inbreeding

i was soooo right last night. work was good, and then spot and i headed off to the lizard. not many people came, maybe 4 / 5, but it was fun nonetheless.

well, it was fun until that last sambuca. i dun got me drunk. i don't like being drunk.

crasher gave us a ride home, and when i woke up i was still a tad sloshed. i had to have a gorram cold shower, because our geyser wasn't set properly. and a cold shave, too, on a sunday when i usually have a bit of a beard.

on my way out, brother bear called to remind me that i was supposed to supply the main part of the section breakfast... "oh crap" was all i could think of. i rushed past the supermarket, bought massive mangos^*1, apples, two bags of muesli (took a while to find that), honey, and a ton of yoghurt, agitatedly waited in the only queue (only one cashier??), and then hopped a bus.

on the bus was a 27 year old who's just joined the academic corps, so i gave him some pointers and generally felt sorry for him every time i looked at him. hope it all works out better for him than it did for me :$

the bus ride this morning was horrid. when we got to the train station, way too many people pushed, shoved and tore their way into an already full bus, and aside from carrying crushables i had my huge bag on my back, and i was shoved into an unfortunately not-lonely corner which i defended with elbows and knees the whole ride to base.

i don't want to be frotted.

back on base, mush-brained, and i'm extremely glad that daddy-o was at the lizard last night, so he was late too :P

it took a while to get things going, but around 10am we had a feast: the muesli went down superbly well!
*gleeful toothy smiling*
*much dry-washing of hands*
[it's not often that totalwaste gets something like this right, people. be impressed!]

soon after breakfast the hangover settled in, and that lasted a while. we cleaned our offices (which for me meant a lot of time popping balloons; my ears still hurt a bit from before i perfected my technique).

the afternoon was a relatively quiet on the work front. i spent an inordinate amount of time playing around with a productivity tool that we've always hated until now (now that i know what's going on it's simply brilliant. not perfect, but brilliant), quite a lot of time lecturing piles, a fair amount of time finalizing (19 days to go!), and a bit of time just hanging around.

i discovered that songbird broke up with her boyfriend last week; now while she's not exactly my type physically, and she doesn't meet my age / area requirements, i still find her absolutely adorable and i've had the thought of dating her sliding around my mind for most of the day. i can't quite catch the thought on either side, but it's definitely there.

it's okay to date a soon-to-be ex-coworker, right?

the driver of the bus to work was a total asshole. i hate drivers who don't understand the words "smooth" or "elderly passengers". the idiot was accelerating like crazy only to brake like crazy, and that's something i just don't get. i must be unenlightened.

work's been great tonight. another job almost complete (there seems to be a trend here). our boss caught us on our way out, so we've been here an extra half an hour - i'm calling it a lesson learned (as in, not sitting outside waiting for the damn bus).

g'nite!

^*1no, really. MASSIVE. like, everyone thought i was trying to put one over them with fake fruit. these were only slightly (like maybe a centimeter or two) shorter in length than a rugby ball^*2.

^*2but really, really tasty.

animator vs animation iimore flash than you can stick a shake at

bill gates for president? got my vote.

haim harari - a view from the eye of the storm: sad but true - long, but highly recommended.

friday on base

i walked to the balcony, met up with the mongoose and his girlfriend, and we had a fun evening. aside from discovering that *both* the bartenders have boyfriends, and being seriously undecided about the appearance of a girl who appeared to be making eyes at me (it was dark. i'm not taking any chances). they gave me a ride back to ramat gan, the most irrelevant place in the country, around 3am, and i went straight to sleep.

i woke up in time to go have lunch on base. that's kinda sad. songbird's guarding, so i spent lots of the day keeping her company. erm - abusing her company, i really need help with the book i'm reading :$
oh, and playing some gta2.

i did laundry, and then put the laundry in the tumbledryer. lordy lord, i feels RICH o_O

i had dinner on base as well, and around midnight took a taxi most of the way to the zamir. i only discovered this morning that the israeli equivalent of minibus taxis operate around the clock on the weekend... bummer. but whatever, i arrived on time for a friggin' AWESOME, AWESOME party.

i was completely broken by 5am, having had too much to drink and having jumped up and down the entire night... i think the bartender likes me. i asked him for a coke, and i got a complementary shooter :B (i can't control the urge to double-tongue!)

wr and i joined ta2 and one of the door managers went for breakfast. when i got my coffee, and then wr got his chocachino with cream - the waitress took note of my expression (didn't say a word! or, at least not to her...), and came back a minute later with a bowl of cream for me.

