+2

 two hours later, and i've actually managed to make a lot of progress that i'm really happy with. unfortunately, i now have much less time for sleep.

*sigh*

damned if you do...

phasing

 jesus, it's past 2am and i've spent hours lying in bed, too exhausted to do the things i need to do but unable to stop my mind from racing around a track filled with anxieties about where we are and where we're going and imagining random aspects of reconnecting once we (hopefully) (eventually) get there.

this week has been a mess for me, for two reasons. the first, that covid is the gift that keeps on giving and i've been forced to treat the ongoing sinus infection that started when the main symptoms ended and always seemed to be on the verge of getting better. the treatment - prednisone again, in an attempt to avoid antibiotics - has been effective regarding the sinuses, but has (as it does) completely messed me up. i've been wired and tired and for days, now, under the gun on my personal project, i've been forced to go to bed early but not really sleep.

the second, in two parts:

1. that at work (my paid gig) i've been trapped in an endless code review cycle because a *small* change that i started at the beginning of the week opened a can of worms, and between the conflicting opinions of my coworkers, massively time-consuming tests and annoying shortcomings of shell scripts and python i only managed to close the damn thing yesterday afternoon.

2. that after breaking the back of the changes for my personal project, and setting a delivery date to (today, as in less than twelve hours' time), i subsequently discovered more sharp react edges and my personal time has been consumed by a long slog of steady improvements, each costing much more than expected. and with the meds, instead of working until late at night and then getting some rest i've been restless at night and dragging myself out of bed at 6am each morning to be able to get *some* time in.

so here i am, trying to drop some of my mind-spinning experience into a post before maybe doing a little work before hopefully going back to bed and actually managing to sleep.

recovery

 the most important effort of the past few weeks was successful, mr smear had his birthday party today and it went well: a bunch of his friends and family came, everyone had a good time. he also loved all his birthday presents. definite win.

this past week just flew by, i'm still amazed that i actually got in a forty hour work week (possibly for the first time since i joined the company). that goes a long way to making up for the two covid weeks. my boss called me up mid-week to inform me that i would be switching teams (and to verify that i'm okay with it), and i admit i was a little bit nervous about my new manager (a guy i've been working quite closely with for the last year or so) until we had a chance to chat one-on-one on friday and now i'm feeling a lot more confident about the changes.

mr smear went back to school on thursday, and our cleaning lady came in. the world returned to its regular speed.

 i've been exhausted this week - he says, about to go to bed really late - but in spite of that gd and i have gotten through all but the last episode of season 1 of legion, and aside from one episode that was twice as long as it needed to be it's been exquisite.

i've made enormous progress on my side project, but today (this afternoon, since getting back from the party) was long and extremely frustrating and i only just (like, about half an hour ago) managed to figure out a hack around some of react's rendering behaviour. i'm loading and processing so much data into one page that i have to avoid unnecessary reloads, so i spent a day moving all the logic into its own module and then couldn't get it render even though i have another page and class doing exactly the same thing but working.

anyway, at least it's operational now and i can move on to what i initially thought was going to be the hard part :P

(not to mention that i spent an hour or two wrangling the client's data export during the week, the software they're working with does *everything* non-standard, including exporting to invalid csv, and apparently the vendor is being unhelpful with regards some other data that's not included in the export at all. what these idiots don't understand is that by making it unpleasant for their clients to walk away, they're breaching trust to the point where they'll never want to go back)

mostly post-covid

 this has been an interesting and busy experience. before i begin:

this last week we all got covid, and for a day and a half i was on my own taking care of my son and working and trying not to let the house fall apart while my wife rested. it's not the first time since the lockdowns started that i've freaked out about how insanely tough single parenting must be on a good day, let alone having to babysit/entertain/troubleshoot AND do chores AND get work done AND stress about whether you can keep your job / survive the pandemic along with your loved ones.

