Listen to the Rain

Last year most of the Jewish holidays were on weekends, so I already had them off. That's not true this year, but the bonus is that many of the High Holy Days are on Thursdays and Fridays, so in October I only have one full work week and three four-day weekends. Not bad.

Wednesday night was Erev Rosh Hashanah and Mishkan did a livestream, but since Laila was awake I missed most of it and by the time she was asleep there were only thirty minutes left, so I skipped it. The next day, though, we woke up bright and early thanks to Laila, ate breakfast and got dressed, and took the bus out to the Copernicus Center for Rosh Hashanah services. While the last time we all went, we were able to go into actual services because Laila was small enough we could hold on to her and she could enjoy the singing, that was never going to work this time. We went for the Rise and Shine service (for kids 0-4), and then went over to the "Museum of Awe" where Laila immediately ran over to Toddler Town and started trying to grab all of the stamps. She was full of energy, so we didn't stay very long, but we did say yoni-labow-5693413a and whoolia45 with their new baby! They were heading in to services with a very asleep baby, just like we had been a couple years ago, but we chattered with them a bit and then headed out to lunch at a drive-in diner that also had Korean food (I got a teriyaki chicken pita. It was delicious) before heading home.

The next day sashagee wasn't feeling well, so while we originally all planned to go to the second day picnic, it was just Laila and I who went. I packed up a lunch for her and we got on the bus to go to Welles Park. We arrived just in time for the Shema, and while she initially squirmed a bit she calmed down once the singing started. Once it ended and the rabbi started talking, though, she immediately lost all interest, so we left the main area and went over to the part of the park where the kids activities were. She really went in on the activity sand, and while she still doesn't quite know how to interact with other kids, she waited her turn until she could get close and played very nicely with them. She even took a turn at blowing the shofar! When we got back home, sashagee was asleep, and while Laila woke her up when we ate lunch, she went right back to sleep when Laila laid down for a nap. She was really wiped out, so I took Laila to the park for a bit and let her rest of the day, and when Laila went to bed so did she.

There is one other thing we did, though. We didn't get to stay long enough at Welles park for the ritual of Tashliḥ, the symbolic casting away of our sins, as it is written:

Who is a G-d like you,
who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance?
You do not stay angry forever
but delight to show mercy.
You will again have compassion on us;
you will tread our sins underfoot
and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
-Micah 7:18-19

So we went to the lake to do it. Laila loved the actual throwing of the bread on the water, but she wasn't interested in anything else. She didn't want to run around on the grass, she didn't want to look out over the water, she didn't do anything. She did smile briefly for a picture, but that was it:



And then we went home.

Saturday we had two things scheduled but neither of them was until later in the day, so we had a nice slow morning where we all got to eat breakfast and sit around watching Kiki's Delivery Service until closer to 11, where we walked to the bus and went to Lincoln Square for Applefest. I went to it back in 2019, and then in 2020 and 2021 there was no Applefest, and in 2022 and 2023 we were out in the suburbs on both weekends, but this time we could go and a bunch of our friends were there too! The festival was twice as big as the last I was there, from Lawrence all the way down to Sunnyside on Lincoln, and the weather was beautiful but that meant it was a sunny day and I was carrying Laila for blocks up and down while we looked at the shops and got a bit of apple pie, some breakfast sandwiches--sashagee wanted a smashburger, but we were warned that it was a thirty-minute wait time so she got a breakfast sandwich too--and ate them while Laila ate her apple waffles. We got apple cookies and looked at the artisans, and chatted with our friends--Laila was obsessed with spacedragon's dyed hair and kept asking her to hold her--until 2 p.m. came and we needed to get home to rest for a bit. It was already too late for Laila's nap, but we could still go home and rest.

Around 4:30 p.m. we left again for our second event, thosesocks's housewarming, with apple pie and Laila in tow. We went out to the bus and the tracker said "no scheduled arrival times," so we had to walk all the way there--it was only a mile or so but it was a long way after all our earlier walking and while carrying Laila. When we got there, sashagee talked to thosesocks while I chased after Laila, which proved to be the theme of the evening--at one point Laila went out on the balcony and ran up and down, since it was laid out lengthwise along the entire building. She did that a couple dozen times, full of way more energy than I expected, except for some brief interludes to dip a cookie in ranch dressing and eat it and trying to steal chocolate-covered pretzels. After an hour or so, right when thosesocks was concerned about Laila being so energetic, it was time for us to go (Laila needed an early bedtime since she skipped her name), so we said our goodbyes and went home. We didn't get a slice of that apple pie but the chocolate-covered pretzels were delicious.

