one free day

i was tired. i've actually been really, remarkably, frustratingly tired the entire week. so has gd, so it's possible fallout from being so sick recently. most of the week was a blur, there's lots of stuff that happened that i didn't write down and while i'm a little disappointed to be missing some good stuff, i'm doing what i can with what i have.

monday 25th:

monday was hard, the first day of proper exhaustion. the start of a formal complaint against our downstairs neighbours who insist on blowing smoke into our apartment. we've been asked not to confront them and most of this week the smoke in our apartment has been nauseating. (i'm struggling right now, switching between closing the windows and trying to air the place out)

tuesday 26th:

another rough day. dnd night was fun, though.

wednesday 27th:

not having received my final payment yet, and stressing over a potential legal battle with a company i have no official details for, i contacted the guy in charge of payroll. in the late afternoon, he finally got back to me claiming there'd been "a mistake with our payroll system". sure, buddy. i re-issued the invoice as soon as i got home, which received zero response. fortunately my mother was able to help me out with my rent and paying the cleaning lady's salary,

thursday 28th:

because by the next morning's withdrawal cut-off time he still hadn't responded. by the evening, freaking out, i sent him yet another email and tried to get hold of him on the company's slack service, and when he didn't respond i finally sent a message to the big boss asking for a hand.

i received two responses from the guy in quick succession: the first rudely reminding me that invoices are only settled on thursdays (really, even when it's your damned fault that i hadn't been paid?) and the second message very sweetly explaining how he hadn't wanted to send it before in case i was sleeping (the #$%@?!?!?!)

anyway, i said farewell to my team in the morning, which went well, i did some housecleaning while waiting for gd to pick up her visa (finally!), we had a good lunch at plant, a surprise run-in with sagirl, a good haircut but unfortunately spending most of the time in the chair trying really hard to remain conscious and failing. i went to the gardens synagogue in the evening to say kaddish for my uncle, which led to a repeat discussion with gd about the inappropriateness of the orthodox separation of men and women during prayer services.












friday 1st:

my "spa" day, the first day of actually exercising at the gym in a month or two. poor cardio, doing a bit of bag work, stretching well, spending 10 to 15 minutes in the jacuzzi, and then fiddling with a java adaptation of my encryption tool

picking up mr smear and staying for a while as he played with a new friend whose mom i went to school with, picking up challah, resting for a bit and being too tired to go to the temple

a really nice friday night dinner with my mom, saying grace after meals for the first time in forever

today:

waking up early, taking gd to her class but she had a panic attack along the way (possibly triggered by an unexpectedly heavy spray of amber perfume which made us both feel sick), coming home for a lazy day, inviting our neighbour for lunch and a good chat

a little bit of willow, most of hook, bedtime, and hunter x hunter (uvogin's battle with kurapika, DEFINITELY not for kids)

weekend so well done it burned

friday 22nd:

gd still sick, me still congested so skipping the gym and working from home, mr smear going to school at least. making good progress for a satisfying end to the first week of my notice period, and putting out a sample copy of my book for my patrons for review.

learning about ordering challah from the grocery store.

skipping the temple to take mr smear to visit some cousins, a great chat with him mostly behaved, a long argument with my 3 year old (along the lines of louis ck's "pig newtons" bit) about whether or not he'd left his toy motorbike at the hotel, arriving home to learn that he'd been talking about a different toy motorbike all along.

a sudden and upsetting regression with my back, which had been doing fine for a couple of days.

saturday 23rd:

driving gd to her weekly hypnotherapy class, driving mr smear for a play-date at the super park, getting him to eat a really good lunch, enjoying a frozen coconut yoghurt, stopping at my mom's to drop off a pilates ball, driving back to tokai to pick up gd, returning home for nap time

going out for a friend's birthday drinks, good company, temporary tattoos, too much cigarette smoke and coming home around 10.30pm to find that mr smear had given my mother the run-around and was still wide awake.

sunday 24th:

waking up with neck issues

podcast prep, driving to my mom's to pick up pool noodles, returning home to find a play-date just starting, a really nice afternoon by the pool, more podcast prep, a trip to the waterfront for tea, playground

mr smear with a balloon sword: "i'm going to cut you, mommy!". also, walking around with a serious swagger and a balloon sword sticking out his front pocket.

dinner and groceries, coming home to find our apartment reeking of cigarettes from our downstairs neighbour and putting our landlord on the case, another late night for mr smear, working really hard on the podcast...

monday 25th:

until just before 1.30am, spending half an hour posting this and now, finally, desperately... going to bed.

what's luck got to do with it?

after this morning's meeting i headed to the gym, determined to spend my workday going over prep material for my new employer. i tried to log in to my old account with them, but there was a problem with the multi-factor authentication... i'd forgotten what kind of second factor i'd set up. so because i expected an email, and didn't receive one, i checked my spam folder...

... and found a whole bunch of documents from my new employer, including a couple that required urgent signatures in order to formally accept their job offer. in other words, if i'd just rocked up for my first day, my offer would have lapsed and i might have run into trouble...

thanks, google. i understand that my new employer's a competitor, but that seems a little mean :P

...

mr smear stayed home again today, gd's still down with the sickness, and my nose did not stop running all the hours i was at the gym, regardless of the fact that i've been taking sudafed and using iliadin, my sinuses were full, throbbing and sore, and the noises i was making as i went through a good chunk of tissues must have been awful to hear. i'm not proud of to admit this.

...

i've just had a chat with our downstairs neighbour, she seems to have agreed not to smoke on her balcony but i have a suspicion that we're going to have a few more incidents, the smoke's been coming straight into our apartment for weeks and driving us crazy :(

...

back to the prep work i did today: i've learned lots of cool stuff, and i'm looking forward to being paid to play with this tech!

just a day

i worked well at the gym today, then came home to find gd in bed with whatever bug i had last week. i took mr smear out to the company gardens, one of the squirrels was terrifyingly aggressive, i actually called a man who was harassing me "rapey" after saying "no, thank you" and then repeatedly saying "no" because he just couldn't leave off, mr smear playing nicely with the two kids we met the previous day

struggling to figure out where all our money went this past month and stressing a bit about taxes

hunter x hunter, the yorknew arc becoming a bit too much for mr smear but fortunately he passed out before things got out of hand, settling in to finish a task and now, 1am, going to bed.

---

i love /r/askreddit. i have to share my latest answers:

What’s the most embarrassing thing a parent has done to you?

1. we were guests at my parents' friends. a man walked in so old and frail that he looked like a caricature, and i was transfixed. suddenly my father, who'd been standing next to me, bellowed "it's okay to laugh, you'll be that old too some day!". i hadn't been laughing, but once he said that everyone including the old man thought i had and i just wanted to die.

2. my 11th birthday was at a skate park, i'd never been able to drop in on a half pipe and my father, in front of all the kids in my class, shamed me into trying. i fell flat on my face to peals of laughter and was totally humiliated, i refused to try again and ran off... he made the mistake of chasing me, trying to get me to try again and saying "i'm not going to hit you". where all the kids and parents could hear i screamed out "you always hit me! every day you hit me! you even hit my mother!"

it wasn't entirely true, but they couldn't have known that... boy, did i end up getting a beating, along with a rather sad reputation at school...

Parents of reddit, what's the funniest reason you've been called into school to collect your child?

this was in the 80's, my parents were called in to the middle school to pick up my sister, she'd gotten frustrated during a typing lesson and in a fit of rage lifted the massively heavy typewriter and threw it out the window.

from the second floor.

above a walkway.

...

she was expelled, not her first nor her last weird story. we still laugh about this, but tbh mostly nervously.

hump day already?

my gods, it feels like a week has gone by since my last post. i've been making a point of sleeping on both sides lately, and i'll be damned if it isn't already making a significant difference to my back and neck.

monday:

waking up from and returning to a long apocalyptic dream wherein the dinosaurs escaped (jurassic park style), with small pockets of us surviving around the city on winter pantries. absolutely terrifying.

leaving mr smear with the nanny (sinus infection), taking gd to sea point, podcast editing at bootlegger's, finding a parking right outside the visa place but not having gd's receipt with us, plastic-ware shopping at mambo's,  shoe shopping at the waterfront (we looked for shorts for me, too, but couldn't find anything reasonable), picking up a copy of wired magazine for the first time in years, publishing the podcast episode and work a bit, rushing through rush hour traffic to get gd home in time to relieve the nanny.

my mom babysitting so we could have dinner at royale with friends, a really fun evening full of interesting conversation and good food!

tuesday:

once again mr smear staying home due to sinus infection, and once again he wasn't actually sick and  it totally messed with our day plans. another failed attempt to get gd's visa decision, this time with the receipt but arriving too late. dropping mr smear off with the nanny and heading to the gym for a few hours of really good work, then returning home in rush hour traffic to take mr smear to the company gardens for a ride with some other kids for a bit. dinner, hunter x hunter (we've gotten to the yorknew city auction, things are becoming intense), shower, bedtime, and getting a massive chunk of work done before sailor pulled me into a conference call.

an hour and a half later, and it looks like we're partners on an exciting and important medical venture!

today:

writing an article on hiring with github until 2am.

we just dropped mr smear off at school, i've written this while waiting for gd to do some grocery shopping, and then i'm going to begin my day for reals.

don't shoe forget about me

new rules:

1. don't buy cheap shoes
2. don't buy shoes over the internet
3. don't take brand advice when buying shoes, not even from a professional. try on all the damned shoes until you find the right ones.

