Month: November 2013

In which I almost die but don’t

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy8 Comments

20131113-181837.jpgIMPORTANT NOTE: Spoiler alert; I don’t die at the end, and neither does anyone else.

Also, I’m literally making dinner while typing this, so I may be slightly less coherent than usual. I’ll be stopping every couple of sentences to stir and it may distract me a bit.

Also also: the last time I made this dish I forgot the goddamn avocado. Don’t let me forget the avocado!

Anyway. Every Wednesday, without fail, I go to the comic shop after work, because Wednesday is New Comics Day and us nerds need our comic books. I left work today kinda weak and dishevelled; it was a pretty damn good day for the most part (needed, after Monday, and I even have another nice story or two I might type out later) but I wasn’t feeling well again this morning and I needed something to eat. I found myself with the rarest, but hardest to deny, of cravings: Chicken McNuggets.

So I got some. I’m a grown-ass man; if I wanna play to stereotypes by buying Chicken McNuggets to eat in my car while I drive to the comic shop, that’s what I’m gonna do. Also, sweet tea, because why would I pass up sweet tea? No damn reason at all, that’s why, and you’re a filthy Communist for even asking.

(This kind of thinking may be one of the reasons my ass is… well, grown.)

(Before I get any farther: yes, I know exactly how stupid every part of this is, especially the part where I deliberately eat Chicken McNuggets and french fries as a fucking mid-meal snack like some sort of animal, and I’m making a goddamn vegan dinner to make up for it.)

So, yeah, picture this: I’ve dumped the fries and McNuggets out of their original packaging and into the bag to make them easier to eat while I drive. The bag is in my lap, and my tasty beverage is in a cupholder to my right. I scarf a McNugget or two and a couple of fries and then, pulling out into traffic on what I should point out is a fairly busy road, reach down and to my right and pick up my beverage. By the rim of the cup, around the lid.

Note that I have performed this maneuver dozens, nay, hundreds of times in my life without incident. No more!

I lift my delicious iced sugary beverage to my mouth to partake of its loveliness and the fucking lid falls off. Well, not quite: the lid stays where the fuck it is. The cup falls off.

A number of things, as they say, happened very fast.

I may have said a swear.

I yanked my knees up to catch the cup and leaned forward. Now, this seems as if it should be impossible, as I’m typing it, but if I’m lying to you at least the lie is entertaining: I somehow pinned the cup in between my upper body and the wheel before it hit my lap and exploded, losing only a miraculously small amount of liquid. Of course, this wasn’t terribly helpful, as the car was moving and the act of yanking my knees up removed my foot from the accelerator and also took it away from the brake.

This is bad. There was traffic.

Somehow– in a feat requiring either ninja reflexes or the will of God or incredible bloody-arsed luck or, most likely, at least two of the three, I managed to get the cup away from the wheel, into the cupholder, and my car out of oncoming traffic and flowing properly with no more than a couple of tablespoons of liquid ending up on my coat and in my lap. I decided to stop pressing my goddamn stupid luck and waited until I got to the comic shop to eat the rest of my disgusting, fat-laced calorrific “snack.”

And then had to text my wife to be talked out of buying the incredibly awesome Hulk statue pictured above, where– I swear to God this is true– part of my justification process for trying to talk myself into it was “Fuck it, I already spent a grand on the cat this week; I may as well blow some money on myself.”

I educate your kids, folks.

In which awwwwwwwww

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching3 Comments

1397218_10152029337349066_1677998081_oSo, the cat.

Remember the cat?  The same cat whose continued existence and life on Earth I generously agreed to prolong, just last week, by virtue of spending one thousand dollars of American money which I had worked hard to earn?  That cat?

Little fucker’s feeling better, because he decided that no one in the house had any fucking reason to want to sleep last night and spent the whole goddamn night yowling.  A week ago I literally spent over a week’s salary to keep him alive.  Now I’m thinking about feeding him to the dogs.

Let’s tell a nice story for once.

I have this girl in my class; let’s call her Paprika, which is close to her actual name in a fashion that has me cackling just a little bit right now.  Paprika was one of my kids last year, too.  She’s not special ed, but she’s low– low enough that she probably got tested for special education at some point and just missed the cutoff.  I like the kid; she’s a sweetheart, if perhaps a bit too obnoxious at times, but she’s never going to be a Rhodes scholar.

