any kind of pesek zman

2020! Can you believe it

roga — Wed, 15 Jan 2020 20:35:24 GMT

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

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Dear Yuletide Author - 2019

roga — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 00:02:36 GMT

Dear Yuletide Author,

Hello! We have shared taste about something excellent! I'm excited to meet you :D

The fandoms I request for yuletide are usually just fandoms that I really, really enjoyed, and have almost no fic at all, and I just want more of them. I would have loved to finish these canons and go to AO3 and just read 10-20 more fics in these universes! But alas they are not always there.

In all fandoms I requested, I am fine with any rating/sexual content (or lack of) that works for you.

Specifically, and in no particular order:

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Aristotle Mendoza, Dante Quintana

I was utterly in love with these characters by the end of the book, and would love to read more about what happens to them in the future - especially the faraway future, 5, 10, 15 years down the line. Are they still together? Have their ways parted and now they need to reconnect? Just thinking about potential futures - assuming that, at the very end, they would be together, even if the fic is in no way fluffy - makes me happy.

Band Sinister - K. J. Charles
Guy Frisby, Philip Rookwood

Uh just MORE FIC IN THIS UNIVERSE please *__* Explicit would be delightful but certainly not mandatory lol. I only requested Guy and Philip because I didn't want to limit options too much, but I would definitely love to read about first time for the two of them in an OT3 with either Corvin or John, or an OT4.

Gifted (Movie 2017)
Frank Adler, Bonnie Stevenson

Any kind of scene of what happens next: Frank and Bonnie, Frank and Mary, Frank and Mary and Bonnie, Frank and Roberta... I loved this movie and would love to know what happens in the future, either short or long term.

Bodyguard (TV 2018)
David Budd, Deepak Sharma

Okay LISTEN. Bodyguard has issues, but it also has Richard Madden's clenched, chiseled jawline as basically my favorite TV character of 2019. I loved the way he played David, any by the time I finished the show I went to AO3 and was like 'yay now I get to read all the stories where you are sad and broken and Sharma, with his competence and emotional intelligence and kindness (ugh I loved him a lot) helps put you back together!', and lo, there were none. So, whether gen or slash, what I want more than anything is something that takes place after the show, about their developing friendship, or their developing romance, and of the road to healing <3 <3 <3

Rocketman (2019) RPF
Richard Madden (Rocketman 2019 RPF), Taron Egerton (Rocketman 2019 RPF)

So Rocketman gave me a LOT of feelings about Elton John that I could not project on any of the ships I saw in the movie itself and hope for a happy ending, so I was like, well, I guess if I want happy fic for this, let's just switch tracks to RPF, and thus I discovered they had really fucking cute chemistry IRL too. Basically anything you feel like writing - I like press tour stuff, I like sexuality exploration stuff (especially if one of them is exploring it for the first time and the other is more experienced), I like trying stuff around filing the sex scenes in the movie - maybe practice before, or stuff that happened after - basically I just want more stories about these two dudes who are just so damn cute together.

*

I will finish with the usual:

In the end, everything I wrote are just suggestions, and I am a very flexible reader who likes a WHOLE LOT OF STUFF so really, I'm just glad to be getting something in any of these fandoms, and I hope you enjoy the process of writing and participating. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to approach me via anonymous comment/the mods. Thank you and have a wonderful yuletide ♥

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okay so this is confusing

roga — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 01:05:56 GMT

I've known about this for maybe a week and a half and am only getting around to posting now, but - apparently I'm going to New York again?

Essentially - got back from New York 2 weeks ago. Slept on my bed instead of a couch; ate my food, did my routine, went to the local SFF con and to work and visited friends over the holidays; and when I got back from the holiday, was asked, by work this time, to go back to New York to help out the local office, after someone left.

So a few days they booked me a flight, and I guess I'm flying out again tomorrow /o\ I am happy to get a chance to visit again, and not pay for [most things] this time, but it's also all just kind of disorienting. I haven't had time for much preparation; it's 3AM and I've spent the evening looking for accommodation (which grrrr work should have just asked a travel agent to do), emailed options to my boss, and now I'm about to finish a packing list so I can... start... packing. Tomorrow morning I go to work till the afternoon, then head out to the airport. Hopefully by the time I land, an apartment rental of some kind will have been booked!

I'm not kidding about disoriented; I only discovered like 5 minutes ago that my flight is United and not El Al like I'd thought. I am... tired and confused. I'm also trying to figure out whether to take both my personal computer and my work computer, or to just go with the work one and log into all my fandom accounts from there, blah. A month - a yuletide month - is something I'd be more comfortable with my own laptop with, but... we'll see.

(Speaking of which: if you know of any yuletide writing groups in New York, please let me know about them! Who known MAYBE I'll actually write my assignment IN ADVANCE like an organized person!)

Okay - off to packing. For real now. Yup. Realsies.

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just me and the GWB [vaguely related song lyrics look I like New York okay]

roga — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 03:37:48 GMT

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: my friend A and her husband have the cutest, friendliest two-year-old; it was pretty darn fun to be woken by him at 6AM when I was staying on their couch in Jersey City. Don’t know how parents do it on a daily basis, but definitely fun as a guest, and I’m glad I could pay back their hospitality by at least an evening of babysitting.

Another friend from home recently moved to the Upper East Side, with an equally adorable 4 year old (+ a baby and a dog). She’s fairly overwhelmed, still, but it was nice getting to see her, and accidentally telling her son about Van Gogh’s ear while reading him a kid’s book about art (whoops), and getting excellent home made french toast.

I visited a third friend from home in Atlanta for a week, to spend time with her and meet her new – here’s our theme – baby, three weeks old. My friend had him on her own, and she’s just being amazing, and it’s just so clear how in love with him she is. He support system is essentially her mom, and right now that’s not going so well, and I really hope they manage to work things out in a good way soon, because she is going to need the help. But: she is healthy, baby is healthy. That’s a good enough start to the year for now. We mostly stayed inside all week, with a brief excursion to a corn maze & pumpkin patch (I carved pumpkins for the first time in my life and have the cuts to prove it \o/), Rosh Hashana dinner, and city hall, to apply for a passport for the brand new American citizen. My friend was deported to China from the US a few years ago; her mission to get her baby as many documents proving he belongs is very, very deliberate.

I met a fourth friend from home who’s visiting the US for the holidays; we had dinner and a play, followed by Marie’s Crisis for some musical theater singalongs; a most excellent evening.