i've been suffering for months with the shoes i bought, and decided this morning that i couldn't take it any longer. amidst a bunch of other things gd and i needed to do today, we stopped at a shoe store and i tried on a couple of pairs, and walked out wearing a pair that give good support and make me feel like i'm floating. i can't believe i've suffered for so long and wasted so much money, the gods know how much influence this has had on my back problems.

my body doesn't care if i'm tired

it took a good couple of hours after posting last night to get to bed, although i might've needed less to be physically ready but i got caught up with playing a virus named TOM and 7 billion humans. fortunately, i slept well (and feeling better about sleeping on my "other" side) and was up and functional early enough that we all made it to the cemetery for shadowslight's mother's consecration on time.

mr smear was well-behaved and was entirely unphased by being in a graveyard, there was a weird moment during the service when we were reading psalm 23 and i really focused on what it's saying for the first time... i became inexplicably overwhelmed by gratitude just then.

we went to his father's place to spend a little time with the family, which was really entertaining but unfortunately there wasn't any suitable food for us so we drove down the road to mary-ann's which was really excellent. aside from them have reachable bottles of household cleaner that mr smear managed to spray into his eye before i even realized they were there...

sated and happy, we returned home with a sleeping boy, took good advantage of nap-time, and then went down to the pool together where they swam and i sat on a deck chair in the shade reading deadpool. good times.

i got a bit more podcast preparation done - today's episode turned up some important revelations regarding the fidelity of the accepted modernized text - then walked to la parada for protoplasm's birthday beers. i had one, and some interesting (one inspiring) conversations, and then suddenly it was almost mr smear's bedtime so i walked back home through cape town's dark and dodgy streets, with only one incident of harassment.

a quick shower (it was stinking hot), and then i sat down to produce the podcast episode while gd put mr smear to bed. it's funny, but i keep thinking they're going to be short episodes and then more and more stuff just pours out...

... right, it's now past 2am on a monday morning, i'm feeling really good about how the weekend went and i'm ready to face whatever this week has to throw at me. being in my notice period with my current employer has really relieved an enormous amount of stress and i'm excited about the next step in my career.

to be productive or not to be

yesterday:

getting some good - no, great! - work done, getting  suckered in to taking gd to pick up mr smear, who fell asleep in the car so i sat with him and figured out the new bluetooth gadget (so i can now control the radio from *my* phone when i'm driving) while gd did the grocery shopping, coming home to rest, Do Stuff, then take gd to the temple for the friday night service... which turned out to be a bit of a bummer, because they'd moved the entire kid's corner out of the synagogue for a big event and so the two of us played with crappy toys in the library by ourselves (although i did discover a cool book: yiddish folktales by beatrice weinrich)

---

driving home from the temple, a man in front was driving way too slowly so i took a look at him as i passed and saw that his head was bowed and he was not looking anywhere remotely in the direction of his windshield. "look where you're driving!", i yelled, and his elderly indian head popped up, looked at me, then gave me the traditional what-do-you-want-from-me wobble and shouted that he couldn't understand what i was saying. so i clarified, to which he responded that he knew where he was going, so what should he look for?

people, man. people.

---

a nice friday night dinner, i tried watching jimmy carr after mr smear went to sleep but after fifteen minutes determined that he's like conan o'brien: great joke writer, but awfully unfunny execution. i then proceeded to watch the netflix documentary inside the mossad, which was great, then entered the now-usual struggle to go to sleep.

receiving a really nice email from my current employer gracefully accepting my resignation!

today:

an acceptably reasonable rest, gd leaving for her course then suddenly remembering that there was a kid's event happening at the temple... a rushed exit, but mr smear and i having a pretty good time overall. he had phenomenal timing for a toilet run, just before we left, passed out in the car and for the next couple of hours gave me space to work on my book. the afternoon was a mix-and-match, including a fair amount of playing with duplo and some real struggling with my neck, back and legs, and after an early shower we settled in to watch labyrinth. we weren't 100% sure it was a good idea at first, but we got through most of the movie by bedtime and he was thoroughly engrossed ^_^

since then, i've watched a very good jen kirkman: just keep livin', and i'm now trying to decide if i'm tired enough to attempt to sleep or if i should be productive for an hour or so.

tough night but better morning

whoa.

TIL that sleeping on one's back is ideal, but for me practically impossible. the next best is sleeping on one's side... but one has to alternate sides or one may develop an asymmetry. which i clearly have. at least now i know.

i tried to go to bed at a reasonable hour, but got sent down a rabbit-hole of facebook stalking when i realized that a friend of mine's once best friend has been dating his ex-girlfriend for years. this wouldn't be dramatic if it wasn't for the fact that their initial fallout was over a girlfriend that had left my friend for his once best friend, married him, and publicly sent him what appeared to be a loving message on facebook days before he started dating the (new?) ex-girlfriend. i'm sure everyone's alright and happy now, but damn, i find that really weird.

after that time-suck, i tried to go to bed, but my back wasn't having any of it. it took about half an hour for me to get up to stretch / destroy bloons until my system gave up resisting a rest, which took about an hour, and the next thing i remember is waking up so i guess it's all okay now. i'm definitely feeling much better, though still a bit weak, and i've just started on my first cup of tea since tuesday morning.

i'm slowly but surely getting into my day, giving notice last night actually took a great weight off my shoulders even if nobody's responded yet.

first thought for the day: it's been almost three years since anybody cared if i wore pants to work.

second thought for the day: i'm done with bloons adventure time. i didn't acquire all the items, and i'm not paying $12 to unlock the special characters, let alone $30 for three. but $6 on an adventure pack was a fair donation in my book, it's a brilliant tower defense game that's given me meditative space (okay, and stolen a little sleep) for more than three months!

subject: untitled

alternative subjects: "surprise!", "onwards and upwards", and "so long, and thanks for all the fish"

and a few minutes ago i just submitted my resignation to the company i've been working for for the past six months. six months without a contract, little to no team interaction, anxiety at every payday, and zero improvement on my sleep schedule. now i have two weeks to make sure i leave everything tidier than when i arrived, and hopefully get my sleep cycles relatively straightened out.

...

on the health front, it was definitely a good idea to uber to the doctor this morning and not drive. i was feeling faint and woozy the entire trip, while my stomache had begun to come right during the night the rest of the horribleness came back, and while the doctor agrees with my assessment that it's a bug i'm fairly certain that it's cranial nerve pinching again and it's always impossible to tell.

funny, though, how ideas can be stronger than our physical bodies. the pharmacist made a comment about dairy allergies (she's dairy allergic) and was shocked and intrigued to learn that it has such an enormous impact on breast and prostate cancers, never mind the calcium-leeching that causes osteoporosis... that pumped me up to "almost well", at least until i got back home again.

day 3 of being sick: i remembered that i have physical books to read, and pulled down volume one of the deadpool collection. AWESOME.

my sickness / wellness has been on/off the entire day, and i had to take gd and mr smear grocery shopping which really took whatever i had left out of me. aside from dinner and showering mr smear, and putting together my resignation letter with my mom, i've basically just been trying to rest as much as possible. not sure how much good it's doing my neck, though...

... one thing i'm super-pleased with - the encryption tool i put together on the weekend? 86 downloads in three days. the idea that others are getting utility out of this is really exciting! oh, and on a vaguely related note, vector seems to be finding his feet and just put out this music video which i thought was very cool.

antizionists vs the jews

"Criticizing the state of Israel is not hostility to or prejudice against Jews, therefore not Anti-Semitic BY DEFINITION. But yall really keep trying it."

that very much depends on whether you're listening to both sides of the story, and very much on who's telling it. i lived in israel for twelve years, a couple of those with palestinians, and i've learned that even on the ground relatively few people know what's actually going on and it's a phenomenally complex and nuanced situation. if all the criticism is flowing in only one direction, well, then the bias is telling. nobody yelling "free palestine" is actually doing the palestinians any favours, all that does is inspire more fighting and prevent more talking.

"there's so much to unpack here. Prevent more talking? Like the "inciting" laws that prevent free speech for Palestinians? Inspire more fighting? Like illegal settlements in the West Bank? If you're not speaking actively and outwardly against those things, whose bias. Is showing?
We say Free Palestine because Palestinians aren't free. In their own land. To self determine. I know what apartheid looks like. I know what oppression looks like. And speaking out against those policies doesn't equate to anti-semitism. Unless of course you're intertwining oppression and Judaism, which would be wild."

you say you know what apartheid looks like, as a south african born under apartheid let me tell you that comparing the situation there to apartheid is unbelievably insulting to the africans that suffered under actual apartheid.

the only time that comparison becomes at all fathomable is by denying that the state of israel has the right to exist. and following that line, you would have to be denying that the jews made multiple attempts to peaceably divide the country from 1928 through to the independence war. we won that war, and those "palestinians" who remained became "israeli arabs" and have civil rights just like any other israeli. those who fled, or were chased out (the stories aren't always so clear), were not accepted as refugees by their countries of origin (egypt and jordan, primarily), and have been deliberately forced to maintain their refugee status by the arab nations because it has suited them to exploit these people as a weapon against israel. UNRWA was invented to maintain the palestinians' refugee status, not to help them get on with their lives (which is pretty messed up if you think about it).

so back to the point, if you're calling israel an "apartheid state" then you're including the palestinian territories (gaza and the west bank) as a part of israel, which they're not. they're under PA and hamas control, not israeli control, which means that israelis would be the dumbest people on the planet to let them pass through israeli borders unchecked. and i've heard stories from troops on the border that would make you cry for both sides.

let's be very clear that i do not in any way, shape or form think that situation is okay. let's be very clear, i personally believe that the palestinians are the most ****ed over people on the planet. the only thing is, what's doing them over isn't the israelis - though the gods know israel is not helping their situation nor the israelis' by reacting to every terrorist instigation rather than trying to find out-of-the-box solutions for such a complex situation - israel is well within its moral rights to defend its citizens, and the palestinians are not israeli citizens.

myself, and what i estimate to be the vast majority of israelis, do not want settlements, we want peace, we want dialog, we want solutions. many, if not most palestinians want peace with israel and to get on with their lives. but we're all at the mercy of a number of factors.

