in my life

Prologue: wrote this post 2 days ago at midnight and never hit post.

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The past few weeks - I'm calling them weeks here, but really this is all about work, so actually in my head now there are no more weeks, there are just Q1 and Q2 (////o\\\\\) - but anyway, the weeks have been this terrible cycle of:

( Work )

Anyway. We will get through this mildly hellish period at work, someday, I hope. MEANWHILE at the same time, work - being an eternal source of wtf hanging on the whim of our CEO - is ALSO taking the entire company (or, as many as can join) to a few days on a resort in the Maldives this weekend. I have very mixed feelings about this for various reasons but at this point I'm trying to just push them all aside and be excited for it. Which like, I *am*, but I am also bummed for all the people who can't or won't come, and for the amount of work I need to get done before and there, and for the amount of work so many people will have to do WHILE there, and also for the so far rainy forecast.

BUT. I am about to head out to get my first Covid test ever as a pre-flight requirement, which does feel like a milestone achieved.

I know I won't be able to get a data package when I'm there and while I'll have wifi, it does mean that I need to download books/fic in advance so I guess I will start scouting for those tomorrow.

A few good things, because when it comes down to it I have nothing but things to be grateful about and this negative mindset I've had recently, especially this week, is not helping anyone:

( Things that are good )

This entire post has been nothing but packing procrastination. Okay. Let's go.

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Epilogue: test was super simple and futuristic and yay negative, am now 2 hours pre-airport and just finished packing, still have a shit ton of work to do and I will navigate through that I guess. In any case: I'm sure it will be an adventure.

I don't know, guys. Time keeps happening all the time. The more things happen, the more I want to share them, the less time there is to do so, the more there is to catch up on, and so the cycle goes.

I spent all of November in New York (*with an amazingly lovely weekend in Philadelphia with merisunshine36 and Elton John! He did not know about us per se but we were there), helping the folks at the local office, in general having a much more relaxed schedule than I did just one month prior. I met friends and watched shows and got to experience the east coast sweeping from fall to winter, leaving the day of the first snowfall.

Back home, I arrived to a new position at work. After TEN YEARS (holy what) of being an account manager/customer success manager at two companies - my work experience is fairly limited - I have FINALLY transitioned to product, and am officially part of the product team. I'm a product manager with no tech experience so I'm learning slowly and giving myself time to adapt, but I have more experience than anyone on the product team about the actual business the company does and how clients use the product, so I have my strengths and am glad for both the chance to learn, and also for not being an account manager anymore, my god. Clients are - clients. *shudders*

December included Hanukkah and a lovely week of having tanndell visit, which was a privilege and a joy, and is highly recommended to anyone who can cajole her into it. January included a company-wide trip to the Judean desert, Masada and the Dead Sea, which included some gorgeous sights I'd never been to - I finally got to see the Mar Saba monastery, founded in the 5th century, and my god, look at it. I dipped into the Dead Sea, which was FREEZING cold, and discovered the most astounding thing: you know how the single moment worse than going into cold water in the winter is coming out of cold water and into the wind? WELL. I was cold in the wind before going in the water, then I was really cold when I got into the actual water, and THEN, when I LEFT the water, I discovered I was NOT COLD AT ALL. A non-scientific explanation, but: the Dead Sea has such high salt/mineral concentration that it essentially feels like your skin is entirely covered by a thin coat of oil, and it was legit protecting me from the wind, like, I felt like I was blocking the wind off like a superpower seal, okay, I don't know. It was pretty amazing.

(**I will quantify my 'cold' assessments by saying the weather outside was 15c/59f, and the water temperature was 20c/68f. That's legitimately cold for getting wet outdoors, right? Like, not just Israeli cold? :|)

This Friday, I took some of the tourists for a Jerusalem tour (I'd looked up a bunch of stuff when I was there with tanndell and marina two weeks prior, so everyone was very impressed with my knowledge bwahaha). Later we went to a photography exhibition which included this photo series on the Israeli mermaid community, which I just love as a prompt and am fascinated by.