Last year, at the beginning of the year, this kid literally refused to do any math at all without a calculator next to her and a pregenerated math facts list.  Flatly refused.  She didn’t get it, she didn’t know, she’s never been taught that before, every excuse you can imagine.  I worked and worked and worked with her on basic math facts last year to the point where by the end of the year she was occasionally forgetting to ask for her crutches– and I was rewarded with one of the higher ISTEP gains I got out of my kids last year.  She still didn’t pass, but she did a lot better.

She broke a couple of fingers this week– I’m not sure how, but her writing hand is wrapped to hell and back and she’s got at least one solid brace in there, but she’s got some pincer mobility with her thumb and index finger– the affected fingers are the middle and ring fingers on her right hand.

We were doing some calculations today and she called me over to ask a question.  I answered it for her and then literally instructed her to “check that with your calculator” to make sure it worked as we expected.

She, with a broken hand and a calculator sitting three inches away, pulled out a piece of paper and solved the problem manually.

Every so often– not often enough, unfortunately, but every so often– they make me proud of them.

In which: I keep things short and sweet

On By Luther M. SilerIn BlogwankingLeave a comment

AvI_0yPCAAII5dDToday: sucked.

Kids: idiots.

Teaching: for morons.

Cat: Clean bill of health.

Thor: The Dark World: Awesome.

Grading: halfway done.

2/3 of my 7th graders: Failing math right now

Not: in the mood

Veterans: Thank you

Grandpa: Miss you

Good: night

In which arrrrrrrghhhhhhhh

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

WHEEEEEEEI’m bad at Sunday.  It’s consistently– say, nine weeks out of ten– the only day of the week where I don’t have to go to work without calling in sick first, so you would think that I would treasure them as the one day where I Get To Relax.  No.  What Sunday actually represents is The One Day I Have to Get Every Single Fucking Thing in My Life Done, Including All the School Stuff I’ve Put Off, Since God Forbid There’s a Single Day a Week where I Don’t Work for School; Also, Get to Work, You’re Wasting Time you Lazy Bastard.

I have a verb for it.  I call it Sundaying.  It’s where I’m so stressed out and paralyzed by all the shit I didn’t do all week because I was fucking exhausted that I do nothing all day Sunday but obsess about the fact that I’m wasting my Sunday and that tomorrow I have to go back to work.  Low-level stress, constantly, that occasionally pirouettes into brief bursts of high-level stress.

I’m going to go to a movie today (Thor, of course) and then have dinner in a restaurant without my son and with my wife.  I’ve gotten a couple of things done this morning– most notably, managed to be out of bed, showered, and breakfasted before ten and finally, finally gotten both of the car seats readjusted so that we’re not pinching the boy’s shoulders every time we put him in the car.  When we get home, I have two computers to fix (fun fact: my wife and my father-in-law both have basically the exact same computer, bought around the same time.  They both shit out this week, for what appear to be different reasons, although both of them appear mechanical and not software-related in nature) and all the weekend’s grading to do and some PAT team stuff to do and lesson plans to write (oh, hey! I got that done at OtherJob!) and and and and and and and. Hopefully I’ll get time to read a couple volumes of Sandman and maybe, just maybe, watch the episodes of S.H.I.E.L.D. and American Horror Story: Coven that we haven’t gotten to this week.

Maybe.

We’ll see.

Or maybe I’ll spend the whole movie obsessing about the fact that I’m not at home doing those several things and be stressed out and ruin it.  That might happen too!

Sigh.

Also:  Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers came out twenty fucking years ago this weekend, and jesus god am I old.

In which I hurt myself and acquire toys

On By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking11 Comments

Stupidest forearm workout ever?  Okay:  spend an hour deleting Facebook statuses, Likes and comments while using a trackpad.  There’s really no way to batch delete anything so it just takes forever and everything has to be individually clicked on and ow ow ow.

On the plus side, there’s no longer any trace of me on Facebook prior to March 1, 2013.  Which means I just have a few more months to get rid of and then I’m frrreeeeeee.  Which is exciting.

Also exciting:  I bought a new santoku knife today, as well as a new set of measuring spoons that are made of metal instead of plastic and thus don’t have the measurements worn off of them.  And it made me as happy as a pig in shit, which is a sign that 2013 has completely remade me as a human being, because being in Bed Bath & Beyond should never make me happy.  An actual project for this weekend: research rice cooker/vegetable steamer combos.

I don’t know who the hell I am anymore.

Because God forbid I don’t double-post on Friday

On By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

20131108-184818.jpg
Take a look at the logo on that picture.

Just what the hell is going on there?

First, the weirdly-quasi-racist Yellow-Peril-with-a-mustache lookin’ laughing dude who replaces the letter “O.” I can deal with that.