1. the palestinians aren't just at the mercy of their leadership, which in turn is at the mercy of rich, terrible entities that fund them and don't give a damn about anything other than the destruction of the jews, they're at the mercy of decades of training to be weapons of hate against israel. we've heard countless stories - and i've met some refugees personally - of people who've been taught to hate israel and the jews from birth and who enter the country and discover that it's all lies. there are plenty of palestinians who know what's going on, but they also know that if they dare to open their mouths the palestinian "leadership" will drag them through the streets, execute them, and make their families suffer.

2. the israelis generally want peace, but as proud as they are of their democracy it's been corrupt as **** since the 90's and their leadership are pretty clueless. except for netanyahu, who's a very shrew POS who's conned a magnificent political game, and with his (what i believe should be illegal) tactical coalition governments has managed to give power to the hard-right minority who are causing almost as much damage to the israeli populace as they are to palestinian relations - those are the settlers and their supporters.

3. after decades of terrorism, israelis have become convinced that palestinians "love death" and cannot be negotiated with. they cannot empathize with the palestinians, and you probably wouldn't want to either if you lived in perpetual fear of them. but imagine if you had the choice of a really shitty life, or of ending it quickly with a violent act and securing for family for a little while. what would you choose?

neither the palestinians nor the israelis trust each other, and although there are some wonderful initiatives happening at a grassroots level there're certainly not enough. it doesn't help that both sides culturally are very proud, and very stubborn. we could work to increase these initiatives, but the media and court of public opinion prefers to put all blame squarely on the israelis shoulders which makes these positive sorts of things harder to pull off.

---

on a personal level, i've been speaking out against the settlements for decades now, very few people i know are misguided enough to support them. the settlements make me angry, dude, and i've been hit with tear gas for protesting them. regarding "incitement", don't be confused by BS. palestinians and israeli-arabs can and do say whatever they damned well please, as long as its against israel. the real punishment comes when they speak out against their own organizations, you look that up and tell me you're cool with what those people are subjected to.

btw, i've also served in the army, and i can guarantee you that military indoctrination is to be as ethical as possible and to avoid both physical and psychological harm to anyone who is not a clear aggressor. while that leads to an distasteful conversation that we can have about units who do not adhere to army doctrine, i can vouch from the inside that by and large israel and israelis have no malicious intent towards the palestinians and just want this crap to be over. you would not believe the lengths to which hamas has to go to increase casualties whenever some kind of action is being taken, it's literally mind-boggling.

personally, i believe that israel would serve the palestinians and themselves best if they *would* give the palestinians the right of return, the palestinians would definitely be a lot better off. but because israel is a "proud democracy" we would immediately lose our jewish homeland due to numbers. so we'd have to ditch modern democracy and figure out some other system, which would be such a controversial move that i can't imagine that ever happening. any other constructive solutions always welcome.

---

so all that said, you're totally right to criticize settlements. but if you're not criticizing the arab nations (via hamas and the PA) for their part, that sounds like a pretty serious bias to me. everyone seems to care so much about the actions of a tiny jewish state, which is serving as a wonderful distraction from the humanitarian disaster that surrounds it. if people really cared about the palestinians, they'd care about solving the problems and not carrying on down the same, well-worn paths we've been fighting on for most of a century.

and if you're only criticizing israel, well, then, one has to be fair and look at what that tiny nation represents. because it's the jewish homeland, and when push comes to shove we really don't have anywhere else to go. if you're not part of the solution...

this must be what pain feels like

well, i did get a relatively peaceful night's rest after my last post. at least that.

*WARNING: GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION AHEAD*

i woke up yesterday morning peeing from my butt, and it hasn't stopped yet. i didn't feel too bad at first, but i got pushed into dropping gd off at the gym and by the time i got home i was *sick*. as in, i literally thought i might die on the bowl. i spent the day and night either in bed feeling sorry for myself or on the toilet fighting to maintain consciousness.

i woke up this morning feeling better, but the diarrhoea hasn't let up. i've at least managed to eat a bit, but i'm still sore and uncomfortable and have had to be in bed or on the can for most of the day.

fortunately when gd left me alone with mr smear for a couple of hours i was able to engage with him a bit, and his enthusiasm for the books i brought out was really gratifying and him playing with his spiderman figurines is always a treat.

i love how he knows all the names (except dr octopus, who he just calls "bad guy"), calls spiderman 2099 by his full title every time and has decided that venom's a good guy because he once said he was sorry.

when gd returned we watched a couple more episodes of hunter x hunter before bedtime.

stimpak

yesterday:

leaving town was hectic, mr smear was not impressed that his mommy and daddy weren't taking him with. the retreat was nice, surprisingly constructive and productive, we met a few cool people, and the food was amazing. there was one woman who gave a talk about urban farming that was 60% on point and 40% such utter rubbish that i couldn't keep my face from raging and i'm extremely proud of myself for managing to keep my mouth shut (aside from a few choice comments to gd).

arriving late, leaving late, spending a miserably windy afternoon indoors and finishing up the project i began on the saturday evening: i'm really proud of it, and when i checked in this morning 37 people had already downloaded it so i'm hoping it's making the world a slightly safer place.

once i'd published that, i settled down to eat dinner and watch hunter x hunter with my family before shower and bedtime. a short break to destroy bloons (yep, i'm still playing the adventure time tower defense game), i threw myself into the latest podcast, and along the way it occurred to me that i should bundle my notes together for my backers...

today:

no sleep until 6am, miserably restless and sore

i've gotten through today by the grace of sudafed, green tea and chocolate.

the gym's generator was down during this morning's surprise load-shedding, and i took the time to explore putting my notes together. i don't think macs are that much better than PCs, but *damn*, pages kicks word's ass ANY day. it's inspired me to convert my notes into an actual book, and i'm one chapter in and it's looking sexy. it's not as awesome as a graphic novel, in my opinion, but it's still a solid step and at least within the shakespeare communities probably a lot likelier to sell.

and all proceeds will, of course, go towards the comics :)

i managed to get some bureaucracy handled, but i didn't get much actual work done before load-shedding struck again at 4pm. it felt like a sign that i should leave; on the one hand, it rendered parking free, on the other, everybody else felt the same and it took at least half an hour to get home. i spent about forty-five minutes eating and working, then headed off to the temple for our monthly study session.

after another interesting session with lots to think about i came home to catch the tail end of moana, shower mr smear, read to him, chat with my mom before she flies for two days, work a little, break to post this, and hopefully go to bed reasonably soon.

and sleep. i'm praying that my body will let me sleep, dammit. i need this.

sleep theory

i can't win. i tried to sleep after posting, but my brain said "no". between the discomfort from my back and visions of the code i'd been working on, i couldn't rest and eventually got up around 4am and worked on the code for a couple of hours, eventually going to bed feeling very satisfied with myself and managing to navigate some weird dreams until gd dragged me out of bed a few minutes ago.

wired

friday:

one hour of work, a mission to get the nanny to the bus station, a fight with our landlord and getting the locksmiths to correct their report to her (they'd gotten us confused with a different client), a little more work before our friend arrived, a mostly pleasant experience at the temple with the two noisy boys, a curry club dinner with some discipline issues, taking them home then returning to shower and crash

yesterday :

up early, gd's first hypnotherapy lesson, mr smear hearing a pink floyd song for the first time in about six months and excitedly repeating "shine on you crazy diamond", turning that into the song of the day

a fun aquarium visit with another classmate, getting him to eat a good lunch, visiting my mom and learning that the reason her new computer "doesn't work well" is because she keeps shutting it down instead of just closing the lid

mr smear falling asleep on the way back, taking advantage and napping myself, enjoying hunter x hunter as a family and a little playfighting before shower and bedtime (parenting win, he wants to be like gon freeks)

the rest of the first episode of mr robot, trying to figure out how to safely ensure that my family has access to my digital life in case something happens to me and getting pulled in to an encryption project i should have started ages ago

today:

and now it's 1am and we have to be up early for a "retreat"

pest control pests

yesterday didn't get much more productive, but i only got to bed around midnight (partially due to knocking minor items off my to-do list and updating my windows machine)

it's 2pm and i'm just beginning to work now, after a good night's rest we all had breakfast and got ready to leave before 10am as we were expecting the pest control guys to arrive, only they hadn't been told that that was the plan so they got to us over two hours late which thoroughly messed up our plans for the day. we picked up the nanny, drove through utterly insane traffic to the waterfront, and i'm finally settled in the gym but have to be out of here in about an hour...

