it's not supposed to be work

 last night was great! dinner was delicious (and quick), although once again the challah-peño was too hot for poor mr smear... mr smear and i sampled the individual mochi (the vanilla one was good, but neither was worth the expense compared to regular ice cream), gd packed up the gift mochi and i headed out to hail a taxi. over the past couple of years tahoma's husband has been using their bomb shelter time to develop a whole lot of cocktails, and over the course of the evening i had two of them, and the two of them were sufficient to do a real number on me.

otherwise, it was a lovely couple of hours spent with them and nystire and a guy i haven't seen since a pride march around 2008 / 2009 :)

aside from a half an hour or so of lower back pain waking me up in the middle, i slept pretty soundly.

i woke up pretty early, considering, and i spent most of the morning and early afternoon feeling pretty tired. i read a bit of my favorite thing is monsters, which is phenomenal, and cleaned the balcony, and eventually managed to get myself motivated enough to spend a few hours investigating alternative AI harness and model options, while simultaneously testing them on my auto-doc project and the tarot game.

i'm still going, though i've had some success it overall feels tragically like real work, stressful, frustrating and not at all fun. heavy limitations on AI usage take something that's painful enough as it is - working with an idiot that needs a lot of babysitting to not fuck up your shit - and making it essentially impossible. in addition to that, i'm no longer in the least bit interested in doing the coding work manually like a peasant, and none of the tools (specifically codex and opencode, i've given up on pi for now) have any of the plugins, workflows or options that i need to operate effectively.

everything is broken.

i took a break to play uno with gd, which was great fun for us but left a bitter taste after mr smear had not only refused, but ended up being rude enough to lose rather a lot of screen time :/

after that, we went out on our rollerblades. he complained for a while about his ankle hurting, but i think i sorted it out by tightening the straps... also, by incentivizing him with a drink, because we went back up and through the park on the way home and he was doing fine.

along the way we encountered the horrible homeless woman, who's very aggressive and started walking towards us while calling us names. i discussed how we were handling it with mr smear, avoiding her and trying not to provoke her, but in retrospect i think i should have called the police - i think it was a week ago that she was doing the same to gd, and i'm quite over the stress of whether or not i'm going to have to get physical with this unpredictable maniac in order to protect my family.

mr smear and i both had cold* showers, and i got stuck in to an hour of troubleshooting a ridiculous unity license issue (the AI broke it trying to run tests in sandbox mode, and it took a lot of experimentation and grilling gemini to give me a useful answer), then i stopped for dinner.

* cold-ish, in this weather the coldest water is more cool than cold

dinner was great, after which we had another discussion about gaming, and why we need to compromise, and gd - in a show of great magnanimity - chose to play fluxx in spite of the fact that she doesn't like it.

well.

mr smear, oblivious to gd's rising anger, enjoyed himself in spite of his protests, and did really well. gd, on the other hand... i've told her it's up to her to find a game that she wants to play.

after wishing mr smear a good night, i jumped back into to the game dev, with a little auto-doc on the side, and i've managed to catch the menu system vibe i wanted, which is pretty exciting.

and i've only used ten percent of my weekly limit...

i think i'm about ready for bed, now. tomorrow's gonna be an interesting week 🤷‍♂️

boding

 omg i'm soooo tired, and as soon as i've eaten i'm heading out to tahoma's to celebrate his birthday. maybe i should caffeine up. [caffeines up. oh, great, organic soya drink full of cream-colored bits]

after i posted yesterday, we had dinner. mr smear ate so much - we split our meals, his "egg" salad sandwich was enormous, and i think we both agreed that my "shuwarma" was too delicious to pass up - that he didn't have space for dessert.

then the two of us played a whole lot of among us together, working together sometimes, and me backstabbing him a bunch of others, but in all cases we both were having fun and laughing at the ridiculous situations we found ourselves in / made for ourselves.

after he went to bed, i played out acts 3 and the ending of inscryption. mr smear occasionally poked his head around the door because he was having trouble sleeping, and that went on until very late, and then i ended up going to bed around midnight.

i had a couple of wakings during the night, but nothing major 🤷‍♂️

i don't recall too many specifics from this morning, but it did involve checking our finances and moving mr smear's pocket money around. if we can keep it together, we might actually be okay this month. *if* 🤞

i managed to leave at a reasonable time to go pick up our cleaning materials, which turned out to be considerably heavier than i'd anticipated. i lugged them to the sarona market, with a plan to pick up speciality halva as a gift, but the halva store was closed (hey, if you don't want to make money, don't open your store during your official hours) and i ended up picking up a few things at the asian market. the girl on duty was very sweet, and managed to find me a sealable bag with some ice in it to transport the frozen goods home.

i bussed home, had breakfast, then coffee, then a very serious nap, eventually taking mr smear out on a mission to find mugs and wine. we didn't find mugs, but we did get a lot of steps in.

it was pretty hot today.

i had a third coffee when we got home, mr smear got some screen time, and then we had a big fight because he wasn't ready to help me clean the floors. we got through it, but not without unpleasantness.

at least the floors are clean, i guess.

then it was shower time for both of us, and i tried to get some more work done with the auto-doc, but i'm just become more and more demoralized about AI output quality and costs and at the same time i don't - i mean i really, really don't - want to do any of the work manually :/

so that's the vibe that's been haunting me this whole week, and i made a conscious decision in the shower to turn it off, at least for the rest of the day. so i've read some more of inside moebius part 1, which includes some pretty disturbing sequences (in addition to being quite an inspiration in general), and tried to nap (didn't happen, even though i'm falling apart), and i guess...