Fifth meeting was with family: my uncle’s a commercial airline pilot, and apparently he had a flight to New York scheduled, and my aunt decided to join him about 2 hours before he left for the airport, which is, you know, something she can do so long as there’s room on the plane. We met up for dinner at Carmine’s (an institutions they were shocked I didn’t know, but whenever Israeli airline staff tell me about a “famous” place in NY, I can never tell if it’s legit well known, or just famous amongst the local airline staff community!) and walked around a bit, which was really nice.

And more family – my dad’s sister flies to New York every October, so I’m staying with her for my last two nights here. She’s staying in a beautiful apartment not far from Lincoln Center, with a 34th floor view that all of a sudden reminds you that oh hey, wait – Manhattan is an island, after all.

And today: it’s Yom Kippur so I had no work, and while there’s something ingrained from years in Israel that makes driving and doing things on Yom Kippur feel just wrong, I took a train up to Connecticut to try and search for foliage with a colleague from back home, who’s there for the holidays. It rained all day, so we had to adapt and went to the Peabody Museum in New Haven and then the Mark Twain house in Hartford, which was really cool; his house was ridiculously pretty, tbh. You can tell that leaves are on the cusp of turning – there are beginnings of yellows and oranges – but it’s not real foliage season yet, and I hope to someday be in the US at just the right timing to finally be able to see it.

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.

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Broadway rhythm it's got me everybody sing

roga — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 19:29:29 GMT

Hello! So I have a terrible habit of just signing up for all the Broadway lotteries whenever I'm in New York, and I just won the lottery for $40 tickets to Beautiful tonight and I cannot, cannot help myself and got them /o\

Anyway it's at 7pm tonight at the Stephen Sondheim theater and I am but one person with 2 tickets. Does anyone perchance want to join? The show is supposed to be cute AND we could hang out...Ping me if you're into it :)

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roga — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 19:53:03 GMT

At the airport, waiting to board a flight to New York and sleep for hopefully 11 hours straight, I am so tired.

Election polls so far are bizarre and inconclusive. I'm exercising more caution than cautious optimism, so I guess I'll just find out what happened when I land in the US.

It's weird and interesting, standing in line for the baggage drop off with so many strangers who are all sharing that friendly excitement and inconvenience of pre-holidays airport lines, who all voted so... viciously, almost, against each other today.

(Yes, theoretically the vote is for something, not against someone, but it sure doesn't feel that way sometimes.)

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roga — Sat, 10 Aug 2019 15:37:57 GMT

Okay hello again. In Hebrew, going endlessly on and on is called digging, so let me try and catch up on myself here without digging too much:

Fandom: juggling between reading fics, watching TV, some movies, and - gasp - even some books or occasionally an audiobook. Would really love recommendations for audiobooks you enjoyed. Fic-wise: kind of still juggling Captain America/Endgame fic and - still, my god - Harry/Draco fic, and also Schitt's Creek fic because I will at this point read anything lettered writes and that show is at least 30% fucking adorable (even if you don't watch the show - watch this clip of David and Patrick saying I love you for the first time, yes it's a spoiler but my god one should infuse every day of one's life with a dose of sweetness like this.

Since it's still summer, I'll take a moment to recommend Linda Holmes's debut novel Evvie Drake Starts Over, which is a small-town Maine romance about a widow who rents a room to a washed up pro-baseball player. It has romance and friendship and is both a good book and a good audiobook, if you are in the mood to read a really well done Hallmark movie equivalent, and I hope we get something come of it come yuletide.

Another fun romcom I recently watched is the Israeli show Beauty and the Baker, which is apparently getting an American version this fall, but you can also find the original on Amazon Prime - down-to-earth baker from Bat Yam and Bar Refaeli-style international model meet, love shenanigans and drama happen. There are two seasons which I binged in about a week.

Work: When I joined this start-up in December 2017 we were 10 people; we're now around 60, and it's been a year and a half of growing pains essentially, and on my end, way too much work and stress. But growth also means I'm no longer directly under our CEO but have a new manager who is really great, and push to get a replacement for me so I can stop managing accounts anymore (thank god) and move to the product team in a few months, which is what I wanted. I've worked with but never been part of the product team, and while I'm a little intimidated - they all come from technical backgrounds and come with experience - I do know I'm bringing value to the table, and I know the head of product has faith in me, which is encouraging. Ultimately, I'm hoping this will give me experience in a new field which I'll hopefully like and be able to grow in, and am also hoping will lead to a healthier work/life balance. So - scared/excited/hopeful. Theoretically, the transition will happen in January. I'll be sad to leave the account management team I'm in now, because on a social level they are wonderful people and fun to work with (and also mostly female, while product - not so much), but hopefully this will lead to good things.

Meanwhile, two girls I trained a year ago have just been promoted to team leaders, and they are so great and so deserving and I'm happy for them - while at the same time feeling this annoying little resentment at how they're getting this recognition and (WELL-DESERVED) applause now, and I'm not. Which is SO DUMB because I have specifically been telling my bosses for a year that I don't want to be a team leader (because I don't!) and want to make a lateral move to product instead, so there is literally nothing for me to be resentful about. I just... want the move to happen and for people to know about it already. (It's still ~hush hush~ for ~reasons~).

Travel: Two exciting trips on the horizon:

1. Aug 20-25th - I'm going to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival again! This time I'll be traveling with marina and another mutual friend. This will be our first trip abroad together, so you know, rooting for success. I am looking forward to some green, some rain, some theater and bagpipes and cobblestones. (I will also toss out there - if you happen to be in the area, do let me know; we also have a spare bed in our airbnb at the moment so it is possible that Things Can Be Arranged.)

2. Sept 18-Oct 10th - NYC/Atlanta! Have I mentioned my new boss is lovely and she not only did not blink when I told her I wanted to fly out during the holidays, she told me "Just let me know the dates and it will happen"? So I bought a flight out for the night of the elections; vote in the morning, will discover the results at the airport. (Yes, in case you haven't heard, we are having elections again, because this country is dumb and elected the Likkud again and Bibi couldn't form a coalition so back to the ballots it is).

Anyway - I plan on working from New York from the 18th till the 26th, taking a vacation to Atlanta from the 26th to October 3rd, and flying back to NYC until the 10th, working from the office there with probably another day of vacation. Would love to meet any friends I can while there, as usual ♥

Life: I'm still going to choir, and have started taking voice lessons as well, to learn how to sing better. Every once in a while I'll go to a play or to improv or to trivia or to an escape room with sisters or friends. I started running again for a while, then stopped, and am trying to start again. I started going to a weekly women's soccer practice, which has been really fun, though now on break for the summer. I just finished a month-long watercolor painting course, which was, more than anything, incredibly soothing. I went on two dates, which were okay but nothing special, and swiped a bunch on tinder but not done anything beyond swiping. I don't feel lonely and have very little energy or motivation to make the effort of working towards having a relationship; at the same time, I'm 34 and should start thinking seriously about whether I want to have biological kids and whether I want to do anything about it, because if I end up not, I would prefer it to at least be my choice and not just something I never got around to (which would be very easy for me; I am very talented at never getting around to things).

