meeting

 this morning started off a bit rocky, as i explained to mr smear the "new rules" which he immediately declared unfair and "evil". by the time he got to brushing his teeth, we were deep into synthknot territory* which is an excellent mood-transformer, and by breakfast he was ready to talk. he left the apartment in relatively good spirits.

* mr smear and i have both had psychovirtual stuck in our heads all day

i spent most of my morning updating people post-contract signing, i did a little bit of post-interview digging to understand where i went wrong (i failed yesterday's phone screen because i struggled with the details of a threading issue, which sucks, but whatever), and 

[omg we just received gd's renewed cannabis license! what an enormous relief!]

then i hopped on a bus to a part of ramat aviv i never remember exists to meet one of the guys i got fired with. i had a good vegan burger experience, and we talked shop, and it was very interesting hearing the story of his career and potentially connecting on a variety of side-projects.

he gave me a ride home, where i almost immediately crashed on the couch and remained out for quite a while. then i grudgingly got up (in stages), and got in touch with swordschool to discuss our december project. so far, i don't really understand the business side of things but it's very exciting stuff.

afterwards, we all went to the school for the parent-teacher evening. i just realized that we never spoke to his homeroom teacher, which is a bit embarrassing...

on our way in, we noticed a couple of the art pieces on the walls that were definitely creepy / horror themed, so not only is mr smear not the only kid so inclined, but the art teachers are clearly not that concerned by it. the two art teachers we met with both made it very clear that mr smear's talent is rare, and that his behavior is generally okay and improving. we informed them of his backstory and the things we're concerned with, which tied in with their experiences of him, and we left with a really nice feeling that he's in good hands.

the other parents were mad because the second teacher spent half an hour with us while there was a queue forming (the meetings were supposed to be ten minutes each, and it was getting late). when one of them came in to complain, the teacher calmly told her: "you will wait, this is important". while she showed us mr smear's work compared to some of the other students', and suggested that she's going to start challenging him with some more advanced stuff.

we caught the bus home, but it was late so i took mr smear to get a laffa. we had some difficult conversations along the way, but almost all in good spirits. i almost got into a fight with a big guy who refused to move his car off the sidewalk.

i didn't get anything for myself, but i did take a couple of bites and it was excellent.

we got home, mr smear got through the bedtime sequence in reasonable time, gd went to bed early, and i'm probably going to go to bed soon because we have to be up at 5.30am, even though i'm not sure it's going to help me get much sleep...

recovery day (1)

 i dreamed a lot last night, so i'm confident i slept. i accompanied mr smear to school (we remembered to take the bus), and then i made my way to the employment agency. "for adults" 🤔

the man who ushered us in spewed a stream of instructions at us, which led to confusion when we got to the ticket machines and they weren't finished booting up yet. then i followed the instructions and waited at the counter indicated on my ticket, but when the clerk showed up she was immediately pissed off with me and sent me to the waiting area. and as soon as i was seated, she called my number.

she didn't speak any english, which wouldn't have been a big deal had i not used an expression i'd translated from english. and she certainly didn't have any detectable sense of humor.

anyway.

after that, i returned home, where i found a delivery notice from the post office indicating that a package had arrived more than two weeks ago, which meant there was a good chance it had been returned to sender. again. i angrily rushed over to the post office, notice in hand, and confronted the manager... who assured me that she's also very frustrated with the delayed notices, and that there's nobody she can talk to about it.

good grief.

the good news is that they hadn't returned it yet, so i finally picked up our math fluxx and mystery fluxx ^_^

(and rain gear for mr smear)

i barely had time to get those back to the apartment before i had to leave again, and with a brief interlude discussing pre-dawn philosophy with horseman i arrived at the coffee shop to meet with the other firees. it was a good couple of hours spent discussing all sorts of things, but mostly supporting each other, and chatting about how to manage (or not manage) a business and what kinds of things we might be interested in building.

at least skippity joined us this time.

i made my way home chatting with swordschool, and we dived into the weeds of a book he wants to publish and i'm trying to help him edit. it's interesting stuff, and it might play into another side project i've been thinking about.

once mr smear got home, it was all about homework until i received a message from the unhinged, once again claiming that her darling innocent angel had been verbally abused by my son.