This week I turned 35! I went to work, I had choir practice, I made a cake which I think turned out good. I met friends yesterday, got some fic recs, will have dinner with family this week to mark the occasion.

I have finished Witcher, am watching Titans and Schitt's Creek and The Good Place (and FINALLY all my January shows are coming back), finished Tan France and Karamo Brown's audiobooks (yup, yes I did), and sobbed my way through the podcast Finding Fred which examines the rising nostalgia and current relevance of Fred Rogers, and makes you cry doing it.

Oh! And for yuletide, I wrote:

Geoffrey Tennant and the Cursed Play (Gen, G, No Archive Warnings Apply, 1194 words)
Fandom: Slings & Arrows
Characters: Geoffrey, Darren, David Tennant (Geoffrey/Darren...ish)

Summary:Geoffrey has to direct a production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

He is, you can imagine, thrilled.

Not that I wasn't cutting it close (CLOSE) to the deadline, but it was still the earliest I've posted a yuletide fic in years lol, and was a very fun prompt/venting opportunity. Things I need to do: write more.

Happy January! <3

It’s my last night in the US, and it has been quite a trip ♥. My travel journal skills are way on the other side of rusted, so let me bullet point experiences:

1. it’s so strange, the things I forget about America every time I’m gone. The way tipping works. Waiting until the full party arrives to be seated. Locks turning the wrong way around. Portion sizes. The way a New York City street smells. Having anything you could possibly want, right at your fingertips. BERRIES. I love it.

2. Friends/family from home: ( great to meet people but man why have so many of my friends moved to the US )

3. Friends from here: ugh, having friends from round these parts is so amazing and I am forever grateful ♥.

I spent about a week and a half in total stay at newredshoes’s, who is SUCH A JOY to spend time with, I can’t even. Coming home to her at the end of each day and having a cup of ginger tea and hanging out with her and her dog, who is just as sweet as advertised, and talk about anything from fic to theater to work to, oh idk, Sasha Baron Cohen, is highly recommended. I am very much looking forward to the day she can come to Tel Aviv and I can return the favor :) Also, magical things happen when I’m with her: a street festival will just pop up on her neighborhood on the day I arrive, and then we’ll meet Chuck Schumer down the block and she’ll tell him to work on impeachment and then a few days later Things Will Start Happening, and then we’ll meet a friend of hers who used to work in comics and Gerard Way was his intern, and anyway, yes. Great times were had.

On the weekend, I won lottery tickets to Frozen, and spent an incredibly lovely afternoon with celli <3! We met at Grand Central and dipped into the NY Public Library, sat in Bryant Park with some snacks and caught up for a bit, and went to see the show, which I enjoyed far more than I thought I would.

A few days later I went to Macbeth at the Met with seekingferret. I’m still getting over the fact that the singers there don’t use any amplification and it’s all just this magical combination of skill and acoustics. We talked about Worldcon and AO3 (<3) and fic and some talmud and it was great to meet up.

This weekend, I got to spend time with thedeadparrot and merisunshine36, our first reunion since 2013 \\\o/// (That time when we tried to make TDP watch a hockey game and she did not care for it at all, and lo, how times have changed). merisunshine36 and I met at Javits Center and peoplewatched Comic Con peeps and costumes for a while – cosplayers are amazing, and also, I love the experience of seeing superheroes walking amongst regular people, especially those is realistic, full costumes. Like, seeing a good Spiderman cosplayer on the subway can really give you this thrill of what it might feel like to see a superhero IRL! Seeing a good Batman cosplayer really gives you that feeling of how awkward it is to see Batman, especially in the daylight, like, no wonder that dude slinks around in the dark with the ears on that mask.