*

A few weeks ago, I took a day trip to a few monasteries in the Judean desert. This was not long after Good Omens came out, which naturally made every story rife with Crowly or Aziraphale cameos. I will share just 3 photos:

St. George Monastery in Wadi Qelt. The current monastery is from the 19th century; the original was destroyed by the Persians in 614. The only part remaining from the original is a small shrine that holds relics of the monks who were massacred in 614, which were discovered 50 years ago. According to the abbot, the remains had never been found, until one day 50 years ago the monks started seeing a path of snails, all going in the same direction. The monks followed the snails, until they arrived at a small cave, where they discovered the bones of those ancient monks. A chapel was built in the place, with snails inscribed on the door, a monument to The Miracle of the Snails. I think we can all figure out who orchestrated that particular miracle.

Nabi Musa - the tomb of Moses, according to Muslim tradition. In Jewish tradition Moses never makes it across the Jordan river, but according to this story, he perhaps wanted to see the holy land after all so he sneaked across the river at night, and got to the bottom of a red hill, where he happened to encounter a man digging a grave. He offered to help him dig, and the man said okay, and when they were done, Moses lay in the grave to see how it feels, at which point he realized it was his time to die, and the man, who was the Angel of Death, took his soul away.

Deir Hajla/Monastery of Saint Gerasimos by the Dead Sea, or: ~Aziraphale and Crowley on a date~

Have a good week, all <3

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roga — Sat, 10 Aug 2019 07:34:45 GMT

[skips over the agony of realizing my last post was in March]

It is hard to find words to describe just how lovely the weather has been this summer. It could be that I spend most of the day inside in the a/c, or the fact that I live not far from the sea and humidity aside, breezes are a thing, or that I work in a tall building which graces us with wind-tunnels. But - given that it's been July, given that it is August, and I'm sitting outside on a couch on my parents lawn, in cool breezy shade, and everything is green and blue and I can wear shorts and be barefoot and feel the wind in my toes - I am very grateful for the weather.

Today's plans: buy housewarming plant for my cousin. Visit cousin and her baby and her pilates studio and see what this pilates reformer things are for the first time. Potentially join my mom and sister to visit my grandmother and her bf. Escape room at 11PM with my sisters. Basically I barely speak to anyone in my family during the week and then pack up all of the family stuff to the weekend.

...I had hoped to actually make a meaningful post but I actually have to leave now, so I will... hopefully come back and make an actual post later. HI.

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roga — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 22:46:28 GMT

It was very very much A Weekend and I am starting the week the week fairly exhausted so that's great. But:

Watched Captain Marvel on Thursday evening and enjoyed it - was a fun movie, above average in my own personal MCU ranking but not way up top. When I got home I was like, that was nice, but I remember Brie Larson can really really really pack an emotional punch when she wants to, let's rewatch the trailer for Room, which ended in me staying up until 3AM to rewatch the entirety of the movie Room, which remains amazing.

On Friday I drove up to Haifa to meet a friend who is visiting from the US for a week. 70% of conversation was about babies, because this is where my Haifa friends are at, pregnant or with newborns. We met up on the Carmel, then drove down for a stroll on the beach - she lives in Boulder now, which is both inland and was apparently -16 degrees last week or something, and misses the Haifa beach a lot. It was lovely. The water was a beautiful shade of blue that day, sun shimmering on small tide pools between the rocks, and the rocks were all covered in algae that looked like a bright green muppet had exploded all over them but really you just wanted to lean down and pet the moss, it was so soft.

After, we met another friend at a cafe, where I had cauliflower patties and the most delicious orange cider; I love apple cider, but man, orange cider is a serious level up.

In the evening I went to friend #2's apt to hang out for a bit; her oldest kid knows me well enough that he remembers me now, and I think he likes me. There were strawberries and whipped cream, which were basically my pre-dinner snack, because for a late dinner, I met friend #3 and her husband at an Italian restaurant. It was great seeing them; I used to see them a lot in the center, but they had a (very) premature baby two months ago and spend every day at the hospital as he grows gram by gram; hopefully he'll be discharged in a few weeks. They are tired but in good spirits and seem to support each other very much, which is all I could hope for.

I slept at friend #1's airbnb; it was really good to see her. We hadn't seen each other since August, which is longer than at any time since I've known her, but in a sense it was also the most time we've gotten to spend together recently, her visiting sans-family. In the morning, we went down the mountain to share coffee and breakfast in what is apparently the hipster neighborhood of Haifa; we found a small cafe/bar with low ceilings and bright sunlight, with walls painted desert and turquoise and soft jazz playing and dogs waiting outside.

I was going to drive back south by the coast, but I'd heard there were flowers - and here is the important part - right by the parking lot of this park up on the mountain. Well, thought I. As long as it's, I mean, right there by the parking lot, might as well go up and check. So I drove up and parked and god, guys, the country is beautiful right now. Everything was green, and there were wildflowers everywhere - red, pink, orange, yellow, purple, white, the mountain overflowing with them, and grass and trees all around, and perfect cool-warm weather, and the view of the bay and the ocean below. After walking around for a bit, I found myself a tree and sat down with a notebook and brainstormed Purimgifts until I settled on an idea.

Drove back down after that, stopping at McD's for lunch because it's the only thing with a drivethru. The flowers from earlier had made me want to get some new plants, so I stopped by the nursery at Ramat Hasharon to buy some, and since my grandmother lives nearby, I checked if she was free and she was, so I dropped by for a quick coffee and hi. Apparently her boyfriend had just been hospitalized, which is DDD: for me but she didn't seem worried. Ironically, my friends' two month old (but really still minus one month old) baby and my grandmother's 93 year old boyfriend are now on the same medication and have the same side effects.

I got home around 5:30 PM, just in time to pot my new plants, burn a CD of In The Heights for the road, and leave to pick up sister and friends on our way to Jerusalem, where we had tickets for a local community theater production of In The Heights. Drove up to Jerusalem, got there in the nick of time, just managing to glimpse how pretty the walls are in between the traffic. I had such a fun time watching the show - both getting to learn the plot and story, but also being able to participate in that energy of live, non-profit community theather. There's something so raw and joyful there; it was closing night after a 6-show run, and I am very happy there was a large enough group of talented enough people to pull this off in English, in addition to everything.