... i guess i just need to chill. i'm looking forward to tonight, but i'm a bit sad about the fact that i need  a fourth coffee to even get out the door. come to think of it, i needed a fourth cup yesterday as well...

nerve bump

i managed to get a surprising amount of work done yesterday, especially considering a couple of rounds of parenting drama revolving around my son being sneaky and dishonest about his screen time violations. dinner was nice - we're continuing with chocolat, and i was very pleased to hear mr smear commenting about what a great movie it is "even if it is really calm and slow" - and then we were invited upstairs for some fluxx.

a lot of the hour or so we were there was fun, but for two things: big data being mean to his youngest (he's really impatient with him), and mr smear being a really bad sport :(

i actually slept really well last night (i only had two coffees yesterday, and i forgot to take my magnesium supplement), but i was woken at 6am by mr smear's traumatizingly loud and aggressive alarm. which turned out to be a good thing, once my nerves calmed a little, because i have to go in a couple of minutes and i had a fair amount to do.

...

tahoma sent me a link to unfortunately, you need to know what the jevons paradox is yesterday, which i happen to have seen the day before. it's absolutely brilliant.

liminality

 mr smear told us earlier that today was the first day he remembers enjoying school.

...

a mostly sane wake-up, dishes, ping pong (i'm just more than halfway through), and after mr smear left for school it was dealing with pension / insurance stuff, and beginning a response to my boss/client who finally replied to my first update with a whole list of questions.

i arrived at work a minute late for my first meeting (this is becoming a thing, i have to be more careful in the mornings), and it was another long, very busy day. some of it productive, but not visibly so, by me having conversations with the stakeholders that triggered some very serious "debates" between them. i'm going to have to be very attentive and careful to not step on anyone's toes... which is literally a part of the job description.

i joined a few people on a lunch mission, which ended up being to a shuwarma place - fortunately, they had a plate full of side-dishes on the menu which was vegan and delicious. on the way out everyone was shocked to discover i'm vegan, which triggered some very serious discussions. the woman who came with us - a mother of two - literally cried when i told her what mr smear had had to contend with in his previous school regarding his dairy allergies and bullying.

we had to stop talking about nutrition and food safety over lunch because the guy in the team i'm embedded in started losing his appetite :P

...

i left a bit early to meet gd and mr smear at our friends' neighbor's apartment to take a look. we were there for a while, the disabled landlord seems genuinely decent and the apartment looks great, but he's putting us under enormous pressure to take it from february 1st, ostensibly because he has another potential tenant and he's giving us a chance as a favor to our friends.

it's a little further away from where we want to be than we are already, but it's on a corner with bus stops that work for us. and it's closer to another street we're happy shopping on, and the park. it's potentially a lot noisier than where we are, but the windows seem built for it. and winter. it's a big space with one more room than we're used to, but there's a poorly-conceived wall that divides what would otherwise be a wonderful open-plan kitchen and living area. there are multiple bathrooms, though each one has minor problems. not serious ones. it has an in-apartment bomb shelter. it's a little more expensive than our current apartment, but it's still very reasonable.

mr smear's very enthusiastic about it, and i made gd try and find faults but she's generally feeling positive about it. i walked out feeling very pressured, which i really don't like.

on the one hand, i don't want to make a decision under pressure - real or artificial - and this is a big decision. aside from the risks you take with any move to a new apartment, this is potentially burning two months' rent if we don't find someone to replace us. but at the same time, there's no guarantee we'll get a better deal than this if we don't take it. in fact, based on the past couple of days of looking, i'd be very surprised if we find something else even close to this good for us.

but there's no oracle we can consult, no human being on the planet who can guess whether we should take it or pass. there's no right or wrong answer.

i rushed through some of the dishes when we got home, then headed out to meet tahoma, and we went to rainbow for their sensational burgers. afterwards we took a long stroll looking for a dessert, and then i took my leave to get home in time to handle mr smear's toenails and put him to bed.

between discussing things with tahoma, and discussing them with my mother, i got most of the way home still very much undecided about what to do.

but then, just before i arrived home, i realized something important: if we don't take this apartment, there's a very good chance we'll have to use a real estate agent. and real estate agents - even though it's illegal - take an additional month's rent from the tenant as fees. which means that us taking this apartment is effectively only a loss of a single month (more than we would have lost anyway), and there's still a chance to reclaim some of that loss if we can find a replacement tenant quickly.

so now we have a plan. a scary plan, but a plan.

...

i read a bit of the beginning of sophocles i to mr smear at bedtime. he's into bits of it, but i don't think he's really ready.

still waiting...

 the threats from iran are escalating (while they're massacring the persian people), and there's been a (literal) storm brewing (i was supposed to meet with tahoma earlier, but cancelled when i realized that i didn't have an umbrella on me), and i'm supposed to finish a PR i started this afternoon...

...

mr smear left for school seeming prepared for his history test, which he reported went well. he's also reported that he behaved well at school all day, but we never know until the reports come in...

the biggest thing about this morning, aside from a whole thing about gd and her dentists, was that we finally started looking for a new apartment. which caused a fair amount of distraction throughout the day.

it was a mostly-positive work day (half work day), except for me forgetting my sunglasses in the office when i hopped home for lunch, and high winds were making little dust twisters all along the way, and then me getting back to the office late for a meeting with one of my teammates... and then the train station entrance i needed to get to my employer's office was closed, and i *just* made it in time for my meeting with my mentor, or would have had he not cancelled at the last minute...

the rest of the afternoon was a lecture, some vegan dimsum and a proper seaweed salad, an awkward "game" debating technology opinions with no context, and chatting with some of my coworkers before heading out.

