The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
I woke up at 5:00 in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, which didn’t stop me from collapsing into bed a bit after noon and sleeping for six hours. I feel like hell and am going back to bed in a few minutes; I haven’t eaten all day and I feel like some food might be a good idea. Not sure if my wife and son still live here, either, so I should probably go see if they’re still in the house.
God forbid I let that streak die, though.
The bride is the eldest daughter of my wife’s favorite cousin, and she and her sister are easily my favorites among my wife’s side of the family (who, for the record, are all perfectly fine people; I’ve gotten very lucky with my in-laws) but I was unfortunately unsuccessful in my attempts to encourage either chicanery or shenanigans. She’s marrying into a family that is substantially more religious than anyone on our side, and I am the least religious of our side by a significant margin, so I was at least hoping for some entertainment or at least horror stories out of that, but it didn’t happen– the church was lovely, the reception was gorgeous, the pastor seemed to be a perfectly fine fellow, and I really didn’t feel like the experience as a whole was any more Jesusy than any other wedding I’ve been to, so all good there as well. The wedding was even short! Twenty minutes, in and out.
That said, they put out a Bible next to the guest book, and asked everyone to pick their favorite verse and sign next to it, and … well … never ask an atheist with graduate degrees in Hebrew Bible to pick his favorite Bible verse.
(She will think this is hilarious. I mentioned to her at one point that I had briefly considered flipping her and her mother off as they officially walked into the church– we sat in the back and were the first people she saw when they walked in, and she and I locked eyes for a moment– and she laughed and told me I should have done it.)
They also did a neat thing where they put a card on each of the tables at the reception and asked the guests to give them advice, with each card to be read on the anniversary corresponding to the table number. Ours was table 7, so they will read our card on their 7th anniversary. I did not write that I hope they enjoyed my funeral, which was my first thought, since there is no way 2035 is even a real year.(*)
At any rate, we are back in our hotel room right now, a room which somehow is sporting four queen-sized beds for the three of us, and in accordance with prophecy and our most ancient and revered familial traditions, none of us have spoken a word since we got back. I’m going to read for a while and go to bed, since there’s a family breakfast in the morning and I will need to restore needed energy for further socialization.
(*) Not only is it not a real year, it’s not seven years from now. Shut up, I’m tired.
Coming home and dying on Fridays seems to have been a thing lately, and indeed, that’s what I did tonight, and we are going to be at a wedding out of town tomorrow night, so don’t expect much more than a hotel picture unless I can con the bride into something vaguely compromising. Luckily, I don’t have a lot of planning to do for Monday, because I suspect once we get back on Sunday all three of us are going to collapse into separate rooms and not speak again for a while.
Just tossed a job application off into the void, likely to never be heard from again. It’s a moonshot; there’s a national search taking place and, well, that’s probably enough right there to not stress myself out about it. But fuck it, I’m definitely not gonna get it if I don’t apply, and the hour or so it took to update my resume and dash off a cover letter isn’t exactly a massive time investment. It took longer to find a copy of my resume that wasn’t a .pdf than it did to do the writing.
It was a long day today. We started the final round of ILEARN testing today, so <insert rant here> as you see fit, and then I had an interaction with a student at the end of the day that led to me genuinely wondering why I don’t just slap a motherfucker in the face once in a while. To be clear, I was thinking about doing the job application before that— I’ve been tossing it around for a couple of weeks, in fact— but hearing “I’ve been written up 600 times this year and nothing ever happens to me” definitely was a factor in pulling the trigger.
The number is 24, by the way, not 600, and considering that the kid has been absent for nearly eighty days this year (not counting suspensions) I think it’s fair that she does, in fact, have some experience interfacing with the office. I’ve done a good job letting this shit roll off my back this year; life is going to take care of this kid sooner or later, so it doesn’t have to be my job. I normally try to have a little more compassion with my kids, but this one wasn’t even one of my kids, just some random shithead in the hallway being a shithead, so to hell with her.