1...

2...

3...

aaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

i've mentioned ta2 driving around with cat food. we're getting in the car, when he spots a stray cat. out comes the cat food, five little piles, and then suddenly 6 cats appear out from a hole in the wall. extremely cute :)

wr and i got dropped off at azrieli, then walked a bit before taking the minibus taxi. i got home around 8am, had a shower, and slept until 7pm. i woke up to 3 / 4 episodes of friends, and am shocked at how long it's been since i vegged in front of the telly. and how quickly i found my groove ;)

my host made some meaty / noodly goodness, which made a good breakfast, and now that i've done the dishes - until i couldn't take the kitty litter smell anymore, at least - i'm off to the lizard.

slight modification to my post

until just before arriving to work, my post was going to look like this:
hard partying. good sleeping.

but now that that's no longer the case, i figure i may as well put down some more details.

last night, i left work at 9pm, and took a slow walk around the block. i stopped at aroma for a roast-beef sammich... i have got to stop spending so much cash on food :S

i went past the lizard, and sat chatting with the mongoose and wr for a while, before eventually taking a loooooong walk to the zamir (i took a stupid turn - the roads are so bloody screwy in tel aviv).

the party was celebrating fourteen years of the alternative line, and it was brilliant. great music almost the entire night (one of the dj's got a little carried away with brit-pop at one stage), and it was all very sweaty and loud, and there were some fine, extremely talented young ladies.

ta2 gave me and wr a ride home (the mongoose didn't come... he went somewhere else with his girlfriend. the fool.) as is becoming the norm, and i slept about twelve hours. i woke up, and made my way to work.

i stopped in at the kiosk to organize myself some coffee. i managed to spill the entire cup all over the counter. they were pissed. "what, are you drunk?!"

"no. i just haven't had my first cup of coffee yet."

i just had a cigarette with the foxy girl here... we had one of those moments of silence. not awkward... not awkward because i understand that it's YOU who makes it awkward, not the silence itself. but when two people really can't think of anything to say, it's a bit of a bummer.

moonflake's midweek cuckoo is hysterical. follow the link to the posts regarding his application, and see my comment at the end for my thoughts on the matter.

someone with an invalid blogger login (???) posted a comment, and the post he commented on (midway through 2005) makes me smile to think that somebody other than myself is enjoying going through my journal :D

in response to his question - i don't know. something to do with high levels of adrenaline not being good for getting good quality sleep. better safe than sorry, either way.

now to transfer all my legal (yay!) mp3's to my player, and to get my ass over to the lizard for a drink, before the week begins. maybe i'll finally sign and deliver my contract when i get home.

nohup

last night i went to the lizard after work, and spent some time with the mongoose and his SO. it was a lot of fun, but i had to leave early. i took a taxi home, and slept *just* enough to make it on time for inspection.

which, again, they'd cancelled without warning. great stuff :S

so we made do with an unhealthy mess hall breakfast ('cause we were on time), and then began the day. the day was packed with work and missioning, i don't really remember half the things that happened. progressing, i guess.

-- note to self: discussion in the morning ("if only you knew me"), sorting out courses in the afternoon --

my branch commander doesn't even realize the huge favour she's doing me, by allowing me to use my "special" leave instead of my regular... i'm actually going to be able to take a vacation during the high holy days with everyone else this year ^_^

the first couple of hours at work were spent arbing, then i got given something real to do. spot and i spent about half an hour arguing over how to do it, until we discovered that we were talking about different things. brilliant - but i've done my part now, and i can go off to my weekend :D

the camps bay girl (cbg) called, we chatted for a while. then my boss walked in, and informed me that one of my apps wasn't working... suddenly i'm performing linux admin tasks with instructions over the phone by the lead :S
at least i got that sorted out, but i don't wanna remember the commands i used. why does "nohup" get stuck in my head? at least /dev/null is familiar territory.

bible studies
zen and the art of password maintenance

no rest for the ______

on my way home, i walked past the lizard, and was surprised to find it hosting a party. 8pm? what gives?

turned out to be a bat-mitzva party, so not something i wanted to attend. my mum called, and i chatted to her outside for half an hour, then chatted with wr for a bit while he worked. and then made my way home.