...

i was very relieved to make it home without being rained on. mr smear's hebrew reading homework was good, dinner was great (mr smear impressing me with his improving heat tolerance after having spilled too much habanero honey mustard sauce), and the rest of the evening went pretty smoothly. now i have to decide whether i have it in me to finish the PR or leave that until morning.

i should probably leave it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

dog day halloween

 i'm still feeling tired, weak and fatigued. at least tahoma's halloween party last night gave me a proper excuse :P

...

yesterday morning started at the park with the school's "dog day". there were dogs, and it was a day. the sun was beating down (it was surprisingly bright and hot), and mr smear and i arrived a few minutes early, just in time for me to be awkward with a couple of other dads before everyone began setting up the picnic.

highlights:

mr smear's teacher sitting down next to us and reporting that mr smear has really turned things around over the course of the past couple of days. please god it holds.

the angry mother from the previous week refused to make eye contact. gd and i have been laughing about the fact that both of us were responsible for bringing a specific vegan cheese spread, so we  childishly brought two in order to "show her up" 🤣

i asked mr smear not to tell anyone that we were going to a private birthday party afterwards. he made sure to tell everyone. loudly.

everything on the table was vegan because of the allergy requirements, which was a first for us at a school event. cake for breakfast.

...

from there, the relevant parents and kids snuck out and the birthday boy's mom gave us ride to the country club. it was a perfect day for it, beautiful weather, hardly anybody else around. the downside was spending a fair amount of time fending off crows, egyptian geese and myna birds, but most of the afternoon was spent watching the kids have a great time together both in the water and out, having long and interesting conversations with the other parents (there were only three of us), and quietly recovering from the madness of the previous weeks (and months).

we were not expecting the gift giving, because our previous school and social circle culture is so different. the gifts were custom, and really impressive, and we're going to need to do something about that this week.

oh! and his eye seems to be clear, so i don't think the pool - certainly not this one - is directly contributing to his outbreaks.

...

we got a ride home, and showered, and immediately jumped in to some of the math homework mr smear hadn't done during the week. it wasn't all smooth, but it never got dramatic, and even for me it wasn't trivial (it's working with square roots and ranges of answers, neither of which he's used to). by the time we were done, we'd both had good exercise and i was quite proud of him.

we made an particularly potent challah-peño, my face caught a bit of it (fortunately not my eyes!) and my fingers burned for hours in spite of washing them thoroughly and even doing a whole sink of dishes.

but it came out delicious.

dinner on call with my mom was nice. afterwards, we did have a repeat of the usual fight about mr smear going out with me on saturdays, but at least it ended softly. then i left for the halloween party.

...

nystire and nyah nyah and partners, as well as the linguist we served with, were there, the place was packed with interesting-looking people and the decorations were really something. it was a really fun evening, there was lots of alcohol, and the conversations migrated from work to parenting to language as the night wore on.

by the time i left i was practically falling over from exhaustion - at least i'd made an effort to drink a fair amount of non-alcoholic liquids along the way - and i hailed a taxi home and climbed into bed. i got a particularly warm and fuzzy feeling from ending a night of good company and entertainment with a heart-to-heart with a taxi driver about the state of the nation that left him profusely thanking me for the conversation (which i'd very much enjoyed too).

it didn't take long for me to climb into bed (having thankfully received authorization from my wife that i didn't need to shower again first) and i mostly slept well, and late. it's been a slow and pleasant morning, we've talked and i've read (i'm halfway through blindsight) and now i've posted this, and gd and i are on our way to the shop quickly to pick up flour in honor of friends coming over for lunch.

cold sweats

 i think i slept relatively well last night. i got up early, read the last of the five asterix books we have (asterix and the banquet, i was amazed by how many of the names i remembered), and had a few naps throughout the day.

we played rayman for a while, mostly it went great but we had some pretty bad feelings at one point due to a misunderstanding... it's hard to explain to a kid how some yelling is okay :/

we played uno for while, that was fun.

we watched some more deathnote. the past few episodes really haven't enjoyed the same level of writing and i'm beginning to find myself over it. i hope it resolves well, but where we are it's a confusing mess.

i took mr smear (bike and rollerblades) to his friend's temporary home, it was extremely hot but it went well. the last uphill before i got home wrecked me, however, and i entered our apartment feeling faint (my neck had been giving me trouble for most of the ride home).

after i cooled down, i cabbed to meet tahoma in his new apartment. it's an awesome apartment in an incredible location! he convinced me to consider looking for a new apartment now and finding a sublet for our current one, i spoke to gd and hopefully we'll be able to make this happen.

we had a pizza at the green cat, and then walked to cassata - a remarkably tel avivi place - for ice cream, before eventually walking to the eliphelet station where it took me three tries to get on the right train because the signage is so bad.

...

having not realized how late i'd been out, i was caught mid-dinner by mr smear informing me that he was ready to go home. for the first time, i arranged for a taxi to pick him up, and he got home fine, but he called me from inside the taxi to say "dad - do you remember how you told me about stranger danger? i'm feeling that right now" 😰

we're definitely going to have to have a talk in the morning 🤣

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 :/

post-halloween halloween

 we're leaving soon for tahoma's, he and his husband are throwing a halloween party and their friends with kids are invited earlier while they're still setting up. mr smear's skeletal make-up is looking good in spite of gd's past fifteen minutes of cursing to the contrary, and i haven't figured out what i'm going as yet...

i just spent the late afternoon - after napping and playing through some of inscryption's act 3 again - bringing down the mountain of dishes that had accumulated, and for the last while i've been on the verge of an anxiety attack because i can't stop thinking about the propagandists who've infiltrated the community and the damage the more "progressive" rabbis have done over the course of many years.

slow

it's getting late, and i have to be up at 4am to go fetch my mother from the airport - we're so excited that she's visiting!

yesterday:

after a chat with horseman, i went up to our elderly neighbor's place because i suddenly remembered in the middle of the night that i promised to visit her days ago and clean forgot. turns out she needed help with her wifi and an ipad her family bought her, as the neighbors who recently left had been letting her use their network.