Sunday morning was a fast day, Tzom Gedaliah, so I woke up before anyone else to eat breakfast before the sun came up. When I was done, I opened the door so Laila could escape her room, we all got ready, and I took Laila out to Hebrew school. This time went better than the first time, where she was overwhelmed by all the people. She still wasn't very interested in the songs, but she was much more focused on the crafts. There was a craft to make a "Bug Sukkah" and that was what Laila focused all her energy on:


Sadly, it did not survive the trip home on the bus. While Laila wasn't interested in the songs, she did stay at the craft tables for much longer than many of the other kids did, who got bored and wandered off to sit with their parents and read books or something. She really loved those bugs, and we stayed through the closing songs and then left to go home...except the bus wasn't coming for 35 minutes so I walked most of the way home, carrying Laila the entire way, and then spent much of the rest of the day sitting down because she's heavy. She's a big girl now!

This coming weekend is Yom Kippur, so even more holidays ahead.

It's been five years since I made one of these posts, since ACEN 2019, and boy has a lot happened since then. COVID cancelled ACEN 2020 and ACEN 2021, and by the time ACEN 2022 happened I had a family and couldn't just run off for a weekend and leave a nearly-invalid sashagee at home with Laila, so I went just for Saturday night to see people and then came back home. I did the same in 2023, but now sashagee is feeling well enough that she could attend the entire con, so back last year I bought her a badge too, and we got a hotel room sorted out, and she got excited about doing a family cosplay. Well, I'm not going to bury the lede--we did:



And now, here's the rest of what happened at the con:

( Thursday )

( Friday )

( Saturday )

( Sunday )

It's been five years since I last went to a full con but the experience was still the same! Always being on your feet, seeing old friends, traveling from place to place to place and collapsing into bed at the end of the day. It was different this year since we had Laila with us, and we kept telling people how she would run through the skybridge shouting "DRAMA-MA-MA-MA! DRAMA-MA-MA-MA!" but she was only there for half a day of the real con, and a good thing too. We took her through the dealer's hall on Friday morning and she was getting overstimulated already--if she had been there on Saturday she would have had real problems, but instead she was having tons of fun with Papa and Nana while we were wandering around the con.

sashagee had a great time is already planning how to have an even better con next year, starting with bringing sneakers. sashagee and dorchadas con-goer arc has begun!

Today is עשרה בטבת (Asarah b'Tevet, "The tenth day of Tevet"), the minor fast remembering the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar that eventually led to the destruction of the First Temple. Since it's a minor fast day I just woke up before dawn--easy today since dawn is later. I had some leftover roast beef and mushrooms and an apple, said hello to my father and my uncle, and then went back to bed.

We're having a big family week this week, almost done now, but I'll save posting about it for a couple days until I have more brain energy. I’m running a bit low now.

Thank you for your good wishes on my last couple of posts. I'm happy to say that the plague has mostly left our house--Laila is feeling much better, I have a small headache, and it's only sashagee that is still feeling terrible. She has a headache from all her coughing and a small fever, and is currently lying down on the couch trying to rest while watching spooky ghost hunter YouTube.

I took off work today because it was originally going to be the day I helped sashagee make Shabbat dinner for our guests tonight, but that's obviously been cancelled.

My mother had surgery on her leg and my father sent a video of her walking (with a walker) today! There's obviously been a lot of medical progress since I broke my leg 34 years ago, where I ended up laid up in the hospital for a month, in a cast for a month, and then unable to walk for a month while my muscles rebuilt themselves. As a seven-year-old, I had the energy to do all that rebuilding. Hopefully my mother will get to go home soon and she'll be able to see Laila next weekend.

