I’m starting to catch up with my Christmas books and my Barnes & Noble Half Off Hardcovers books, but people keep writing more things.
Unread Shelf: April 30, 2022
This might actually be real
My wife mentioned to me earlier today that Spider Man: No Way Home, or whatever it’s called, because I’m not sure that’s it, is fully available for streaming now … and I shrugged. And then I thought about the fact that Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is out next week and I have no desire to go see it, and that Thor: Love and Thunder comes out in June or July and the trailer for that didn’t do a damn thing for me either.
I know I’ve mentioned this multiple times, but it’s amazing that it seems to be actually true: I really don’t seem to care if I ever see another Marvel movie or not. Like, she could download the Spider-Man movie on her own and watch it (and she might) and I really don’t think I’d care at all.
Amazing.
Progress, finally
I think that if you had asked me, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that Fatima has been in my class since January. She has since been joined by two more Afghan students, one girl and one boy, and today, finally, we had a part-time interpreter in the room with us, and I have never been more excited to meet someone in my entire life as I was this poor guy. We did some quick diagnostics stuff (a lot easier to have the kids see what math they understand when you can explain to them what you want them to do) and then I just asked him to ask them to tell him about themselves.
Fatima likes grapes. Like, that doesn’t seem like much, but it’s communication. There’s still a few days of Ramadan left but I am absolutely bringing this kid some grapes sometime soon. Two of them are from Kunar province and the third is from Khost province, which means all three of them were right on the border with Pakistan. I asked the translator to reassure them that if they wanted to talk to each other during class, that was absolutely okay– the three of them are as quiet as mice pretty much all the time— and I actually heard the other girl (who needs a code name) laugh for the first time. It was great.
I think it is actually Thursday, which is good, because I’ve thought the week was nearly over all week, and that kept being wrong, and if it’s actually Thursday than that ought to make tomorrow Friday, the actual end of the week. Nineteen days of school left.
Speaking of the end of the week, Wednesday (I think) was my nephew’s first birthday, so we’re going to be out of town all weekend to go to his birthday party in the north Chicago suburbs, so if you follow the YouTube channel, updates are probably going to be light. I didn’t post any new videos today for the first time since I started the channel because yesterday was that busy, and I think my plan right now is to do one video a day for tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, and then try and resume the normal schedule on Monday. We’ll see if I pull that off or not, but it’s the plan at the moment. At any rate, if I go radio silent over there, don’t panic. I haven’t quit anything, we’ve just hit a scheduling snag.
Taking tonight off
God, I can’t believe it’s only Wednesday.
In which I’m not going anywhere yet
I didn’t mean for this to work this way, but this headline is doubly appropriate: first, because despite Elon Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter, I don’t plan to immediately flee the service. I didn’t like Jack either, and actually I don’t know who the hell runs the place now, so it’s not like I’ve ever personally approved of whoever was at the top of the corporate ladder at the place. Musk’s ownership probably won’t become official for six months or so (and isn’t guaranteed,) and I’m not about to flee a place where I have nearly eleven thousand followers and something like fifteen years of history without a better reason.
Like, for example, “I hate it there.” I might leave Twitter because I hate Twitter. But not because of Musk. Not, at least, until he starts changing things. Then we’ll see.
Also, speaking of things that aren’t happening, I have officially not gotten the only job I have managed to get an interview for since I started applying to jobs a couple of months ago. And … honestly, whatever. I’m not bothered by it. They ended up going with someone with coding experience, which I always knew was a weak spot in my application, and if you’ve been following along lately you know I was lukewarm on the job at best anyway. I still don’t especially want to return to my current school in the fall, but I’m far from convinced that this would have been an improvement.
Are we sure it’s only Tuesday, by the way? Is there any chance that it’s Thursday right now? Because this has been an insanely long two days, and I really don’t like having my worst class at the very end of the day.
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