FFS.

buggy birthday

waking up with gd freaking out over another infestation (probably mites), ruining her birthday from the get-go. keeping mr smear home on a really hot day (to not share whatever this is), and the pest control team not willing to come into town because of the SONA preparations (which really didn't affect anything until after they would have left).

almost falling asleep during the morning meeting, taking the family to my mom's to pick up our boxing gear (which we couldn't find), then to the waterfront to buy gd's birthday present: optimus prime for mr smear (she got an early birthday present or two, and she really wanted him to have one)

a struggle to find me sandals, eventually succeeding, then heading back to town to have lunch at plant. stopping by the pharmacy. the day had become super-heated, so i shared a coconut water with mr smear and almost forget to pay for it, then managed to forget the ready bag (with an expensive epipen and asthma pump / spacer amongst other things), only realizing that'd happened once we got home. rushing back to sit with the security guards and go over twenty minutes of footage to figure out where i'd left it, being enormously relieved to find it but also sweaty and very tired.

showing off the healing tattoos to the artist on the way home, it's really beginning to look good!

a serious nap, then an unproductive slo-mo afternoon that felt like moving through hot soup.

2 minutes to midnight

... is the perfect time to push code and call it a day.

yesterday:

i barely got any work done, between shared-workspace distractions, the physio appointment, a long nap, grocery shopping, and game night... game night was great. i've been with the group for a few months now, i think it's the longest rpg run i've ever had and our party and DM have a really cool dynamic :)

today:







i slept better last night, i'm praying tonight will be alright as well. i didn't actually leave the house today, gd and the nanny handled mr smear and i spent most of it actually being productive.

BIG news: company 1 was having trouble with my background check because of my status with my current employer - i work for them, i invoice them, they pay me, but we don't have any formal contract or documentation and i have to take care of all my own administration. i gave up all the documentation they asked for, but they told me they needed more, and i started to get worried because i really want to switch jobs and i'd been planning on giving my current employer two weeks' notice next friday. the moment when they finally accepted my documentation was such a deep relief i felt like my whole universe shook. i'm ready, world, lemme get in there already!

i'm getting sick of the DA cold-calls, so i've started "putting them on hold" by saying "please hold" and whistling at them until they give up. the first lady lasted a minute, the gentleman who called afterwards had two minutes of patience for me in spite of me smiling at one point and just blowing air.

flybys and cannons for SONA rehearsal? gd was freaking out, understandably.

someone on reddit asked a question about shakespeare's sonnets i could answer, i had to restrain myself from spamming ALL THE COMMENTS.

gd's getting into hunter x hunter. and she's addicted to angry birds. i'm entertained :D

the sonnet 4 tattoo is beginning to clear up, i'm looking forward to seeing it properly. i'm actually not stressed about any of them any more, if something's not right we'll fix it, and the chances are that if it's not perfect it'll still be awesome.

much wow.

arguing with someone on reddit and being called misinformed because i stated that the quality of the calories you intake is more important than the quantity when it comes to weight loss :/

...

i haven't posted in a few days, as i just posted before my energy levels are stable but close to zero. work-wise, if i was demoralized before i found a new and exciting job it was nothing compared to how little i'm invested now...

tattoo sonnet four is beginning to flake, the other two are healing nicely except for the text on sonnet 3 being very faint.

...
thursday: [missing]

friday: dropping gd and mr smear off at the museum before a meeting with the big boss (first time i've spoken to him), night tantrum exhaustion (mr smear was super tired before we arrived at the temple)

saturday: a trek up the mountain with mr smear, a fresh tattoo, and only half a cup of tea. BIG mistake. spending the rest of the day recovering. seeing aquaman while stressing about leaving my mom and mr smear without a front door key. he's bulletproof? how'd he get those tattoos, then? how does his mother get to the surface in the middle of a battle wearing high heels? why is mera's makeup so trashy? otherwise, it was awesome.

sunday: gd taking mr smear with our friends to the aquarium while i rested and analyzed sonnet 14.

today: exhausted, mr smear waking me up by reading a story to me (it was amazing until he started hitting me with the book), a really rough start to the day because mr smear's friend is REALLY unhappy with his miserable teacher and the principal and the kid's father are both being dicks about it. the kid's three, FFS.

a fun chat with my workplace bromance and him sticking ibuprofen patches on my back - i didn't realize the damage from a couple of weeks ago is actually visible and i've scheduled a physio appointment for tomorrow. taking gd with to the post office to pick up an incredible customized book for mr smear that we'd forgotten about, picking him up, having lunch at plant, napping, then coming here to my mom's coffee shop to work.

coffee, tea and me

there are plenty of healthy attributes to coffee, but the most important one to me has always been "keeps me awake". recently i realized that it wasn't actually doing that as much as i remember, and i decided to pull back... and replace coffee with green tea, which is not only healthy but also an easy way for me to hydrate. because, they say, hydration is important.

i've been mostly off coffee for a couple of weeks now. i haven't had the usual caffeine withdrawal headaches (because i'm still consuming caffeine), but i noticed an almost immediate relief of anxiety that i didn't even know i had. amazing!

so those are all very nice, but i have to admit that while my energy levels are a lot more consistent now, they're generally a lot lower than they were before. like, i'm spending most of my days in dire need of a nap.

i love my coffee, but for the first time in my life regret my relationship with it.

half the tattoos, twice the stress!

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

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

relativity

last night i got a relatively decent night's sleep. we'd bought a fan yesterday morning and some insect killers (the kind you plug in to vaporize insecticide), i went to bed earlier than planned and aside from lower back pain during the night and twisting my neck just before waking up everything was fine.

it just suddenly occurred to me that of all the problems i have with sleeping, the biggest by far is that whenever i finally do get a chance to rest i'm either hit by rls, or lower back pain, with the latter only really becoming a thing over the course of the last two weeks (since i lifted the grate to save the chicks).

...

yesterday and today have been considerably cooler than the sauna temperatures from monday, and while i'm not 100% the cold that hit me hard over the weekend seems to have run out of steam. gd and i dropped mr smear off at school to another dramatic "no, don't go!" goodbye, then headed downtown to do some shopping, then came back home to work.

ostensibly.

in the midst of a ton of bureaucracy which would consume most of my day - people needing to be paid, people owing me money and undelivered goods, dealing with insurance idiots - i suddenly remembered at hour 22 that i had a 24-hour deadline to response to a request from company 1 which required finding a bunch of historical data and printing / signing / scanning, which means that at approximately hour 23 i returned from the printers with considerably higher levels of stress than was necessary.

picking up mr smear, heading to the coffee shop to work and passing by the tattoo parlour for a quick consultation, finally getting a little bit of work done, rushing to pick up pita bread and coming home to find that gd has learned to make good za'atar

really realizing that i'm doing the next two tattoos today! watching hunter x hunter with mr smear before shower and bedtime, getting a little more work done and finally crashing

...

it has been really hard to find time to work this week, and even harder to find motivation, but what's particularly sad is that i've had a couple of really cool breakthroughs and nobody to share them with, and nobody on my team is interested in looking at my code so i'm stuck celebrating myself by myself. which kind of sucks. i'm really, really excited about going to work for company 1. this shit has been lonely AF.

furnace

it feels like it's been weeks since i last had a decent night's sleep. if it's not my back, or sudafed (made the mistake again yesterday), or new tattoos, or the unbearable heat...

last night was rough, waking up was rough, taking the nanny to task for not doing her job satisfactorily was rough. saying goodbye at the school to a mr smear inexplicably freaking out because he thought we were abandoning him - he was surprised when we picked him up and repeated "i thought i lost you" - was really rough.

only vaguely recognizing our creepy not-neighbour when chatting with her after my morning meeting, then being grateful that i hadn't

a nose too stuffy for the gym, uploading the latest podcast episode, getting a little bit of work done, discovering that the hospital had overcharged us by $600 in december and couldn't be less interested in returning the money, picking up gd and picking up mr smear, spending an hour not-working at the local coffee shop because i was assisting the background-check company and trying to get two phrases translated into latin, hurrying home to hurry to sea point to pick up a script

the struggle to keep my arm out of the sun is real. i don't know if i'd have committed to 154 sonnets initially if i'd known how difficult and lengthy the aftercare would be, 154 x 1-2 hours of pain is not the same as 154 x 4-5 weeks of avoiding water, itching, freaking out anytime something touches the open wound, and now, apparently, literally burning painfully like a vampire the instant the sun hits new ink.

mr smear unwillingly waking from his sauna-car nap, pharmacy and shopping, a great time playing with top trumps' adventure time cards, then watching a couple of episodes before bedtime.

a very late bedtime. followed by bureaucracy. and now it's 11.15 and i need to get some actual work done, dammit.

...