she can't connect to ours through all the concrete, so she asked me if i could help her get internet installed. we then discovered that already did have internet installed, and we could upgrade her connection for less money than she was already paying. eventually, we managed to get her password sorted out, and her devices connected, and she was really happy.

she then informed me that she was particularly grateful because her husband and son both passed away many years ago, and the rest of her family is too far away to help with this sort of thing... so that was heartbreaking. it was interesting to learn that her daughter's a published poet.

afterwards, she gave me a super-sharp knife for gd and i came back home, gd responded by going to visit her and i took mr smear out to run errands. i asked the mongoose for advice and he invited me to join him and his daughter at dizengoff, so mr smear and i made our way there. stopping for an emergency breakfast sandwich along the way.

our mission at the center was really fun. we all had a good time, between the robotics and the games and the comics and the figures and the toys, although we didn't end up buying anything. and mr smear got a taste of a proper synthesizer at the music store :)

we ended up having lunch with them as well, even though that wasn't the plan, and after they rushed off for toddler nap-time we made our way home for a quiet, lazy afternoon and evening.

i started playing disco elysium. i'm enjoying it, it's brilliant, but after quite a few hours i still don't really understand what the game actually is. i mean, i want to solve the mystery, of course, but i get the feeling that that's merely a superficial element...

today:

aside from a midday excursion to discover a nearby park that tahoma suggested and pick up ingredients so that gd could make tabouleh for my mother, and an evening excursion to the climbing wall, today was very much spent indoors resting and playing video games.

the climbing wall experience was excellent, and mr smear got to the top of the really high wall he's been working on for the last couple of sessions.

it's now 11pm and i've got to be up at 4am to fetch my mom from the airport, so i think i'm going to go to bed pretty soon.

probably.

metal meital and the shitty flute horror

yesterday:

it was father's day! and i got a really nice card from my family, and my wife made a delicious curry for dinner ^_^

the work day started off well enough, but the release went south and there was a lot of bashing heads against walls. additionally, i was exhausted - i thought my three-month-old sinus thing had slowed down on saturday, but it was back pretty hard (but only during some parts of the day?) - and at some point i was falling asleep at my desk and my coworkers expressed concern...

...

oh, and yesterday was the very worst kind of cheat day. i ate a big lunch, half of gd's leftover challah, more snacks than i should have, two bowls of curry and rice, a really nice salad, a beer, and then ended up snacking around midnight with chocolate/halva and dried fruit.

today was much better, but nowhere near making up for all that :P

...

after an early dinner, i bussed over to tahoma's for a really nice salad (they've been heavily influenced by their time in japan, both in culinary arts and in that tahoma's learning to read japanese books) before the two of us headed out to the tmuna theatre. it was my first time there in almost 13 years, and absolutely nothing has changed. we went to see meitav sherman, who has an amazing voice and - so far - generally good music, but as impressive as she may have been* it was the band playing with her that really blew me away. and between all of them, it was really cool seeing a new generation of talented musicians on stage with a sizeable crowd.

* she's very young and obviously new at this kind of performance, but it was a fun show and she said some unsayable things that were quite entertaining

today:

the shitty flute recital really wasn't as bad as we anticipated (us parents, gd had to be at the dentist), but mr smear stole the show, and not in a good way. he was supposed to be pretending to play along with everyone else, but he was so bored he spent most of it just sitting (quite noticable when everyone else is standing) and doing something really gross that i don't even want to write about. this from a kid who won't eat his lunch if he sees another kid do anything unseemly, like eat with their mouth open or not blow their nose enough.

it was painfully embarrassing to watch live, but even worse when one of the parents posted a video in the parents group where it's practically impossible to look at anyone else :$

...

work-wise, it was a long, really hard day and it was full of distractions. we eventually figured out what we'd been doing wrong for half a day, and finalized yesterday's release, but there wasn't really much sense of satisfaction. when i finally got to the work i'm supposed to be focused on, i was - just like yesterday, *strangely* - so unreasonably tired that i had to take a nap.

to be fair, i haven't slept much in a couple of days and i've been eating badly and drinking either too much coffee or not enough.

...

on the way into the school in the morning, i got into it with the security guard and the caretaker who both insisted that we've always needed a teacher's note to take mr smear out early. i was halfway home from the recital when i realized that i'd sent a message to his teacher requesting a note, but that his teacher was on vacation. so i walked back and found the woman who was looking after them, and one of the class assistants. they assured me that mr smear would have his note by the time i arrived to pick him up.

by the time i arrived to pick him up, mr smear did not, in fact, have a note. and the security guards and i had words. very intense words. i was furious with him, because he's a complete moron. he doesn't like me much, either.

so i whispered to mr smear to go to the other gate, walked all the way around, trying the whole way to get hold of the secretariat (they don't answer their phones or emails), and took him out from there via the human being security guard with whom we've never had an issue.

...

mr smear and i talked about what had happened in the morning, and i showed him the video. i hope that his contrition and embarrassment sticks, and that he really doesn't do something like that again. after dropping him off at his hebrew tutor, i went to have coffee but the usual place was full, so i went to the other usual place and found a seat. i was supposed to be working, but i needed to have a discussion with my mother about her aliyah process. hopefully she'll get useful answers to the questions we're now asking.

the way home was *hot*. like, oppressively, painfully hot. and we were almost home when i saw a message from his tutor informing us that he'd left a notebook behind. so back we went, and then back we came again. it was *hard* out there today.

...

at least by the evening the weather had calmed down a bit, but i couldn't take mr smear to the climbing wall because we needed to get him new shoes. we walked to the usual shoe store, and they had nothing for us, so we walked to azrieli. long story short, we got him a new pair of shoes that we're only somewhat confident are actually good for him, we replaced the screen protector on the old huawei he's using, i bought a decent pair of headphones (jabra elite 4), we picked up a stack of printer paper (for drawing, it's the best value for money), and we got mr smear a good falafel for dinner.

aside from getting through lots of daily quests in adventure time: bloons, and posting this, i have dishes to do before i go to bed. and i'm not sure i have the energy to do them.

