Technically, the rapier is a birthday present for the boy, and the zweihander and seax are mine (the zweihander is nearly as tall as I am, thus the picture with the quarterstaff for scale) but the Siler household acquired a lot of new weaponry today. I thought the Michiana Renaissance Festival was quite a bit more impressive than I was expecting, and the attendance was really impressive– it’s being held at the 4-H Fairgrounds, and judging from the parking in the lot, I’d say attendance was at least a good percentage of what the Fair usually generates on a Saturday.
Got a video game to finish and a book to (hopefully) get a good percentage of the way through, so that’s all I’ve got for today, but one way or another it’s already been a good day.
That capital L was originally a typo, but I’m keeping it because it feels appropriate.
Tomorrow is my son’s fourteenth birthday, meaning that I left a building where I had been teaching 8th graders all day and came home to a house with four extra 8th graders in it. Tomorrow we are going to a local Renaissance festival, at his request.
I have officially had one of the best first weeks of school of my entire career, and am nervously waiting for the other shoe to drop. That said, if it’s coming today, it had better be fast, as I’m going to bed early as hell tonight.
I have had the idea for several years now that in the unlikely event that I were to decide to become a Motorcycle Person, I would quite likely become a boring Motorcycle Person. I’d end up in one of those oversized, three-wheeled jobs with an oversized windshield and lots of places for storage– I think the technical term for them is “baggers.” The type, frankly, that if I spot on the road are likely to be driven by someone with a decade or two on me even considering my advanced age. The excitement/danger factor of riding a motorcycle doesn’t really impress me; in fact, it’s quite the opposite; I think I’d spend most of my time terrified of being run off the road by a car and part of the reason I’m more attracted to a larger, more stable vehicle is they just feel safer. I can’t ride a bicycle, remember; the notion of one that goes 70 miles an hour is not inherently attractive.
Anyway, I was driving home from work today and I noticed the person in front of me was driving … probably not that exact vehicle, but close enough for our purposes. He was, in accordance with prophecy, grey-bearded, somewhat portly, and wearing a full helmet, and while obviously I couldn’t get a good look at his face, he vibed as a guy in his late fifties or maybe early sixties.
As I was following him, I was musing about more or less exactly the same things I’ve been talking about in the last couple of paragraphs. I’ve not seen many of these things with the two wheels in front, which was kind of interesting, but I think I prefer the traditional style.
After a mile or so, a guy pulled up beside us. This guy was younger, helmetless, and riding a stripped-down crotch-rockety sort of thing that was more or less the exact opposite of the first guy’s bike, and in fact the type of thing that I’m absolutely certain I will never ride, because I will die.
The second guy said something to the first guy. I obviously couldn’t hear it or seem him well enough to read his lips, but his body language seemed more or less friendly and positive? The first guy, perfectly reasonably I thought, pointed to his helmet (which looked like the kind with headphones built in, so he was probably listening to music, too) and made a sort of sorry, dude, I can’t hear you gesture.
Bro went nuts.
Traffic is reasonably heavy on my evening drive, and so my guy on the trike managed to stay in front of the motorcycle guy mostly by just staying in his lane, and to be completely honest I’m not even convinced he was aware of the guy, since again, he had his helmet on and the guy was behind him. He was right to my right, though, so I got to witness a bunch of unhinged screaming and yelling and occasional attempts to get ahead of him. Eventually he found an opening, drove between two cars, and pulled in front of the guy, nearly clipping him in the process, then found a hole and got far enough away that I lost track of him. And other than the part where the dude nearly hit him, I really don’t know how much of probably two solid minutes of spittle-flecked raving the trike driver even realized was happening. Good thing the stupid bastard didn’t have a gun, I suppose.
It has been hot and gross for a couple of weeks now, and the humidity has been grotesque enough that I have genuinely had some trouble breathing while outside recently. Yesterday was supposed to be in the low eighties; it didn’t really appear to make any difference and everything was still horrid. Today the high was supposed to be 77 degrees; I took a risk and wore my usual jeans.
I have not lived in Indiana for my entire damn-near-half-century life, but I have lived in the Midwest for all of that time, and I know what the Goddamn sky looks like in November. It looks exactly like that, which is what I was greeted with when I left work this afternoon, and stayed like that the whole way home. Even weirder? Maybe I’ve had the world’s strangest stroke, but I swear to everything you might find holy that I could smell snow.