MOSQUITOES. I FREAKIN' HATE MOSQUITOES.
and i didn't even know just how cruel they can be.

fiery sunday

getting to bed around 2am, another mid-night wakeup to stretch

waking up early with a stuffy nose and scratchy throat for a long, tired day. a long walk around the block with our neighbour, possibly damaging my new tattoo, it seems like i've managed to nudge him to find himself a goal and its a very interesting one

the new ink itch beginning to rear its ugly head

gd and mr smear swimming for a while, my mom dropping off her computer so that i could update it and sort out her email

our friends coming by, a fun afternoon (when the kids weren't fighting, but they were mostly good), inspiring what will hopefully be a welcome change in company 1's code review process, dropping them off and borrowing sudafed and witnessing a terrible mountain fire

the pride in listening to mr smear singing along to some of the japanese lyrics of the hunter x hunter generic, a delicious dinner, fun shower, reading metamorphosis to gd and mr smear until he passed out, posting this and then beginning to stress about tonight's podcast episode and tomorrow's work...

why climate change matters

"I have been to many talks at UCT about this topic and every time the same thing happens, they leave out any natural impacts from the sea, clouds, decaying forests, volcanoes, insects, animals and only tend to blame humans. Their conclusions are always the same, end fossil fuel and the world will be a better place, yet they do not give any alternatives. They go on about how the polar ice caps are melting and have never been this defrosted ever, yet if you watch what is happening in Siberia and the Yamal peninsula gas pockets are being formed from decaying animals which were caught in these ice shelves. Now if the ice levels have never been this low in history, then how did animals get trapped in them? I do research in alternative fuels and even with all the billions of funding, the highest percentage it could enter is around 10-15%...so a country still needs something else to take up the slack and every country ends up taking fossil fuel. In fact the trend for coal use globally is on the increase and there is no evidence in sight to show any decrease soon. Even if we were to stop fossil fuel use, the CO2 being produced by nature will still so called negatively impact the world, just at slower rate...but destroy the world in eventuality...or so they say. These climatologists cannot even predict an earthquake, yet they can for sure predict the end of the world, without real tangible evidence. Mars is more evidence of this, Mars according to geologists once had a favourable environment for humans, yet without 1 human or without fossil fuel it destroyed itself! Look at Saturn, astronomers are noticing that its rings are disappearing....without humans and without fossil fuel...all by natural progression. Imagine if this climate change could do a 180 and then we all sit together to find real solutions, maybe there are ways of making fossil fuel cleaner or safer? Imagine putting the billions that go to alternative energy and do not produce significant progress to projects within the fossil fuel industry which were sidelined due to funding problems. While we all flow towards alternative energy...all we have got is higher energy prices, higher vehicle prices, higher transport costs. Have you noticed while civilian fuel prices go up and up, jet fuel has been going down down down and yet the cost of flying is still going up and up. Let us look at Al Gore, his carbon foot print is so huge, you would not expect him to be the climate change activist of climate change activists....then you also have China who cares less. If everyone does not have the buy in then you will fail. I read yesterday that the Chinese built a waste to energy plant in Ethiopia....a little more investigation found that the plant started being built in Sept 2014 and using an obsolete emission standard which expired in July 2014 I think. Yet there was an updated version from 2010...which begs the question why did they not use the more stringent emission standard and went for an obsolete version instead? It is a rhetorical question, had they built the factory according to the new standard it probably would have been illegal to build it. In conclusion, I do not say that I do not believe that the climate is changing, however I do believe that this issue is not as serious as politicians make it out to be, because the world has been in this situation before and managed to have spectacular ice ages and survived thousands of years after them...There was an expedition to the Arctic to study the levels of ice there, the scientists employed the strongest icebreaker in the world, they predicted the voyage would get to their destination in record time because the ice was very thin....in the end, the ice was so thick, the research had to be abandoned...How about that egg in the face and this research had got funding on the grandest scale. There are too many holes in the climate change topic and even the professors who come talk admit it....I feel socialism and communism would make matters so much worse."

it's absolutely correct to say that the climate changes and has changed without us. that doesn't mean that industrialized humans haven't enormously influenced the rate of change, and we have more evidence than we need to demonstrate that. it's easy to pinpoint fossil fuel as a large contributor, but there are problems with that which you've pointed out; however, looking at the prices of things doesn't mean much because a lot more than fuel costs need to be factored in.
getting off fossil fuel is nice in theory, but solar, wind and biofuel are not really viable alternatives as you've pointed out. hydro, geothermal and nuclear, on the other hand, are more than capable of doing the job, and the tiny risks associated with nuclear are absolutely worth the efficiency of energy output we'd get.

it's also not true that getting off fossil fuel alone will be sufficient, as we have as much if not more influence coming from animal agriculture, and all of that combined with a whole lot of other things which include an horrific quantity of food waste being stored in garbage dumps, ocean acidification and depletion, and a reliance on unrecyclable rare metals for our tech parts.

it's also true that we've had worse climates in history, but there's a fundamental difference causing the concern for the current trend: we weren't around when those animals were trapped way back when, and as adaptable as we are humans beings are not capable of adapting to the coming changes "en masse". a heck of a lot of us will die. mostly in wars over resources like water - which if you recall is what began all the trouble in syria.

the planet will survive whatever comes, and it'll most likely re-equalize at some point in the future. human beings? unless we slow this down dramatically or get off the planet, we're toast. we might survive in pockets of mad-max-like hunter-gatherer tribalism, but all the wonderful things that make us so amazing? we'll lose them, and as far as we know we're the most advanced species this universe has produced.

even if all this was some political conspiracy - which is so outside of the realm of the possibility that it's almost funny - not aiming for sustainability is simply not intelligent behaviour. a big part of evolution is optimization, and since industrial consumerism took hold a century ago we've been devolving into a species of wastefulness, ignorance and isolation.

i don't know what socialism and communism have to do with anything, i'm an anarcho-capitalist and i'm pretty confident that my political ideology has little to do with how i'll fare during civil war and surviving in the wilderness. i'm also fairly sure that all the wonderful tech and knowledge we've been developing ever since we started farming is worth saving. i also don't think there're enough politicians anywhere who have enough of a handle on the situation to turn us around without a fight.

this whole "debate" misses one important thing. we live on a tiny planet, it's the only one we can survive on (until we manage to escape), and there's a fundamental principle that most of us learn early on goes something along the lines of "don't poop on your own step"... or more accurately, "in your own drinking water". we are long overdue in applying this principle to how we treat our environment, none of us are immune from the shit-storm that's coming.

ups, downs, rounds

yesterday:

waking up at 6.30am to send an embarrassed email to company 1's recruiter to correct for an email i'd sent at midnight

falling asleep again and waking up late, mr smear at home with what appeared to be a cold, rushing to eat breakfast and get to the therapist for a first meeting, a quick stop by the tattoo parlour to discuss sonnet 4's alignment, a couple of tough conversations with company 2's recruiter but with a surprisingly positive outcome, heading to work at my mom's coffee shop

getting an important piece of work complete and shipped, but the rest of the afternoon was consumed with collecting details for a background check: you know that moment when you hit "submit" after typing a lot, and you took so long that the website logs you out? that happened to me, after gathering details that took two overseas phone calls to clarify. but good news! when i logged back in my details were restored. 2019 technology for the win!

a big grocery shopping, bringing it home in time to take mr smear to the temple, a really nice friday night service, a good chat with SxS but feeling really sad afterwards for his sister*, a nice dinner with my mom, watching half an episode of peaky blinders then crashing early.

* she's been suffering from a neuro-degenerative disease for years and without a definite diagnosis they can't get her into clinical trials

today:

waking up in the middle of the night again, stretching and then suddenly fainting, sleeping until 9.30am and waking up tired, apparently having caught mr smear's cold

a quiet saturday morning indoors.

a really nice afternoon at shimmy's, managing to stay out of the sun, a shocking bill at the end of it

mr smear's big fall backwards off the couch and a struggle to put ice on the giant lump on the back of his head

another struggle to wake him up after a twenty minute nap and eventually managing to take him for a walk in the gardens, coming home and showering and feeling ready to relax then discovering that we were all out of toilet paper

pure resentment for a fight with gd being shared with mr smear and my mom, going to her place for a cool-off period and after a long phone conversation returning home to give us another try

rough but ready

a rough night, the new tattoo being fine but my legs and lower back killing me

mr smear trying to sleep in but waking up in a good mood, dropping him off at school, stopping at my mom's vida in time for my meeting, sending a delay email to company 2

leaving in a huff

a pleasant chat with company 2's recruiter, working from the gym, helping out a "co-worker", making progress but then being thrown completely when company 1 got back to me with an offer that's better than i asked!

head spinning, making a little more progress but leaving in a daze, arriving home just before gd and mr smear, trying to rest for a bit, heading across the road to the coffee shop to work, a struggle to pick a wine for gd, picking the wrong wine, returning to struggle to pick another one in heavy winds, deciding i wasn't leaving the house again, leaving the house to bring my mom a sweater against the wind, a delicious curry club dinner, showering mr smear and reading from "shakespeare's ovid" (arthur golding's metamorphosis) to which he fell asleep in short order

lots and lots of bureaucracy, including dealing with reddit banning my campaign account

thursday morning 1am

this post begun on thursday morning at 1am as a series of quick notes before crashing twenty minutes later

tuesday:

a pretty solid day's work at the gym,  a sneaky DAI transfer, shopping on the way home, a difficult shower with mr smear (although it improved fairly quickly), and a great game night of dnd

working until midnight

wednesday:

getting up just before the alarm, working through a tough bug, learning that the company i interviewed with on monday can't handle my salary and feeling relieved that i won't have to reject them for company 1

dropping mr smear off at school and getting my fingerprints taken by company2

a quick stop at home, a little work, then packing and heading to the tattoo parlour, silently freaking out when i saw the designs, reworking them until satisfied then finally getting on the table around 12.30, lots of pain with the intensity rising to a dramatic climax (me yelling and struggling to breathe evenly) for the last 10 / 15 / 30 minutes, finally finishing up around 4pm

burning pain, desperately tearing into a sandwich gd had brought, a quick pharmacy run and then posting all about my tattoos while learning about youtube's amazing ability to strip out copyrighted music from a video

the anxiety waiting for company 1's recruiter to call and not realizing i'd been holding my breath until i got the exciting good news, suddenly feeling woozy (shocked and exhausted post-tattoos and good news) and lying down for a bit, then showering mr smear, chatting briefly with my mom and going to the school for a parent-teacher meeting

a positive meeting, being presented with a card and a bottle of champagne by my new co-workers (assuming the offer gets made formally before company 2's expires), heading to their place for drinks and suddenly it was 10pm, rushing home to relieve my mom and finding mr smear still not in bed and being super-cute in negotiating with gd until eventually they both passed out

trying to fix my mom's work device and eventually being forced to throw in the towel

hello monday

i'm beginning to believe that replacing coffee with green tea is helping immensely. i'm also beginning to believe that i'm getting older because my lower back is hinting at me.