ANYWAY. The three of us went for lunch, and then just wandered around downtown fairly aimlessly. We saw the Brooklyn Bridge, we strolled through Chelsea Market and ate fruits and berries on the highline, and then we met azephirin for dinner at Union Square. I left a bit early to go to Elsiefest at Central Park – a mistake I made once, and will now never have to repeat again – and the next day I met thedeadparrot in the afternoon and we went to a play, and a last breakfast the following morning after I crashed at her place. I’m so glad I got to meet up with them both and am eternally grateful that we’ve gotten the chance to see each other in the past few years.

Finally – yesterday we made it work and oliviacirce and I grabbed lunch together! It was short and sweet and many recs were exchanged, and I’m really glad we got to make that happen.

(Is this truly the end? I technically have one more afternoon here before leaving for the airport tomorrow evening, so like, if you’re in the area and have time to grab coffee or something, do let me know, I’ll be somewhere in the Midtown/Lincoln Center area for sure.)

4. Theater – how about I just make a separate post about that. How about someone just go ahead and ban me from Broadway. There was A Lot.

5. I should also make a separate rec post of all of the fics I’ve read during this trip (MCU, HP, Schitt’s Creek) because they have all been excellent. I will just say, to all the people I met, sorry for going on about Schitt’s Creek so much, and remember, unless you enjoy the first episode and are there for that kind of humor, just go ahead and skip to season 3 episode 8 and skim the show for all of the David and Patrick scenes, until someone posts a supercut of their scenes on youtube or something, because they are the cutest fucking thing on fucking television and also the fic about them is e x c e l l e n t.

7. Work: the reason I was able to fly out for three whole weeks is that work agreed that I could work from the NY offices, which are conveniently located by Times Sq. I love the US team, they are such a great group of people with seriously fascinating and honestly diverse backstories and also just really sweet people, and I had a great time with them. That said, my god, working for an Israeli company, with Israeli clients, with the Israeli timezone, from New York - *shudders*. If there’s one thing I’ll be glad to leave behind when I go back, it’s this work jetlag and constant feeling of stress, being barraged by emails and text messages at 6AM that need responses ASAP before the day/week are over in Israel. Blah.

8. I landed in the US the morning after our elections, and the whole first week was filled with daily online checkups of ‘do we have a government yet?’. This last week was filled with checkups of whether the US still has a government. Politics are all very all over the place. I’m still not clear on what’s going on back home, tbh. I am looking forward to Friday night news back home to start trying to figure out what the hell is going on; putting it aside for now.

...does it still count as bullet points if it’s a numbered list? Let me add a final bullet point then:

• Note to self: Yuletide nominations end today. DON’T FORGET TO NOMINATE BEFORE YOUR FLIGHT.

As usual, where to start from after so long away - an assortment:

*

My baby cousin (5 years younger than me, now 29) gave birth to a baby boy last Saturday. He's the first - first child, first grandchild, and my grandmother's first great-grandchild, and I can already see how doted on he's going to be for the first year or two of his life; it all lines up with family lore on how much I was doted on, until my cousin came along.

I was abroad with my family when we heard the news, and the first photo of my grandmother holding him in the hospital almost made my cry; she is going on 89, and I am so, so glad she got to meet a great-grandchild in her lifetime.

When the baby was born, the parents decided he didn't vibe with any of the names on their shortlist. About two days later, at the suggestion of the mom's twin sister's boyfriend, they named him Nadav.

Yesterday morning we have a "meet the baby" family gathering. My grandmother shows up with a story.

"So, you know I'm kind of a witch," she opens. I know what she's talking about. She's referring to that one time she lost a ring in the ocean in Turkey, and found it washed up on shore among the pebbles on her last day there. How she and her boyfriend study Yiddish together in the evenings, from a dictionary they found that it turned out she'd gifted to him and his wife 30 years ago, or how it's almost impossible to watch a murder mystery with her because she always points out the plot twists before they happen.

"Well," she says. "Before I left this morning, I wanted to write a card. Now, I've written you all many cards over the years, and I usually keep the drafts in some writing pads, to either copy from - there are a lot of you, and I don't have that many ideas! - or draw inspiration from. I was going to look through them, but for some reason I didn't go there - for some reason, I went to the legal pad in the drawer under the television, which I only use to write technical instructions you give me: how to operate the DVD, how to connect to wifi. So I take the writing pad, and it opens to the middle, and this is what I find."