i immediately took him to task, and put the fear of god in him, and he told us the details and appeared to be suitably contrite regarding his behavior. but i didn't want to respond to the unhinged without some council, so i asked their teacher to call me.

while i waited (and in-between helping gd prepare dinner), i chatted with someone who wanted our windows machine for much less than i'm asking, leading me to re-evaluate my offer and raise the asking price again, but also format the machine.

when the teacher called me, i was pleasantly surprised, both because she's not usually so easy to get hold of and also because she was aware of the incident and supportive. and then, in addition to that, she informed me that mr smear really has been making an effort, that his behavior's no worse than any of the other kids, and that today he entirely voluntarily participated in her science class.

so while he's being punished for handling the unhinged's daughter really badly, we're also very busy praising him for everything else :P

when i finally responded, just as had been recommended, she responded with a flood of her usual disrespectful bile. i took a screenshot and sent it to the teacher so that she knows what's up, and successfully held myself back from responding.

we had a long and entertaining chat with my mom and sister after dinner, then put mr smear to bed (relatively smoothly), and i'm now trying to decide whether to try to be functional or not. i have lots of interesting stuff to read (swordschool homework), but i also have a very busy day tomorrow supporting the window fix and the air-conditioner cleaning, and the floor cleaning in between with gd only able to yell at me for doing a poor job because she's still recovering from yesterday's nerve block...

nerves

i barely slept last night, not sure why.

i was supposed to supervise mr smear on the bus this morning, but we were so wrapped up in our discussion of how to tell jokes across different mediums (and the importance of panel layout, he's got strong opinions on swamp thing) that we auto-piloted to the light rail instead :P

i spent a couple of hours preparing for my phone screen, after which it turned out to be just a non-tech introduction. but it was positive nonetheless, and immediately afterwards i heard back from the outsourcing form, who's skipping a step with me and has invited me to what might be the final round! i'm legitimately excited about this one, i really hope it all comes together.

after that, my eyes were giving me trouble and i was feeling quite antsy, and i decided to take a walk with my kindle. i found a nice spot in a nearby park and read a little, but after a couple of pages i realized i just didn't have the focus. i walked a little further, found a surprisingly nice little fountain hidden away next to the park that i've never noticed in the three and a half years we've lived right next door, and then returned home just in time for a call from swordschool.

jesus, fuck, he's been going through some difficult shit. we talked for quite a while, so long that i almost entirely missed urchin's visit (we literally had a couple of minutes to chat before she left), and we're going to continue the conversation tomorrow. i'm planning on giving him a boost with one of his ideas and hopefully we'll enjoy some quick success 🤞

mr smear arrived around the time urchin left, and we dove straight in to math homework. well, he did - he didn't really need my help, so i got some of the dishes done.

mr smear has been repeating some mightily inappropriate shit recently, directly from his new friends at school. i'm trying to impress upon him, just in case, that friends don't pressure friends into doing anything they're not comfortable with, and that if he does find himself compromised, he needs to tell us so we can help him out of whatever shit he gets into...

a short while later, we all left for the hospital complex, picked up some meds and then accompanied gd to the pain clinic for her nerve block. after getting her ready for the doctor - which took a while, but much less time than usual - mr smear and i went through his hebrew reading homework. he did really well, but there were a couple of moments that reduced my patience, and then his behavior afterwards (he didn't want to do anything that wasn't on his phone, including not doing anything at all) reduced it further.

getting gd home after the procedure was pretty straightforward, and after a brief chat with my mom i took mr smear with me to go pick up dinner. some of the walk was unpleasant - my patience had pretty much bottomed out by that point - but most of it was us talking. a lot of the talk was about heavy stuff (aging, illness and death), which was fine except for the bit where i said something so heavy it upset him and i immediately regretted it...

we picked up... too much food. like, two of the dishes we could've left behind, and it was quite an expensive meal. having said that, the meals were delicious.

there were some negative feelings around bedtime (the usual), but otherwise it's been a smooth evening.

tomorrow morning i've got an appointment with the israeli employment service...

wacky wednesday

yesterday:

the interview didn't go well. it didn't go badly, but it definitely didn't go well. when it came to the technical part i was really unfocused, and all over the place - "all over the place" has really become my standard mode.