Got home after 1PM, and it was a wonderful weekend, truly, but also I feel like I need another weekend after that. Work, alas, does not work that way; today was rough. But now I will go to sleep, and hope I will not wake up to online conversations that will make me want to tear my hair out about Gal Gadot's politics.

Flowers!

Sea view from mountain

Fluffy muppet monster remains on the beach. SO SOFT

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the first post of 2019 had to start somewhere

roga — Sun, 03 Mar 2019 22:57:22 GMT

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.

*

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.

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Dear Yuletide Author take 2

roga — Tue, 25 Dec 2018 08:23:03 GMT

Hi! Happy holidays if you celebrate! This is to say that I obviously I suck and never actually followed up on making an official letter, so hopefully the notes from my requests were enough and you don't hate me completely, and also to say that if I am to be a successfully productive member of society today, I will not read my gift until I come back from work tonight, so take that into mental consideration... and have a lovely awesome day <3

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roga — Sat, 20 Oct 2018 22:08:20 GMT

Okay I HAVE to sign up for yuletide tonight but also gah I am TIRED and want sleep and to be rested for the upcoming week! I've just spent 2 hours reviewing the fandom lists and narrowing it down to 29 that I can either request or offer, but now it's time to actually nominate and I have to... do that thing where you choose. And I can't even trust myself to finish this tonight really, because this week I've fallen asleep in the middle of working on my computer every single day, then women up and caught up on work at like 1AM-3AM, and then went back to sleep. It was not fun.

ANYWAY. Sign ups tonight - or tomorrow morning - and then sleep.

Until then I will say 3 things:

1. I just had the best french toast I've ever had in my life. I understand now what it means to say something's melted in your mouth because this melted in my mouth, it was so delicious, and if you're ever in Tel Aviv and are not lactose or gluten intolerant then please, please let me know and I'll take you there. Tragically they only serve this dish on Friday mornings BUT apparently they sometimes agree to make it on other days when there's no rush, hence tonight.

2. Tara Westover's memoir Educated is a fascinating read about her growing up with in survivalist Mormon family (off the grid, no birth certificates, no hospitals, no school) and ended up leaving and getting an education and a PhD from Cambridge - I heard it as an audiobook (which you can apparently borrow from libraries (!!!!!) whaaat), which is read by Julia Whelan whom I now want to subscribe to because she's so good. Can she please record all the books.

3. If all goes well, I shall be in NYC from around November 1st to around November 15th! I'll be working during the week, and have at least one full weekend. Will try to take 1-2 other days off, too. Really hoping there's some foliage left by the time I get there. Looking forward to boots weather. As usual, would love to meet who I can <3

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Dear Yuletide Author

roga — Sat, 20 Oct 2018 20:44:59 GMT

TBD

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roga — Fri, 21 Sep 2018 06:50:53 GMT

Last night I saw a yuletide noms reminder and realized I'd completely forgotten about it and thought thank god for the reminder post, I have 12 hours left, I'll nominate as soon as I'm done with this movie

which I fell asleep at the end of

fast forward to this morning when I woke up sans alarm clock and after a while of lazing around in bed suddenly jolted with the realization that I STILL HAVEN'T NOMINATED.

There are still 2 hours left, thank god, so I'll be doing that now, and once done I'm sure I'll think of a million things I wanted to nominate instead but oh welllllll

Which is to say: this is your reminder that nominations close in countdown.

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Yuletide prep, lest I forget

roga — Wed, 04 Jul 2018 09:36:43 GMT

Just putting this here for the record, so I don't forget come yuletide - fandoms to nominate/request/offer:

-A Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue
-When Heroes Fly (Israeli TV show)
-Broadway RPF (specifically, Andrew fucking Garfield in Angels)

....until I remember more.

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New York

roga — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 22:07:45 GMT

I am the very actual worst at updating but I am in New York for a few days, staying by Columbus Circle. Anyone want to grab breakfast tomorrow somewhere from which I could feasibly get to 52nd street at 12:30?

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roga — Sat, 28 Apr 2018 12:31:39 GMT

So I will probably talk about Avengers in a different post - but I have watched it and can thankfully now return to me regularly scheduled internet checkups.

What I want to post about, though, is last night: after the movie, I went to my parents', who were hosting a family event. My dad's cousin was captured on the second day of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and was held as a POW in Syria for eight months, until he and the other men were released. This evening, my dad's cousins and anyone in the family who were interested were invited to hear his story.

It was my first time hearing the story - don't think I've met this dude more than once - and as these types of stories are, it was fascinating. Some bullet points from his story and the discussion that followed:

*After a week, he was sent to solitary by, I'm not kidding, mistake, where he ended up staying for 78 days. His guards couldn't find him so just figured he'd escaped. The guards at solitude knew him as an extra body in the solitude cells so might as well feed him too.

*After long in solitary he was so starved for touch that getting slapped by his captors offered a sort of relief.

*Telling himself he needs to recharge his batteries every three months. "I don't even know what that means," he said, "but when three months were over, I told myself that okay, I'm recharging, I'm ready for 3 more months now."

*Wanting to release pressure by crying but not wanting to cry all the time; he told himself he could cry after 100 days, and on the 100th day indeed spent the night crying in his sleep.

*Lots of different coping mechanisms, among them having previously watched movies that included captivity (The Bridge on the River Kwai, Rambo, I don't remember what else. "If those manly heroes could struggle and moan with pain, it was okay to do it too."

*the two hardest things about beatings is not knowing where or when the next blow is going to come from, and hearing your friends shout in pain as it from the next room

*every time someone returned from an interrogation/abuse session, beaten and bruised, the others would help take care of his wounds; this cycle in a way served as mental preparation for your own upcoming sessions.

*you find ways to reduce the pain of beatings: if it's your hands, move them slightly downwards as they're hit to absorb the blow. If it's your back, cry out less when you're hit on your upper back and it hurts; cry louder when you're hit in the lower back where it dips and your shirt absorbs some of the blow. It hurts less, but the captor thinks it hurts more and hits you more there, making him happy and you happy.

*when he was in solitary he was completely alone for about 35 days. After that he discovered he could communicate with the neighboring cells by knocking on the wall, and from that point he wasn't alone anymore. They didn't know morse, but intuitively just knocked out the length of the letters of the alphabet (* for aleph, ** for bet, *** for gimel, etc). Of course that meant that the last letter of the alphabet took 22 knocks, which took forever, so at some point they switched it so that every tenth letter got a double knock (** for the tenth letter, ** * for the 11th letter, etc). "How do you communicate making the switch from one system to the other?" we asked. "Well, you just sit there for two hours knocking: f-r-o-m n-o-w o-n e-v-e-r-y t-e-n-t-h l-e-t-t-e-r etc etc etc."

