherwise intelligent jew with an audience who's clueless about what's going on and is spreading lies that cause anti-semitism. the world is really sucking right now.

my short nap didn't cure my exhaustion, but it made the rest of the evening manageable.

...

we watched the rest of safe, which is an intensely fun film, and finally put stickers on the magnets gd bought so we have a useful tool for keeping track of what we need to do when we get home or before we leave. now that i've posted, it's 3.30am and it's just started raining and we're going to bed.

ups and downs

another day is done. i actually got a bit of interview preparation done, and received a healthy dose of reality check from nystire as well as a document that would be awesome if i didn't keep having to look up crypto logic and get stuck in chains of wikipedia lookups in order to get through it. some of those articles are written by people who really don't give a crap if what they're writing is understandable without at least a university course or two...

---i didn't mention that this morning started with my nose and sinuses being all unhappy again; i handled boxing in spite of it but it was frustrating.

appointments made: i have a date tomorrow afternoon, and a telephone interview later in the week for a company that's just opened offices here (it's good to have friends looking for recruiting bonuses!).

enemies made: someone on quora has been opportunistically pushing their crazy sonnet interpretation on a number of threads as authoritative. i've been downvoting and explaining that that's not cool. gods, i really need to get my own work out the door! this is all very frustrating.

gaming: it's a shame that shadowrun online has opened for beta on a monday. seriously! i had to hold off until dinnertime for a proper excuse to play. so far... it's looking really, really nice :)

boxing: i have robo-mojo. the instructor gave us an exercise and told us to do it without speed or power.
"totalwaste! what did i *just* tell you?!"
"no speed, no power. i heard you!"
"oh, i forget. robocop does *everything* full power. whatever."
*shaking his head and mumbling under his breath while hiding a smile* "that fucking guy..."

when we got to impact the guy i was partnered with was hitting me pretty hard, but not in the right places. i explained to him how to strike the liver, and i almost regretted explaining it so well... just then, our kickboxing coach came in (he's recovering from knee surgery) and wanted a go. i was all "oh, shit..." and we were both surprised when he hit me so hard the other guys jumped and i managed to stay standing. hurt, but still standing! he tried another time, with the same result. this year has definitely changed me ^_^

i'm well pleased with myself for finishing strong. it was tougher with my half-assed lungs.

...

it's been a good evening, and it's late now so i'm off to bed. quite sad, though, because frankie knuckles is dead. rip, dude, you made a proper dent in the universe.

momentous

huzzah! i'm still feeling a bit giddy with delight, i spent about an hour at the starbucks this evening rocking gently and tapping my fingers and probably looking a bit crazy, but i walked out having finally completed the intro script! which i began over a year ago. hah!

boy, have i learned some interesting things for my thesis :D

---i've just sent off an email to the cto requesting a demotion from manager to developer. this will either dramatically improve my working conditions, or see me unemployed. there's no third option. once i realized yesterday that this is the correct course of action, i've been feeling really good about everything!

purging

it's been a while since i've been in the mood to work on my comics... before bed i spent some time copying out a section of a source text, and something caught my eye and another piece of the puzzle clicked into place: very rewarding! i followed that up with an hour or so at the starbucks this morning (finally!) working some more on the intro chapter when it dawned on me that the background might prove to be considerably more material than the primary content. it's still awesome comic reading, though, and certainly more easily accessible than the psychedelic i'm focused on.

...

[caution: don't read the following if you're eating]
as i got into bed i felt something acidic burning in my chest. during the next half hour to an hour i'd learn that i have the wondrous ability to make myself throw up without sticking fingers down my throat - i'm so talented! i don't know what the hell caused it, but i was worried that it was food poisoning and i wanted whatever it was out of me as fast as possible so i didn't wait for actual nausea to set in. i continued until i retched dry, and was surprised that throughout the ordeal i felt absolutely fine (aside from the sour feeling and taste).