...

i was just saying to gd this morning that i've been riding between the edge of burnout and being burned out for a very, very long time now. it doesn't just make things tougher when they're not going smoothly, but it also makes me really unmotivated and demoralized.

...

i walked home feeling uncomfortable about my performance. i worked through some of mr smear's math homework with him, we had dinner, and while he got ready for bed we discovered a massive mold bloom in his bedroom so we had to work to get rid of (most of) it before he went to sleep.

by that stage i was completely done, over it, and most assuredly not in the mood to go rollerblading.

i put some time into preparing my laptop to be formatted (backing things up, primarily), then joined gd in watching some more beetlejuice beetlejuice. i'm not not enjoying it, but i'm not exactly engaged, either, and we keep falling asleep. still infinitely better than venom: the last dance.

today:

another weird day.

i woke up feeling very anxious about everything, took mr smear to school, and as i returned home received a phone call from the manager of a recycling site. amusingly, it turns out that while my complaints about the sites i've looked for are valid, there's a large site literally across the road from our apartment. with a sign. the only reason i didn't find it is because its google map pin is about 500m south of the place itself 🤦

i continued preparing for the great format, while gd worked on dusting and sorting mr smear's shelves (that's a hell of a lot of work, it hasn't been done in forever - possibly literally), and i was very pleased and relieved to receive a message from the company i interviewed with yesterday informing me that they'd like to proceed.

gd finally cut her hair short(ish), it's a lot of money but she's much happier, so... 🤷
(i don't really care much about hair, but i do prefer hers shorter)

i eventually took a bus to the office, and sat down with the CEO for our exit interview. it went well. we had lots to talk about, and in addition to giving me very positive feedback he and the CTO are being very helpful when it comes to the next steps and finding another gig.

and i can use my desk and equipment until the end of the month, which is extremely useful.

i then demonstrated my laptop's formattedness to the CTO, had an informal chat with him, and began the agonizing process of reinstalling the machine for personal use.

OMFG.

the reinstallation has taken many hours, and it's still not complete. i have, however, just managed to get the exercise code back to where it was on monday evening.

two of my coworkers (now ex-coworkers, whatever) came in to the office as well, and we ended up talking for a very long time, until it was dark and we remembered that rain was expected and we rushed out to get home before the downpour.

fortunately i didn't get caught, just lightly drizzled on. i had a long conversation with horseman about the game idea, then found that swordschool had added notes to our shared doc, and i'm pleased that we're all seeing value in this, even if we're not necessarily seeing the same value ^_^

we watched curious archive's the evolution of absolutely everything over dinner, and it's stunning.

mr smear's bedtime was alright - not excellent, but alright - and gd and i watched some more beetlejuice beetlejuice, and now i'm writing this down while messing with configurations and thinking about going to bed.

the salute

 good gods, i woke up this morning to find feeds flooded with musk's apparent nazi salute. here's a post on the topic for any of you who're freaking out about not much.

also: 

this morning started well, with mr smear getting up early and the two of us having a great chat before taking off for school - i taught him cursive writing, which he was excited about, and also had some ideas for that game i've been thinking about.

after dropping him off and returning home, i settled into a long conversation / pitch with swordschool, which was exciting and fascinating but by the end of it my brain was melting... as usual with our chats :P

the biggest things i've taken care of today: signing the severance contract with my boss, re-applying for gd's therapy authorization, transferring tooth fairy money to mr smear, sitting with gd as she called her OB/GYN's secretary (who claimed not to have received anything in writing, after she'd already responded in writing two weeks ago to confirm that she has gd's file), did the dishes while gd took care of the projector's annual cleaning, spent a lot of time on phone calls with the municipality about electronic recycling (the sites either don't exist, or aren't marked at all) and "school fees" (personal insurance for mr smear, whatever that means), and threading through all these items i played a great run of inscryption that completely bombed towards the end.

when i realized that i needed somewhere quiet for my interview, i then also realized that it was a half hour earlier than i'd thought it would be. so i quickly slugged down my coffee that i'd just warmed up, jumped on a bus and am currently sitting in my office building buzzing quietly, nervously, and felt the need to dump all of the day so far because i felt it was dragging on my consciousness.