So she draws out these three yellow pieces of paper with a flourish, and they have her handwriting on them, and she says, "These have to be a few years old because I never use this pad, and I have zero memory at all of writing it" - and starts reading out these three poems, and they are all three written in verse, in flowery language that there is absolutely no way my grandmother wrote herself - my great-grandchild, precious treasure, my soul is bonded to yours like with golden threads - and they are all addressed -- in rhyme --: "To my dearest first great-grandchild, Nadav."

When my grandmother's bf walked in to give her a ride, "I immediately asked her what's wrong, she looked so shocked," he said. (She replied: "We have to go. I'll tell you in the car.")

*

They had a bris for the baby today. I don't think they gave it too much thought; I have friends who struggle hard with the decision, who were so grateful to discover they had girls so they wouldn't have to make the choice of whether to circumcise or not. But my cousin and her husband, despite being secular - enough that they didn't get married in Israel, because they didn't want a nationally sanctioned Orthodox wedding, but rather had a friend perform the ceremony here while the official marriage tool place in Cyprus - despite that, I think in this case they very easily went with society and tradition. They had it at home, with just their parents and a doctor-mohel, and in the photos, I saw that both the father and the grandfather (my uncle) were wearing tallits.

I was so curious where they'd gotten them. Were they their own? Borrowed? Did the mohel bring some spares?

I asked. "Oh, they're old," said my aunt. One was from my cousin's bar mitzvah; the other was from my uncle's bar mitzvah, 47 years ago.

They're not a religious family. I don't know that my uncle's ever worn that tallit since his bar mitzvah. Perhaps for his own wedding, or for his parents' funerals. And now, for his first grandchild's bris.

There's this one photo with the three of them side by side; the tallits draped over the first two, and the baby in an tiny little onesie, that I am fairly sure was only accidentally striped blue and white, and it's way too early to think about 13 years from now but man, 13 years from now, secular or not, that little kid's gonna get one of his own.

*

(There are certain moments when tradition can very, very easily make me cry.)

*

I spent last week in Austria with my dad and sisters. My dad is 61 and leaving/is being retired from his job after 35 years, and while he has immense socio-economic privilege and he's fine in that sense, it's still this strange situation to be in. My dad's always been this constant, and now all of sudden there's this instability there; and unlike me, he's not the type who can do nothing. He gets antsy when purposeless. And it's this weird situation, we're not really celebrating retirement because he's not technically retired - official retiring age is 67, and anyway he needs to do something to occupy his time - so he's kind of... slowly job hunting. 35 years in the same place - I know it's an exception to the rule to stay in one place for such a long time, but when you do, it's such a huge impact on your life, and on our life as his family. When he left, HR told him that there are 19 people in the company in Israel with more seniority... out of 10,000 employees.

His last day on the job was technically last week, spent with us, skiing in the Zillertal Alps and playing cards in the hotel lobby in the evening. So like, overall, good. I hope.

*

I took a week off of work to go on vacation, which was the longest vacation I've had from this job since I joined and the first REAL vacation I've had, where I didn't have to check my email more than twice a day, even once by the end. I'm catching up on all the work missed now but man, man, how great that was. I skied and ate and drank hot chocolate in the snow and played cards and read Captive Prince fic and this 253k Harry/Draco monster of a story, and colleagues took care of my clients while I was gone, and it was great.

I manage accounts at a local (but global-facing) startup, and I am so very much looking forward to not managing accounts someday, to not have to be the point of contact for the company's clients who demand and demand and now now now. Our head of product wants me to transfer to his team, and I would love to get some experience doing that and hopefully discovering that I enjoy it more than account management - I'm sure I will - but my bosses don't want to lose me in the client management department and are not convinced I'm needed in product vs getting someone new with experience. The head of product is really pulling for me, but couldn't convince them at the first go; for now, he's gotten permission to involve me in a few projects and "see how it goes", which basically means if I want to transfer there I'm going to need to prove my value. HOWEVER somehow I'm supposed to do this without reducing any of my current workload, which is somewhere between 100 and 140%?(?? also ONE REASON WHY I WANT TO LEAVE account management). So... we'll see how that goes.