last year we were hearing stories post-hard lockdown about people with small children - frightening numbers of them - being forced to return to work before the schools opened and either leaving the kids with neighbours they had no relationship with or locking them in their houses and praying that they'd somehow be okay (physically, not even discussing the psychological trauma).

jesus christ, have we lost our way as a society... i'm no fan of john oliver, but watch the episode of last week tonight on maternity leave and tell me that's not scary.
i really, really hope that all the horrors of this pandemic lead to some more awareness and support. parenting is tough enough for two parents.

fortunately, i didn't have to take off last week, but i did do way less hours than i would have liked. it's tough to self-care under these conditions. there's some reorganization going on at work, but so far it's all feeling positive and i'm getting my work done at a good enough pace. hours-wise, at least this week's off to a good start, and although it's been a bit daunting my side-project progress has been slow and steady (i registered a major design flaw over the weekend and was very relieving when meeting my client today to hear that he's happy with my solution to it).

i lost some weight due to covid, but am slowly putting it back on. we're REALLY excited for thursday, when we can finally send mr smear back to school and start living our lives again. i'm particularly excited about the idea of getting back on my blades again.

over the course of the last few nights my mum's been reading harry potter to mr smear over video chat (we both have copies), and it's been a great experience. which reminds me of sad news, my mum's really struggling to get rid of her coffee shop and cut her losses and it's super frustrating to not be able to help in any substantial way.

...

dance dance revolution has returned to its spot as our only reliable exercise regime. i get the strangest feeling that the designers intended us to wear red/blue 3D glasseses while playing, it's trippy AF. additionally, i bought little planet 3 this weekend. our boy's been stuck at home for weeks and we all could use a little treat... this was a fantastic purchase!

boy, was i wrong. hello, covid.

 so it turns out i *did* have covid. and i've no idea where i managed to pick it up. runny nose aside, i was feeling fine until thursday morning, during which i was decidedly unfocused. then i took a walk with mr smear to drop off the rented video as an excuse to be outside, got back home and felt so utterly lousy i actually had to call in sick.

i proceeded to feel progressively worse, very "man-flu"-ish, and on friday morning i took my meds and slugged a cup of coffee and fast-walked ('cause i was running late) to a covid test so that we could be certain for mr smear's birthday party on sunday.

let me tell you, i was beginning to feel a little better on saturday morning, so when i got a call from the doc that afternoon informing me i'd tested positive i was stunned. frantic retracing of steps (with brain-fog) and reporting my test result to my contacts, followed by lots more time in bed and staying as far away from my family as is reasonable considering we all live in a tiny space together.

i was still feeling uncertain on my feet (dizzy and fatigued) until sunday night, but monday morning came around and three things had changed: 

1. i was feeling pretty good for the first time in days

2. my lower back nerve pain had fired up again for the first time in a long time

3. gd hadn't slept well and was beginning to struggle with her own covid experience

i spent a lot of yesterday working on my personal project, mostly because it was an unpressured thing to do and i'm still supposed to be resting and taking it easy. i eventually managed to put in a couple of paid work hours too, which was satisfying.

today was difficult. gd was in excruciating pain, so it was on me to manage mr smear while trying to take care of small things around the house and get a little work done. some of it was fun! some, not so much. we've been really fortunate to have a community volunteer looking after us, after this morning's report they sent a nurse to look at gd and she was heartbroken, we called the doctor together and i took gd off to the hospital.

while she was being treated there, i took mr smear back home and we did our things until she was ready to be picked up again. just as we were leaving his best friend's mother dropped off a huge bag of gifts, we picked up gd, and after dropping them home i had to go off to the pharmacy for an outside pickup.

the rest of the afternoon / evening has been a juggling act of working, chores, entertaining / exercising with / feeding mr smear, with the usual shower / bedtime routine ending just before 10pm.

lesson of the day: i'm a complete stranger in my own kitchen. i'm also tired and nervous about taking a week of leave that i won't get paid for. the downside to contracting...

