The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
It’s been a real real long day, although not a bad one, and there are a very many things that I could talk about in a blog post right now were I so inclined, but I think instead I’m going to take my son over to the 4-H fair to watch the fireworks.
Have a lovely Saturday night, everyone.
I was thinking about writing some sort of retrospective, possibly quite maudlin post about turning 40 when I got home from work today.
That was before walking seventeen thousand steps during my 11-hour shift.
(NOTE: That is not a complaint. I love it.)
Instead, I’m gonna read a book and go to bed early. Maudlin will have to wait.
Love y’all. G’night.
If we were having coffee, I’d be… Hm. I’m not actually sure what I’d be doing at the moment. This is a big week of transitions in my life, right? I’ve been at training for the last two weeks, but tomorrow my new career actually starts. I’ve been an educator since late 2000. I’m a furniture salesman now. Most of me is really looking forward to this but a big part of me still can’t help but see it as a mid-life demotion. Will I get over it? I expect to. But I don’t know.
Oh, and also, I turn 40 on Tuesday. There will be a whole post for that, and I don’t want to burn the entire Holy Shit I’m 40 And My Imminent Death Is Staring Me In The Face post on a coffee share, but there’s some of that going on too. Or maybe not? I’ve been telling people I was 40 for a year, as I mostly skipped 39. I’ll be at work for eleven hours on my birthday, so it’s not like I’ll have a lot of time to get all kvetchy about things. But maybe I will anyway? Or maybe I’ll be OK with it? I dunno. I won’t know for real until it’s official.
Nah, if we were having coffee, I think I’d mostly be interested in looking to see if I could get you to indulge in bitching about fireworks with me. Some of the neighbors put on, oh, a two-hour display last night while I was at OtherJob? And it was pretty, but it was mostly loud. And I got some of the clearest evidence yet that I’m getting old, because by the end of the night I was muttering Jesus fuck, ENOUGH every time something exploded nearby. I sort of want to keep the boy up late tonight and take him to see something– we are in a shitty part of our timezone, and it doesn’t get properly dark this time of year until nearly 10:00– but I certainly found that I could do without the damned things last night.
So, yeah, maybe the goal for this coffee share is to keep you talking. My gripes are all pretty predictable at the moment. How’s it going?
At some point– specifically, on June 4th– I failed to note that this blog is three years old. So… uh… Happy Birthday, a few weeks belated?
If we were having coffee, we’d… I dunno, talk about Brexit? It seems to be what all the cool kids are doing lately. Trouble is, I don’t really know a damn thing about it, other than that I’m sort of tribally on the Remain side. Every person whose opinion I respect who has been paying attention (mostly actual British people)– and I’m not joking, it’s unanimous— has been on the Remain side, and the one vocal person on the Leave side stole five minutes of my life the day after the vote to rant about immigration. Generally, at this point in my life, “vote against what people who rant about immigration want” has become a useful guideline, as has “vote against what old white people want.” Both appear to be on the same side here, so I guess I’m at least nominally on the other one, though for no better reason than a vague hand-wave and “those people are usually wrong.” I can’t present, like, an actual useful argument.
I would be willing to bet an inconsequential amount of money that it never actually happens, by the way, if that’s something that you’d find entertaining. Remember, the referendum’s not binding. The UK hasn’t actually left the EU yet.
We’d talk about my new job, which is basically all I’ve been doing with my week on the blog, so I won’t spend much time on it here. Needless to say, I’m halfway through the “training” period, and as of Friday was starting to feel like I was learning genuinely useful stuff rather than absorbing corporate policies that are either obvious (Don’t steal! Don’t grab butts!) or bear little relevance to what I’ll actually be doing on a day-to-day basis. I remain super excited about this and look forward to seeing how good I can get at it. I’m just looking forward to having something new to talk about.
It’s a beautiful day outside, so naturally I’m planning on spending most of it inside cleaning. I work at OtherJob tonight, but once we’re done with our coffee date I have at least vague plans to spend the rest of the day cleaning and getting some minor tasks accomplished around the house. Tomorrow is an actual Day Off, and I’m hugely excited about the fact that I’ve worked for six days straight and that “day off” is a viable concept for my no-longer-unemployed ass again. I’m planning on cooking dinner. There will be corn on the cob, as late June seems like a good time for corn on the cob. I’m not sure what else we’re having, but that’s a start.
How’re you?
Okay, that was the last day-of-the-week themed post title, I promise. The young lady in the picture is the first result when you GIS “fooferall,” I have no idea who she is or why she appears when you do an image search on that word.
