In which I shove stuff around

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Not pictured: the chaos behind me, involving our bed, everything we had to move out of that corner, and a ton of stuff that we used to paint/patch/repaint/prime everything and haven’t moved back into the garage yet. You can see where the wall used to be on the right there; the seams range from, well, that, to nearly invisible depending on the direction and amount of light in the room. It’ll be fine. That missing baseboard in the back corner was already missing and has been since we bought the house. We threw furniture in front of it and didn’t worry about it; the fact that it was literally hidden behind. a wall helped. We assume there used to be some sort of ladies’ vanity there or something like that. Anyway, we cannibalized baseboard from the half-wall we removed to extend out to that point and are going to have to go to Lowes to see if we can get something similar to fit in what’s left of that corner.

Tomorrow we have to figure out how to Tetris our king-sized bed frame, absurdly heavy mattress and adjustable base up against that wall, then start moving everything else to where it’s supposed to be, cleaning years of dust off the floor as we go. My wife has a plan. I am just doing what I’m told. I have, like, two other very minor projects in mind for tomorrow; we can get those done when we get annoyed at moving stuff around in the bedroom.

Also, mental note: find a rug. God, I hate that floor.

In which I destroy stuff

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

We have a dumpster coming next week, and I have never been more excited about anything in my entire life. We are going to be tearing apart or taking down all sorts of shit that has been slightly annoying but not annoying enough to actually deal with during the fifteen years we have lived in this house. This metal post in the back yard has never had a birdhouse on it. You can see the rotten remains of it on the top part of the post on the ground back there, but we never bothered to do the work to tear the thing out because it’s cemented in place. It’s just been sitting there being an eyesore. Well, I cut a couple of chunks off of it today in preparation for either cutting it flush to the ground or digging the cement chunk out next week— I wanted to make sure the blade for my reciprocating saw would actually cut through the thing, and it looks like the answer’s yes.

Meanwhile, the size of modern cars means that my Kia and my wife’s car only somewhat fit in the garage, and these cabinets have been in my way for years. I tore the doors off today and we’ll take the cabinets down tomorrow. To the garbage with you! We’re going to order a standalone cabinet or two from Lowe’s that will use the space better and actually allow me to get out of my car without turning sideways.

There’s a workbench we’ve never used in the basement that’s going to go too, and we’ll finally repaint the bedroom tomorrow and start rearranging in there. We’ve got electricians coming in for new lighting in the basement, too, and we might tear down some paneling down there too just for the hell of it.

Soooooo psyched.

Victory

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

I have made it to Spring Break. Certainly not the hardest year to do so, but I started my last three classes of the day with the words “your job is to make sure I don’t go to jail today” anyway. My official observation last week turned out literally perfect, and the guy who was in my room for the disaster lesson on Tuesday was back yesterday and everything went beautifully.

I even made it through April Fool’s Day without any particular nonsense, although one of my students did attempt to convince me she’d passed out, sticking to it until I stepped over her prone body and pointed out to the whole room that generally when human beings pass out they fall backwards.

“I guess she could be dead,” I said. “If that’s the case, someone needs to drag her into the hallway. There’s no dying in here. Y’all know the rules.”

One of the boys actually got up and that’s when she abandoned the joke.

And yes, I really do have a rule that no one is allowed to die in Math class, and I really am like this, and I guarantee if you ask my kids to name one rule in my class, about a third of them will mention that they need to stay in their seats and the rest of them will say they aren’t allowed to die.

Anyway, I’ve been playing video games all evening, and now I’m going to go read until I decide it’s time to go to bed. Hooray!

Monthly Reads: March 2026

On By Luther M. SilerIn Photography, ReadingLeave a comment

Book of the Month is the most excellent The Black Hunger, by Nicholas Pullen. This was kind of a bleh month overall, but Slewfoot and Trad Wife were pretty good too.

Unread Shelf: March 31, 2026

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How long, do you think, will I hold out until I cave and call this post “Unread Shelves”?

In which that could have gone better

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, TeachingLeave a comment

I had my second observation today, the one that technically didn’t count: the head of math instruction for the district, who mostly just wanted to sit in on my Algebra class and see how things went.

Ha.

I can say without the slightest fear of contradiction that I have never had an observation, official or otherwise, go more poorly than that did. Holy shit, y’all. The kids were fine— this was one hundred percent not their fault in any way. But we just loaded math error on top of math error, and for some fucking reason every single problem I put in the assignment (graphing quadratics) put a negative sign in front of x squared, and basic arithmetic betrayed me, and by the end of it I’d managed to fuck it up so many times and in so many different ways that I stopped everyone, told them to all turn their assignment in for full credit, and that tomorrow we were going to try over again. The lesson was a complete disaster after the first ten minutes, which went fairly well, but for some reason -x2 completely shortcut the usual rules of order of operations in everyone’s brains— if it had been -3x2 I would have remembered (and so would they) to square the number first and then multiply it by negative 3, but the absence of an actual number meant that for some reason we were all trying to square negative x, which, of course, is always positive, and …

… fuck.

The thing is, this happens, and my observer knew that (and he fell down the same damn rabbit hole we did) and wasn’t pissy or upset with me at all, and in fact I think the way I dissected what had gone wrong in front of him actually impressed him a little bit. I told him he had to come back on Wednesday for the quadratic theorem, though, and I’m bound and determined that that one, we’re going to do right, Goddammit.

Ha ha ha lol we’re all gonna die

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

Nine teachers out tomorrow already, before 9:00 PM. Five of them are out for the entire week. I went ahead and signed up for coverage every day next week, figuring that it’s going to be one of those weeks where I don’t end up having a choice. I slept all afternoon and into the evening and am bound and determined to be back in bed by nine, which is in ten minutes. I have not had dinner. Last night featured truly spectacular digestive distress. Whatever this is, I’m planning on sleeping it off, because hell if I can afford to miss any school this week.

Four days. It’ll be fine. Really.

Halfway there

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, ReadingLeave a comment

I finished Robert Jordan’s A Crown of Swords today, Book Seven of the Wheel of Time, which means I have finished eight of these dreadful books (there’s a prequel, technically book zero) and am either halfway through the series or over halfway depending on how you’re counting. I only have four of the actual Jordan books left and then the trilogy written by Brandon Sanderson. I am also about to enter what fans of the series refer to as “the slog,” which means that a book series that will regularly go five hundred pages without a single speck of advancement in the plot is going to get slower.

Seriously, Crown of Swords is eight hundred and fifty pages long and maybe three or four actual events happen in the book– someone dies abruptly in the prologue, someone else dies abruptly and more or less off-screen in the last chapter, someone fake-dies (I don’t believe it for a tiny shred of a second) a few chapters before the end, and some of the characters find something they’ve been supposedly looking for for like three books. They’ve been looking for it for so long that I’ve forgotten what it’s supposed to be for, and when they find it, it’s also off-screen. A character literally walks out of a room with a bundle wrapped in cloth and announces “Here’s the thing! We’ve got it!”

Oh, and two other characters, whose relationship has never made sense for a single second, get married. Off-screen.

I am going to finish this damned series this year, but I have always been reading it out of spite, and nothing has changed. The physical books still make me happy every time I walk past them, though. I have no regrets.