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I have the weirdest basil plant. Some guy was leaving the dorms at the university where a friend lives and was getting rid of all his plants. We went to have a look but most of the plants were either too big or too ugly, and this one basil plant was kind of cute - it was two long stems, maybe 40 centimeters tall, with a few leaves and this dried seeds thing on it.

A few months later, it's somehow kept growing, but it's only growing up. So now you've got the same two stems, just as thin, except now they're 90 centimeters tall (can't stay up on their own, they have to leave against the window) and the tops keep blossoming, which, seriously, what type of basil is this. In the past I've only known them to be short plants that look like this and die in a month, instead of these things that grow old and tall and flowery. I just don't understand what type of weird variety of plant this is.

(I can't cook with it, by the way. It was infested for a while so I sprayed it and now I'm pretty sure it's poison.)

*

I'll use the plant as a last segue: we moved offices a month ago, and the new office building gave every employee a rose. I put mine in a small vase in the living room. It is white. It is currently an experiment of how long will it take for the flower to start shedding petals in slow motion like in Beauty and the Beast, or will the petals simply dry up and never fall. There is a single petal who's been dangling for two weeks now but hasn't fallen yet. I am watching you, petal. I'm watching you.

You know when it's the end of the day and you take a hot shower and compose a post and you know, you really know, that when you get out of the shower you will once again be too tired to even think about opening your laptop and jotting it down?

NO. Fuck it. Post, I told myself in the shower. Don't make it into a thing. Don't start with another lament about never posting (already, I fail). Don't try hard because you'll psyche yourself out of it and also, it's 3:30AM and you need to sleep. Just post something and go to sleep.

After successfully leaving [new job] before 8PM for the last two days, today I left work at 9PM when the power mysteriously went out at the office, took a break for dinner and Supergirl, and proceeded to work from home until 3AM, and I am... not saving the world, okay. There are reasons for these hours, and I've been saying they're temporary, and I'm really hoping for temporary because obviously these kind of hours are something I neither can not want to do in the long run, and I'm just... waiting for temporary to end.

For now, I do love the people I'm working with, but: weeks have been long, and I miss having free time outside of weekends and also vitamin D.

*

In other news:

1. I have tix for Black Panther next week and I am excited.
1b. Steve Rogers is strutting around with exposed wrists in the new Avengers trailer and I am psyched.

2. The Olympics are about to start and I am SUPER psyched. Tell me about people you are rooting for? Due to the NHL being dicks I don't actually know any of the men's Olympic hockey players except like three, and I don't follow figure skating fandom, and I definitely don't know any other participants. So if you have any favs or are rooting for narratives, please share. I will root with you.

3. Apparently I will be in London again in late March - at a conference around the 19-21st, and I'm extending it to stay over the weekend, the 22-24th. If anyone wants to meet up, or take a day trip outside London, or is fine with me crashing over but I will survive either way, do hit me up :-)

THERE. Post. Boom.

The past week has been a combination of highs and lows. I was on 'host' mode for a lot of it - one of my colleagues from the Chinese office, a woman I'd helped recruit and train and befriended while I was there, visited our offices here this week, and I spent a lot of time with her, both in the office and out. I enjoyed it - mostly the parts outside the office - but it was also a lot of time, and whenever I was with her I had to be especially "on" - being social with a foreigner whose English and cultural references aren't totally aligned with mine requires more of an effort - and hanging out extended to the weekend, so I didn't get much time to recharge.