Anyway, I promised a book review today, which is going to have to wait until tomorrow, but if it helps any there may be a semi-irate in-progress video game review after that? I dunno, we’ll see.
I wasn’t intending to skip posting for the second night in a row (Wednesday doesn’t count, that shit was funny) but I got home and fell asleep in a chair and that was it for the night. Good news, though: I successfully went to a full day of work for five straight days this week! Unbelievably, this is the first time this has happened in 2026. There are twenty-eight days of school left.
Also, Caskey Russell’s The Door on the Sea is really damn good and I should write a full review of it. Maybe tomorrow? We’ll see.
Tonight was actually a really nice first day back, but in the way of every First Day of School, I have a sore throat; spending all day projecting my voice after over a week of talking 1) normally and 2) much less can be kind of brutal. I also don’t have a ton to talk about, so I’m just going to vaguely wave hello in everyone’s direction and go read a book or something.
(Actually, quick question: anyone familiar with Sentrel Bath Systems? If you are, mind dropping your thoughts on the product into comments?)
I will probably post pictures once everything is completely cleaned up, and especially once we have the basement functional again, but tomorrow is absolutely going to be a book review unless I decide to write two posts. I only got two projects done today, really, other than organizing and cleaning, but man, they were doozies. Both of these have been waiting for literal years to get done, and they took between ten to twenty minutes each. One of them required me to spend some more money, though.
Anyway, look at this thing:
That is a TRX X-mount, used for TRX suspension training. My wife used some wellness funds she had access to to purchase it years ago, and it has been sitting in the basement ever since, because it needs to be carefully anchored into a stud to work properly, and the enormous bolts it came with put me off at first, and then … in the way of such things, it just never got done, and then we had a basement goblin for two years, and, well, now the fucker’s on the wall and it was done in less than ten minutes. I am not actually strong enough to do pull-ups but I put as much of my weight on it as I could and my hands gave out before the mount budged. I have spent a lot of time today uttering the Dad Mantra, “That ain’t goin’ nowhere,” and this was the first thing that Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.
Speaking of:
Those mirrors were originally in our bathrooms, so at least one of them has been sitting in the basement since the original Terrible Decisions remodel a thousand million years ago. They are mounted to the wall now. They, also, are Not Goin’ Anywhere, although I might put a cleat on the one on the right just to ensure maximum safetiness. Actually, thinking about it, I could put trim around them. That would protect the edges— you’ll note that the top corner of the taller one is already slightly broken, and I’d like these to be as safe as possible.
They are also heavy as fuck, and I had to go to Lowe’s and buy two of these to move them, at which point a nearly-impossible task became something I could do by myself. Worth it.
Our new nightstands also arrived today, and I probably ought to put at least one of them together before bed. For now, though, it’s absolutely video game time.
They took the precious away today, so I can no longer arbitrarily choose to throw away any object I own. It’s very sad for all of us. There has been a distinct slowdown in the pace of work around the house today, very likely due to both of us finally and thoroughly running out of steam. I did manage a couple of projects, though: I cleared all of the books from my Chicago classroom library out of the basement, some to the dumpster and some to donation and a small number that will be brought to my classroom on Monday. And we put this together:
Bek got some touch-up painting done in the bedroom, too. We still have baseboard to deal with, plus making the garage usable again (mostly an organization/putting everything away project; that cabinet is currently empty) and installing a couple of things in the basement, plus restoring the basement to its former glory as a mostly-unused workout room. The bedroom’s not quite 100% yet either. It’s 5:30 right now; we had an appointment at 3:00 that took an hour and a half or so; I’m hoping that one of those projects gets done by the end of the day. Just one more today will be enough.
Maybe one more update tomorrow. I have a couple of reviews I’ve been sitting on that need to get written, and sooner or later I’m going to have to admit that I’m going back to work in a few days. For right now, the PS5 is calling for the first time in a little while, and I’m going to answer it.