it doesn't help that i've done nothing towards the exercise i'm supposed to be working on for the other company.

hopefully the interview will go well.

slowdown

 it's sunday morning and i'm about to leave for work, but i needed to get this down. i didn't really prep for tomorrow's interview, but i definitely and desperately needed to rest. gd and i are convinced that we've both had covid. she seems to finally be getting better.

friday:

i had a chat with swordschool in the morning, but i was still in recovery mode and my brain felt like it was melting into a puddle. but he had a great idea about gamifying something and i was happy to be able to contribute somehow.

we started watching the original beetlegeuse movie, then picked mr smear up from school and bussed to dizengoff center, where we ordered mr smear's new lens prescription (that we should've done more than a month ago) and picked up a new phone for him (an entry level samsung).

so not exactly a cheap day.

the hummusia was packed with a long line so we ended up at a franchise coffee shop eating mediocre vegan sandwiches, and the rest of the day was resting, snacking, and gaming.

i started getting into shadowrun: hong kong and it's really good so far. i'm liking a lot of the added mechanics, but i think they might have been a bit overwhelming if i hadn't recently played the first two games.

yesterday:

yesterday really felt like a recovery day. i didn't feel as ridiculously tired all day as i've been for the last week or so, although when i walked up the stairs after dropping mr smear off at his friend i almost fainted and had to lie on my back with my knees up for a few minutes in order to reset.

i was a bit irritable over the course of the day, part of it being because i decided to implement a feature with my phone control solution and it took ages to figure out something that should have been really trivial to understand, but it was overall a good, restful day.

the plan was to take mr smear out on his bike in the afternoon, but his friend called and it was a no-brainer for all of us that that was a better idea :P

i accompanied him on the walks there and back, but for the most part he was on his own and it seems like he handled himself and the afternoon really well.

...

i'm slowly reading through the honest truth about dishonesty, and the chapter on how effective lobbying and pharma rep manipulation is is simply appalling. this is stuff everyone should know.

not as planned

yesterday evening:

we took a cab to tahoma's, and were absolutely blown away by the quality and attention to detail of their halloween decorations. they turned their little apartment into a legitimate haunted house, and it was so effective that mr smear - who's obsessed with making creepy and gory things and tries really hard to be scary himself - refused to even look at the rooms because they scared the shit out of him.

smh.

some of the evening before the party actually got started was awkward, but mostly it was cool and we met some really nice people. one guy convinced me to explain the word "trolling" to him, and by the second sentence i began to suspect he was trolling me but he was so convincing i just carried right on, and i was quite impressed with myself for describing it as clearly as i did :P

there was a hilarious moment when a guy was translating mr smear's english for his five year-old, and asked mr smear what he was dressed as. "a killer clown!", mr smear said with pride. "a scary clown," the man translated for his child. mr smear was shocked. 

"i said a KILLER clown!"

"i know what you said."

"a KILLER clown!"

"i KNOW what you said!"

at that point we were all in hysterics, and i took mr smear aside to explain what was happening 🤣

as more grownups arrived, we caught a ride home, made kiddush and ate insanely delicious challah and broccoli schitznel sandwiches. by the time mr smear climbed into bed it was probably around 11.30pm.

today:

i think i slept pretty well, but i woke up very early with enough anxiety to realize that i needed to get up and start writing an open letter. i wrote and i wrote until my family got up - not too late, either - and after running through it a couple of times with gd, i pulled the trigger and posted it publicly on facebook with my email address attached. in it, i called out the pro-palestinian rabbi and his wife by name, and after a lot of introduction that includes both a summarized history of the conflict and a brief history of our experiences with the congregation, i made the following statements:

• Stop listening to people who rely on your political ignorance to propagate malicious disinformation that is designed to harm you.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you that you don’t have the right to live in the only land you’ve ever been indigenous to, the land in which you have historically been its indigenous people for thousands of years.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you that there’s an occupation, or that there are “disputed territories”.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you about the plight of the Palestinians in a way that suggests it’s anyone’s fault but the league of Arab nations and the UN.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you that violence against Israel, or Jews in general, is justifiable.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you that this is Netanyahu’s war.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you that believing that Jews should live in the only land they’ve ever called home, the only land that promises them protection, the only land they’re free to be Jewish, is wrong.