showered quickly, dressed, and taxied to meet up with spot. on my way there, i passed an area that always reminds me of lake. i realized last night that i can't actually be upset with her for not being in touch during the last couple of years - during the first week that i met her, she warned me that she's like that. so i guess i'm back to being ready to marry her at the drop of a hat :P (not that that's ever going to happen, but whatever)

i walked in to spot's gran's place, his cousins were still there. i had excellent cake, we sat around for a bit, and when i got bored i started reading knife of dreams. mistake. now i'm going to have to read it, instead of waiting patiently for the series to be completed.

we went to a coffee shop, and i had a huge (and really good) salad for supper. the waitress laughed at me, asked if i was on a diet. look - i ate a 330g burger for breakfast, i'm fairly confident that it's within my rights to eat a salad for - essentially - lunch, and still retain my sense of masculinity.

spot and i walked through to the zamir, but arrived early. i went to a kiosk to get smokes. they didn't stock gauloises, and when i asked for them, the asshole had the cheek to tell me that i wouldn't find anywhere in the area - so i may as well spend my money there on something that i didn't want. i walked a further 100m to the next kiosk, and bought them there, then returned just to show him. it didn't make a difference to him, but i felt a little better for it. i'm so fickle.

the party at the zamir was awesome. i don't know what the deal was supposed to be with astral projection... apparently it was them playing upstairs from 2 - 4, but when we went up to check, it was shitty. so we spent the night downstairs with awesome track after awesome track.

the only disappointment was a cute girl who flirted with me (and i back), who left in the middle of a great song, when i wasn't paying attention, without even saying goodbye. annoying!

after the party, ta2 joined us (or we joined him, it's his car) for a mission to find food. all the places in that area that are 100% 24 hours a day, ALWAYS open, were closed. we ran into wr at my coffee, and the funny / sexy waitress from last week. she was fascinated by my tat; it makes me feel good to have others appreciate it ^_^

sat for an amusing half hour over chocochino. then moved off to a place ten minutes' walk from where i live, that i've never seen / heard of before. brilliant food - philadelphia steak and cheese sammich, with excellent home-fries (although it was a waste of cash, 'cuz i had about 4 bites before i was stuffed completely... the sammich was HUGE).

ta2 gave spot a ride home, then me, and i was so wasted by the time i arrived home that i simply brushed my teeth and fell into bed.

slept beautifully ^_^

i got up 9 hours later, read a bit, and was then disturbed by some arsim messing around in our parking lot with their lawnmower-scooters. i flicked a lit cigarette at them, but the wind pushed it to safety. for the best, i guess. i don't really want a brick through my glass doors.

i've discovered that i'm going to a wedding of one of my first flatmates on the 19th. i'm trying to decide if i should congratulate them while talking like a pirate ;)
i have no clue what to get them! how much money do i give if i'm a soldier (soldiers are more or less exempt from large amounts), but also working for a salary (and he's one of the big bosses)??

i showered, and took a walk to azrieli, on the way discovering that a kiosk close by sells cadbury's chocolate! YEAH!

i went looking for tool - aenema, but i didn't recognize it because they don't have the name written on the cover. bastards. but i've been listening to samples of the album from amazon, and now i don't think i want it anyway :S

thank you, nystire:
not only do i now have access to those cartoons that i made outside of the army, but i now know the following (from wikipedia):

in ptolemaic egypt, idiotès was a term for soldier

excellent. so we're all professional idiots. at least that explains the general mentality.

oh, and operation acoustic kitty is just awesome.

rob zombie kicks ass. kmfdm too.

pool, bugs, chinese, work, drink, photo

damn, we're good!

the kid and spot picked me up, and we had an awesome night of pool. i was completely bombed by the time i got to bed.

the entire day that we were on base, we dealt with a major problem in our system: SABOTAGE. wtf?!?! somebody with access deleted a crucial part of our system. we don't know when, we don't know who. it took all day to get it back up and running.

our systems:

it was extremely gratifying to learn that the guys in our new section don't expect us to deal with these kinds of problems, so from now on we're going to make a point of doing our jobs to the letter. and fuck them.

we went to visit someone from our section who's just had surgery (same op that i had on my nose), and we all ordered chinese. we learned that if you order szechuan, you don't automatically get rice. fuckers. not the best meal, but would've been pretty good. spicy as hell.