Anyway.
A bit of history on this blog: when I initially started this round of blogging I called the place Infinitefreetime because the joke was I had absolutely no free time at all and therefore it was an insanely dumb idea for me to start blogging again. This was back on Xanga before Xanga killed itself. Then, a month later, of all the people I knew who had started or committed to blogs during whatever month it was, I was just about the only one left standing. Despite the last several months of my life, where I have been unemployed and generally able to do whatever the hell I wanted with my days, the title of the blog was meant to be ironic.
After I get back from OtherJob tomorrow night, I will have gone to work six times in the past six days, for the first time in months. Understand that six-day work weeks have been par for the course for virtually my entire life. This represents a return to normal, not an exception to the rule. This is how my life is supposed to work.
My only real problem, at the moment, is that the 9-5 M-F thing is only going to last about another week. I’m still not entirely sure exactly how much detail I want to reveal about the job, but some bits are going to be unavoidable and “high-end retail” is probably close enough for now. My schedule is about to get a lot more complicated, as the way things work at this place everybody has at least a couple of days where they are there all goddamn day. It’s going to affect my blogging schedule one way or another. I’ve been able to post every day for well over a year by now– I haven’t missed a day since December of 2014. I will be amazed if that record survives for another three weeks. I am categorically not planning on abandoning the blog– it’s too important to my plans for the next several years of my life if not longer than that– but it’s likely that my posting frequency will be changing somewhat or, at the very least, I’m going to have to start pre-scheduling a lot of posts.
Bookwise, I have secured a cover artist for Tales of the Benevolence Archives. I will likely only have one new release this year after initially hoping for two, but I should have that out this fall. I should have a couple of days each week where I’m home and the boy is at school or day care, so I’ll be able to keep working on those days this week. But that’s something else to look forward to. I’m hugely excited about seeing what this artist comes up with. The main reason?
Brazel, Grond and Rhundi will be on the cover of this one.
Booyah.
I guess I should post something, right?
Actually, take this as an alert: things are gonna be a bit on the light side around here for the next several days, as I’ll be in Convention Mode at IndyPopCon and my access to wifi is going to be uncertain until I return on Sunday, possibly quite late. Then Monday is my first day at my new job.
I… uh… probably ought to have set up some guest posts. I was at work all day today, and as a result I’m way behind in being ready to leave tomorrow. But I’d rather sleep than pack. Guess how helpful that is?
Yeah. That kind of day.
If we were having coffee, I suspect you’d quickly notice that I was in an uncommonly good mood, at least compared to the last, oh, eight months. Because good news: I have a job. Or, at least, I’m back up to my usual three jobs from the two I’ve held since October.
What’s the job? Speaking broadly, sales. Slightly less broadly, retail sales, but relatively large-ticket items. It ain’t gonna be glamorous but I’ll be dressing nicer than I was at my last job and at least initially I really like the people I’ll be working with. And, most importantly, 1) I can delete the “jobs” and “school” folders from my bookmarks, a fact that filled me with much more pleasure than the simplicity of the act might imply, and 2) I am not in imminent danger of running out of money and causing my family to lose the house. Which… yeah, both of those are real good things.
This coming the same week as my brother’s wedding has me tentatively hopeful that 2016 is gonna drop the bullshit at least for a little while, but we’ll see.
Also! You’ve probably figured this out if you’ve actually visited the site in the last week or so, but I’m going to be at Indy Pop Con in Indianapolis over Father’s Day weekend. Specifically, Booth 722 in Artist’s Alley, which looks like a pretty primo location:
I’m hoping those tables there are a common area of some sort and I’m not facing, like, the back of the food court or a stage or something. This location is either going to be great or it’s going to be godawful; we’ll see. At any rate: come see me next weekend! This will probably be my last con appearance of 2016– at least, it’s my last currently planned one, although there’s a chance of appearing at at least one local event in the fall. So I strongly suggest everyone reading this plan to run to Indy.
The conversation might turn to projects at this point, maybe, and we’d discuss how there are awesome hardwood floors under the disgusting, filthy pink carpet in my bedroom. I’m planning on tearing out all the carpet over the next couple of days; pictures when it’s done. Exciting! Also exhausting.
So, yeah, coffee buddy, it’s been a good week. 🙂 You can fully expect me to spend the week after the con whining about how I haven’t had to work a 40-hour week in forever and I’m so tired and waah waah waah and all that sort of stuff, so be glad you got to spend part of the morning with me before I had to reacclimate myself to a working person’s schedule.
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