It did give me the opportunity to:
-walk around the streets of Tel Aviv in the middle of the week in DAYTIME for the first time this summer
-take her to see the sunset in cliffs that overlook the ocean; miss the sunset and get lost in the sand dunes in the dark in a FOREST OF SNAILS and survive
-have meals at a few restaurants I've never been to before
-go for a run for the first time in 6 months! I was expecting to be super out of shape, since the last time I ran was in March, but I ended up being able to catch my breath. It was not a long run, but it proved that I could start running again without starting my learning curve again from scratch, which would have been... hard. It's good to know my body's up for starting this again.
-finally go to the beach for the first time this summer, since returning from China
-take a day trip to Jerusalem, in a day that had gorgeous weather and blue skies and a soft breeze and golden lighting. It was a great day for a trip to the Old City, peaceful and soothing like I wasn't expecting.

Other things I did this week included:

Arabic class: I signed up for a beginner's Arabic class! It's very short and super rudimentary, only 17 weeks and just once a week, so if I end up learning anything from it it will be because I do a lot of homework, which... we'll see if I'll manage. But so far I've at least learned some interesting things, and can kind of recognize a few letters (a little), and the teacher is wonderful. I'm taking the class with two friends I've been looking for opportunities to meet more (one of them is someone I took a uni class with once and we've been exchanging facebook likes and nothing else in the seven years since), which is also nice.

Pub quiz. I actually committed to that before I knew how busy this week would end up being, which I ended up regretting; it was nice enough, and I was glad to have at least a few pieces of information I knew that others didn't (Ayn Rand and Robert Pattinson, this time around), but I would have preferred spending the night at home with friends talking about MCU fic.

ADAM LAMBERT AND QUEEN! A few months ago Adam Lambert & Queen announced their tour would be stopping in Israel and I bought a ticket the moment it went on sale. I didn't know who I'd end up going with, just knew I'd go, even if it was alone; the day of the concert I was resigned to just going alone, until I saw on facebook that a fangirl friend who's no longer on LJ and I haven't met in years was tagged on the train on the way to the concert. I immediately texted her and we ended up being together the entire show, so it was an awesome reunion and I was really glad to have gotten the chance to see her.

The concert itself was great. I love Queen, and I love Adam Lambert (which, haha, if you were here in 2009 you PROBABLY KNOW), and they make such a great combination. I remember, reading concert reviews back in the day, that people always said his voice sounded different in person, and it's true - there's something more fierce and rounded and powerful in his voice in live audio; bits that sound more like falsetto in recordings that are very clearly chest voice onstage. And it was so much fun both hearing Queen's songs live, with Brian May and Roger Taylor playing and singing some fantastic solos (including a Brian May solo incorporating Hava Nagila, because it's always nice to suck up to the local crowd), and respectful tributes to Freddie, and great weather out in the part where the concert took place.

It was also awesome seeing how into it the crowd were. Like, there were a lot of people who didn't buy tickets because most people don't know who Adam is and "it's not worth it without Freddie", but the show ended up getting great reviews*, and people raved about how good it was, and the crowd loved it, and as an Adam Lambert hipster ("I knew him when...!") it was really satisfying and pleasing to see him get some local recognition because, you know, yay! It was also amusing that most of the press somehow missed the fact that he was Jewish**, and the crowd went wild whenever he snuck a little "shalom" or "oy vey" into his stage dialogue.

*Israel does not get many international acts performing here, so when the big names do come, you can pretty much bet on the concert reviews being in the front page of the paper the next morning.
**I assume, because when they do figure out an international star is Jewish it's almost guaranteed to be mentioned in every article about them.

The Queen concert definitely goes into the 'good' column.

*

...which basically means I had a pretty good week, except for work, ugh. When I came back from China it was to a different position - one where I have to lead this project but don't work with many people, where I have to be self-motivated in order to get anything done, and where I am not actually... not so much interested in what I'm doing, but more importantly, I'm not entirely sold on its necessity. Which makes it really hard to self-motivate.