thing that has helped the most to maintain sanity over the course of the last few days? alugalug cat 2.0.

dependen(ce|ts)

sudafed... is the real hero. at least whatever's making this happen (probably allergies?) isn't being made worse with a decongestant dependence, i've been off iliadin since the last episode and the symptoms really aren't so bad.

have i really not posted anything in a week? i know there've been a few interesting things happened, but i'm sure i've forgotten more than i've remembered.

mr smear turned six on friday, so for his birthday we got him a covid test and then isolated for 24 hours. as we thought, he didn't have it. i'm still not sure why his doctor was so insistent. fun times.

my mother and i had a conversation about a business opportunity that i'm praying she dives into.

tattoo 21 is the first that's right next to my belly button, pain-wise it was bearable but *damn* it's hard to breathe in a helpful way and i now understand why tattoo artists find the belly so tough to work on - because there's nothing to press against. especially if you're carrying a few extra pounds.

most of my weekend went to weaning off my google reliance, or documenting the process. i'm still updating things today, but i believe i've covered all the critical stuff.

saturday afternoon i took mr smear down to the garage with his bicycle and my blades, and we had a good time. i think it's time to remove the training wheels.

sunday evening mr smear and i went for a promenade walk with sailor, which in retrospect may have been a mistake considering mr smear's chest is still compromised. we did all thoroughly enjoy a ride on the blue train, though.

monday was a public holiday, and i joined the rollerblading group again - it was great fun! i definitely got exercise and had quite a few engaging conversations.

something's happening with one of my coworkers, but we're not quite sure whether he's leaving or being promoted. work has been going pretty well.

last night gd and i watched sof ha'olam smolah, which was not the movie i thought it was going to be (i somehow confused it with ahava colombianit). it's a brilliant movie almost entirely composed of cringe that we both enjoyed.

...

the other day i got a taste of a reddit post going viral. it's exciting, but it's work.

weird coincidence

 a few days ago i was walking somewhere when - and i don't remember any context for this - the following insult popped into my head "if i had a dog with a face like yours, i'd shave its ass and teach it to walk backwards". that's from gleaming the cube, a childhood favourite, with brian kelly (christian slater) insulting detective al lucero (steven bauer) in a particularly - at least for 8 year old me - memorable way.

so last night gd mentions something about a "thrasher film" - i presume she meant to say "slasher" - and i said that that reminded me of thrashin' and gleaming the cube.

a little later, and probably unrelated to her earlier comment, i noticed that she was watching primal fear. i loved primal fear, and after being surprised by the fact that i recognized it from the lawyers' interactions even before the murder scene, i saw pinero and thought "geez, that guy looks so familiar!". i couldn't place him at all, so looked him up on imdb, but there was nothing i would have recognized until... al lucero.

blank

 i'm tired, but no more than usual. gd and i managed to get the first of our vaccinations yesterday, both our injection sites are sore but she's also been thoroughly fatigued.

mr smear started a cough today, we're hoping he'll be well enough to not miss his "birthday circle" at school...

i don't know if i'm doing the intermittent fasting correctly. i'm having no trouble with the not eating part, but i feel like i'm compulsively making up for lost time during my eating window.

every time i look at my bank statements i'm forced to scratch my head and wonder where the heck all our money's going. it just doesn't make any sense.

gd got *all* the teensies in rayman: legends this evening! that game is insane and brilliant and i have a suspicion that we'll be replaying it quite a bit.

back on blades

 it's midnight and i'm exhausted, i just wanted to post this quickly before going to bed:

today i bought a second-hand pair of oxygen inline skates and they're really good, i was on them for three hours and i was amazed at how immediately comfortable i was and how well my knee / legs performed!

the last two days of the work week were quite frustrating, but life in general over the course of the past four days has been good. all the tattoos except the latest one have now been outlined, and the artist and i are both excited about the next one. our first double-pager is done (although there were a few last-minute edits required).