Last Wednesday was the final farmer's market of the season, so even though I wasn't feeling particularly well, I put on a mask and dragged myself down there. Unfortunately the place I usually get my eggs from had run out and due to all the sickness in the house I had forgotten to preorder any, but I dig snag one last bag of apples and a pie from the local pie shop. Zeitlin's Deli was also there, and since they're primarily an online shop and it's unpredictable where I'll find them, I bought ḥallah for Shabbat tonight, a giardiniera focaccia which is spicy and absolutely delicious, and a half-dozen bagels. This morning, sashagee woke up and made a French toast bake out of most of the ḥallah but there's just a little bit left for the motzi tonight.

Alright, I need to get to the post office. More after Shabbat.

It was touch and go there for a bit.

I exaggerate but it certainly felt like I was dying. Monday afternoon my stomach started to feel a bit perturbed. At first I thought it was because I was nervous about my dentist appointment, but the appointment went fine and my stomach kept getting worse, until at around 6 p.m. I went to go lie down in the bedroom. This ended with me on the bathroom floor, sweating and shaking, using roughly 99% of my willpower to avoid throwing up. I did not throw up, I managed to call sashagee at the other end of the house thanks to our Apple watches, and she helped me get into bed and put a bunch of cold compresses on me, which cooled me down. She did this one other time, when the fever returned in the middle of the night, but that was the last of it.

Not the last of the sickness, though. My stomach has still been on edge since Monday, and it actually feels worse today than it did yesterday. I barely ate anything on Tuesday, only really ate dinner on Wednesday, and we'll see what I eat today. But I'm back on the internet and making this post, so that counts for something. I'm also back at work after taking Tuesday and Wednesday (my usual days in the office) off. I'm not back at 100%--maybe 60%--but I'm still doing better than I was Monday afternoon so hopefully I can put in a good day.

Laila is totally happy and healthy and בעזרת השם she'll stay that way. Maybe her brain troubles have rendered her immune to lesser illnesses--she didn't get the plague when both sashagee and I had it either.

sashagee is probably the most into Valentine's Day person I've ever dated, but for different reasons--cuteness. She loves everything cute, pink hearts and cute chocolates and stores done up with decorations and squishy things and so on. In America cute things are heavily devalued unless they're animals or babies and liking cuteness is considered a childish trait, so she doesn't get much expression for her preferences...except on holidays like Valentine's Day. It's not the flowers or the chocolates, it's the cuteness around them.

She had big plans for Valentine's Day that unfortunately didn't all work out, but we did get the day all to ourselves--my parents came and picked up Laila in the morning and took her out to the aquarium and then back to their house for a sleepover, leaving sashagee and me in a baby-free house for the whole day. We ate lunch together, then sashagee took a shower and got ready while I did some dishes, and then she rested to recover her strength. Around 3 p.m. we got on the train and went downtown for the first part of our day, buying her Valentine's Day present--an Apple Watch. sashagee always used to be an Android user, even as the rest of her family used iOS, because she preferred the widgets and the greater customizability of Android. But the multiple family albums with cute Laila photos that she was completely excluded from unless she asked me to send the photos to her finally won her over. She's had an iPhone for around a year now, and she's mentioned that she's ready to buy fully into the walled garden--watch, AirPods, the works. Having a baby means we do not have a lot of extra money so the full buy-in did not occur, but she got her watch in a cute rose-gold with a red band.

After that we walked over to the train, stopped briefly for donuts on the way, and took the train out to Oak Park and the restaurant where sashagee had gotten us reservations at:


Amerikas.

This is a salmon tlayuda, described by the internet as "Oaxacan pizza", and it was delicious. Salmon, avocado puree, radishes, greens, and a spicy sauce. We also got the pollo which Sasha ate since I was having a dairy meal--and this turned out to be fortuitous anyway because she hadn't noticed that it contained chorizo--and the calabaza, with roasted acorn squash, wild mushroom risotto, and Chile de arbol – truffle butter. Everything was delicious, and we ended up finishing the calabaza and taking only a couple tiny boxes home. We each had two cocktails, probably a mistake when we're trying to save money, but one was gin-based (my weakness) and the other was mezcal based (sashagee's weakness), so we each got our own preference at the beginning and then tried each other's drinks. Surprisingly, the gin drink was much sweeter than the mezcal one! Then, we got dessert--dragonfruit cheesecake and crème brûlée:


We had arrived an hour early at the restaurant, but they had a seat for us, so we left around the time when our reservation would have been. And then it took us much longer than we expected, because I had four Lyft drivers cancel on me and sashagee had two cancel on her. She initially thought it was because I had a bad rating until she had her first cancellation, but I think it was just because drivers didn't want to take someone from Oak Park through the city to the north side. We waited for half an hour, to the point where it would have probably been easier (and much cheaper) to just take the train home, and then finally got a ride. At this point sashagee was very tired so she went almost straight to bed. I followed pretty closely behind because I did not take work off today, so I had to get up at 6:30 a.m. But sashagee got to sleep in! I am looking forward to seeing Laila when I get home today, though--I'm sure it'll be different when she's older, but right now when she's small and cute and wants hugs all the time, I miss her so much when she's away.

