Category: Blather

The worst damage the burglary caused, besides taking the laptop and hard drive of much TV, and beyond making me jump up when I lay in bed on the edge of sleep and the neighbours make an undexpected noise, is that when the burglar came in through the bathroom window, he/she cracked the pipe connecting the toilet’s Niagra (I don’t know what the real English term is, this is what Israelis use, and furriners can probably guess what part of a toilet’s flushing aparatus gets that name) to the toilet itself.
Perhaps this should be classified in the Too Much Information! department, but I can get pretty anxious about having a working toilet.
I discovered this damage very late Thursday night; On Friday I couldn’t be bothered finding a plumber (I called one, and he slammed the phone because it was too late in the day). I made do by wrapping the cracked pipe with clingfilm and shreds of a torn up plastic bag. This, remarkably, proved a pretty good temporary measure.
Yesterday I went to Ace, a big hardware store, but they didn’t stock the part. So this morning I went to the Givatayim Industrial Park at Quorazim St., and they had the part, and also a helpful staff, one of whom explained to me exactly how to do the repair. 35 shekels for the pipe, 10 more for a rubber plug I didn’t eventually need. And I was going to call a plumber. Also (thank Suz) I had the hacksaw needed to saw the pipe to fit. So first think on getting home, I took apart the toilet, replaced the pipe and put it together again, in working order. Sometimes, I amaze myself.
The bathroom is filthy, though (nothing to do with the repairs, really, except that I added a rich sprinkling of sawed toilet pipe dust to the rich and varied dust layers already adorning the floor. For a moment, I considered cleaning, but sanity prevailed, and I went to bask in the glory of my triumph, make some pasta and watch some Deadwood.

Kate Bush can sing anything, as she’s happy to demonstrate in her new album: in the second song, she sings some digits of Pi as a chorus. This is probably why she writes lyrics that would make a teenager cringe: they serve her fine.
Listening to this album is like soaking in honey and mother’s milk, and it floods the emotional ducts, but if you actually listen, it’s hard to escape the impression that Kate Bush has a scary sense of humor: Aerial is probably funnier than any of Monty Python’s songs. The ridicilous is delivered with straight face and total sincerity, so it goes beyond self-satire and becomes, like Tal put it, love.

Your manager is probably the last person you should tell about wanting to quit. But strategy has never been my strong suite. So, when the latest movement of our manager-managee tango ended up with him asking me if I planned to stay with the company, I said that, well, I really think it’s time for me to move on, and in a year or six months I…
Well, looks like I have four months.

I remember complaining about my job before, and the particular relationship with this manager was behind it. Things came to a head 5-6 months ago when he called me in for a stern talking-to, warned me that I’d be fired if I don’t shape up, and I responded with “look, you’re right, I’m really not giving you and the company my best, how about I wrap things up properly and leave?”
Well, I haven’t left yet. First because I think that talk somehow switched the balance in our tango so that I became focused and a lot less stressed; second, because I got all excited about a cool new project I started shortly after that talk which is now fairly complete and producing neat results (as in, compelling powerpoint slides and potential commercial value). A month after the talk, my manager said it would be silly for me to leave now that I’m doing good work. And I’ve been pretty happy recently, both because work is both fairly interesting and satisfying, and our working relationship seems to be doing OK.
So obviously I’m tossing this all aside. Perhaps I’m just being an idiot, and over-reacting to what I percieve as his attempt to re-assert his dominance over me. Or perhaps I’m thinking about H, who said my skills were atrophying.

SO, if you know someone who has interesting work (CV here) starting in March, let me know.

Oh! There’s a new Kate Bush album out, the first one in twelve years! And, thanks to (starts with a B and ends when you stop seeding), I’m listening to it. It’s sort of what you’d expect.

I got hit by Never For Ever at – what? 12? 13? – and fell in love. First “album” I sat down and listened to that wasn’t a kids’ record (yeah, see, in the pre-video era, they… nevermind). I learned how to turn on a phonograph and change over a record for this woman. She 0wnz0red my adolesence.
This is nice. But I miss that big cardboard programme (why they called them albums) with the lyrics and obscure thank-yous and the notice that this recording was meant to be played loud.

I got home, the door didn’t open proper with my key, I twisted it this way and that. For a second I’m worried that the stupid door stopped working and that I’m locked out, but eventually I work it open. Inside the cupboard drawer in the hall is out of place, the venetian mask that was in the drawer is on the floor, the window in the bathroom is open wide. Wind? No, fuck, my apartment’s been burgled! But –
Things seem to be mostly in place. The bed room (did I leave the duvet crooked like that?) The same mess on the living room table, the TV is still there (of course it’s still there, the thing weighs a ton and is as manueverable as an ocean liner, the computer is there… Ah, computer…
I call my mom and tell her, silly me, I thought someone broke into my apartment! We talk, and then I go and make myself something to eat, take stuff from the fridge, cook my omelette, put it on a plate, come to eat it.
There’s something odd about the living room table. The big thick book I keep my laptop on is there, but where is…?

Fuck.

Laptop gone, its power supply and cable gone, and, right next to the computer where I sat, crap shoved aside so someone can steal my laptop carrying briefcase. Fuckfuckfuck. So, wait, did they turn things over looking for cash? That pair of socks jammed in the drawer, did I do that or…? I panic, but turns out that cash (Amuta money!) is still there.

So just the laptop. Which I was growing fond of again, after abandoning it for a while for the flashy new (but thankfuly heavy) desktop computer. With my half-munched, half-regurgitated story, and a half-written incoherent blog post, and a lot of chunks of my life.

And, you know, that sense of security you lose when the place you live is violated by a stranger.

Fuck.

Updated: OK, I am a moron. My portable hard drive (“the library card”) is also gone. And the Motorola 3G phone/PDA my dad got off an Egyptian that brought it from Germany, which I never used because it’s too battery-hungry and clunky, and which gathered dust in my bag as recently as ICon where I flashed it before Ophir’s eyes, but which apparently I was stupid enough to take out since then. Damn.