we've been having some very interesting conversations with mr smear lately, he seems to be slowly but surely gaining control of his fears. we've both enjoyed the new masters of the universe series but after seeing skelegod he asked me a question that i simply can't find the answer to: why does skelegod have an H on his chest that looks like he-man's?!

good night.

a very happy hump day

 i went to bed reasonably early last night, i was exhausted... but i barely slept, and i don't even know *why* i was so uncomfortable. then i got up early to make up some hours.

work today was extremely satisfying. i've been working on a devops task for a week that's been dragging (mostly due to unexpectedly having to upgrade dependencies to support it), and this evening i finally merged and everything smoothly turned green. i really, really like it when infrastructure-as-code does what it's supposed to.

additionally, our team lead is on vacation and - as always - something broke. two things, actually, but in addition to us mitigating effectively we also uncovered a couple of ticking time-bombs that need to be defused.

that reminds me! after dropping mr smear off at school this morning it popped into my head that i should add "software entomologist" to my resume.

today's physio session was rough. i really need to get myself a pair of rollerblades.

is it only tuesday?

it's been a very, very, very long week. it's involved some strife, which has been a bit of a learning experience but also kinda confusing. yesterday had some hard moments with some difficult decisions.

on sunday, after mr smear and i watched dumbo together, we went with my mom to boulders to see the penguins, after watching the netflix series penguin town (which is surprisingly dramatic). it was a good day. last night we watched the muppets from 2011 and mr smear loved it as much as we did.

work has been good, pretty gratifying. i've reviewed an incomplete upcoming page for the comics and it's really, really good. i have an idea of what sonnet 20 would look like in tattoo form. we had a hackathon team meeting last night and we have a good strategy for the next couple of weeks. i've made great progress with an aspect of my side project.

the intermittent fasting is going well, i'm generally feeling better although my legs are giving me trouble again for the first time in a while.

mr smear is loving being back at school, which is a huge relief.

gd's document story is once again stalled because of issues with organizing police clearances.

something, something, i forget.

fast and furious

this has been one heck of a week.

work was pretty good, i made a reasonable amount of hours and for the large part enjoyed it. side project progress is slow and steady, and satisfying. all the hackathon winnings have been paid out. it looks like the next two pages of the comics are coming along nicely.

at the beginning of the week we learned some details about the aliyah process that made some of our previous decisions suboptimal, but gd got her fingerprints taken, so we're at least a step closer to her police clearance(s) which we need for what we're praying is the final phase.

mr smear and i have had some rough patches but we've been mostly good, and today was especially good.

i'm proud of him for starting to learn to dive in his swimming lessons, even prouder that he was brave enough to plunge in and swim a little in ice-cold water this afternoon after insisting that he wanted to get in the pool.

the intermittent fasting is going well, although for some reason i've been a bit dehydrated the last day or two. i'm amused by my weight fluctuations and i'm pretty confident i've been eating the same amount of calories overall... at the same time, i'm hoping against hope that it'll help me with my neck, this week in particular i've been having nerve pain in my hands and a couple of days ago i woke up in the middle of the night with an arm in pins and needles :(

we've been big into rayman: legends lately, and gd was convinced that origins is harder even though i've been trying to tell her that we've been getting better. so i tried an origins level this afternoon just to see... and i was absolutely right :P

our cousins are getting divorced (although one of them doesn't quite understand that yet, he's in denial), and we had friday night dinner with her last night. her son has invited me to join a sunday rollerblading group... and i'll be damned if i'm not ready to get back into it. i'll take it easy, of course, and i think it would be really cool to take mr smear and his bike along as well.

mr smear's fears seem to be slowly abating, gd made him a talisman that he wears in a pouch around his neck and it seems to be helping. it still blows my mind that this is the same kid who drew blood caverns at school a couple of weeks ago :P

oh, and thanks, mom: she took mr smear to his swimming lesson yesterday and this morning he explained that she said "fsck" and it was okay :/

alright, i'm tired and it's midnight, good night world.