...

very exciting news from this morning: i spoke to gco, and pitched an idea i had yesterday. he was excited that i *get* what he and his partner have been trying to achieve, and i hope that this morning's chat sets the ball in motion for something big.

unusually me

yesterday:

a very positive start to the day, getting mr smear to his fight camp on time.

mostly meetings, with me forcing a retrospective that felt appreciated by most of the team. a good start to sorting out potential on-call rotation issues. very little time for my own work.

leaving the office early and coming home for an early meal with my family before heading south.

efrat gosh in levontin 7 with tahoma - an interesting catch-up, a very intimate performance that really blew me away, as i was simultaneously quite emotional about being in a show in levontin 7 for the first time in about twelve years.

getting home late, showering and snacking even later.

today:

3am mistakenly looking at facebook and seeing a post recommending that a tel aviv family consider relocating to cape town, finally going back to bed an hour and a half later

rough and rushed wakeup, but mr smear being pretty cool

a really good chat with his instructor when dropping him off

a surprising conversation with gd about spirituality.

meeting up with my cousin's kid for coffee to discuss career options, a sudden and dramatic plot twist into a romantic adventure story

arriving late for work, being dropped into an unfamiliar production issue for a customer. an emotional rollercoaster of an afternoon, with gd getting on the wrong bus and picking up mr smear late, and mr smear continuing his struggle to get out of the fight camp, and me getting lost trying to figure out all the pieces of the work puzzle, and then getting news that my nephew just received his british ancestral visa and is finally able to join his mother and sister in london, and then hours trying to decipher truly pathetic documentation (google's envoy) and figuring things out with trial and error (with the AI assistance being the opposite of helpful), finally being inspired to ask a different question and hitting the jackpot, then a loooooot of debugging implementing the solution and eventually leaving the office late, but in time to eat with my family, and feeling exquisitely exhultant.

the evening was great until bedtime, i tried to have a conversation with mr smear and it went south (for no obvious reason), and then gd and i watched the third episode of the new fallout series. it's full of fan service, even if i feel like the pacing's a bit slow it's really inspired me to get back into it.

the meeting

 my work day was weird, i spent all day fiddling with something confusing and broken. in the middle of it, though, gd and i went to the school to meet with mr smear's teacher and the principal.

while waiting for the principle, we were talking to a teacher while petting the dog she had on a leash. suddenly, a little boy hears our son's name and enthusiastically says "you know mr smear? kids tell me where he is and i love hitting him in the face!"

just as he finished his sentence, his carer suddenly appeared from the classroom he was supposed to be in and hustled him away.

i was stunned. i was furious. i wanted to threaten him, and beat him. and his carer. i don't care if he's autistic - he is - he's been picking on, hurting, and traumatizing my boy.

the good news is that we've been informed that the school has recognized their inability to handle him, and he's out. the bad news is that it's not before he's done immense damage to a kid who was already struggling with anxiety and feeling unsafe.

it's really not fair.

it's also the first time that any of mr smear's stories have been completely, thoroughly proven true. this little fucker just confirmed everything. there was no exaggeration.

...

i was a bit nervous about the meeting itself, having no idea in which direction it would be going. i think we got everything out on the table, and by the time we were done each side of the table had homework to do. while i'm still bitter about the autistic bully business, i am happy with the principal and teacher's efforts to help our son integrate in a healthy way.

...

mr smear's second mma class went really well! i was so surprised by gd's reports that i wasn't sure if she was trolling me, or if our son had been replaced by a doppelgänger :P

...

in the evening, tahoma arrived for a quick visit that ended up being quick a few hours. the circumstances are sad (his mother passed away last week, so he and his husband returned to israel for two weeks from their year-long travel adventure), but we had really interesting discussions and debates and we were really glad he managed to make time for us.

...

tomorrow wasn't going to be complicated, but it's our cousin's 99th birthday and a whole lot of us are going to celebrate him. even if he's lost his faculties, we're at least going to be with the family. i've been feeling uncomfortable that i haven't seen him since we arrived (my mom and gd and mr smear saw him last year), but it's a weird sort of discomfort because at this point he and his wife don't always recognize their own kids...

the battle pt 1

 the most important thing today happened in a single, blood-curdling moment, mr smear enthusiastically began the warmup for his first mma class and then walked off, and we were all out of levers to pull. there was drama, there were negotiations (about there not being negotiations), there were tears. there were pep talks.

and then, after gd had left the building distraught, there was a single moment of me and him, with me putting one word after another and praying for a miracle.

and there was a miracle.

a tiny spark, for what feels like the first time in his life, and he spoke to the teacher (who said all the right things), and he went back out onto the mats and he did what he needed to do. he learned stuff, he had a great time, we sat on the sides giggling, being amazed, and trying (and failing) to get a photo or two.

he's still not convinced about tomorrow's jiujitsu class, but i'm now standing my ground on the mother of all threats (no training, no screen time AND no getting out of the afterschool programme). i feel bad about having to do that, but i know and he knows and he knows that i know that he would much rather be training than in afterschool. and i know what i saw when he got off the mats.

joy. and pride.

we're doing this.