yesterday was very full, we had a family lunch at cafe riteve, picked up a birthday present (and an awesome spiderman activity book with figurines for mr smear), arrived only half an hour late at the blue train for the birthday party, generally enjoyed everyone's company, left too late to visit the rabbi, dropped gd off at the hospital (she was having another allergic reaction), got mr smear into the pool for a bit, got frustrated with my mom's email setup again, and i think i went to bed at a reasonable hour.

this morning i woke up around 5am, worked on my podcast for a couple of hours, including recording it (pity the volume didn't pick up properly, i think it's because of the ambient noise that late in the morning), dropping mr smear off at school, hitting the gym to work and spending a good chunk of the morning chatting with shared-workspace co-workers, lunch with gd and a friend, home to nap for twenty minutes, then leaving for a final technical interview

arriving late because an uber driver had accepted my fare with no intention of picking me up whatsoever. when i called the second time, after six minutes of not moving during which i could have walked to where he was, he hurled abuse at me and told me to cancel - which i did, but i was already late.

a very positive interview, returning home, playing with mr smear for a while, at least until he started misbehaving in the garden, showering and eating a delicious dinner and crashing on the couch while mr smear watched adventure time, going to bed early but getting up to do hackerrank problems and a little work, now about to crash and try the early morning approach again.

interviewing chicken hero

monday 14th:

was that just monday? waking up late (i needed the sleep, desperately, and i was dreaming), warning the nanny about using her phone when on the job, making just enough progress to report to my coworkers, working and looking after mr smear (including literally walking him across the road and back to keep him away from the vacuum cleaner), heading to the gym and being too late to secure a room, studying for an hour then rushing home to pick up keys for my mom's and arriving there with three minutes to put the kettle on before my phone screen...

... passing the screen, rushing to pick up emergency groceries and get home in time to take mr smear swimming, shower, and leave him with my mom while gd and i went to the temple for our monthly study group

home, reading the chronicles of narnia until bedtime, working through until 1.30am and going to bed with an almost complete proof of concept

tuesday 15th:

two green teas instead of coffee, home alone with mr smear, struggling to work while he desperately wanted to play: the heartbreak and guilt was crushing
a quick swim in cold windy weather before rushing off to a lunch with some recruiters, feeling awfully tired, sudafed and a great interview for a product that i've wanted to build myself, a quick stop at home then off to the temple for our first committee meeting

mr smear being surprisingly well-behaved during the meeting

home, mom arriving for help with data recovery then disappearing, dr horrible's sing-along blog, a quick bedtime reading, then working straight through

wednesday 16th:

to 1am, taking half an hour to actually getting into bed

a tough wake-up, but green tea instead of coffee again seemed to be helping
morning traffic jam to mr smear's first day at the new school, total chaos as nobody knew what was happening, our concerns over allergy awareness and his stress over not getting a superhero sticker on his locker

working a bit then heading to the tattoo parlour, the artist not feeling well so we postponed the appointment and sat planning for an hour an a half instead, with both of us feeling excited by the end of it

running into our neighbour on the way home, poor dude's been super sick, writing up the morning's experience and working a little more before taking gd to pick up mr smear

a much-needed nap, waking up to "no! we must go without daddy!" followed by "daddy is my best friend" (i was stunned ^_^)

a great swim with mr smear and gd and really playing in the water, a good shower, delicious dinner and hook

working late, finally getting my code running on a demo server

thursday 17th:

struggling to get out of bed, getting a little work done, dropping mr smear off at school, a blank space (work? bureaucracy?), dropping gd off in sea point and settling in at my mom's for a really cool semi-technical interview, an amazing lunch from the sunshine food company, difficult personality assessments, too much renovation noise for the cognitive ability assessment so driving to the gym for that, the confidence-crush of bad time management and then rushing to sort out consent forms for the next day, two coffees later and generally feeling anxious and overwhelmed

home, dinner, mom's visit, running to our friend for interview prep and leaving feeling far more confident, home again in time to say goodnight to mr smear and have a few laughs while gd read him the witches until he passed out, hackerrank...

friday 18th:

... until 1am

a pretty decent morning, but running late with a big rush to get mr smear showered and to school before hunting for parking at the offices i was to interview at. in the middle of the rush mr smear came up to me for a hug and said "i love you, daddy" and that really made my morning!

a full day of interviews, generally engaging and pleasant, finishing the day with a (half a) beer with our friend (and realizing that i've been friends with the guys i met up with at that same bar recently for twenty years, since my first year at university)

a quick stop at gardens centre, picking up one bottle of wine but forgetting the other, getting home planning on taking mr smear to the temple but walking to pick up the forgotten bottle and deciding to just relax for a bit instead.

taking my mom and mr smear to my aunt's for a really nice friday night dinner, mr smear passing out on the couch towards the end and giving me no trouble all the way to putting him into bed at home and going to sleep myself

yesterday:

waking up but needing plenty more rest, starting the day with adventure time and eventually getting out the house around 11am, picking something up in sea point then driving to my mom's coffee shop, chilling there for a bit (mr smear napping on granny for a while), running into a cousin and his girlfriend, and then bumping into our friends and their kid and taking them with us to plant to pick up shwarma and to the eco-village at oude molan for a great afternoon with the kids both riding horses.

on the way back to the car we saw a hen and her chicks by a sewer grate, and our friend realized that some of the chicks had fallen through the grate; i jumped to lift it, only realizing just how heavy it was after i'd already gotten it off - fortunately, while i'm feeling the strain in my lower back i did pick it up with relatively decent form and it could've been a lot worse. it felt really good returning the two lost chicks to their mother.

getting everyone home, showering mr smear, watching stardust, getting mr smear to bed, falling asleep watching titans,

this morning:

jesus, netflix, where did boj and he-man go?!

this post aside, i really do have a lot of work and podcasting to catch up on in addition to family / birthday / community obligations. i'm feeling relatively relaxed, though, this weekend has so far been an enormous relief from the intensity of the past two weeks.

uneasy like sunday morning

yeeeee gawds. gd and i were both totally over today before we even got out of bed. this morning was such a struggle that my main goal was to see if i could get my computer hooked up to my monitor, which it hasn't been for the longest time. by my second-and-a-half cup of coffee i'd finally started getting some paid work done, it was a painful case of slow-and-steady-win-the-race, and eventually took a break to look after mr smear who was physically expressing his frustrations at us having been indoors all miserable day (it was a miserable day outside, too).

on a couple of occasions i threatened him with taking him back to the store and exchanging him for a new one, which i found funny at the time but in retrospect was probably not smart. later, gd and i had a fight over me threatening to give him a hiding for playing with the dangerous hinge-side of a door, in spite of the fact that i'm the flg-bearer of never beating your children: having argued about this and considered it, given the choice i would much rather traumatize him in a "standard" way than have him lose fingers, limbs, or life. i will do what i can to avoid hurting him in any way, but if he's laughing at me while doing something remarkably stupid that he knows he shouldn't be doing i'm not certain how else to approach this.

my mom came over to help out for a little bit, and we had a long discussion about what to do about purchasing the neighbour's apartment (i really hope he makes me an offer that i can afford), and then i spent some time researching my next podcast episode but got so lost in golding's translation of ovid's metamorphoses (and trying to keep track of the stories) that that's going to have to wait until later in the week.

mr smear and i watched toy story 3 over dinner, i resumed podcast prep but have recently realized that i have paid work to complete and a big interview tomorrow afternoon that i haven't begun to prepare for, so i'm calling it a night now and praying i'll be strong enough to get out of bed on time.

Y.A.W.N.

still buggered from the week, even after two pretty decent nights' rest.

friday 11th:

recruitment bureaucracy, taking mr smear to the museum

a failed attempt at a nap

the nanny taking mr smear to our friends while gd and i rearranged the apartment, which now looks pretty cool and my books are on my shelf again! and mr smear's room looks like a kid's room, with his books actually accessible to him. picking them up, bringing them home, taking her to the bus station, doing a grocery run, returning home to pick up mr smear and driving through to the temple.

a pleasant service, mr smear behaving pretty well (either in spite of or because of being tired)

hosting the new rabbi, a decent evening with only a couple of faux pas', driving her home then returning to go straight to bed.

saturday 12th:

finishing the princess bride, heading to the waterfront to sort out gd's cellular contract and failing, grabbing lunch, rushing to go through to the greyton farm animal sanctuary, realizing it was too late and too far, meeting friends at the green point park, meeting them back home after checking out our neighbour's apartment and deciding that we definitely want to buy it if we can get the financing, everybody yawning, eating gd's amazing curry, running around wildly in the company gardens, taking a walk around the block and stopping for a delicious vegan double-thick shake, getting mr smear showered and into bed, watching venom (a lot of fun), being unable to do anything productive and

now:

deciding (right now) to go to bed before 1am in spite of a podcast episode to plan, paid work to complete and a big interview on monday to prepare for

high and mighty

so... i laughed, i almost cried, i finally went back to bed around 4.30am, having finally completed the work i began on monday and feeling pretty good about it. but not about myself, because i was feeling totally wired and just ever-so-slightly hallucinating.

around 6.30am i looked online and learned that combining sudafed and caffeine is a thing. "i won't be doing that again," i told myself, "not after this one last time just before my early morning interviews."

let me tell you, i was WIRED. i don't think it helped my mental acuity much, i felt a bit slower than usual and words i needed kept drifting through my brain and fluttering off again, but overall the interviews felt good and considering the fact that they're planning on contacting my references tomorrow i'm pretty confident that i did alright.

it's funny and a bit sad that a friend at a big global company was the instigator of all this - me realizing that i need to get myself an office job in order to save my sleep / sanity - and that company has been dragging their feet so i might not even make it to the first screening i have with them on monday. i feel bad for my friend because their team needs someone like me, but if the company i sat with today makes me an offer i don't think i'm going to turn them down.