vaccine news!

i almost forgot! gd and i are booked for our first jabs. 

lions, tiger and bear

 most of saturday was great. i got a haircut, and mr smear and i joined sailor for a good walk along the pipe track. unfortunately, mr smear was very busy acting out and the walk turned a bit sour, the evening did not end on a positive note.

most of sunday was fantastic. i got some side-project work done in the morning, as well as taking a couple of steps forward with the next pages of the graphic novel, then my mom picked us up and we drove out to the drakenstein lion park. it's a beautiful place where they give safe homes to abused lions (and a tiger, and a couple of caracals), and it was amazing being able to be outdoors in a large area with mr smear seeing the animals and feeling safe enough to tool around by himself. their rescue-chimpanzee park was also pretty cool.

we stopped by fairview to pick up coffee, see the goats (that reminds me - mr smear's first comment at the lion sanctuary: "i didn't know goats were real!"), visit our friends (gd made it clear that my godmother was not welcome to photos of our boy), play with the dogs and swap stories of bureaucratic insanity.

everything was great except that something wasn't, and gd and i had a blowout after mr smear went to bed that left us both with an ugly feeling (less angry than confused, communicating can be absurdly hard sometimes).

after watching veritasium's how to slow aging (and a week of feeling fat - the pics of my last tattoo shocked me - and finally slowing down on the processed food/snacks) i was inspired to give intermittent fasting a try. i'm now a day in on 16/8 and aside from realizing that i was doing it wrong (tea and coffee are mostly fine during fasting, but not with even a little bit of the soy milk) i'm finding it entirely manageable. i even got a good day's work in, and a good night's work as well.

 my only concern from today was with a team-lead who had been upset by an argument we had on friday. i feel like the conversation went pretty well, considering, but i really do need to be careful with our discussions...

*sigh*
1am. fine. g'nite already.

waking up slowly

 it's a pleasant saturday morning, i've slept late and am feeling a little bit better than i've been the whole week. a part of it was the lack of sleep, a part of it mourning, a part of it mr smear's constant terror that's only just begun subsiding over the past day or two, a part of it is trying to shift my diet from lots of processed snacks to more whole foods, a part of it is still living in a country that's falling apart at the seams (and the world is starting to take notice) while the israeli and canadian bureaucracies continue to force us through flaming hoops.

i don't like being overweight, i don't like that i'm not making / managing to make time to exercise.

i'm exhausted by it all. depressed? probably. and trying not to let it affect my relationships but it's really hard. there are a few things that have helped me maintain sanity this week. one of them is our hackathon team's interview, one of the guys said something that was truly heartwarming (about how obvious it had been to him that he should join our team), and one of them is rayman: legends driving us completely mental (there's a special place in hell reserved for those evil bastards + i can't believe it was made in 2013).

although i missed a day and a half of work at the beginning of the week, i made great progress on the project i've just been added to (we're trying to break the siloing, and so far the new team feels like we're winning). it's very gratifying to join a project knowing nothing and being able to contribute tangibly from the get-go.

plans for today: enjoy the saturday. i'm gratified that mr smear has picked up opus magnum again of his own volition - even if he is missing the point somewhat (he understands the mechanics, but he's very busy "making levels" for me to do :P)

the passing of a matriarch

my great-aunt passed away this afternoon, just a few weeks shy of her 96th birthday. she hadn't been in great health for the past few years but she enjoyed a reasonable quality of life and she certainly had her wits about her. i'm very glad we went to visit her a few weeks ago and we all got to enjoy each other's company.

... 

we tried watching a babysitter's guide to monster hunting last night, mr smear was so utterly terrified by the creepy hand in the intro sequence that he had to sleep in our bed, and so none of us got much rest (he sleeps horizontally when not in his own bed). he was still scared tonight but we managed to get him back in his room so i'm now writing this in bed and crashing early. 

