In which I’m not complaining but I definitely am

On March 16, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking, life2 Comments

I am not big on the whole St. Patrick’s Day thing. I have been more strident in my dislike in the past, especially when I lived a life more likely to expose me to drunken idiots in green (ie, when I lived in Chicago) but I am not willing to even pretend to be remotely Irish, am definitely not remotely Catholic, and I don’t drink, and between those three things I don’t have any particular use for this holiday. This means that when my wife told me that we were getting together with her side of the family today, and that “brisket” would be involved, I was excited as hell– I never get brisket– and I did not even think to connect it to the holiday.

You can imagine my consternation when we got to the party and the “brisket” was corned beef, which yes, I understand is from the same part of the cow and is in fact a different preparation of the same meat, but Goddammit when I get to a party and I’m expecting brisket on a Sunday afternoon and instead I’m given a reuben I might start muttering under my breath and quietly sending pointed and slightly disrespectful text messages to my wife. Don’t misunderstand me, I love a good reuben, although my particular preference for brined meats on rye runs more to pastrami– but reubens don’t at all fit into the same headspace as “brisket,” dammit, and part of me still feels betrayed.(*)

The rest of me is stuffed full of corned beef, though, so all in all it was a pretty good day.

(*) I should have learned after seventeen years of marriage into this family that I should never assume I know what is going to happen when we go to her sister’s place for a meal, even when said sister isn’t responsible for the cooking, and most of the cooking for this particular event was done by her cousins. The last time we went there for Thanksgiving there were no mashed potatoes, which is a food sin of the highest order, and I absolutely left that particular gathering with my dis firmly gruntled. You can’t even call it Thanksgiving if there are no mashed potatoes. It may as well be Mashed Potato Day. There can be other potatoes too, I’m fond of au gratin and any form of sweet potato, but either way wrongs were committed against Thanksgiving in general and me in particular.

Holy cow

On March 15, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking2 Comments

I registered the site before I started using it, but Goddamn, that’s a long time.

Welp

On March 15, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Woke up at 5:30 this morning, laid in bed for a couple of hours unable to fall back asleep and finally gave up and got up before eight, and paid for it with a nap this afternoon. Now it’s 8:30 and I legit do not have any idea where half of the day went. How are you?

I had no pie today

On March 14, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics4 Comments

… but I did have a slice of abso-damn-lutely delicious carrot cake for dessert that I grabbed from our local grocery on a whim, and I’m so sugared up right now that I might die, and that’s fine, and if you’re one of those people who doesn’t like carrot cake you may have a regular carrot and find an alternate use for it. Carrot cake is Goddamned awesome and I have it maybe once a year, and tonight decided to be the night.

And I think I’m going to leave it at that, because I just found out that the Post Office is cutting 10,000 jobs and anything else I have to say is going to attract the attention of the FBI. The Indianapolis post office distribution hub may already be the most fucked place in the country— I’ve had a package sitting there for two weeks with no information at all– and … yeah. I’mma stop there.

Sometimes I think about how I thought I hated George W. Bush, and how that doesn’t even vaguely compare to the quality and quantity of hatred that continues to blacken my soul every fucking day in 2025. So I’m going to go back to thinking about the rest of that carrot cake, because otherwise I start wondering about what a regular civilian normal person might be able to do to damage someone who owns a private jet, and that seems like a bad idea.

Three down, one to go

On March 13, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I applied to teach summer school, did I mention that? I don’t know for sure that I want to do it, but I can’t decide that I do want it unless I apply now, and I have no real sense of how many jobs there are or what my chances are to get one, because for this type of thing they basically drop the teachers into a spreadsheet that sorts us by seniority and licensure and stuff like that and then spits out the teachers that get offered jobs. Plus I really only want to teach Algebra 1; I’m licensed for high school (there’s no middle school summer school this year) but I don’t want my first time teaching, say, Geometry to be in a three-week intensive summer course. Seems like a bad idea!

But yeah. I’d work four hours a day for three weeks and make a few grand (I’m paid at my hourly rate, which … I’m not 100% sure what my hourly rate is but it’d be decent money) and then I’d have all of July and the first week of August for my break, which doesn’t seem like it would be too terribly exhausting. We’ll see what happens.

