In which I don’t have time

On December 5, 2022December 5, 2022 By Luther M. SilerIn life2 Comments

I’m teaching myself Arabic, finally fulfilling a promise I made to myself when I dropped out of the class a couple of weeks into my freshman year of college. I’ve been using Duolingo fairly religiously and I just bought a “basics” type of textbook, and looking at the image above I can almost parse some letters? Regular Arabic writing is complicated enough for the unskilled Westerner; Arabic calligraphy is a level of insane that I am not yet remotely prepared to deal with. I am aware that English calligraphy is probably harder to decipher than regular English print, but Arabic doesn’t have print, and each letter has three forms depending on where it is in the word, plus the several letters that English has no equivalent for in the first place, so I feel fairly confident in asserting that there is a real difficulty difference here.

I mean, it’s not Russian cursive, which is apparently not a hoax, somehow:

I mean … come the fuck on. I believe Arabic calligraphy is words. I don’t know that I can really convince myself that that shit is legible script to anyone, Russian-speaking or not.

Anyway. Point is, between lesson planning, blogging, eating dinner, learning an extraordinarily difficult foreign language for no Goddamn reason, trying to record a little bit of YouTube video, and, oh, right, interacting with my family, my evenings have been feeling unreasonably stuffed lately, which I think has been a major contributing factor to 1) how brief my posts have been and 2) how late my posts have been, as it’s currently 8:30 PM and I’ve just stopped writing to stare at my phone for ten minutes. I’m not complaining, as I’m still more or less enjoying all these activities and it’s not like Winter Break isn’t right around the corner, but … man.

There’s a lot going on.

One day

On December 4, 2022 By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

One day, I will write a coherent and interesting blog post. I was hoping that day would be today, after several days of bleh.

But after driving home from Chicago and spending … what, two? let’s go with two– hours grading, all I want to do is dissolve into a puddle in front of my PS5 right now.

We did go to the Lego store on the way home from Cary and I managed to get out of there without demolishing my bank account, so that’s good. It’s a really neat store. I mean, you can already kinda imagine what’s in there, but still. If I buy much more Lego I’m going to have to invest in a storage and display solution of some sort and that’s not happening, Goddammit, so we aren’t buying any more expensive sets for a while.

(Thank God they didn’t have the huge Star Destroyer set in stock, so I didn’t have to decide not to buy it. I think it’s discontinued by now.)

While I’m kvetching: does anyone think this is legit?

Thanksgiving IV

On December 3, 2022 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I straight-up forgot to post yesterday; I’m no longer remotely as pressed about posting every day as I used to be, but I do like it when I actively decide to not post on a given day rather than forgetting. But yesterday was nutso busy and I just forgot. I assume y’all have already forgiven me, if you even noticed.

And today I’m out of town, at my brother’s place in the Chicago suburbs, what we used to call North Northytown back when I lived in Chicago. We are watching football and my son is starting to agitate about heading to the hotel now that his cousin is in bed for the night. One way or another I wasn’t about to skip the night after forgetting. More tomorrow. We’re going to the Lego store on the way home and my goal is to get out without spending $500. We’ll see if I make it.

Getting there (house update)

On November 23, 2022 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, lifeLeave a comment

New sectional, sitting on the new carpet:

Former dining room now has comfy chairs in it, although it’s not quite ready for prime time yet:

You can see the shape of what we’re getting at here, I think, although there’s still work to do and not everything is in its final place. The chandelier is getting replaced with more appropriate lighting, the table in the corner is going away, we need to a rug and some side tables into the room, and many of the books will end up being moved to the as-yet-unordered new shelving going in the living room.

And what will eventually be the dining room:

This room needs a lot of work before it looks like a dining room, obviously, and a number of the things in here are going to end up in the former dining room, but again, you can get the idea we’re going for, more or less. This room needs the most work but I think we’re going to be really happy with it once we’ve moved beyond the “table in the middle of what is obviously not a dining room” stage.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all. Prrrobably no post tomorrow,(*) although who knows, and there will definitely be no videos up at YouTube, because I’d have to have them recorded by now and it’s already 9:00. So see you on Black Friday.

(*)I’m sure I’m lying. Every time I say anything close to “I probably won’t post tomorrow,” I end up posting anyway.

Taking tonight off

On November 22, 2022 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

…yeah, okay, my posts have kinda been taking the whole week off, but I started a new job this week, gimme a break. Well, last week. Also my eyes are dilated from the eye doctor and my vision is not exactly optimal so I’m just kinda hoping everything is spelled right and trusting my typing fingers.

Also, I almost spent $250 on the Lego typewriter earlier today, and if anyone wants to buy me the Lego typewriter that would be cool.

New furniture coming tomorrow, so at the very least you ought to get pictures of it.

Zzzzzz

On November 21, 2022 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

So when they test you for sleep apnea, or rather, before they test you for sleep apnea, they make you take this test that ranks you on something called a Sleepiness Scale, which doesn’t sound like it should be a thing but it is. There’s lots of questions about falling asleep in inappropriate contexts and places and stuff like that.

I think the number of days I have taken naps have outnumbered the days I didn’t in the last couple of weeks, and I came home and died in my recliner for a couple of hours after work today. Wednesday we’re getting a whole ass new sofa delivered and I am going to climb into it and sleep my entire five-day Thanksgiving break away.

This is all to say that I have nothing for you this evening, except that my recliner is really comfortable.

In which I’ve wasted the weekend

On November 20, 2022 By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

Welp.

Friday night I took an Emergency Brain Pill. I wasn’t necessarily having a mental health emergency or anything really close to it, but I basically use these pills when I can’t get my brain to shut off and let me sleep, and what with the God-tier sleep apnea I apparently also have, and having survived my first week in the new building, I figured I was owed a decent night’s sleep. The pill kicked my ass, rendering me a useless, sluggish mess all day Saturday and requiring a three-hour nap in the middle of the afternoon. Then today my son had his Lego Robotics competition, which somehow went from 8:15 in the morning to 4:30 in the afternoon, and by the end of it the boy was so bored he was in tears.

I have … some issues with how this competition was organized. Nothing I can really yell at anybody about, because there’s only one competition, and they didn’t place high enough to advance to the state-level competition in December, but from what I can tell most of the people involved are okay with that. Regardless, we got home around five and all of us died. I had grading planned for tonight, and fuck that. They can wait a little longer, they’ll be okay.

Sometime in the next couple of days I need to do a book review– the short version is that Nghi Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful is magnificent– and think out loud a bit about how grading needs to work in my new building. But this is all I’ve got for tonight, I think.