...

i got very little work done on friday, i was mostly tired and distracted by trying to sort out my budgeting cloud app so i could try to get a handle on where our money's disappearing. i ended up figuring out how to convert my pdf bank statements to csv, so i'm feeling pretty pleased with myself.

yesterday's tattoo, no. 19, was directly on my sternum. it generally hurt less than we expected, certainly less than the previous two, but by the time he got to the shading my nervous system was done and the last (i'm guessing) 20 minutes were really difficult. the tattoo came out beautifully, though, but i'm too tired to post it now.

otherwise, i'm making pleasingly steady progress with my side project and the quality of our family game time is improving (we navigated some insanely challenging/evil rayman: legends levels this evening, one of which may have taken 500 to 1000 tries.

we watched maleficent yesterday (beautiful), and the black cauldron today (surprisingly good) .

we're really struggling with the physical exercise. as in, to get any. this is not good. 

time flies regardless of whether you're having fun

sheesh, talk about getting older faster. this week has been insane, full of distractions and excitement, gratitude and frustration and anxieties. hackathon and side project going forward nicely, work is really good (but lots of context switching, which is not so good), and this evening i read an article telling me that multitasking is damaging my brain and i'm feeling personally attacked. 

i think i need a personal assistant.

also, i took the car in for a service and learned i need to drop R10K on it. this afternoon i got a call to say that there's a broken part (i presume they broke it) and the car's now stuck on their lift for the next three weeks.

good grief. i was feeling like i was bleeding money before that news.

anyway, i've been thoroughly exhausted since wednesday and every evening i've intended to get to bed at a reasonable hour and then...

6 years married

 today was our anniversary! some of it was great, some of it not so much, but regardless we're doing fine in the grand scheme of things. we spent a large chunk of the day playing rayman: legends, we took a symbolic walk around the company gardens, watched astro boy and some of ice age 2, put mr smear to bed and have since been making slow but steady progress with my side project - the front end stuff has taken much longer to get right than i'd hoped, the backend refactor has taken longer than i'd like but not unreasonably long.

having said that, it *is* 1.30am already. good grief.

18 down

some of no. 18 hurt a lot, but it was mostly fine. definitely less difficult than no 17.

today was divided into three chunks: waking up early to practice leyning for the first time in weeks, alternating between playing rayman: legends and sorting out my hackathon "trophies", and getting tattooed for the first time in more than a month.

this evening has been all about freakazoid and takeout, posting about my tattoo and playing steamworld: heist. now i'm trying to decide whether to go straight to bed or to watch something first.

decisions.

...

i've been really, really hungry the past few weeks. i know it was triggered by some of the meds i was on, but it seems to be going strong and i'm still not getting any physical exercise. it's very frustrating that i'm either too busy to exercise, or i don't think about it until the timing is inappropriate...

paydirt

well. let me tell you, i was completely taken by surprise last night when they finally announced the hackathon winners, we had no idea and it's been a joyful scramble since to ensure that we're all in agreement as to the values of our contributions so that i can divvy up the prize money.

it's very nice, very welcome prize money, and we're all super excited by the validation and the prospects of taking this project to the next level ^_^

...

in similar news, my employer engaged a bunch of us in a three-day workshop this week to produce a proof-of-concept, and we were as excited by our technical achievement as we were by the fact that our colleagues and bosses have a newfound appreciation for the value of our projects. and then today we learned that as actively invested as we are in improving the security of our infrastructure and our products, we're already noticeably ahead of our competition. this is obviously good for us, but i do hope they follow our lead...

...

things with mr smear have generally been better, but today was a mixed bag and i think i need to step back again...

...

today was the first day since quitting iliadin that my nose, throat and chest have been in decent shape.

...

i watched jane mcgonigal's ted talk a while back, and it's excellent. but i'm reading her book reality is broken and i'm simply inspired by the relationship between gaming and positive psychology.