...

i couldn't help but wonder if that was my body finally ejecting all the stuff that's been accumulating in my lungs: i went to bed and slept really well, and woke up feeling fine for the first time this illness. just in time to take advantage of a gorgeous day!

a "no" recovery

i tried to get some work done yesterday in spite of the holiday and began by synchronizing my code with the svn... which somebody had checked in to with broken code. when i got to the office today (yes, saturday, i know, thanks), one of darn's crew was there and he told me that's it's been like that for two days and nobody knows how to fix it.

in case that doesn't give you a hint as to the quality of developers i'm working with, let me say that the more hours i work with our code directly the more i realize that these assholes have either misunderstood or overcomplicated all of the solutions i've provided them with and i now understand why everything's taken so long.

"if you want something done right": well, i don't have enough man-hours in me. quite frankly, i don't think i have what it takes to get good code out of these guys. some manager *i* turned out to be :(

---yesterday:

i tried to nap because i felt terrible and had the shivers and ended up just lying wrapped up and praying that i wasn't sick. i can't be sick. not now. unfortunately willing myself to health isn't really my thing. i dragged myself out of bed and took the metro to de la concorde, which is "across the border" in laval and is an absolutely stunning metro station. i sat waiting for bnw on a bench in the sun, which warmed me almost enough to offset the cold breeze. i don't know why i left the house without my sunglasses. i really needed them.

so: bnw. she's almost done with the convention circuit (next weekend is montreal's comiccon, we'll both be busy with that), but she's decided that she's in ^_^
i'll be paying a symbolic fee per page and we'll share the rights* and the profits. super-exciting!

* to the artwork, not the project. the project is mine.

she's colombian and she made really, really good filter coffee that tasted just how i'd expected it to taste - magic! after spending some time playing with the outlines for the first few pages we talked a lot, mostly about the social differences between quebec and the countries we come from but also about israel and the middle eastern conflict. always a sensitive issue :(

i was planning on returning home for dinner but we talked so much her husband came home; bnw wasn't wrong, the two of us have a lot in common. and all three of us have similar tastes in music and gaming, in addition to aerospace (he works for one of the big ones i'd like to work for). hah!

we would have carried on talking but he was hungry and they weren't eating anything i would have, so they forced their copy of bioshock 2 on me (even though i'm pretty certain i won't get a chance to play it) and walked me out.

it was cold, but in spite of my still feeling awful and headachey i was in good spirits.

---flesh & blood is pretty cool. i wish i'd finished eating dinner before watching it, though. i usually have a strong stomache for gore but a couple of moments shocked me enough to make it hard to swallow. if the words "testicle piercing" have any effect on you, consider yourself warned.

---i went to bed relatively early, and got up relatively early. i had breakfast and tylenol before returning to bed for a while. still feeling rough.

eventually i got up and dragged myself off to the office. it didn't really make a difference where i was (now that i have a keyboard at home) but it was easier to focus and i guess if i hadn't been able to talk to anyone i would've wasted more than just an hour or so on finding the last unbroken version.

i spent all day on my task, properly consolidating my opinions on megaman, darn, my team and my company. let's just say i'm not deeply satisfied with any of them, but as my satisfaction is not what they're paying me for i'm going to keep on trucking.
i got through a sizable chunk of what i needed to get done and then called it a day.

at least i'm feeling a little better.

i came home to do laundry and watch a bit of trigun and community, but the plan changed a bit because netflix seems to have removed season 4 of the latter while i was halfway through! not cool, netflix, not cool.

i watched most of in time instead even though it stars justin timberlake. he's not an unwatchable part of the film, for once, but the script is quite bad. better-than-mediocre idea with uninspired writing: i'm surprised i sat through so much of it.

i seem to be getting used to the online dating world and it looks like i might be going on an actual date soon. the worst part of this scene is not knowing how your date looks in real life...