I didn't know how working on this project would be, so I kept an open mind and told myself I'd give it a chance. But in the past 2-3 weeks I've really lagged on working on it, keep distracting myself by helping other people on whatever they're doing, which has made me really behind on my own work, and I'm at a place where I'm now dreading having a talk with my boss showing her how little progress I've made. And instead of sitting down and working on it, I just keep procrastinating more, ugh. So: really need to start making some headway on this, and also have a talk with her. Hopefully once I delve in more deeply I'll get more interested in the project - once it's broken down into smaller, more doable tasks instead of this big vague hulking project that I need to help define. If not, I'll have to... do some thinking, I guess.

In any case, work is not the funnest thing right now.

*

General good things include the weather being much cooler than it was in August, the faint beginnings of the fall holidays coming in, yuletide noms, and MCU fic being present and occasionally soul-destroying in my life.

Tonight: now that I have reminded myself running is a thing I can do again, I guess I'll try going out for a run.

It's been a beautifully sunny Friday and wonderfully rainy Saturday and multi-rainbowed today, and I am decently caught up on all of my shows; which softens the blow, a little, for the fact that I got home from work today at 11PM.

Here is a fun thing: a person changing her mind about wanting a position in your department, after you've spent an enormous amount of time and energy training them for the job for the past two months; at time while also training another person for a different job, and while doing your own job, and at times while filling in for your boss who was away. Like - it's good that she left now, because better now than in a few months of doing a bad job I guess, if she didn't care and it wasn't good for her, but man, what a stroke of bad luck for the department.

The reason I stayed late wasn't really anything to do with that, but because I finally sent a massive email I'd beet putting off for 2-3 months, so at least that's a giant load off my shoulders. I mean, at least until tomorrow, when I get in the office and see people's responses, but oh well.

I haven't been reblogging Captive Prince things on tumblr because I... don't want to spoil anyone for anything, though I'm pretty sure anyone who might be spoiled has already read the books. And yet. So - some random Captive Prince links:

Captive Prince kink meme on DW! That is a think that is happening :DDD
Combating the King fanart lol
This manip of Laurent - a lot of people have many ideas about what the characters might look like, and while they don't always hit my tastes, this one struck a chord with me. (I also like this Laurent, though there's something about the expression that feels a little... off.)

I have also been reading some fic, which has been fun; I'm happy that now that the series is over and so many questions are answered, there's also more room for people to write fic with a fuller understanding of the characters.

Also: I have seen someone on tumblr reccing Song of Achilles. Has anyone read it? I had not heard of it, though goodreads has... quite a number of reviews. Any thoughts ("nice" "good" "totally overrated") appreciated.

So today included:

a) a car accident - I'm unhurt, but was the front car in a four car pile up (caused by the last car, who collided with the car in front of him and pushed the other three cars into each other). After an hour in the (oh god HOT) sun talking to the other drivers and the police, I was of course late to work. My car's a little bruised and unfortunately I will be spending tomorrow at the shop, FUN.

b) a meeting with HR to discuss my future in the company - nothing is decided, I've basically asked them to let me know whenever a different position becomes available since so say I'm stagnating is an understatement. It wasn't a bad conversation, nor a good one, but coming in was stressful.

c) spending about 5% of my time on work and 95% helping the new guys and dealing with other people's tasks, because I'm not only the one with the most experience at the moment but nearly the only one with experience, now that a whole bunch of people are abroad.

d) therefore am still at the office now, at 9PM on a Thursday, so that's fun

e) in the outside world that is not me-centric, a man stabbed six people at the Pride Parade in Jerusalem, so my mood is even less improved

Bottom line: today was really, really not a good day.

GOOD THINGS ABOUT TODAY include:

a) I wore a dress to work and enjoyed it a lot
b) the day began with a hockey fic that I was really looking forward to being posted, and it did not disappoint
c) obviously, important to keep in mind, my health
d) also I had a good veggie-burger? My surprising discovery as of very recently is that a lot of veggie burgers are actually really good, esp with mushroom and onions toppings, who knew.