For no clear reason, the second letter O is an eyeball. Which… okay.

But look at the I in “Joking.” Why the hell is that a little person? And somehow that’s the detail that pushes this logo from poorly-designed to truly inexplicable. Why the hell are any of these letters actually other things? Who the hell designed this? Who approved it? And why is the whole logo on what looks like a splash, and how long has this thing been in my gameroom and I’ve never noticed how goddamned weird it is, and holy hell is the yellow dude masturbating?

It may be time to call it a night already.

In which I find a way to mention sriracha again

On By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking, Reviews, TeachingLeave a comment

20131108-174700.jpgI have, conservatively, and depending on how much I push down on the stack prior to measuring it, between four and six inches of poorly-organized and no doubt deeply depressing grading to wade through this weekend. I am not remotely in the mood for it right now; I think pulling together next week’s lesson plans (and, uh, this week’s lesson plans) is probably about as ambitious as I’m planning on getting tonight. I have a blog post to write, the last 40 pages of a relatively entertaining book to blaze through, and Baldur’s Gate. I think that’s probably enough to get me through a three-hour shift at OtherJob.

Three of my favorite kids (and the sister of one of the three, who I haven’t actually ever had in class due to her age but I’m fond of) all transferred out today. It’s got me in a deeply pessimistic mood about my job during a month that has already seen much, much more than its share of pessimism, and I caught myself looking at job listings at private schools again yesterday. There’s a tiny silver cloud in that one of the two Kids Who are Always Suspended was spreading the word that he was transferring schools on Monday as well, but he apparently has given two different schools out for where he’ll be landing so I’m not holding my damn breath. Naturally, even in that situation, he’s the one of the two who I actually kind of like despite his constant attempts to derail my classroom; the nicest thing I can say about the other one is that the world would be a better place had he been a blowjob.

So, yeah, that’s where my head’s at right now. Also, since I apparently review commercial food items now, I had what Subway is calling their “Sriracha Chicken Melt” for dinner tonight. While it was tasty (and spicy enough that, half an hour later, my nose is still sorta running) there are little advertising placards all over the store that describe the sriracha as “creamy.” Sriracha is a lot of things, but creamy is none of them. Something else sriracha isn’t: orange. So I don’t know what the hell I was eating on that sammitch, but it wasn’t sriracha.

Mmmm, sriracha.

In which Kraft is out of their goddamn minds

On By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking, Reviews3 Comments

photo-2I am, as I’ve mentioned before, a macaroni and cheese aficionado.  I’ve made it roughly two dozen different ways this year, and I found a new one tonight.  My wife made a late-night grocery run last night, and asked me if I’d found my present while we were unbagging everything and using Pym Particles to fit all the food into the pantry.

I had not.

“I have not,” I said.

She digs around, all excited, and hands me this box.  It’s new Kraft Mystery Taste Sand!  Jalapeño Mystery Taste Sand!  With, apparently, special new ridged macaroni!  Which I think technically makes it something else, but hell if I know anything about what to call pasta.

I was as excited as she was.  Then I forgot about it until tonight, when she called me to let me know that she and the boy had been roped into dinner at her parents’ house and I was therefore on my own for dinner.  Batching it, as dudebros might say.  Which I’m not.  So I kind of feel dirty right now.  But whatever.

Oh shit I can make the new macaroni.

Which I have now eaten.  And taken a picture of.

Guys… I don’t quite know what to do about this.  Kraft Jalapeño Mystery Taste Sand Macaroni and Cheese smells and tastes exactly like Chili Cheese Fritos.  The smell is uncanny.  And kind of horrifying, because when you put something in your mouth that smells exactly like Chili Cheese Fritos, only it’s on a spoon and it’s not Chili Cheese Fritos, it’s… a little… well, off-putting?  Sure.  Off-putting.  Which maybe shouldn’t have a hyphen; the autocorrect fixed it once and left it alone the second time.  I’m not even sure it’s a word.

So I covered it with sriracha.  And then it was delicious.  As all things covered in sriracha tend to be.

I will vouch for the thicker, ridged macaroni, although it would have boiled to limp nastiness had I not decided to taste it with about two minutes left– it boils quicker than they want you to think it does, but it’s good and they should use it for all their macaroni and cheese.  I can’t really vouch for the macaroni, though.  Unless eating Chili Cheese Fritos (owned by Kraft, I think?) transformed magically into pasta appeals to you.  In that case, go for it.

There, you learned something today.