...

i walked home, ate lunch, cleaned up my code and proudly pushed it, juggled emails and invoicing and a bunch of other things, then dropped for a nap which was mostly pretty good. for a nap. mr smear and his nanny came home around 4.30, i showed him pictures of cyclops (greek, including the dude from oh, brother, where art thou) which led on to lego x-men and havok, then slowly made my exhausted way to my mom's coffee shop for a chai and a chat, did a massive grocery shopping, came home to eat dinner and watch half of the princess bride, put mr smear to bed*, got caught up temporarily in william goldman's introduction to the 30th anniversary edition of the princess bride book which i plan on reading to mr smear once we've seen the movie, then got sidelined sorting out something for gd with her ipad and am now, finally, about to go to bed.

* ever since he was really little, i've been putting him to bed with a blessing / statement of family values to him in a little hebrew rhyme i came up with. tonight, for the first time, he tried to say it along with me, and words cannot express how pleased / proud / heart-warmed i am. and that's after a day that began (for him, at least) with us chilling on his bed listening to jefferson airplane and the doors while he figured out what he wanted to do with his morning**.

** oh, that's right, it actually began with his whining "i want granny!" repeatedly until i tried to record it for my mom, at which point he stopped whining and then managed to hurt himself trying to pick his nose.

...

i think i deserve a little bit of a rest.

sudafed and coffee

i forgot, i took sudafed and drank coffee thinking i was going to be up all night.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

heavy hump day

did i really begin the day with an interview? then return home to fix a door handle, work, then take gd shopping for chairs, then fight with an old man who hooted at me to get my attention, then sit down at a coffee shop to work and do a second interview, then pick up mr smear, drop him and gd at home, then return to the furniture store to pay, then take mr smear to the pool for a swim, then shower him before leaving him with my mom to take gd to the hospital, then book her in, then return home to fetch her things, then do them off and say goodnight, then call to get mr smear to pee, then learn that i have two technical interviews too early in the morning, then get a call to pick gd up (bad beds), complete some work before my mom got back, pick up gd, bring her home

and finally work until realizing that it's past 1.30am and oh shit.

heavy before hump day

these last two days have been rough, i've been having trouble focusing and i'm not sure if i've had a cold, or just been suffering from "seasonal" allergies.

monday morning i was not able to be functional until about half an hour before my meeting, which fortunately was enough to have an idea of what i was doing. unfortunately, two "days" of work and this part of the solution has proven so tricky that i'm behind on my target, and it's now past 1am and i have to be up for a morning coffee meeting with a company i probably won't be applying to work for.

i was a mess for most of monday. i worked out pretty hard at the gym, worked a couple of good hours, then suddenly my back began to hurt... i walked to the pharmacy to pick some stuff up and didn't change out of my training shoes, which turned out to be a bad idea because by the time i was done i felt old and brittle, i came home to watch the angry birds movie (it's actually a great movie), walk around the neighbourhood with gd and mr smear, then return home and feel sorry for myself before turning in early.

yesterday:

i've spent a lot of time dealing with recruiters, i've had one interview so far; and although it went well, the longer i've thought about it the less interested i am, because it doesn't seem to be a significant improvement over my present employment.

gd took mr smear to the local baths this morning for an hour or so and he's definitely into swimming. she brought him back earlier than anticipated and left him with me for an hour or two, which threw out the rest of the morning completely. i took him downstairs to play in the garden, we mostly had fun, he lost a tennis ball after throwing it at my head, and then we returned home where i got a little work done before heading to the gym where i got a lot more done. i was so into it that i returned home much later than planned, rushed a shower and dinner, picked up snacks at the grocery store and joined out bi-weekly dnd group for a highly entertaining evening.

game notes:

1. your dungeon has an office, but no toilets. WHERE IS ALL THE POO?!

2. i decided to call the halfling with amnesia "bilbo", he actually turned out to be a thief.

3. i failed a stealth check trying to sneak up on bilbo to see if i could smell anything interesting with my super-keen senses. all i could think of to say when he caught me was that i was trying to get a better look at his rune... which was hanging on his neck in front of him...

4. we had a fight with a bunch of disembodied hands. the puns got out of hand very quickly.

5. we picked up a soul trapped in a lamp, bilbo put it in his backpack. "change voice: penelope". "okay, penelope: how do we get to the bad guy". penelope's only directions were "down", i was hoping for something more in line with "in one hundred feet, turn left"

6. i stabbed into the darkness where i'd last seen the skeleton, heard a death-squeal, and pulled out my spear with the skeleton hanging off the end. and thus did i invent "spear-skeletoning".

almost enough

almost 2am. enough caffeine to be wired, but not enough to be functional. one podcast published, one jira slack integration integrated, one (paid for) problem solved. will i be more functional if i crash now and try to wake up early? will i be able to wake up early?

wall painting

HAHAHAHAHAHAHahahahaha... ah ha... aaaah... haaaa...

i thought i'd get lots of work done today, but everyone came back a lot earlier than anticipated, the two boys took everything out of me and i wasn't even supposed to be dealing with them, i ended up being sidelined with a jira box setup (at least i was finally successful), and at some point i had to just throw in the towel and go and swim with my wife and son.

which was awesome, in particular because mr smear insisted on swimming by himself (with waterwings, of course), and i couldn't be more proud! he was sad when we told him he had to go, he sat on the edge of the pool for a little while meditating on how much he didn't want to leave...

i got most of the work in for my podcast after we got back (thanks to my mom taking gd and mr smear grocery shopping after mr smear and i showered), then watched the rest of hook with mr smear, we were joined by my mom, the movie is still amazing, mr smear went straight to bed afterwards.

my mom left recently after helping me write a very formal email to my landlord, gd is playing games on the ipad (angry birds and billiards, i'm kinda pleased even if she's cursing a lot), and i'm about to drink tea, tidy up the podcast, and try and get some paid work done before going to bed.

my weekend ending early

it's sunday morning, i got a good night's sleep last night but this morning has already gone wild as our friend and her kid arrived; the two boys have redecorated mr smear's bedroom with black marker and i'm already ready for them to get out of the house so that i can get some work done. at least the kids are playing nicely. mostly.

the reason i need to work today is that friday was a complete loss; i stormed out angrily from an entirely unnecessary argument, got caught up in our neighbour's psychic adventure (stepping on a "cue" with a noose in the background just as a truck saying "REGRET nothing" drove past), straight from that conversation into a meeting with my cousin who's back from being a counselor at a summer camp, and from there going to a play-date before heading to the temple to say goodbye to the week.

mr smear fell asleep on the way home, and we woke him before we went to bed to use the toilet and that turned into an hour or so long nightmare...

yesterday started with a visit to the hardware store to learn about lock mechanisms, eat frozen yoghurt and drive off to canal walk to pray at the church of the almighty dollar; we didn't find the chairs we were looking for, but we did end up spending an inordinate amount of money on new toys for mr smear... a delicious lunch (i love seeing mr smear wolf down tofu and veggies) and returning home for a nap, a twilight swim (the water level's risen so mr smear had to stretch to stand, but he really enjoyed swimming and actually wanted me to let go while he was paddling), a hot shower and hook - i had to choose between english audio with all the subtitles, or french / english audio but no subtitles, which seems unnecessary, but at least we have another great "french" film for mr smear.

my mom coming over for a little bit, then putting mr smear to bed and falling asleep way earlier than anticipated.

payday delay and new year's re-evaluation

monday 31st december:

going to bed around 2.30am but only getting there around 4am with mr smear refusing to sleep for an hour and a nightmare half

the great playdate part 2, podcast publishing

swimming with water wings, mr smear going it alone for the first time and once again making the tattoo delay utterly worthwhile

heavy grocery shopping in 2 parts, popping loads of bloons along the way (i'm an addict, and it's become an OCD thing where once or twice a day i bring myself incrementally closer to 100%)

taking mr smear and his bicycle to the company gardens but both of us were exhausted, returning home for dinner, shower, thundercats, and to cry at the end of toy story 3 again (the others don't make me cry, but that ending gets me every time)

bedtime, bloons, road rage videos (i think i need a dashcam), then a less early night than planned

tuesday 1st january:

at least the third day with my neck threatening to spasm (left neck / shoulder)

a better night, waking up to the thundercats, our friend / playdate coming over, taking forever to get going to meet my mom and do some quick picnic shopping*, taking forever to get going to kirstenbosch, eventually arriving, finding a spot, calming down a little before managing the two boys alone in a small stream