At any rate, I’m done with three quarters of the 2024-25 school year, and I’m reaching the point where I’m having to admit that this has been a pretty good year so far. I’m pretty sure I’m failing fewer students this quarter than I ever have, or at least since returning to teaching after the furniture sales years, and that’s a good feeling. Then again, I had to fill this out for each of my classes, which is reliably the most annoying part of giving grades:

I know you can’t read that, but that’s a class of thirty or so students and I have had to rank each of them from zero to two on Persistence, Respectfulness, Initiative, Dependability, and Efficiency, and if you’re thinking that some of those sound like they might kinda be the same thing and you’re not entirely sure what some others mean, well, the kids never look at the numbers either so even putting enough energy into them to spread them out like I did is kind of a colossal waste of my time. This is more a measure of what kind of mood I’m in when I’m doing the grades than anything else, to be honest, and I wish the district would stop doing it. Annoying for teachers and irrelevant to students and parents is not a good combination, guys! Half of them don’t care about their actual grades, why would getting this shit matter? Plus every teacher ranks all of their kids– so I had to do this a hundred and eighty times– and so each kid gets thirty of these stupid little grades, which are just slapped into the margins next to the grade for each class in a way that is barely readable anyway.

Blech.

Today was the first day of spring– shut up, yes it was– and the way I know is that the entire building suddenly shifted to 100% playing grabass with each other all day. It’s supposed to be in the seventies tomorrow, and it’s Pi Day, which I don’t like, because there’s a building tradition that the math teachers bring pie, but I have a tradition where I pretend to forget to bring pie, while wearing the Pi shirt that doesn’t quite fit very well and I wear one day a year. And guess what? I’m gonna forget to bring pie again tomorrow! My wife and I almost stopped for pie on our way home from dinner but then we decided we were tired and I didn’t want to spend my hard-earned money on pie for however many Goddamn teachers we have in our building.

Also, I’m wearing shorts to work, because 74 or so outdoors for the first time all year will translate into approximately 190 degrees in my classroom, and that’s if they remember the heat’s not supposed to be on. I may burn to a crisp tomorrow, is what I’m saying, and that makes it even less likely that I’m going to be enjoying any pie.

In which this makes no sense and that’s fine

On March 12, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

It was actually a pretty good day today, all told, but my God, I’m exhausted in the exact same way I might be after having the hell beaten out of me all day. I’m going to try to be in bed by nine tonight; I see no advantage in further consciousness today. See y’all tomorrow.

In which I make a decision

On March 11, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

…so, apparently I like my job?

I had a Moment this weekend, or perhaps a series of Moments, where a math job opened up at the boy’s school and I jumped on it faster than I’ve ever jumped on a job opportunity in my life. And then, once the cover letter was written and the resume was updated and everything was filled out and sent off, I immediately regretted it.

And that was … kinda weird? You’re telling me, brain, that I offer you a job with small class sizes and damn near universally kids who want to learn and whose parents are invested in their education and you … don’t want it? You’re supposed to kill people to get that job. I’ve been in the trenches for over two decades at this point! I deserve a job that no one would ever refer to using the word “trenches,” God damn it!

Now, because it’s my kid’s school, it’s kind of a weird situation, because in the “who do you know who works here” section on the application, I had to write “basically everyone,” because dude has been at this school since he was larval and that’s kind of what happens. And I emailed one person at the school and gave him a heads-up that I’d put in the application, because technically I used to be his boss and I thought it was at least a little possible that someone might go ask him about that if they put together that we were at the same school at the same time. And I very specifically did not tell two of the three people I put down as references, because no one ever calls references first and if I’m not taking the job I don’t need the drama at work about whether I’m leaving.

Anyway, yeah, several days in the row of anxiety, and do I really want this, and reminding myself that I really haven’t had a lot to complain about this year, and then the person I sent all the documentation in to emailed me back and she asked “are you sure about this,” because, in her words, their pay was “woefully” lower than what I’m currently making.

So, of course, I emailed her back and asked how woeful is woeful, because that word doesn’t really suggest a number to me if I’m being honest, and Glassdoor was being really unhelpful, and she got back to me.

Twenty five thousand dollar pay cut.

So, uh, yeah, I’m staying at my current school next year. That was a fun few days, though.