Or, as the guy I overheard on the bus called it, SHWOO-as. I have no idea why he was pronouncing the vav as a W. Maybe he was a time-traveler from the Kingdom of Judah who followed Ashkenazi minhag.

Anyway, Sunday and Monday were Shavuot, the holiday where we received the Torah a the foot of Mt. Sinai and where nowadays we study all night and eat dairy food. The legend is that on the day that the Children of Israel were to receive the Torah, they slept in and had to be woken up by G-d, so now we stay up learning all night to commemorate our previous laziness. Eating cheesecake is because with the Torah came the laws of kashrut, so the Children of Israel returned to camp knowing that their previously-prepared meat meal was treif, thus obliging them to eat dairy in celebration instead. Or maybe it's because the promised land was full of "milk and honey" and they were looking forward to their new home. Or maybe it's gematria related, since the Hebrew חלב (ḥalav, "milk") equals forty, the number of days Moses spent on the mountain. Or maybe-

Anyway, Judaism is like that.

I went early for the learning portion, since the rabbis were teaching three classes:

• The Book of Ezekiel — Judaism and Psychedelics w/ R’Lizzi


• The Ten Commandments — Is This The Best We Could Do? w/ R’Steven


• The Book of Ruth — Comfort in Times of Sorrow, and Joy in Chosen Family w/ R’Deena

I went with the Ten Commandments one, and the most interesting thing that came from that is when the rabbi made the point that the Ten Commandments are accorded a lot of importance in American culture when people think about Abrahamic religions, but if you ask a Jew to tell you about Judaism, we probably won't mention the Ten Commandments even once, even if we talk for a while. We talked about what is distinctively Jewish about the commandments--really not that much other than remembering and sanctifying Shabbat, unless the first commandment counts--whether there's anything special we should have added in that case, like dietary laws or any of the festivals, the distinction between the more famous first set of commandments and the second set in Exodus 34 which are much more obviously Jewish, and so on.

I also learned that Judaism has a word for infidels--עובדי כוכבים ומזלות (avdei koḥavim u'mazalot, "worshippers of the stars and the constellations [of the Zodiac]"). Despite this seemingly-obvious pointer, Judaism is actually mostly fine with astrology.

After the study sessions were over, Rabbi Deena read the Ten Commandments from a Torah, shofars were blown--much to the terror of some small kids nearby--and I had a bit of pizza until sashagee and Laila arrived. She came after most of the festivities were already over, but not so late that she couldn't finally meet bunnydelfuego just as she was leaving! After a brief conversation, we sat down with aaronhparker, ate our pizza, and he invited us to a Moroccan Shabbat dinner he's hosting in two weeks and told us about a bakery just down the street. Since we didn't want to keep Laila there for too long, and since sashagee is still in ill-health, we left pretty soon afterward, stopping by the bakery for some English muffins and cheesecake for Shavuot.

I didn't stay up all night this time--maybe in future years--but it was still a lovely holiday.

I'm more well-rested and cuddled because we managed to get Laila to sleep in her bassinet! When I came in at 3:15 a.m. or so, I suggested that we wrap her up in her sleeping sack and see if she'd tolerate sleeping apart from us. sashagee told me that she'd been thinking the same thing, so we put her in the sleeping sack and Laila quietly accepted being swaddled up and then laid down to sleep. She muttered a few times but never cried, and sashagee and I got to sleep in the same bed, without her nest of pregnancy pillows!

We tried it again tonight and she cried, and sashagee has a headache so Laila is asleep on my lap. Parenting is like that.