* sandal stress on the way out

an important nap, a quick dip in the pool, thundercats followed by dinner and hunter x hunter until bedtime (fantastic teaching opportunity)

bloons until late, going to bed early-ish (11pm)

wednesday 2nd:

a grumpy morning, sitting out some maintenance tasks, still stressing about not being paid, letting in the cleaning lady, napping for twenty minutes, heading to the coffee shop to work and look for freelance jobs, protoplasm joining me and walking home for a beer, some manly venetian blind fixing and an interesting chat about sustainable architecture

gd's first curry (excellent), thundercats, hunter x hunter, an easy shower and bedtime, early to bed ourselves

thursday 3rd:

being woken by the olfactory assault of my wife spaying tabard in a closed bedroom and having to go sleep on the couch

one or two hours of snoozing my alarm, getting a bit of work done over a suspicious avocado toast breakfast, a mr smear meltdown, pinching nerves down to my calves, dropping gd and mr smear off at the castle then heading to work at the gym, an interesting chat with a "recruiter" (not exactly), some difficult hours between working and minor distractions, half an hour on the phone with my bank to (re)discover that their "wire transfer tracking division" can't track wire transfers unless they've cleared already, sending off a passive-aggressive email to our CFO saying that as i'd already borrowed money to pay rent, another couple of days wouldn't make much difference

at least coming up with a vague strategy before leaving around 4pm, taking mr smear down to the pool for a great swim, learning that he can stand by himself in the shallow end (!), gd joining us for a bit, showering, watching coco again, rushing an already sleepy mr smear through tooth brushing and bedtime, bloon destruction, settling in to work and finding the money in my account (hooray!) and sorting out repayments etc.

preparing an intro speech in case my offer to coach high school students in spoken word is accepted

today:

it's just past midnight and i'm going to try to get some work done before going to bed, it's really pathetic how exhausted i've been and i'm distracted and demoralized in general. i watched lisa feldman - you aren't at the mercy of your emotions today and i'm wondering how much control i have over this...

analyze this

it's freaking me out that i still haven't been paid, and i need to borrow money to make rent and i'm not even sure it can be transferred in time.

---

i was definitely sick on thursday and friday, more than allergies and sleep deprivation could explain.

friday 28th:

working from the waterfront while gd handled a playdate, swimming (mr smear freezing afterwards, removing his only protection from the wind then walking really slowly), a pleasant temple experience in the evening and a very serious learning experience when mr smear found himself trapped in the net of the jungle gym, great great indian curry dinner with mom, early bedtime

saturday 29th:

starting my day with half a cup of coffee and heavy grocery shopping, gd taking mr smear to a playdate while i walked the city with our neighbour for a few hours, becoming quite convinced by the end of it that he's fully paranoid delusional / schizophrenic / whatever today's psychobuzzwords are. the poor dude's been really messed with, and not in the way he thinks, to the point where he pulled rubble out of his mouth to prove his story to me and i felt my own sense of reality destabilizing... i don't think he's dangerous, but he's definitely in need of some guidance and i really, really hope that i can be a positive influence. jesus fuck, this dude is smart, lucid when he's lucid, physically solid and good looking, and a mess - it's really hard to reconcile that shit as an outsider.

going to my mom's, mr smear waking up from a five-minute nap on contact with her bed,  some time with my nieces and great-nephew before helping my mom with her furniture, then returning home for dinner, toy story (gd's not happy that it's not canadian french like it says, but it's still french and mr smear's still following along happily), and an early night

sunday 30th:

a midnight wake-up for a wet bed, then waking up in the morning to another one

resuming toy story, pancakes, a long drive to a play-date that was great fun for everyone and went on far longer than expected (the mom had made delicious vegan cake, but none of us had considered actual lunch), mr smear passing out close to home and taking a long nap, me watching a fair amount of batman: mask of the phantom

a lazy afternoon of hunter x hunter (it's awesome watching difficult stuff and having real conversations about death and danger, he's not freaking out and he seems to be following the narrative) and toy story 2, a pleasant but very late bedtime for mr smear, then working on the podcast until

monday 31st:

now, around 2am, not including an important viewing of the first episode of the original thundercats series to verify that my purchase was worthwhile and hunting for the 2011 reboot

almost useless

still coughing, but slightly better in the sinus department. tired. a bit confused - or unfocused. i managed to get some good work done this morning, finally posting the code i've been working on and *pretty* satisfied that it's production ready.

---

then the plumbers arrived, and i couldn't get into anything while they were around. and they were around a long time. i sent the following letter to our landlady:

We've finally managed to get plumbers in to sort out the mixer, there was a problem with the nut used to secure it and it was so badly rusted they needed a hacksaw to get it out; there's no reinstalling it.  I will send you the photos of the newly installed mixer and the invoices a bit later.

Additionally, we asked them to investigate regulating the water temperature (changing bathtub mixers previously didn't improve that), which has forced us to waste an enormous amount of water over the course of the past few months.

While solving that problem, they discovered that the thermostat on the geyser has been broken, and so it hasn't been shutting off when the water's heated which might explain our very high electricity bills. The T&P safety valve was blocked on installation, and between that and the thermostat, it is not only dangerous but has probably done damage to the geyser itself. And as if that's not enough - there's no drip tray installed, so any leak would damage the wardrobe and all the things we're storing there.

It must also be noted that whoever installed the geyser did so really badly, and didn't leave any room for maintenance so replacing the thermostat became a whole story. When your handyman was here however many months ago and needed to look at the geyser, he had to force the covering board that they'd used to seal the geyser in, which is a very strange design decision; I think whoever installed it must have thought that nobody would ever need to access it again and any maintenance - like replacing a thermostat, or the element - now requires draining the entire geyser, pulling it out to do the work, then replacing it. This has been expensive and time consuming, and I suggest that you seriously consider having the geyser re-installed by professionals.

I will present you with today's bill and a quote for a proper fix once I've consulted with the plumber.  Having these kinds of problems, unnecessary expenses and potential losses is not conducive to reasonable enjoyment of the premises.

to which she most elegantly responded:

You leased the flat as per what was offered and as per what was signed for .

All the changes that you keep insisting to do just causes more problems

We spoke of mixers that you wanted to replace at your own cost nothing about plumbing issues that seemed to have arisen as a result of all your changes
The fact that you requested your plumber to investigate will now be for your account as I never gave permission for this .

this idiot is claiming that we are responsible in some way for the poor and unsafe installation of the geyser. either that, or that an undiscovered and serious set of problems with said geyser didn't exist as long as we didn't investigate.

it boggles the mind.

---

taking mr smear to the pool, though the weather wasn't perfect and he didn't want to come in with me. he did enjoy goofing around in the garden and we learned an important lesson about not giving up when we fail (catching little parachute man)

our neighbour bumped into us on our way back inside, and he was in dire need of an ear to hear and some good advice. i hope the latter helped, he seems like a good guy but he's deeply troubled and we don't know if he's dangerous or not (to himself or others). i hope i manage to catch him for a cup of coffee sometime.

kubo and the two strings is WONDERFUL. mr smear was lying between my legs on the couch and he fell asleep during the credits, we had a weird experience trying to wake him up just enough to pee before going to bed when he was fast asleep and i had to keep his head propped up while he was on the bowl... eventually gd managed to wake him enough to get the job done and then he passed straight back out again.

since pushing my work this morning, i've done almost nothing of value (okay, not true exactly, but nothing work related). i'm distracted, and my wife and mother both think i need to go back to working in an office. i'm hesitant, but i'm honestly not sure i disagree with them.

biting the hand that feeds

christmas:

a lot more morning telly than i'd like, new friends coming over for lunch,  me monopolizing the conversation (although it seemed to be appreciated, i'm confused)

finalizing and posting a new page!

another early night in the hopes of getting up early

boxing day:

another morning failing to get up early, still suffering sinus and chest issues

a grumpy, stressful morning trying to get work done and snapping at anyone that interfered (i'm embarrassed), a lovely afternoon with hido and fam (and dirk diggler), coming home in time for dinner, going shopping but everything was closed, watching coco again, showering mr smear and then his new thing of not wanting to get off the toilet when he's done turning into a tantrum and we finally got him into bed around 10pm but not before having to hose him down because he fought us trying to clean him up...

oh, the joys of parenting.

working really hard and making good progress until

today:

about 20 minutes ago, now heading off to bed.

"family"

it makes me sad that people i care about feel that it's okay to make fun of us, directly or indirectly, about our life choices. that they're so deeply entrenched in their beliefs that they feel threatened by our refusal to participate in something that we know is wrong, and will find any angle they can to try and pick apart a case that decades of well-researched evidence has put together.

a long time ago we learned some very important facts, or "uncomfortable truths", and we choose to do what's right for ourselves and our child. it would be nice if we didn't have to be on the receiving end of disrespect and passive-aggressive "teasing", or have people joking about us behind our backs. this is bullying, plain and simple.

it's a difficult call to make, whether to tolerate such unpleasantness or to isolate ourselves from people we otherwise love spending time with.

most people are ready to cater for all sorts of strange things, whether it's extreme interpretations of kashrut, or pretending that santa's coming down south african chimneys, but somehow find that a refusal to eat animals crosses a line and doesn't deserve even the pretense of accommodation or understanding.

any advice or suggestions on how to navigate this would be greatly appreciated.