Tonight I will (at some point) get home, finish reading the SGA fic, and do some more London planning. Since last time it was accidentally under a cut, whoops, have yet another reminder that I'll be in London in three weeks and would love to see any of you there!

Well. The potential ceasefire lasted exactly 45 minutes, so that went nowhere fast. As usual there was little affect in Tel Aviv - a single siren Tuesday afternoon. But Tuesday was a long, long day - this entire week has been one of the most stressful weeks I remember having in a really long time. Part of it was The Situation happening in the background, but part of it was just work: me finally gathering the mental energy and courage to handle some things I've let drag on for waaaay too long, and spending the entire week hashing over my mistakes and dealing with them. And most of them are behind me now, thank god, all except for one, but I left work after 9PM twice, and on Tuesday night I just got home so late, crashed in the living room with the lights on after dinner, woke up at midnight and couldn't sleep; at 3AM baby sister texted the family a screenshot of the homepage of a major news site headlined by this photo - "I'm in the front truck", she wrote, while the caption read IDF trucks gather at the Gaza border. AND I'M SUPPOSED TO SLEEP AFTER THAT. Spoiler: I didn't :/

I ended up finally falling asleep after 5AM. It took me forever to drag myself out of bed, and it was ultimately a morning siren that forced me out - didn't go all the way down to the first floor shelter, but technically going down two floors and standing in the stairwell is enough, which is where I ended up meeting some neighbors for the first time in my PJs. BUT it was over soon enough, and I was not late for work, and I continued dealing with the stupid things I had put off for so long. Thankfully, the day ended with meeting minglingcrab and marina, which was like, hello, breath of fresh air, and calm, and fandom and recs.

Today was - well, work was productive but horrible, and at least this week is over. In the evening I met a few friends in Holon, celebrating her completing her degree. Dessert was interrupted by a siren, the first time I've experienced one in public instead of at home/work; it was pretty well organized, all in all, signs pointing to a shelter in the building, everyone cramming in from the complex and the street.

And it was good, it was okay, and now there's been a ground invasion to Gaza.

My facebook feed is seriously gross right now. I just turned off the news, which are just regurgitating the same 30 second clips they have of soldiers getting prepped and the Gaza night skyline glowing with explosions. I really, really hope this will be over soon. It's useless to keep saying that and then do nothing about it, but well. I still do.

There are countless videos and clips about the situation and I'm not sharing any of them, but this video is well-made and chilling and all I have to say right now.



(I'm getting tired of this. Next post I make will be about fandom. It's the Blackhawks annual fan convention, and I have not forgotten. They have a panel called "Blackhawks Baby Boom", okay. There was just an article out titled "Blackhawks' Kane, Toews more than Teammates." You can see why this is a fandom.)

I haven't googled "NYC Events Today" for like 3 whole days and LO AND BEHOLD google is telling me that Panic are playing tonight at the Roseland Ballroom! Is anyone going? I would totally spend the however much they're charging even though I barely know anything from the fourth album and I believe there will be no Spencer Smith ;___; but probably not if I'm alone soooooo if any Bandom peeps from around here are going please let me know :D? :D? :D?

SPEAKING OF WHICH let me tell you about the type of AU that I now believe is totally realistic. You know the fics where Spencer leaves the band and becomes an accountant and leads a normal office life until one day his past comes back to haunt him and all of his coworkers are like "whaaat you were a rock star once!" and that's probably my favorite, albeit not very plausible moment in the fic?

WELL. There is a dude in our office who looks not unlike Spencer Smith (not as hot but come on), and he's this boring quiet desk job guy around Spencer's age, and last week all of a sudden someone pulls up a youtube video of some guy rapping and gasps, "Oh my god, is that you?" and next thing you know the entire office is crowding around in shock as we view this dude's, like, rap/hiphop video from 2008 that has over a quarter of a million views. He had an album! He was not unsuccessful! All of which is to say: sometimes the suspension of disbelief required for harlequin AUs is not required at all. JUST BELIEVE.

...and tell me if you're going to the Panic show tonight!