...

this morning was weird. i managed to make another first-aid dental appointment for tomorrow morning, and had an interesting chat with a head-hunter. i dropped mr smear off at school and put the caption guide together for the final edition of the latest page of the graphic novel.

then gd and i headed out to get to tahoma's mother's funeral, and the morning fell apart. we got on the wrong train and ended up in herzeliya, and on the way gd began to feel faint and ill. after further train schedule stress we ended up just giving up and going back home.

i had a weird workday, trying to do basic things with the circleci platform what they don't want to be done (and that many users before me have requested), and worked straight through until it was time to take mr smear to the mma class.

the class was 45 minutes, but we were out for about three hours.

i worked a bit between shower and dinner times, and then after bedtime dived in to try and figure out a solution. i eventually got it right, "good enough" even if it wasn't what i was looking for, and then i stretched a bit and watched matt rife's walking red flag special which was definitely not as much fun as his usual stuff. i think it might have been the crowd.

...

i didn't try to eat anything on the left side of my mouth today, and it's definitely not hurting as much, but i still think i might have an infection. i guess i'll find out in the morning.

closing the week

i'm feeling surprisingly accomplished today!

wednesday:

my throat was stilled threatening me, and my brain was a bit fluffy.

i woke up still feeling horrible about the night before, and mr smear did too. i tried to apologize but he was having none of it, which really stung, but a little later he said something and i realized what exactly he'd been so upset about, and it turned out to be a simple misunderstanding. it took two seconds to clarify and rectify the situation and everything was fine again.

i'm still feeling hugely relieved.

after dropping him off at school, i wrote up an article about scribble diffusion. this is a real game-changer for AI-generated art!!

i worked from home again, and it was a long and difficult day. i barely remember it, to be honest. it's all a bit of a blur.

tuesday and wednesday were particularly bad days for internet connectivity, and i was frequently disconnected from meetings and ultimately had to rely on my phone for a mobile hotspot.

yesterday:

there was a strike on yesterday, and i worked from home while gd and mr smear went through his online assignments together. it was a looooooong morning for them, but they got it all done in the end and i'm very proud of both of them - they did need the occasional help, but for the most part they figured it all out.

the internet technician came to sort out the problems we've been experiencing for the last week or two, and he showed me a picture of the cables - they're literally hanging in mid-air, so of course we have disconnections if there's any wind. he's managed to re-stabilize it, but i've just signed a contract with a different ISP and we'll be switching over to fibre soon.

i had a weird day, however. i really struggled with the work i was doing and i was feeling a bit out of it, not only was it hard to concentrate but at some point i realized that i had no idea what i'd been doing for the couple of hours prior to that moment... but by the end of the day i'd gotten the first task (of a big, important series) complete and had learned a ton, and i finished the work day on such a high note that i actually had to make an effort to "put my pen down" and leave the final tweaks until sunday!

the babysitter arrived on time, and mr smear immediately began acting super-weird. apparently he was totally cool from the moment we left, but it was enough to be embarrassing...

gd and i thoroughly enjoyed our evening with tahoma and his husband, nystire and his wife, and nyah nyah and her husband, it was raucous and silly and fun and it's been far too long since we got to just be people around others and not parents for a while.

today:

i managed to get up early today, feeling slightly hungover in spite of the fact that i didn't drink very much last night. gd, on the other hand, felt very hungover. she went back to bed as soon as mr smear's bag was packed.

mr smear said something eye-opening to me on our way to school this morning; i'm paraphrasing, but it was basically: "dad, am i'm an ideological zombie because i want everybody to be kind to animals?"
i'm literally amazed that my suspicions seem to have been correct.

i started my day with a bumpy bus ride to the kenyon ayalon mall to pick up what i thought was an electronic pen to use with scribble diffusion. it wasn't, it was basically a very advanced etch-a-sketch, so i went into the mall, picked up a coffee and hung around until the computer store opened.

they didn't have what i wanted either. but on the way out i noticed a stationary store that did have what i was looking for! the G430S is a little more pricey than i was planning on, but we've now gotten a good hour or two's use out of it (on both a macbook and a windows machine) and i'm well pleased that i bought it ^_^

i returned home in time for a quick breakfast, then rushed off to pick mr smear up from school - i left late, walked really fast and arrived just in time, by the time we returned home i was feeling pretty exercised. we immediately left home again to do the grocery shopping, and by the time we got home from that expedition i was properly exercised (12000+ steps) and in dire need of a nap.

so i napped a couple of hours, an absolutely glorious nap, then got up to spend the rest of the afternoon on chores and reading. mr smear's grounding ended at sunset, at which point we unboxed the pen and got to work :)

he's now playing some spider-man before dinner, and i just listened in on the temple service; i'm just feeling a lot of gratitude for everything we have and for being in a good place mentally.

birthday weekend 2013 - part i

friday night:

i headed off to vfmp's and from there we went together to meet his boyfriend at the theatre. before the lights went down i had an sms conversation with a girl i'm going on a date with soon, and was quite proud of myself for managing to transmit my sense of humour. apparently getting hit in the head wasn't all bad :P
in addition to the aggravation of having forgotten my antibiotics at home, my phone reminder went off loudly even though it was set to vibrate and that was horrifically embarrassing! paranoid, i held my phone's silence button at the ready for the next while and it felt like i was receiving tons of messages or phone calls... eventually i turned it off. after the movie, i turned it back on and there were no missed calls or messages. :S

out in the dark - it's an absolutely brilliant film, and does a fantastic job of portraying, in my opinion, a good deal of what makes israel tick.

like a time-bomb.

it's got an excellent story and covers the angles with deeply disturbing accuracy. every time security services opened their mouths i got chills! overall, i loved some of it, hated most of it and appreciated all of it. not the happiest birthday movie - not cathartic at all - but i'm very glad i saw it.

and then i had to rush home to take my pills.