my anxiety immediately switched from that of feeling frustrated and ashamed for not having said anything, to that of having said something so undiplomatic and confrontational that there's absolutely no going back. it was validating to receive messages of appreciation from members of the community, including gd's fellow graduates, and also from old schoolmates who've been involved in the battle but unable to affect change.

i don't know what's going to happen next - although i was disappointed that the executive blocked me on facebook and messaged me to make it clear that we could no longer talk - but i feel like i've discharged my duty, and if i have to have uncomfortable conversations i will do so. as much as we owe to the executive and the rabbis, and as grateful as we will always be for them helping gd with her conversion and us come home, our loyalties are first and foremost to the community as a whole.

we've put our own oxygen masks on, and played nice and diplomatic until they were secure. now it's time to help others.

...

while scrolling down my whatsapp messages i realized that swordschool had sent me an important message some time in june, and i hadn't responded 😱

so i called him up, and we synced for at least an hour. it's very comforting having someone like that in my corner. in addition to discussing his new dice mechanics and desolation jones, amongst a thousand other things, i was shocked and saddened to learn that before the tragic incidents he'd been through just prior to us reconnecting a few years back, he'd been through an even more tragic family disaster... i feel awful for him, and also exceedingly grateful for what i have.

...

in the afternoon i met up with sailor and we did a couple of rounds of coffees (well, first macha tea and then coffee) and a lunch (he ate, between my nerves and the confusing menu i was fine). he accompanied me home, and remained with gd while i took mr smear out for a walk. it was fine, at first, but he was in such a good mood that he vigorously skipped for a couple of blocks - with me skipping along right behind him - and ended up having a full-blown coughing fit / asthma attack. so i gave him his pump, and we slowly walked home around the circle.

aside from my reacting to a barista milk alternative (that i was told wasn't barista, but then later informed was) and the occasional open letter-related intrusion, we had a pretty good evening.

after all the anxiety and everything, i'm exhausted, and i feel like i skipped a day of weekend. i did a whole bunch of dishes, wrote all this, and now... i think i'm going to drink this new cup of tea and hit the hay.

...

oh! on-call. i forgot i was on-call today. and then i realized that the reason i was getting confusing alerts that made me forget what day it was is that with all the scheduling changes for the holidays, i've ended up with four days of on-call in a row :/

friday

 i slept alright, until mr smear woke me up because he'd lost his duvet. it was a pretty good start to the day. i dropped mr smear off at school, where he was really proud of himself for crossing the road safely when the crossing guards weren't at their posts.

gd and i had a pretty good morning, and i had a good chat with my mother about her aliyah expo experience. then we left for the mall, then returned to give our neighbor his drill back, then turned around again. we had a nice breakfast together, then rushed to the pharmacy and do the grocery shopping (while i chatted with swordschool), bailing when we realized that we were properly late to pick up mr smear. i dropped the groceries at our building entrance then literally ran all the way to the school the pick him up.

after cooling down, i had a long chat with sailor, did the dishes, then resumed my chat with swordschool while capturing the martian throne in bloons adventure time. then i showered, cut a toenail too short with a new nailclipper, rested a bit, and now we're off to friends for dinner.

the win

 today went as best as could have been hoped for. after a good night's sleep, we talked to mr smear about ice skating and he became very enthusiastic. we walked to the new 24/7 to pick up a treat, then went hunting for the car. between the search for the car and taking a wrong turn to the ice rink, we arrived about half an hour later than planned, but no biggie.

getting mr smear sorted out was a confusing mess, then i headed back to rent a pair of ice skates for myself and got stuck behind a large group of old people.

i managed to keep relatively calm.

a lifetime later, i grabbed my skates and made it to the birthday / prep room in time to give mr smear a hand with his and go through to the rink with him.

what followed was an awesome time teaching him to skate. we both had a great time, he loved skating and he handled himself well both in getting his balance and in bouncing back up whenever he fell. i was really grateful that i could be there on the ice with him for his first time, and that gd was able to be with us even if her role was standing at the edge taking photos and videos and cheering us on :)

when it came time to go, mr smear decided he wanted to go to his friend's place, and his friend's dad okay'ed it so we shrugged and left. i was feeling a bit tired when we got home, but not that tired, but then swordschool called and as we talked i felt my eyelids and brain getting progressively heavier as my need for a nap became progressively more aggressive.

eventually i apologized and ended the call, then lay down on the couch, then realized that with mr smear out of the apartment gd had lit up a joint in the living room and the windows were closed. by the time she understood that i wasn't kidding about its effect on me and closed the windows, i was out cold and i would only wake up two and a half hours later...

after waking up, i lost some time trying to figure out why plex wasn't working properly* and then we took another car to pick up mr smear.

