My first week at the shelter

The woman who runs the shelter, Jelena, is kinda taking care of everything on her own. She’s 47 years old, weighs around 40kg and her left elbow is messed up, so she really needs help.

I usually spend around 2 hours changing water and then another hour fixing stuff around the shelter. That means I’m pretty much always carrying something and my hands are usually covered in mud and/or saliva, so unfortunately I don't have a lot of opportunities to take pics.

The most interesting thing so far is how each animal has their own character. There are around 70 dogs, but even after a few visits, you easily figure out what they love, what they hate, and if they're gonna cause trouble or not.

There is one dog that really, really loves putting his dirty paws into the water. He patiently watches as you fill the buckets with fresh, clean water, then pretends he’s not interested at all while he waits for you to leave them unattended. As soon as you turn your back even for a second, he’s there, with his paws in the bucket, looking you straight in the eye. I hate him. I also love him because he’s really cute and I respect his dedication. It’s complicated.

Last Saturday, one of the dogs figured out how to open the gate and let a couple of dogs escape (curiously, he stayed inside: he’s not interested in running away, he just wants to fuck shit up I guess). So I had to go look for them and bring them back and then fix the gate so they couldn’t open it again. Of course, the dogs had no intention of going back, so I had to catch them one by one and carry them back inside. Needless to say, the first thing all of them did when they got out was roll around in poop and carcasses and they did not smell nice.

One of the activities I enjoy the most is making The Perfect Mud for pigs. By noon, their precious mud is all dry and they’re visibly distressed. As soon as I start pouring water they start cheering, and when it gets close to The Perfect Mud Consistency they lay down into it and start making these lovely disgusting sounds.

So far, I love it! The dogs are ridiculously fun, I get super-tired in a really nice way and I've improved my technique with the shovel and pickaxe.

My first week of (procrastinating on) learning to drive

When it comes to driving, I’m still at the boring stage: learning theory. The interesting thing is, until recently, they would actually put you in a car and ask you to drive through a busy intersection during rush hour even before you started reading the books and manuals. But after some 30 years, they’ve realized that’s probably not the best idea, so you have to pass the theory exam before you start driving around with the instructor.

There are no books you can learn from, just a database of roughly 2000 questions with multiple answers that you have to go through inside the worst user interface I’ve seen in my life. It’s pretty obvious a single engineer made it using Bootstrap and had to reinvent design patterns from scratch.

Most of the time I can't even focus on questions because I'm thinking about different ways the design could be improved. Maybe after I'm done with it I'll do one of those annoying unsolicited redesigns and post it on Medium...

The thing that keeps me going is the images that represent different driving situations. They’re using these cursed collages of photographs and illustrations that make it look like you’re inside an Eastern-European point-and-click adventure from 2004.

And, of course, there are casual sexist easter eggs: when you hover over a “danger” sign it shows a silhouette of a naked woman… Very tasteful.

Other noteworthy things

• I bought a bicycle! I love it!
• I started going to the gym 4x a week! I love it!
• I had a really nice birthday and my girlfriend wrote me a poem! I loved it!