---
saturday:

i wasn't ready to get up when i did, and the idea of snowboarding was too much. most of my morning (and it's barely stopped even now, three days later) was spent responding to birthday messages - which was awesome! i don't let people post on my facebook wall because i feel it's inappropriate and impersonal, and i've been rewarded by soooo many long catch-up conversations with people i care about and have been out of touch with ^_^

...

i read through wired's "guiltless gift guide":
i think they can drop the "guiltless" pretense, most of the items are just more stuff. it's cool stuff, to be fair, but very little of it is superior in any way to any other equivalents when it comes to being mindful of the planet. i'd have been very glad to see a real "guiltless" guide, but seeing a regular guide labelled "guiltless" is nothing short of offensive.
i'm also still very disappointed by their lack of a digital-only subscription and their physical promotional spam.

...

getting my opus card fixed / replaced at berri-uqam took about two seconds, i was a bit shocked when the woman turned back to me with a smile on her face and wished me well. "is that it?!"

as i purchased by bus tickets to saint sauveur i realized that if i wasn't going snowboarding right after brunch then i could have picked them up any time...

godmother picked me up from the station and we went to an awesome place in old montreal called olive and gourmandeau. it's super hipster funky with great food (two vegan options) and excellent atmosphere. after breakfast she took me to a skate shop to buy a bag for my snowboard - sweet! i quickly settled on a backpack with appropriate straps, so i can have the board on my back and only need a single bag for travelling ^_^

after another round of birthday messaging i stopped at subway for lunch on my way to the starbucks to work on my comics... the nutritionally well-endowed gentleman who works there always appears to be stoned, but this is the first time i've registered him making himself a sandwich as soon as he finished with mine. what a perfect job for a stoner!

on my way out i called fcmg to ask if she'd like to meet during the week, and she was all "sure! i can meet you in ten minutes!"
no, shit! so i flipped my plans, did some rushed shopping (subway's next to the supermarket), dropped everything off at home and then went downtown to meet her at cafe depot - i'm a regular there already :P

coffee and comics were great fun, with a lot of inspirational moments. additionally, she loves my space epic pitch (next project!) and was happy to discover that she knows someone who actually applied for mars one :)

one of the problems she had, and she was embarrassed to tell me this, was that she couldn't read one of the source texts because it's written in middle english. i'd told her that it's not easy, that you have to "relax" your linguistic rules, but while i can do that easily i failed to take into account that i studied literature for two years in addition to my being a poet...

as i'd read in wired that morning: "any communication - is a problem of empathy. you have to imagine yourself in the mind of someone who doesn't know something that you do." that's hard, man. last night i spent a few hours on modernizing the text, and while fcmg responded enthusiastically to the results i'll refrain from publishing it until i've reworked it to a satisfyingly poetic translation. not that it doesn't sound good, but i'd like to maintain the metre and rhyme as much as possible...

after our meeting i returned home to lose more time to once upon a time... omg that series is awesome. the writing is incredible! over the last couple of days i've found myself consistently blown away by the series, and towards the end of the first season (i have two episodes to go) it's become one of my top-rated series of all time. i've actually shouted at an ending for being an evilly clever cliffhanger...

i was eating dinner while watching, and as has become normal over the course of the past week i was eating insanely slowly... we used to laugh at tahoma for eating slowly, but now it's me taking an hour to eat a bowl of salad :(

i was hoping to meet with sagirl who'd just arrived in montreal, but she couldn't get a fix on her plans so i went to vfmp's to play thunderstone instead. we had a great time :)

---sunday:

we enjoyed an epic finish *just* in time for me to catch the bus and metro, and i headed home. there's something magnificently creepy about a parked metro train with the lights off in the middle of the night.

i got home ready for the deepest sleep, but instead woke up soaked in sweat. i dumped the sheet, showered, and spent the next few hours trying out different methods of not overheating. eventually i settled on moving to a cold spot every ten minutes... this has happened every night since, and it's very frustrating.

...

in the morning i had a chat with lipgirl, who wanted to know why i didn't even want to visit israel anymore. i gave a few reasons, but what i didn't say to her - i wrote it out and then deleted it - i'll share here:
it's so hard to deal with the barbarianism and that begins precisely at the point at which you join the line for passport control at ben gurion airport.
...
the psychologist i spoke to prior to my release from the air force warned me to make sure that the terrible things i experienced don't become a great stone around my neck, but no matter how much i made good on my life afterwards each and every negative thing accumulated... it's the country, the government, the lack of national cohesion, not the individual that has brought me to this dark point where i cannot bear the thought of returning.

[continued...]

where did sonnets go?

i just realized why i like shakespeare's sonnets so much: what he did then is the same as what trent reznor and maynard james keenan do now. brutally honest musical insight into the gritty side of personal human experience.

---i just got home from a pleasant evening with tahoma (i talk too much), after a few hours at work (finally put my last project into production) for which i had a really hard time waking up (which means there's a ton of stuff i didn't get done).

i'm ready for a pre-roll nap.

...


ZOMG shadowrun online is gonna happen!!!

the race to nowhere

i woke up at 4.30am just to check that my alarm clock was set for the correct 5.30am.
*yawns just thinking about this*
waking up at 5.30am turned out to be a mistake, too - it was too late and the pressure to get ready and equip myself was intense. of course, under pressure and half-asleep is a recipe for disaster: everything went pear-shaped :(

i slurped half a cup of coffee and raced to the starting point, and by the time i arrived i was already exhausted. half-marathon? 6.30am? on 4.5 hours' sleep?

it had never occured to me to wear a helmet, which is mandatory at this sort of event. a bunch of us turned out who'd forgotten / didn't care, and that's been cited as a major cause in what appears to be the city council's decision to cancel inline skating next year :(

those of us sans helmet began in the middle of the pack, crouching to get by the guards. unfortunately, rollerblading awkwardly bent over put me on bad form even when i straightened up and it took me more than half the marathon to realize that i was being completely inefficient: by that time, it was far too late.
it didn't help none that i hadn't thought to pack an energy bar, and my blood pressure dropped during the first stretch. at least it wasn't drastic enough to pass me out of the race, but it made for an exceptionally uncomfortable 21km, in addition to the bad form and the bitter wind being against us for a lot of it.

i was in such bad shape that at some point i hallicinated that one of the guys holding out water was offering yoghurt, and i thought "wow! what a great idea!" before expending excess energy in circling back to be tremendously disappointed. it was only a half a minute later that i realized what utter nonsense i'd imagined.