*After 40 days in Syria, he got his first shower. (When they were released, he saw a woman for the first time after 8 months.)

*food: he listed the things they received, but I just remember that they got a fruit a day. Each two would eat one fruit and save the other for later, and after three days they'd all pool them together and make fruit salad. One time they got a can of Israeli peanuts: they had a math guy who divided them between everyone, three and a half peanuts each.

*30 people living in a 30 square meter room becomes its own microcosm: upper classes and lower classes, ashkenazi and mizrahi, religious and secular. The thirty men were mostly all part of the same armoured corps unit, who'd been stationed at Mt. Hermon, ages probably 18-22. By default, their leader became a Syrian Jew who'd immigrated from Syria, and so spoke Syrian Arabic and could communicate with the guards. They formed into four groups, two of 7 and two of 8, and arranged mattresses in the four quarters of the room: sleeping places would rotate within each group every day, and the four groups rotated between the four quarters once a week, because every corner of the room had its own pros and cons: the one's closer to the window, so nice in summer but colder in winter; this one has more ventilation, but is closer to the toilet; this one has more space, but you're the first people the guards see.

*days were spent in lessons they gave each other: English, math, Arabic, Hindi. In games - they made cards out of cardboard found in some food packaging that they drew on with ash, and a logic puzzle made from soap. Art - one of them made necklaces out of olive seeds, filed against the walls and strung with a string unraveled from a towel. Smoking. Fantasizing. Mostly talking and getting to know each other to their very souls. He said after he was back, he visited the family and friends of one of the other prisoners in Jerusalem without the guy, and realized he knew everybody there, just needed to put names to faces and he knew everything about them.

*there were different kinds of guards: the bad guard, the simple guard, the ugly guard, the sadistic guard, the good guard. The good guard was always gentler and tried to help with whatever they requested. Before they were released, he told them that he'd be going on vacation, and by the time he'd return they'd already be gone. He had tears in his eyes. He'd been a refugee from Quneitra, but treated them fairly.

*when the Red Cross started visiting they would get some news from home. Short postcards with numbered words. He was frustrated that the family always wrote "everything's okay" without giving any real information. A fellow prisoner received a postcard mentioning the upstairs neighbors' and downstairs neighbors' porches, and 25 people coming to visit grandmother; he'd lived in a one-story apartment, and his grandmother was dead. It was an update on the outcome of the war: Israel had the Golan Heights and Sinai, and 2500 dead.

*they got to write their own letters back, carefully numbering words and making it through censorship. He tried reassuring his family he was okay, and lied about saying he missed them - he wasn't missing them at all. When he was there, he said, he'd checked out and was on a different plane of existence. He wrote to give his mother power of attorney to take care of his bank account. That letter never made it, he said, but the bank was considerate anyway.

*when the Red Cross came, they also started getting some better food, including some food sent from home.

*They were taken out for local TV interviews a number of times for propoganda. Red Cross also filmed them a little - here at 2:06 is when they were first captured, here at 05:33 writing letters with the Red Cross.

*There's also a video of them landing in Israel when they were released in a prisoner exchange in June 1974, stepping off the plane and being greeted by family, photos of him arriving at home. They were taken for a few days of tests and recovery at a sanatorium up north, went through debriefings and investigations by intelligence and the military. He was already close to the end of his service, so he was discharged. And that's it. For 20 years, until concepts like PTSD started surfacing in the '90s, he and the others received no special assistance or treatment from the government or the ministry of defense.

*I asked him how it feels talking about it today. He said it was 45 years ago - it's fine, it's just something that happened in the past. I asked how long did it take for him to reach that stage, but he said that for him, it was like that pretty much from the start.

After he finished speaking, the family went around and shared stories about what it was like back home:

*his brother was the only one who knew he'd been transferred to Mt. Hermon, the parents didn't know. When stories started surfacing about soldiers being captured and taken, he was the one who told his parents.

*he was MIA for a long time, and the family didn't know whether he was among the prisoners or not. The Syrians didn't release a list of names until February, 4 months after the war broke and they were captured. There was a photo of prisoners in the paper, where his face was partially hidden by someone's elbow, old back and white photo, and they couldn't figure out of it was him or not. The man on the photo had a beard. They couldn't remember, the last time they saw him - did he have a beard or not? They ended up taking the newspaper photo and a recent photo of him to the police forensics department, asking them to identify if it was him or not. The constable said yes, the curve of his eyebrow is unique; the commander said don't take it as a certainty.

The family would constantly visit the missing persons location center: an office in Tel Aviv where photos of missing and captured soldiers were displayed on large tables, photos taken from Arabic press in the surrounding countries. They would sift through the photos, hoping to recognize his face somewhere, looking to see if any new photos had surfaced.

In February they finally received the following surreal letter from the army:

Dear family,

The IDF is pleased to inform you that First Sergeant XX XX appears in the list of Israeli prisoners in Syria, as it was delivered to us by US Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger.

We have requested the International Red Cross confirmation that he is among the captives. We will inform you immediately upon receiving information.

*his mother lost more weight than he did in captivity.

*My aunt remembers how uncomfortable and strange visiting his parents was. No one knew what to say or do.

*My uncle - his cousin-in-law and friend - was living in the States when the war broke out, and immediately flew to Israel to join the reserves, not even stopping at home on his way from the airport. He happened to be sent to battles in the Hermon area, and he said that walking around there was terrifying: my dad's cousin was already missing at the time, he felt like he'd been send there on a mission to recover his body, that he could stumble upon it at every turn.

After everything, I spoke to him a bit longer, and asked him if he had any idea how captives were treated in Israel. "Nothing's different," he said. "Captors are captors all around the world. Put someone in that position, and they'll play the part."

And one more thing: My grandmother and her boyfriend were also there, listening. I asked the bf, who is a Holocaust survivor whose entire family other than his sister were murdered, who was a partisan living in the forests until 1945, who jumped off the illegal immigration ship to Israel and swam to shore in freezing waters and was immediately drafted to fight in another war, and who worked with Holocaust survivors for years - whether anything about dad's cousin's story or its emotional aftermath rang as familiar. He thought about it for a moment, and said, "No, I don't think so. I was never a prisoner like that. I mean, I was in the ghetto, but I never experienced any traumas."

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Unspoiled

roga — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 23:07:01 GMT

I am going to Avengers tomorrow! I don't want to jinx it with only 12 hours to go, but I am pretty proud of the steps I've taken to avoid spoilers, which were basically: remove twitter and tumblr shortcuts from my phone so I wouldn't be tempted to check in, and basically not log into the internet for anything other than work, news, AO3, and like the two hours a night I spend binging on MCU cast members on late night shows or whatever. This is completely normal behavior.