---shakespeare with a shakespearean accent? that sounds righteous!

what sundays are meant to be like

how did we go from hot and humid back down to 18 degrees and chilly in four days?!?!

i'm not really complaining, by the way.

today was awesome. from pacific rim to piknic electronik to shakespeare in the park... *this* is how sundays are supposed to be :)
1. *nerdgasm*

i think i've been waiting my whole life for pacific rim. in 3D. on imax. i may have drooled a little. and giggled too much ^_^

2. piknic

dubstep and groovy beats with yang. i wasn't there for long, just long enough to be disappointed that i had to choose between shakespeare and mat the alien.

3. a midsummer night's dream was beautifully executed in such a manner that had everyone laughing out loud throughout the production. the acting, most notably the acting of bad acting, was superb and while the changes to characters and script were noticeable they weren't distracting at all.

vfmp and his boyfriend took me through the village - i've never been - and we sat chatting until it was time to call the weekend to an end.

i'm exhausted, i don't even have the energy to eat anything. it's been a perfect weekend!

scribbles iv

i've just got in from a 6km zombie run, with karnivool between incidents and psychological background noise concerning the comics consuming me. i'm working with two people who i'm hoping that i can trust, and there are things going on that do not fit in with how i see this happening but in a sense it's already out of my hands. and i don't like that at all.

but i can't draw very well, so i need this to work. so i'll play the game, and pray that everything's going to be alright. the specific incident concerns nocence and i both talking to mason and not synchronizing, and apparently he feels i'm being pushy but nobody (including him) told me. either way, i don't think it's pushy to want to meet more than once a week or communicate via email or whatnot, and i think that considering that this whole project is my baby i have a certain right to be involved a bit more.

---saturday:

1. a long, late sleep that i really needed.

2. general tiredness in spite of aforementioned sleep.

3. on my way to best buy i stopped by source and the sales dude did an awful job of convincing me to get sony in-ear headphones (mdr-ex10lp if you care). i decided to go for them in spite of him. he asked if i wanted to purchase the extended warranty and as usual i said no, but when the other sales guy shook his head to indicate the stupidity of my decision i asked him why.
"what happened to your previous headphones?"
"the cable's fucked. as always happens."
"exactly. with this warranty, when it happens just come in a swap them out."
ooooooooooh.

why can't somebody design headphones that can't pull like that?!

anyway, the quality is so much better than anything i've used in years! i walked along the highway and could barely hear the vehicles passing, and the bass sounds good. it was dreamy ^_^

4. i stopped at starbucks for a large soy latte and some sketching time. i made some progress and was then joined by horseman. i showed him malice in wonderland (the trippy, totally nsfw animated short) by way of explaining what shakespeare's imagery does in my head, and when he got it he described something he'd been looking at in the same style. perhaps after the comics we'll make a short of all the crazy that isn't appropriate for them.

5. horseman joined me as i did some quick shopping on my way home, and was impressed by my fallout setup. even better - he has tekken 6. he's promised to bring it over sometime.

6. after playing a bit of fallout, i watched tom rhodes. he's pretty darn funny! and chased that with star trek iv before going to bed. meh. a couple of good lines, but not impressive.

---sunday:

1. a long chat with my toronto cousins.

2. lunch with godmother and yin and a couple of her friends who came over to see her. yin's looking okay, at least, although her legs are screwed :(

one of her friends is studying literature and we talked about a few things; what was really weird is that she's cute, but there's a definite shared look and mannerisms with the witch. it was like meeting the professor's younger self, and finding her at all attractive was a little creepy.

3. as i left the day became beautiful - for the first time in ages - and so i walked to the metro. on the way i stopped in at the health food store for a long chat about probiotics, and i was talked out of buying supplements as i'm not experiencing any issues. i took a couple of samples for different protein powders (and ordered a sample of another one), then returned home.

4. laundry. and using laundry as an excuse to watch star trek v. certainly better than the previous episode, although less fun and not particularly amazing. now that i think about it, perhaps i've been ruined by the space quest series...

5. the run. and posting this. and now it's late and i *must* make dinner and get some rest. *ahem* watch another movie.