Was there snow? No, of course not; that would be damn near unprecedented in late August, and it wasn’t remotely cold enough besides. I cannot describe the level of sensory discontinuity(*) this led to. My body was telling me slightly cool for August and my nose and eyes were telling me Mid-November; snow coming.
Stupid state.
(*) This is not exactly the word I want, but my brain is stuck on dysmorphia and dystopia, both of which are even wronger than discontinuity. If I happen to remember the word I want or someone volunteers it, maybe I’ll edit.
I was rudely tricked into doing classroom coverage today, when I made the mistake of walking past a classroom that did not have a teacher because she had gone home with a sudden illness. Apparently the office had not sent anyone to the room yet. I guess I’m not the type to just walk off when a kid comes out into the hallway and tells me there’s no adult in the room.
I’m sure it would have been fine.
At any rate, tomorrow will somehow be the first day of the school year with a completely normal schedule, and my lesson plans currently include a quiz about me and then a bunch of attempting to learn names. My retention rates run from 90-100% in the mornings to less than 50% with my sixth hour, so apparently I need to do some work on that. I tell the kids that I get the first two weeks of the school year for free and after that they get a piece of candy every time I can’t remember their names. I usually learn the girls’ names faster but the girls are also more likely to be the two kids in every classwhere it’s May and I’m still calling two of them by the same name. I think I’m also going to put my seating charts together tomorrow; that’ll help.
Also, for the first time this year I’ve decided to keep a running count on the board of 1) what day in the school year it is, 2) how much of the school year is gone, and 3) how much of the school year is left. Only I’m doing it using fractions, and I feel like if I make a biggish deal at the beginning of each class period I might do some good in teaching them how to reduce fractions, especially since there are exactly 180 days in the school year and 180 has a lot of factors. So, just as an example, since this is day 3 (and I’ve decided, arbitrarily, to consider the current day “done” for the purposes of the fractions):
3rd Day of the school year 1/60 of the year completed 59/60 of the year remaining
And tomorrow will be:
4th Day of the school year 1/45 of the year completed 44/45 of the year remaining
… and so on. I dunno, it’ll entertain me, and fully 2/3 of what I do every day is done with the explicit goal of entertaining myself.
I’d give y’all the quiz just for the hell of it, but there’s too many pictures of people I don’t have permission to post pictures of online, so it’s not going to work. It ought to be a fun day, though, which I will make up for by throwing a diagnostic test at them on Wednesday that’s going to be … discouraging. For all of us.
I’m pleased to announce that the sense of impending dread that most teachers associate with Sundays is not currently afflicting me. I’ve been sickish all day again, as has been typical of Sundays for a while now, but beyond that, we’re prepped for class tomorrow and we’re all good. I actually got a major (sort of) task done today; our mailbox has only been tenuously attached to its base since we installed it after buying the house in 2011 and I finally bought a piece of wood of an appropriate side to attach the thing properly today. Fourteen and a half years, y’all, but the mailbox no longer wiggles when you open it. I am amazed that in all this time we’ve never had a complaint from a mail carrier; I am sure that he will notice the difference when the mail gets delivered tomorrow. Maybe there will be a thank-you note in there! It would be nice.
I also sent out the first of my roughly-biweekly parent newsletters and got a barrage of responses in rapid succession, which I suppose I should see as a good thing but which might actually have the effect of decreasing how often I send such things out. Or maybe in the future I’ll just make sure I’m somewhere where I can instantly reply to a ton of emails if necessary.
That means that it’s 7:12 PM and, since this blog post is written and my Duolingo obligations are fulfilled, I’m free to spend the rest of the night reading or playing video games. Huzzah!
I got plenty of sleep last night but it feels like it didn’t count for some reason, my wife and I went out shopping for a while in the afternoon, the heat got to me way more than it should have, and now I’m staring out the window waiting to see if apocalypse storm is going to hit us or not. My brother is in the north Chicago suburbs and sent me video of the ridiculous hailstorm that hit his place; I think what smacked him is going south of us, but it’s supposed to get fun soon and the internet’s already gone out once just for shits and giggles.
A long way of saying I’m not bothering with a full post tonight again because if I do the internet will likely cut out part way through it anyway. See y’all tomorrow.
Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com 