* it's a combination of my dell laptop's performance and the ps4 client, they're both a bit shit. using my macbook works brilliantly, though.

i would've hopped on a bus, which would have been much faster as well as much cheaper, but the buses weren't running yet... i managed to return the car with three minutes to spare, but then got stuck on hold with their service department for almost fifteen minutes because i ended the ride without realizing that i'd left the overhead light on :(

i came home, ordered pizza, chatted with my first boss for a bit, did some dishes, then finished watching the book of life which we'd started last night. it's a pretty solid kids' movie, but the music is really cringey and the sudden change of heart in xibalba really rubbed me the wrong way. overall, it felt a bit rushed.

after finally getting mr smear into bed (very late) - right after i got into trouble because he caught me sneaking a scoop of ice-cream - gd and i watched an episode of evangelion (the one where asuka and shinji get in sync), and after messing about and then posting this i'm now just about ready to get into bed myself.

post-weekend

friday cont'd: learning about the three hostages that were accidentally shot. this is absolutely devastating.

having read this article, i'm left with the impression that the current conditions are extremely unclear for our soldiers - hamas has made it very difficult to identify terrorist from unarmed civilian, and are employing all sorts of tricks to trap them - and it must be nigh impossible to adhere 100% to protocol under such circumstances. i cannot imagine how i would handle myself, and i don't want to imagine the psychological horror that the soldiers who killed the hostages must be going through / will be carrying with them for the rest of their lives.

yesterday:

the biggest part of the day was assisting mr smear with his holiday homework, in spite of it being very non-sabbath stuff. it certainly wasn't fun, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been, and i was very proud of him when he finally completed it - having made sure that i hadn't been doing any of it for him.

in the late afternoon i had a long chat with swordschool, which resulted in a list of interesting things to see and hear (as usual), one of them happened to be a spoiler for inscryption but at this point, i'm going to keep playing and i'm going to keep enjoying it.

i'm definitely addicted to bacterial takeover, even my son says so.

we watched another chimera ant episode of hunter x hunter, and my gods, the cruelty and violence wasn't just inappropriate for mr smear, but it was really hard to watch for us so hot on the heels of october 7th. at the end of the episode, mr smear informed us that he felt it was inappropriate for him, and that he felt that everything from the phantom troupe onwards was inappropriate, but he didn't mind because he'd enjoyed it regardless. but now he wasn't enjoying it anymore.

so that was a revelation.

as a palate cleanser, i started reading the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy to him at bedtime and he found it hysterical :)

today:

mr smear returned to school, and gd and i went to azrieli for a coffee and a consultation. the former was shit, the latter was highly informative and the lady we spoke to really made us feel heard. it's now clear to us that it's not worth appealing the disability judgement, and that we should instead just be praying that gd's situation never gets to a point where social security would be sympathetic.

admin anxiety-wise, that's a load off.

i had a pretty good day at work, my coworker who was on paternity leave returned, and invited me for a chat - it turns out we both served on the same base at the same time, and were both (militarily) seconded from the same unit. i honestly can't tell if i (vaguely) recognize him or not from that time, but it was fun to sync and laugh about the stuff we both worked with back then.

we adventure timed over dinner at mr smear's request, and i read some more of the hitchhiker's guide. there was one sentence i needed to modify slightly, but otherwise we're still going strong.

i've spent most of the evening sorted out gd's email accounts, and now most of the important stuff is taken care of.