[i just received my results: my place was pretty close to the middle, with an average of 20kph. i could have done better.]

i had breakfast with pg's parents (her mom came in second place!), and we returned to our neighbourhood together. i was going to shower and go straight back to bed, but tahoma called while i was stretching and i decided that a cup of coffee wasn't impossible.

we had a fun debate in the sun, which i chased with a meander through bicycle-only tel aviv (they just did it for the day, but it was peaceful and comforting) on my way home for a nap. the nap didn't work out, and pg arrived home from her adventure down south so we went out for a great lunch and returned for a proper sleep.

we crashed until dinner time, joining her family for a big dinner. i decided that a movie was in order, and dragged pg along on a mission of spontaneity: we had no idea what was playing. pg got to choose, and she went with mirror, mirror.

what a great film! there were a couple of things i didn't appreciate - but i won't spoil them - and the beginning was a bit awkward, but overall it's entertaining, witty, and aesthetically very pleasing.

we ran into a bunch of mongoose's friends on the walk home, which was a bit awkward. the more i think about it, the more offended i am by him.

...

the long day of nothing (the marathon seems a separate date) was followed by a good night's sleep. i've done a couple of chores, greatly reduced the size of my todo list and i'm now ready for a pre-wall climbing lunch and a bit of work before i go.

in passing

tahoma woke me up just as my alarm was going to go off, and i met with him for pleasant breakfast at etnachta. he scurried off to work, and i to french class. i feel like i learned something today.

after quick lunch with pg, i made my way to work. i handed over my keys, i updated the documentation, i erased my users, i said goodbye. done.

i stopped by campus on my way to work to sit with kc's sister for a while over coffee, mostly discussing studies, then headed off to work (there's only one again). from there i returned home, meeting pg for falafel and then strapping on blades. relatively short route, quite nice, very social.

now bombed. an super-early morning looms.

results, a confession pt 1

[post re-divided retroactively]

a big week has gone by. mostly, it's not over yet. i'm not even certain i'm ready to post this right now, although it really must be done. i'm using the fact that the youtube upload is taking *forever* and audacity's so bad with silence detection and maintaining the sound's quality when left alone that i'm now ripping tracks from my minidiscs one by one...

---
monday:

the bus changes have been chaotic, but mostly alright. the one glaring exception is egged - they're totally new to the electronic card system and when their machines don't work, their drivers don't know how to respond. or they respond a little bit too pedantically: the card reader read me as empty, even though i have a full year pass. after rubbing the card's magnetic strip on his trouser leg, which bothered me, he began investigating. "show me your receipt," he said. i was surprised, i've never thought to travel with it and don't really want to. i have an electronic card, you see. that's what it's for. "take a look at my photo, on the back. look at what the card says."
he read it out loud, which was unnecessary.
"so you see, i -"
"where's your receipt? who travels without a receipt?! you need to bring your receipt."

i'll tell you who: nobody i know. tahoma laughed at me when i called him to find out what that was all about, but the damage had been done and i was uncomfortable getting on egged buses the entire week.

---i'd been on my way to the old office. as it turned out, it was to discover a better way of handling time-zone differences - every time i have to deal with something, i realize how little thought my predecessors put into their work... i spend far more time overwriting rubbish than i do solving real issues. it's good for my ego, at least.

i found pg in a great mood, and i was exhausted and stressed but pretty much satisfied with the day, so we went hunting food. up and down ben gurion we went, unable to find anything suitable, eventually giving up and taking a bus to the frozen yoghurt place - but she spotted an interesting looking place across the road, and we ended up there instead. it was pretty good, but we both ate *way* too much. and the beer and the coffee on top of that crossed the line.

the apartment looked... different. pg had taken it upon herself to paint the table i'd wheeled over green, and it took up a lot of space. i set down my bag, then took a walk to see my family.

on the way, an odd thought struck: words have power, and they shape the way we think. perhaps it would be wiser to speak in the imperative, and decisively?
"you will care, things will change"
as opposed to
"you should care, things have to change"?
yang came back home with me to meet pg and join us in watching the darwin awards - a surprisingly entertaining movie. i thought some of winona's acting came off a bit contrived, which is unfortunate because i really like her.

...

on going to bed: i scored a 93 for the shakespeare course! *phew*. and YAY!

---
tuesday:

waking up early to drive up north: but not too early; half an hour later than intended, in fact. my alarm clock decided that i'd meant to set it for the next day :S

we had coffee and a pleasant drive north, going through afula by mistake but fortunately coming out on the right side and then arriving on the kibbutz for breakfast. it was a very sweet reunion - i think our kibbutz cousin was a bit overwhelmed. it was a very pleasant morning, and then we were off...

the ride back was a bit stressful. not necessarily good stress, although i must say that my aunt can certainly dish it out and she posed some very interesting challenges. we were primarily arguing about the value of fiction and fantasy, and exposure versus choice. that last all the way back, and made the driving time feel like a few minutes :P

i was exhausted, so i decided to take a nap. i set my alarm, and again it didn't go off - that was when i discovered that my iphone was selecting my "schooldays" alarm by default even though i haven't used it since the semester ended. and that alarm never works on tuesdays.

wonderful.

so i was late, and irritated about being late. i'd wanted to take them to see the university, but there wasn't enough time left so i went with them to the palmach museum next, saying goodbye and then discovering that they couldn't get in because they didn't have their passports on them - i flashed my reserve duty card and the gate opened. very nice. a very weird sensation.

[continued...]