i didn't have time to play volleyball, as i went straight from the base to work. more skew than straight, i suppose - i stopped off at home to pick up some clothing.

i told the boss i wanted 4.5k... so i got 5k plus travel and food expenses covered.
^_^ nice!!!
i officially begin on the 23rd, just as soon as we're past the holidays. i'm rather excited!

i ran into wr at the lizard, who was about to begin a shift. so i stopped in for a drink and a chat, then made my merry way home. i've just uploaded all the photo's from south africa (FINALLY! the mongoose passed them along!), so i can now get around to inserting them in the appropriate blog posts.

i'd do that now, but i'm bloody tired, so i'm going to bed.

in good spirits

by itself, that's an expression that doesn't make much sense.

i've noticed that my appeal to the "fairer" sex is directly proportional to my attitude, and sleep deprivation. the more wasted i am, and the better the mood i'm in, the more girls i find giving me looks and finding ways to keep my attention.

i need to sleep less, methinks.

after a couple of hours sleep, i got up quickly (and to the point) this morning. i even made my bus. my bus arrived a bit early, and i received a number of "well done!" comments during the day - apparently the second i unlock my pc everyone on my contact list gets an alert. that's worrying. it means my team leader can see exactly how much time i'm away from my computer. and i can't be bothered to disable / re-enable every time.

i spent a large part of the day moving around and getting bureaucratic things sorted out. which meant a LOT of stopping and chatting. and a lot of smoking too. i'm conscious of how much i smoke, uncomfortably so, but i still don't want to stop...

i also got a lot of work done today. aside from our team being hit by numerous bug reports throughout the day, i learned some rather neat java / oracle stuff. at one point i got hold of a 22-page document that explained how i've been doing everything wrong. not wanting to change anything, i double-checked the java api stuff, and it turns out i was in the right, and since then it's been smooth sailing ;)

lunch was REALLY bad today.

and i realized that there's no place in our offices for sb's punching bag. that really bites. we were really looking forward to that!

a new kid was assigned to our section today, and i ran into him during my missioning and found him agreeable. we then found out (from the horse's mouth) that the only reason that he hadn't arrived in our offices is because our section commander wants him to sweat a bit, so that he'll arrive with courtesy.

not only is that bloody cheeky, but i got an awkward look when i asked if that was the reason i wasted a day of my life on the induction base before coming through. BASTARD.

so, of course, we found the new guy and explained it to him. if we're not going to be allowed to "show him the ropes", we're going to make a point of messing him up completely (as far as our commander is concerned ;))

amusement: one of the guys in our prefab was saying ridiculous things loudly when some girl was in earshot. i made an arbitrary comment in her direction about us being disgusting, and when she turned to respond i did a visible double-take (for which the guys laughed at me afterwards), when i registered that she's actually extremely cute.

i worked until 18.20, then took the bus home. i know i'm fucked up because this is the first time in my entire life that i've spilled coffee on my keyboard - i'm most unimpressed with myself.

i've now spent an hour or so working on the hospital project - not too bad, and called my boss to update him. he's sent me a huge document in hebrew to read through, and we argued over whether or not he'll send me a rough transration for the important bits... otherwise it'll take me a month with a dictionary to get through it.

now i have to decide if it's worth dragging myself to the lizard for some live bands, and a dj afterwards who's a member of my favourite israeli metal group... maybe i'll just go to bed.

i mentioned the gay photographer story in the tag list, so here goes:

i went through a period where i was toying with the idea of modelling. a friend of a friend (extremely large, extremely camp ex-cameo stocking leg model) introduced me to a friend of his, who took a few photos just for kicks. he invited me to come to his rented penthouse apartment if i was interested in getting my portfolio done for free.

of course i was.

i arrived, a bit nervous, and he immediately began by telling me who he was. editor and photographer of new york's most well-known gay magazine. i wasn't bothered - i just wanted good photos.

he asked me to strip down to my underwear, so he could see what he was working with. not knowing the rules of the game (and still not knowing), i did. he saw how uncomfortable i was, and in a doomed-to-fail attempt to relax me, he told me a story about a model he'd once worked with.

the story basically goes as follows: homophobic model sitting in a sud-filled bath. he walks in. model is uncomfortable. he sits down and talks for a while, model eases up. he somehow (i don't remember the story so much as the horror of hearing it, and wondering what he was *implying*) ends up with his hand in the water... things happen... model turns out to have been in the closet.