ANYWAY: it's been fun, the excitement leading up to this movie. Like, my expectations for the movie itself are simultaneously high - that's the emotional part, not the logical one - and extremely, extremely low, which is my head.

Watching Cap 3 two years ago when I was in China was such a unique experience. I wrote about it here a few weeks after the fact, and I've just been thinking about it. Of course, back then I could thoroughly enjoy the thrill of the movie, having only 10% emotional investment in it. My emotional investment in certain MCU characters is currently closer to 500%; I guess we'll see to what extent I'm able to enjoy new canon, now that I have seen these characters written with incredible subtlety on AO3, and now that I care about some (and do not care at allll about others, who will probably get all of the screentime.)

...as you can see this is just me being on the internet talking to myself to avoid interaction that might be spoilery. I feel like I've been waiting for this forever, when in fact I have only been legitimately waiting for 24 hours - last night I was still at the office at midnight, which is when the movie was released here, and I was just like. The movie is 15 minutes away. Why don't I just GO.

ANYWAY. Clearly I need dinner and some sleep. I will leave you with three fics I have greatly enjoyed recently:

despite the threatening sky and shuddering earth (they remained) by praximeter (Steve/Bucky, 71k words, explicit) - I saw recs for this fic (aka "the maskfic") pop up all over last week when the last chapter was posted and decided to click and boy howdy did I get sucked in. In a sense this is a fairly traditional post-CA:TWS "Winter Soldier recovers" fic with a twist - in this AU, the mask was grafted onto Bucky's face, so during CA:TWS Steve never discovers that the Winter Soldier is actually Bucky. Team Steve manage to capture Bucky after the movie ends, and it's the road to recovery from there. It's got a really great Steve and Sam and Bucky and Tony and I could not stop reading this fic for all of Sunday, it was the best(/worst, depending on how productive I wanted to be with the rest of my life, really.).

Better Than to Bend by silentwalrus (Steve/Bucky, Steve/Bucky/Peggy, 23,000 words, rated mature but honestly explicit)
In which Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes is tired, hungry and completely failing at not sticking it in the crazy. Also there’s a war going on or something.
aka world war threesome. Fear these queers.

This fic is actually just the very short part 1 of another fic that I've seen recced everywhere and is next on my list - If They Haven't Learned Your Name, the 236k sequel. But the prequel's all I've read so far, and it was just so lovely and warm and, I feel weird describing a WWII fic as having good vibes, but. It's just a really good WWII fic about Bucky outing himself tot he Howlies and how they bond as a unit and also some really hot and lovely OT3 and a really good Bucky voice, which I look forward to reading more of.

under a golden january sun by newsbypostcard (Steve/Bucky, 17,000 words, mature) - written before IW comes out so no spoilers, and I don't know how canon compliant this will be after tomorrow, but it's just a story that takes place between Black Panther and Infinity War. Has good Steve, Bucky, Shuri, and is mostly just exactly the kind of Steve/Bucky fic I wanted to read after watching the BP post-credits scene.

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roga — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 07:51:23 GMT

Another good friend is moving to the US for a few years. STOP LEAVING ME FOR AMERICA, FRIENDS. This is now 2 good childhood friends who are in the US to persue their own careers, and three whose husbands are getting PhDs or post-docs in the US, and a fourth who is considering her own post-doctor in the US in a year.

I support your careers and families and all but do academics really have to take four-five freaking years? Gah.

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roga — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 22:11:11 GMT

It seems that I have only made one post in 2018 and this is a travesty. A TRAVESTY. The self-disappointment is strong with this one.

If I had to summarize the past few months - or, as I have been conditioned to think of months now, Q1 - they have been, in a word, workworkworkworkworkworkwork. To a truly ridiculous extent. Here's the line I've been giving when people ask about work: I'm okay with the job, I really like the people, I'm learning new things, but the workload is a challenge. It's a diplomatic way of putting it, but it's true. It's hard to say I'm okay with the way things are, given that there were weeks where I literally didn't do anything other than work all day until very (very) late, fall into bed at home, and go back to work, recovering a little on weekends. But I'm also aware that this is a new job with a learning curve and that it's a start up, and that this kind of workload is - I hope, I hope, I hope - temporary.

The good thing is that the past two weeks - the start of my fourth month on the job - have been a bit chiller, and I've been able to leave work at around 7-8pm almost every day, which has been a relief and hopefully a sign that things are getting better. I'm caught up on a lot of my TV shows - this year I'm watching more firefighter shows than I have since Third Watch was on (look, 9-1-1 has Peter Krause and Connie Britton and Station 19 has Okieriete Onaodowan, it's really hard to choose.) I got to see marina participate in a panel about SFF books at a local con. I've watched almost all of the movies nominated for this year's Academy Awards (only two left! This MIGHT BE THE YEAR I watch them all.)

More good things:

1. This year, work craziness and all, also included two (two!!!) trips to London, including two (two!!!!!) times seeing Hamilton, from pretty freaking amazing seats, and including hanging out with both raven and cesy ♥ and also visiting Stratford-upon-Avon for the first time.

2. This winter and spring so far have had absolutely breathtaking weather and I've been out in nature almost every weekend, seeing the flowers. I don't think there's a word for it in English, but in Hebrew it's called pricha - Blooming, used as a noun. "Do you want to go hiking this weekend? I'm in the mood for some Blooming." "The Blooming's about to start up north." "Do you know any good spots for winter Blooming in the south?" Anyway: it's been flowers in nature, week after week after week, and it's beautiful.

(Relatedly to points both 1 and 2: last week a friend and I went to see the poppies blooming on the way south. There were some massive fields by Kiryat Gat in full bloom. I had just been to the British Museum 2 weeks before, and was pretty freaking impressed by the Lachish reliefs. Clearly, His Majesty Mr. Sennacherib had worked really hard to capture the city and was quite obviously proud of it, and there I was, living 50 minutes away and had never visited the place! But the poppy fields were in an area called the Lachish geographic area so I assumed it was close by, and lo and behold, Tel Lachish - what remains of the ancient city - was only a 10-minute drive away, so we stopped by there too for a short walk. There's not much left there - some city walls, the gate, a few walls from the palace and a well, and mostly grass and flowers and birds and a view. It's a great vantage point; I can see why Sannecherib wanted it.)

3. We had the most amazing seder, and I honestly feel so blessed to have such great people in my family. It was the first time in many years we've done a seder with my dad's side of the family, and the first time we've done it in the kibbutz where my cousins live.