( Pre-made foods )

I've been slowly plinking away at Final Fantasy VIII over time, but it's hard going. The Japanese is a lot more complicated than it was in Final Fantasy VI, so it takes me longer to get through a conversation, and every once in a while I'll hit a point where I'm faced with a giant brick of text and my brain melts. That happened when I played through the Timber Owls mission, where I had to decipher the instructions given to go on the presidential car heist, and most recently it happened when I was in the Shumi village and I was slammed with a full-screen dialogue box about how amazing mumbas are. It was like 2:30 a.m. when I hit that and Laila was asleep on my lap, so I read the whole thing, then immediately thought "that's enough," went to the save point, and just read RPG blogs for thirty minutes until Laila woke up.

Speaking of Laila sleeping on my lap, I'm having real trouble as I write this. I've never been diagnosed with anything but I have restless legs, and while fortunately they usually don't keep me from sleeping (though I do very occasionally have to get out of bed and tired my legs out), the symptoms get worse when I'm sleepy. Early in the day I can have her sleep on me without any problems, but as the day goes on it gets harder and harder. Sometimes I even have to pick her up and walk around because it's the only way I can prevent myself from having to clench or twitch my legs so much that I'd wake her up, which of course has its own danger of possibly waking her up. I'm not sure what the solution is yet, other than the obvious one of getting her to sleep in her bassinet more. It'll take some doing.

Another post where my awake in the night icon might make sense. I feel like I'll be make more and more of those.

Well, this is definitely some of the biggest news I've ever posted about:


Laila Rose (from לילה, "night") was born at 4:02 p.m. May 13th.

Originally, sashagee and I were just going into the hospital on Wednesday because she wasn't feeling well. She had a headache and was starting to get spotty vision, and while she had an appointment later that day with the midwives she didn't think she should wait that long, so I took the afternoon off and drove her to the ob/gen triage at the hospital like the midwives had suggested if anything seemed out of the ordinary. When she got there, they did standard intake, put her in a room, and then hooked her up to a fetal heartrate monitor. That caused a huge flurry of activity because the baby's heartrate was around 110--very low for babies--and didn't have much variability, so several nurses ran in and started prepping, a doctor came in, and just as she was explaining the risks of an emergency C-section to sashagee, the baby's heartrate recovered back up to the ~140 you want it at.

Obviously they couldn't send us home after almost scheduling an emergency surgery, though, and since Laila was one day overdue anyway they decided to induce labor. sashagee was originally going to do a natural birth--we got a preview of this later in the evening when we heard a woman screaming somewhere down the hall and then, about twenty minutes later, a baby crying--but once her contractions started she almost passed out multiple times, so she opted for an epidural. That caused another flurry of activity because after administering the epidural, her blood pressure and the baby's heartrate both dropped, so more nurses came in, a doctor came in and started once again prepping for an emergency C-section ...and then everything went back to normal again. With the epidural in, she was even able to get some sleep, while thosesocks kindly came to pick me up and drive me back to our house to pick everything up that I had left behind when I thought it was a simple doctor's visit.

They started the second stage of inducing labor around 3:40 p.m. on Thursday, and after 15 minutes of pushing, our daughter was born healthy! I ended up assisting with the labor, helping a nurse hold on to one of sashagee's legs while she pushed. I admit, before we went to the hospital I was worried that I'd be squeamish about the birth, but I wasn't. I watched part of the placenta come out, followed by Laila's head, followed by the rest of her body in a rush, and I'll remember for the rest of my life the nurses laying Laila on sashagee's chest as sashagee cried and said "She's perfect."

Laila almost immediately went for the boob, so she and sashagee had a bit of bonding time, then I got to hold her while the nurses checked sashagee and cleaned her up, and then they took Laila over to be weighed (3500g exactly, much to the nurses' surprise, about 7 lbs 11 oz) and measured (19 inches), and then while my parents came to visit--my father took me back to the house to shower and eat, since sashagee got a bunch of meals but I got nothing--they moved her to the new mom and baby section where we spent the next two days. That was the less-exciting part, where they did tests, sashagee fed Laila, I slept on the inflatable/pull-out couch thing, and sashagee healed while they made sure nothing serious went wrong with either her or Laila. After the last test came back clear, showing slightly higher-than-normal new baby jaundice but nothing serious, they let us go and we came back home with our newborn daughter! It's been a bit rough at home caring for her without the nurses to ask for advice and help--she refuses to even be in her bassinet for more than a few minutes, even when I'm actively cooing at her and holding her hands to show her that I'm still right there--but I know there's an adjustment period and I'm determined to adjust!