...

and now i've just seen the latest terror tunnel that's been uncovered: holy shit.

hopefully ready

 thursday was a long and difficult day. coffee wasn't helping, and by yesterday noon i was pretty sure i knew whay - it looks like i've come down with a bug. i'm still not feeling 100%, but after resting most of yesterday and a bit of today i'm certainly feeling better.

psychologically, not so much. i spent today well, but as well as i could have, but then gd approached me a couple of hours ago to inform me that the mattress we bought isn't good. this absolutely stinks, and now it's going to be a scramble to get the shop to a) take responsibility and b) figure out the right mattress(es).

shit.

thursday saw me working on an exercise to write my first smart contract (a liquidity pool), some of it i got and some of it i didn't. it was the first night of hannukah, and i was too exhausted after the candlelighting and latkes to work on it any further. so that's tomorrow morning's task.

yesterday morning started off alright, then had a bit of a sour downturn on the way to do the chores (nothing serious, but i wasn't feeling good so it all came together unpleasantly). we took gd's newly broken shoes in for repair, picked up a bicycle pump (probably fancier than we need), and we stopped for sandwiches and coffee before heading through to the supermarket for a grocery run.

it was only once i walked out of there, laden with bags, that i realized how shitty i felt.

i don't remember much of the rest of yesterday, i know i published an article but i don't actually recall when :P

oh, and two rocket attacks. which led to a lot more time playing bacterial takeover than i'd like to admit.

after a long conversation with swordschool, mr smear and i began the day with hunter x hunter (we're almost through the greed island arc), and we downloaded a bunch of interesting-looking games but got thoroughly stuck in to it takes two, which was refreshingly fun and well-balanced, and has an interesting story that we could have (needed to have) a conversation about. after scheduled downtime (followed by an additional hour of no screen-time because he fought with us about the downtime), he joyfully returned to the world of roblox (i'm keeping an eye on that) until dinner time.

i guess i need to hit the hay early tonight as well.

monday already

thursday/friday:

long days at the "office" (my mom's), although not all the hours were paid for. at least one of them was spent brainstorming about a really exciting new ARG concept with swordschool, another was spent walking with sailor, who informed me of the awful things going on in ethiopia on the day i booked our tickets through addis ababa and then inspired me with an amazing use-case for the phone software i've been using/building over the past few years.

one thing about the paid gig, though - i seem to be the new expert for two critical elements of our solution, and my manager seems happy with this. some of the last week was frustrating, but a lot of the work was pretty gratifying. the last thing i was working on was so intriguing that i had to make a conscious effort to not work on it over the weekend.

saturday:

after the morning service i was absolutely exhausted, and passed in and out of consciousness on a number of occasions while playing little big planet 3 or watching avatar: the last airbender (the original anime, we didn't enjoy the movie) with mr smear.

i found the right screwdriver to fix my rollerblades without having to go shopping. win!

we expected loadshedding, and i used it as an excuse to get mr smear outside for a walk without a fight.

i watched pete davidson: alive from new york and was surprised by how much i enjoyed it in spite of his delivery... i mean, eventually he just won me over, delivery included.

"yesterday":

i started my day early by documenting all the things that need doing before and when we leave. it's helped a bit with my overall anxiety. 

we were going to take mr smear to a friend of his' birthday party, but then realized that at least one of the group of bullies from the previous two years was going to be there and we agreed to just drop off a gift some other time.

we booked tickets, picked up my mom and went through to hout bay to do a seal island cruise. it turned out to be a great day for it, except that mr smear and i felt... a bit green... as the waves were really choppy. at least we all enjoyed the first half of the trip, and mr smear was really excited to see all the seals ^_^

we had a nice lunch at a market in hout bay, it was a bit of a relief to find a good vegan option and i was surprised by how much i ate (or the fact that i ate at all, considering).

i was so tired i actually misjudged the length of my car while parking and bashed into a pole. i'm VERY grateful that there doesn't appear to be any damage.

a bunch of us saw my sister off at the airport this afternoon, she's off to london to live with her daughter and i really hope she finds a new employer once she's there (her current employer's a real bastard).

shower/bedtime went very well.

i've just managed to deploy an updated version of my "side-project" web portal: hours spent upgrading one of the components because heaven forbid the react peeps would release a new version without significant breaking changes... anyway, the final version i deployed is working really nicely so i feel it was time well spent.

now:

it's almost 00:30. i'm going to bed.