My dad was the youngest of four children, all of whom had 3 children of their own. Other than my sisters and I, my cousins are all married with children. Including a few guests, this made for a seder of almost 40 people, including over 10 kids, from babies and toddlers to 14. Unlike all of the previous seders I've been to, which were all ultimately hosted and led by my parents' generation, this one was organized by our generation (although it was funded by my parents' generation, I will say). There was a steering committee, which included one member of each of the four siblings' families; they were the ones who organized the affair and delegated people into subcommittees: food committee, decoration committee, treasury, haggadah committee, nostalgia committee, toddler corner committee, afikoman toys committee, afikoman committee.

The haggadah itself was beautiful. That team included two of my cousins' husbands, one of whom is the most traditional of us (he does kiddush every weekend), another of whom is an educator and principal of a boarding school, and my mom. They printed a new haggadah for the occasion, drawing from the traditional haggadah and from the kibbutz haggadah, which have things in common but are different; they included more songs and poetry, and delegated in advance who would read what aloud so the children would have time to prepare. They included a section from a 1948 haggadah that my grandparents had kept from their kibbutz: its pages are crumbling and yellow, but it's the same pages that the kibbutz members wrote and sat and read from in their seder exactly 70 years ago, in the middle of a war, two weeks after 7 of their members had been killed in the same afternoon, just a few weeks before the state was to be declared.

The readings were great, the food was nice, a friend I invited because she and her kid were alone this year felt super welcomed by the family, which is all I could hope for, and then it was afokiman time, aka the committee I was on. And friends. The afikoman hunt was, if I may say so myself, amazing. My cousin and I planned and built an escape room for the kids, with about 20 different puzzles and clues and locked boxes they had to solve along the way, in order to find the code to unlock the treasure chest where the afikoman was locked. We built it in a way that we hoped all the kids would be involved in, from the 7 year olds to the 14 year olds, from the Canadian kids who didn't really know the others to the kibbutz kids who grew up in each other's houses, and it went pretty dang great. My cousin and I were chaperoning and while I was mildly anxious throughout at the constant shrieking, the kids throwing tantrums, the one kid crying, and the general feeling that world war three was about to start, my cousin - who was the mother of 25% of the kids and slightly more experienced with kids than i - kept saying "This is SO GREAT LOOK HOW WELL THEY'RE WORKING TOGETHER" with stars in her eyes, and ultimately, "We kept them occupied for an entire hour. Mission freaking accomplished."

It was definitely one of the most exhausting hours I have spent recently - kudos to anyone who works or spends a lot of time with kids, honestly, wow - but I do think it went really well, and overall it was a really awesome night and I appreciate my family a lot.

*

Not that you would know it from my prolific posting in 2018 or anything, but like, I'm still super into MCU. Just putting that out there for the record. May I survive this upcoming movie, good god.

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working late, lately working

roga — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 02:47:57 GMT

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.

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Yuletide!

roga — Tue, 26 Dec 2017 20:56:05 GMT

Yesterday I ended up staying home sick instead of working and slept until literally after sundown, but after some chicken soup I snuggled up with the comfort of Yuletide fics.

I received the following wonderful story as my gift:

A Note to Myself (2972 words)
Fandom: Younger
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Liza/Charles
Summary: After Josh's wedding, Liza accidentally replies to Charles's phone call from Ireland. Post episode for Irish Goodbye, Season 4, episode 12.

It was just the kind of post season 4 closure I could have wished for (grrr why do shows take a YEAR in between seasons!), and I thank the mystery author (AND FELLOW YOUNGER FAN high five) very much.

Then, today I received a gift notification for a treat! Someone wrote me a Gifted/MCU crossover. I love yuletide's ability to make your dream prompts come true.

In general I will say that all of the fics written for Gifted this year are pretty wonderful, so like, that's my general rec for this yuletide, if you liked the movie :-)

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roga — Sun, 24 Dec 2017 19:30:25 GMT

I just made the giant mistake (OR IS IT, says paranoid me) of holding a flashlight to my mouth to see what the extraction site looks like and then google imaging a lot of really gross images and now I'm paranoid I'm going to have some kind of complication. Internet medical research is truly a curse and I wish I could just wipe the past hour of visuals from my mind, but also, I'll call the doctor tomorrow just in case.

To anyone celebrating, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas! I am currently thinking of the one I had last year, when thedeadparrot and bironic picked me up from the airport in Boston and I got to hang out with them (and other awesome people) for a week. So I hope your Christmas is as lovely as that <3

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roga — Sat, 23 Dec 2017 13:55:15 GMT

I started work on Wednesday, while still not having signed the contract. It's a small start-up, everyone works in the same crowded room and everyone is very busy and a little all over the place, enough so that the CEO hasn't had the time yet to sit down with me and hammer out the final details & sign. But I trust that it's gonna happen tomorrow, and they've already exposed me to enough information that I'm not worried they're going to back down, and the final details really are minutiae. The reason they wanted me to start so soon is that my counterpart, who'll be doing a lot of my training, is currently visiting Israel for two weeks, and they wanted as much face-to-face training and shadowing is possible (which is smart, esp since she's normally located in the west coast, which is a pretty big pain, timezone-wise).

Overall, the job seems interesting enough, I think - I'm not 100% sure yet how it'll go but we'll see - and the people seem really nice, so at least as far as working environment, I think I'm going to enjoy it. Supposed to move to less crowded offices soon, and either way it's a 10-minute drive from my apartment. I might even try biking there if the weather's good.

Pretty weird to have a day-job working schedule again. I can't say I won't miss the freedom of late mornings and seeing Tel Aviv coffeeshops in the daylight. And the next public holidays aren't till April, which is honestly way too far away - but I already know I'm taking a day off this Thursday to be with a friend who's visiting from abroad, and a few days off in January for Hamilton (!!!) in London, tickets that I only had to buy 11 months in advance, no biggie, so I'm going to be easing back into this work thing.

Another way of easing into work was not actually working full days my first two days there: on my first day I left a bit early for the dentist's to get two wisdom teeth pulled, and on the second I left a bit early because with perfect timing I got strep throat.

So dentists have been telling me for years that I need to surgically remove one of my wisdom teeth, but after leaving my job earlier in the year and finally scheduling dentist appointments after forever, they've all recommended removing the other three as well. So 2-3 weeks ago I went to a doctor who was recommended by my cousin and he was really good - just, made me feel like I was in good hands. He did a full checkup that included my jaw, gums, palette, tongue, detailed tooth inspection, and he wrote me up a full treatment plan that included various cleanings, fillings, teeth pulling, you name it. He actually told me that he cold see an inflammation in my throat, but I couldn't feel anything and he said it might be dormant or something.