---the one way mission to mars seems legit. and sounds like it'd be a great way for me to participate in our great escape! i do believe i have what it takes, and i've prepared a short speech for an application video.

but.

is it for real?
i mean, looking at some of the applications i'm not sure...

patriotic days

today was patriot's day, and i'm pretty happy that it made for a long weekend. i've just watched an episode of death note after experiencing a surprise breakthrough with my comics and thesis, and i'm definitely ready for bed so i'm going to try to get through this post as quickly as possible.

---sunday:

studying for the driver's (not that i'm worried, but it'd be nice to be fully confident) has made correcting my eyesight a little more urgent. so i've now contacted two clinics to see what they're about.

i had to wait days to register for my medical insurance website because they send your details in the mail, even though they're details you already have. it's very bureaucratic. i then waited a few days more because i never had the time or energy to log in and sort my shit out. until yesterday! i registered successfully, but then it wouldn't accept the password that i'd just entered and i'm now locked out of my account.

bastards!

i caught pg for a chat and i felt bad afterwards because she sounded miserable by the end of a call that was essentially me asking her to help me out with my apartment. fortunately the emails she sent today were more positive, i really don't want to antagonize her. [whoops! i totally forgot her birthday today. *sigh*]

i spent a fair amount of time studying french; i should be a daily thing but i never get that right :(

note to self: soft tofu is a menace and not worth the effort required to handle it. it's amazing how it can flop precisely where you don't want it to every single time.

i thought i was feeling better, but i woke up from a short nap feeling like death. in a trance i hurried to meet up with horseman. there was a guy in the metro planking at the end of the platform. a few people were staring and laughing, he didn't let up until the train came. i thought about strolling up beside him and joining him, wondering if a chain would form, but it was highly probable that he'd find my intrusion offensive.

the afternoon at cagibi was great, nocence joined us, and later we moved to her place to discuss poetry and hip-hop at length. aside from my suddenly beginning to feel horrible, on my way out nocence and i had a gross misunderstanding that was related to my being partially aspie.
"that's the sort of thing you have to tell people upfront if you want to collaborate with them!"
umm. maybe? it's not something i think about all the time.

the night was post-rain and cool, with cool city rain smells.

---today:

i woke up still feeling awful, but i went through the motions of doing laundry anyway. once i was done i checked to see if my clinic would be open (it was a holiday). they would! i headed down there to see a doctor because i've been feeling bad for almost two weeks. and those issues i went for last time still aren't resolved...

... so i arrived there and it was closed. closed, closed, closed. wtf?! i headed back to the metro and found myself on the train going in the wrong direction. i decided to go with it and head to the picnik electronik to pick up my season pass, stopping for food along the way.

i began to overheat and sweat bullets while the red cross dude spoke to me about donations; i started to worry that i had a fever. i guess i didn't? i introduced myself to chez geek, who do boardgame pick-ups every thursday evening, then walked into commensal. it was a little confusing at first, but overall i like the place and the food was decent and decently vegan. i had an issue with my "live" tea - some weird woo thing, i guess - which seemed to be infused with vigor every time i tried to unscrew the cap. i got the impression that it was trapped and trying to escape, and it took me most of ten minutes before i could get the cap off and drink it. by that time my hands were sticky with the short bursts that i didn't manage to catch :P

i entered the street illegally just as i noticed a policeman standing on the other side, and tried to pull off nonchalance as i continued to cross. no matter, he was about to jay-walk too :P

i've come to the conclusion that i get much more done with my comics over coffee in a coffee shop environment. i'm very excited about today's starbucks progress ^_^

i arrived early for the picnik without a picnic, and just sort of milled around for a while. i used the opportunity to send an introductory email to a great artist that nocence wants me to work with, and i hope it entices him to meet me!

the music was a bit crap at first, but it got progressively better. eventually i removed my shoes and got a bit dirty, i was surprised to recognize a girl from the last time (in 2010) and i saw yang for a couple of minutes before i disappeared. it was on my way out that aota's daughter's friend walked in with someone else; i didn't recognize her (she looked better than i remembered) and she said hi but didn't stop. which i found weird considering that aota had messaged me last night to say that she wanted to meet me there...

...

right, past time for bed. as usual.