i never have been in the closet. due to various incidents i'm 100% confident in my sexuality - if i was gay, i could have owned a porsche at age 18. and i would have enjoyed my only male-male kiss. *shudders in memory*

anyway, so we begin the shooting. at some point he gave me some oil to apply, and i did push-ups to give my muscles a sheen, and we continued.

almost at the end of the run, he asked me a favour. he wanted a photo of me bending over, pulling down my pants to expose half a butt-cheek... so he can use it for christmas cards. how twisted is that?!

i admit i thought about it, but at the time i didn't know where i was going in life, and i had this image of myself one day running for political office, and these christmas cards coming back to bite me in the... erm... yeah.

so i declined. but i'll tell you something for nothing - INCREDIBLE photos!

i've just discovered that there was a bombing today - i'm about to depress myself by watching the news.

ps. count the idioms. and cliches.

aww - it likes me!

i went to the party last night - not as big as expected. also - a bit sucky. i left when my mood flipped to aggro. i was warmed up from walking home, so i stretched a bit before showering. then i worked a bit (shouldn't sleep straight after exercise), and actually got quite a bit done before crashing... at 2.30.

i missed my alarm this morning, thankfully waking up at 7.20 - got the bus at 7.35. i hate rash wake-ups. hell, that's not true. i still just hate waking up before lunchtime.

i was bombed most of the day, but i did manage to catch an hour's sleep at my desk. what sucked was that it made no difference. event though we have stuff to do, it's so boring it kills me. the most exciting part of the day was cleaning our office and the gutter outside.

great. no disillusionment here. nuh - uh.

did some shopping before coming home, and spent an hour or so working some more. i'm almost done! almost the entire project (my side) is ready for testing! w00t!

i switched back to my personal system, and have spent the last few hours working on getting my dvd burner to work. i finally succeeded. i am SO proud.

i also managed to find a whole lot of stuff on some backup cd's of mine... looks like i'm going to have to update my collection - it's a mess :P

i finally opened my box of books, and began flipping through the oversized calculus one. i'm glad to see i didn't forget EVERYTHING.

i'm guarding tomorrow, so i'm about to hit the shower, then the hay. this is going to be a busy week, regardless. i've also got to make a call to get my last taekwondo tournament's video, schedule a catch-up lesson at work, and finalize the testing arrangements. and learn about kinetic energy.

-- hopefully an interesting thing started today --

where am i? why? HOW long??

what an interesting weekend!

yogi picked me up, we went to his parents place, and installed the program we wrote last year. and it worked first time - yeeee-hah! very exciting.

we went to my favourite pizza parlour, and had these folded-over pizzas (don't remember the name at all), which were truly excellent. visited ru55, chilled for a couple of hours, and then he gave me a ride to the lizard.

danced around with the guys until about 2.45, got home and into bed at 3.30.

woke up at 6.40 (thank the lord for automatic snooze, i would've missed the alarm).

got to the base, signed in and went for coffee. i took half an hour, so i was told off by my commander. as punishment, i have to read a lengthy user manual in hebrew and pass a test on it. that REALLY sucks.

at the same time, i discovered that i was supposed to guard yesterday.

i spent the morning making repeated phone calls to the asshole in charge of guarding. eventually ended up guarding anyway - although i did get a great shift. so i slept, none too comfortably, from 6pm till 5.40am, and went to guard for four hours. it was actually alright.

met some guy yesterday on the base who surfs - said he'll call me if they go on friday / saturday morning! w00t!!

spent the rest of the day in konenut (reserve), which was actually quite fun. a whole group of the guys want to train with me (taekwondo) - so cool!!

i just got home about an hour ago - i'm doing laundry, showering, then cleaning up for my "date" at 20.30 :) i wish my washing machine didn't smell mouldy... i'm not actually sure what part of it is producing the smell, which is infuriating.

learning to talk... then forgetting again

i spent the day reading, and i did a *little* bit of work... i was using nurmras's machine to tunnel to lagnet, and had to learn how to use talk... not too complicated, when you know how :P

i met up with the mongoose at azrieli (after being harrassed by a newbie security guard), and we walked to the lizard. i had a double shot of sambuca for the first time in ages, which i thoroughly enjoyed. pity about those motor-skills... and my vision... i'm guessing it's the exhaustion. so i decided to come back home, and i'm now going to bed.

just so's you know - typing this is *HARD*.