Anyway, I went after work on Wednesday. I'd never had any teeth pulled before, and was getting both reassurances that it's really not that bad but also that I should prepare for some pain afterwards. I ended up asking him to remove 2 teeth instead of one if he had time, just to save appointments and extra healing time in the future, and he said no problem. And in the end, it really was a lot less traumatic than I expected it to be: I don't know what he used to sedate the area but I didn't feel anything there for about five hours. Pulling the teeth themselves was super fast - felt like maybe 1-2 minutes each, he said they were at good angles - and afterwards I had to bite on some gauze as he gave me post care instructions.

My face looked normal afterwards, so I decided to go to a post-Hanukkah candle lighting with a group of friends after all - out schedules didn't align to meet during the actual holiday, so we faked a ninth night and lit candles anyway.

When the anesthesia wore off I expected to be in much stronger pain than I ended up being in; it was just a very mild toothache, and by the time I considered taking an a pill it already passed.

I was supposed to only eat cold mush for the following 24 hours, so I took bananas and avocados and white cheese to work, which was mildly embarrassing, but overall fine. I followed the doctor's orders and did not feel up the missing teeth with my tongue - which I still have not, I'm a grossed out to do it, actually.

The Thursday evening I was in a meeting in a closed room for like two hours, and I could feel myself starting to get a fever - just being hot and stuffy and tired and aching joints. I left work early, collapsed into bed and watched (rather, listened) to episodes of Silicon Valley for hours. I consulted with the dentist who told me that if it doesn't pass by morning, just go to a regular doctor, so I did, and voila, strep throat, yay. Got a penicillin prescription (and some challah - the doctor's office was in the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak and the bakery smelled delicious), then got home and watched, in order:
-the rest of Silicon Valley
-a biopic starring Dominic West about the discovery and extraction of penicillin
-a documentary about Archie Leech aka Cary Grant, which was pretty good/interesting.

Somehow throughout this all I had to navigate between food that was good for my throat (soup/tea) and good for my teeth (nothing hot for 24h), but I am now at the stage where I'm definitely allowed to have soup, so that's good. Thursday night I ordered takeout soup and kept adding junk to the order just to pass the minimum price for takeout, and ended up only having the appetite for 3 spoonfuls. Friday morning my mom brought be a giant pot of chicken soup, though, and it's delicious as usual.

Yesterday evening I took meds that made me feel good enough to go to a Swedish Christmas party that one of the Swedes from choir throws every year, and it was fun - had some glogg (mulled wine), sang a bit, mingled.

Today I woke up with no fever but very stuffy, so I... hope that passes fast.

Meanwhile, maybe it's this time of ~turmoil, but I've had two dreams I can remember:

One was this nightmarish combination of work and the dental treatment that was somehow about the company's technology being a lot more primitive than where it needs to be, and requiring mostly manual work.

The other was about a twist in the new Star Wars movie, where we flash back to some Luke scene from the original trilogy, and then we discover that actually it didn't happen that way at all, and then we flash back to what really happened, which uses extra footage that was filmed back in the '70s specifically for this purpose. Like, they'd planned this long con fakeout for forty years. I don't actually remember what it was that Luke did in that scene, but it was all epic screenwriting and everyone's minds were blown.

And now I shall go and buy some kleenex and honey because I fear I'll need them with me tonight.

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6/8 candle lightings in:

roga — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 15:35:24 GMT

While I haven't always lit candles every day over the years, it's somehow the one holiday tradition that I actually do find myself following fairly consistently, even when I'm alone. Can't really think of other holidays I'd do that for - mainly, maybe, because most other traditions involve prayer, making food, or having other people around, and lighting candles is something simple you can do to mark the holiday even when you're alone. Also, firelight in the darkness! That's always fun.

Counting the days of Hanukkah so far:

Day 1: had job interview with CEO of a small but growing start-up in the morning. Shopped for groceries. Peeled and grated roughly one million potatoes by hand. SUCCESSFULLY LATKE'D. Successfully hosted partly-extended family for the first time, for the first candle. There was singing, there were candles, there was food and coziness, overall graded myself an A.

Day 2: Baby sister came over in the afternoon. We briefly lit candles together in the evening, then left to meet my aunt and uncle for drinks and a movie - Scaffolding, a fairly depressing Israeli drama.

Day 3: Went to second women web coding class (I officially know a tony bit of CSS now), bought a new menorah at Nahlat Binnyamin, started listening to the Call Me By Your Name audiobook* (*WE WILL RETURN TO THIS), and had dinner + Star Wars: the Last Jedi in the evening (fun times, enjoyed reading people's reactions after.) Lit candles when I got home at 3AM.

Day 4: Candle lighting in the evening with sisters and parents, at my parents' house.

Day 5: Spent the day in bed, basically. Lit candles at home.

Day 6: Had second job interview at same company. Got job offer, and they want me to start tomorrow /o\ Felt overall very strange about this swift turn of events. Received contract draft by email, had a few questions/revisions that I sent back, am currently still waiting for them to get back to me. Lit candles at home. Drove to a town in the center to meet a good friend for coffee, updates, and freak outs about life; ate the best pomela I have ever tasted in my life, and picked another one from their tree to take home with me, no offense intended to my parents' pomela tree.

***

So, job-wise: basically I am waiting for their feedback on my comments and if all goes well I guess I'm going to start tomorrow. I am not unconflicted about this, but I think/hope it'll be okay and prove to be a good decision, and we'll see soon enough.

***

Let me take you back now to Call Me By Your Name because wow. The movie's coming out here next month, and after seeing some adorable clips and cast interviews it was definitely on my radar as both 'to watch' and potentially 'to read', especially after seeing tumblr descriptions of it as "one of the most romantic books I'v ever read" ((c) Someone On Tumblr).

And then suddenly youtube decided to bump up this 7+ hour video into my feed, which is the ripped Call Me By your Name audiobook narrated by Armie Hammer.

NOW. I figured to myself, okay, let's listen to a sample, and if I like it let's go ahead and buy the real thing. FRIENDS I COULD NOT CLICK THE 'BUY NOW' BUTTON FAST ENOUGH. Just a few minutes in, it was very clear to me that I definitely wanted to listen to all seven hours and forty-four minutes of Armie Hammer's gravelly voice in my ear, like a long, slow seduction that is nearly impossible to listen to in public without blushing. Like, imagine walking down the street with his voice IN YOUR HEAD going "I felt myself getting hard" or "I wanted him to put his fingers in me", like, WHAT EVEN dude, have some mercy. And I'm only in chapter fucking five. And then he started saying words in Hebrew. Help.

All of which is to say, if you have Audible, books currently have a 50% discount. If you don't have Audible, you can get the 30-day free trial and get your first audiobook for free by using 1 credit. Which I think is what I did. So know that that is out there.

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