I'm a father!!

Bonus picture of Laila showing her resemblance to Kirby :

Hour three of trying to fall asleep.

After two weeks off, my sleep schedule reset to the truest expression of my being. I got tired and fell asleep around 1:30 a.m. and I’d stay asleep for 8-9 hours pretty consistently. But tomorrow I have to get up at 6:30 a.m. to get to work on time, and barring jet lag or sickness or staying up through the previous night, I have never in my life been tired at 11 p.m. So now I’m trying to listen to white noise so I can fall asleep and it’s pretty much pointless so far.

Back to trying, though!

So after a whole weekend of partying and staying up late, I came back to Chicago and...immediately decided to to go to a late-night showing of Blade Runner. I mean, now it's an alternate history movie (as of just under a week ago)! I had to see it while it was still on the bleeding edge of the future.

Also, the whole audience laughed when this came on the screen:


This showing was the Final Cut, which I've never seen before. The last time I saw Blade Runner was as a university student, when jdcohen and jmenda were astonished that I'd never seen it, so we piled into a disused conference room in Stouffer House along with t3chnomag3, meistert, and some other people I've fallen out of contact with and watched the theatrical release on a projector. As soon as the voice over started, jmenda audibly groaned. I didn't know what I was missing, but I thought it was pretty good.

This was all before I started describing my aesthetic as "cyberpunk elf" or "an extra from Blade Runner."

So that was my half-remembered experience when I went into Blade Runner this time, and I was surprised how much was the same and how much was different. For one, it's not all just Japanese in the background! There's a lot of Chinese too, and occasionally Russian and Spanish. Los Angeles of 2019 is more diverse than the derivative material gives it credit for. This time I did understand the brief bit of Japanese, when the noodle vendor welcomes Deckard and then tells him that two is plenty (二つで充分ですよ！) when he tries to order four fish. There's a Japanese comic about it here that answers the question "What is Deckard ordering and why are they arguing about numbers?"

I forgot how weirdly disjointed the movie was. I can kind of see why the studio execs wanted to add a voice over, though the movie is clearly better without it. There's a lot of confusing shots of rain-slick streets, empty buildings, crowds who almost completely ignore everything going on around them, and scenes with no dialogue and barely any action. It does a lot to immerse you in a world of future shock, where everything is weird and strange and what does it mean to be human--or as my brain insists on search-replacing that with, "What is a man?"--but I was sometimes relying on my memory of what the movie was about rather than what was actually happening on the screen.

I also love all the design aesthetics. The use of chiaroscuro, with the darkness everywhere occasionally lit by flashes of bright light, and the way there are a lot of "unnecessary" details on everything. Deckard's dingy apartment has a bunch of large blocks set together like bricks and almost bas-relief-like murals all throughout. And all the asymmetricality! The apartment is laid out strangely, the clothes have extra curlicues on them, and even the whiskey glasses Deckard drinks out of are strangely designed, as is the bottle of whiskey. A bunch of my clothes are asymmetrical like that now, because apparently that's the cyberpunk aesthetic, I assume entirely due to this movie.

I also completely forgot the middle section, much like when I reread Neuromancer a couple years ago, but I'm not sure if there were any scenes added to it for the Final Cut. And I appreciate how the Final Cut also hints slightly more strongly that Deckard is a replicant, but still leaves everything up in the air.

(I know about Blade Runner 2049, but I haven't seen it)

I'm really glad I went to see it again, since it had been so long and now I'm in a much better mindset to appreciate it, and at the perfect time to do so, too! Now I just need to wait thirty years and then go see Blade Runner 2049 before I die in the Water Wars.

I guess I am an extrovert now.

( My calendar's full and it's great )

This week is a short week, since I leave on Thursday for Daishocon. Full report on that when I get back!

Every weekend should be a three-day weekend.

( Do all of the things )

So, uh, am I an extrovert now? Even beyond everything I've done, I was all set up to do something tonight, tomorrow, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I wrote about this and some of my friends said they got tired just reading it. I've living that city boy life, as I told fiendishfanfares.

What a lovely weekend.