In which I’ve read this book already

On February 17, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

I’ll call it 50/50 whether we have a two-hour delay again tomorrow; Michigan schools have already called it due to the cold. We won’t cancel; it’s not going to be that cold, but subzero wind chills during the walking/waiting for the bus hours are dangerous regardless. On top of that, I have what feels like the beginnings of a sinus infection immediately after getting over whatever the hell I had last week, which feels unfair. I absolutely cannot miss any days of work between here and Friday for schedule reasons and I would really prefer to not miss any more days in February at all, so we’re gonna cross our fingers and hope this stays at a simmer until next weekend.

I have written, more or less, that exact post maybe fifteen times in 2025. I’m deliberately avoiding writing about creeping despair, political authoritarianism, or my own slow decline into supervillaindom, which pretty much leaves video games, books, and musing about the weather and being sick. My “Presidents’ Recess” went pretty well, I suppose, and now we enter into the longest stretch of the entire school year with no holidays, as Spring Break isn’t for seven weeks.

It’s entirely possible that I might die. We’ll see.

In which it got brought

On December 5, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

We ended up with a two-hour delay this morning, which didn’t get me any extra sleep but did mean I could sit in my comfy chair and drink a leisurely cup of coffee before leaving for work, and then buy a second cup of coffee on the way to work. It took about twice as long to get there as usual, but the drive itself wasn’t scary, just slow.

Then somehow it spent all day snowing like hell but without any significant accumulation at the end of the day, and I’m not sure how that happened. It snowed hard today, and the two inches or so that was on my driveway when I got home was the deepest snow I saw all day. I feel like at least four or five inches of snow fell. I’m just not sure what the hell happened to it once it hit the ground.

There’s a slight chance of a second delay tomorrow– the storm is supposed to end late tonight, but it’s still going to be cold as hell in the morning– but I think I’d prefer to just have a regular day. Either way, we’re about to hit the two-weeks-until-winter-break point, and so far, so good.

Good morning! It’s cold!

On January 15, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography4 Comments

I have posted a ton of winter weather pictures over the lifetime of this website, but I feel like I’ve never even seen frozen spiderwebs before.

POlar VORtex (clap, clap, clapclapclap)

On January 14, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

Taken through the window from the safety of my library, that is about nine inches of snow, with maybe a foot or fifteen inches at the foot of the driveway where the snowplows have created a berm. Since I took this I’ve been outside and cleared enough of the driveway for my wife’s car to get in and out and mine to get in and out with a little bit of creative turning, at which point the battery died on my snowblower (mental note: buy a second battery) and I also hit my allotted fifteen minutes of being allowed outside, because, oh, right, it’s thirty below fucking zero out there.

The high today is supposed to be around 4:00, so I’ll go back out around then and finish the driveway off and clear out enough room for the mailbox to be reachable on Tuesday. I’d love to know what percent of schools nationwide are going to be out on Tuesday; I figure the chance that we’ll be in person on Tuesday to be nearly zero and 50/50 on Wednesday; it’s supposed to warm up a lot in the afternoon but it’s still supposed to be twenty below in the morning and, as I’ve said many times, it’s just not safe. So this will be either a three- or a two-day work week, since even though technically I have to provide instruction on both of those days it doesn’t really count if I’m not actually at work.

Meanwhile, I’m off on a common wintertime mental tangent, that being fascination at how our bodies perceive cold. As I said, the windchill is thirty below right now, and the actual air temperature is seven below zero. This becomes extremely dangerous after fifteen to twenty minutes and can genuinely be fatal if you’re not prepared for it.

I was absolutely colder on Frozenween than I was just now. Now, there are some mitigating circumstances; while it’s not nearly as labor-intensive as shoveling, even snowblowing nine inches of snow is work, and I wasn’t just sitting in a chair waiting for children to hand candy to, but I also had my beast coat on for Frozenween and a space heater next to me and I still spent half an hour after getting inside cradling a chemical hand warmer like fucking Gollum with the Ring.

(If you are from somewhere where it doesn’t usually get cold, or if you generally suffer from cold hands, these things are fucking lifesavers. I rarely have need to use them as a born-and-bred Northman but you should make sure you have some on hand just in case. Honestly, I should throw a set in the car, now that I think about it.)

Anyway, the difference, of course, is that my body has done whatever the hell bodies do when they adjust to cold weather; the other fun example of this will be the first day in Spring when it’s 45 degrees outside and everyone acts like it’s the middle of summer and goes outside in shorts and t-shirts. But I will never stop finding this fascinating; it is objectively much colder than it was on Halloween and I know I have to go back out in it again in a couple of hours and it’s genuinely no problem at all.

As little as possible

On January 13, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Today’s activities included:

Far Cry 5;
Reading King: A Life, the newest biography of Dr. King, which is real interesting so far (I’m 100 pages in, which more or less covers his life up until marrying Coretta.)
Dassit.

Tomorrow will feature clearing the driveway of snow and Lego, hopefully in that order.

Not so much

On January 12, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

We did not get a snow day, although most of the surrounding districts did. That said, it’s polar vortex time, and right now if the forecast doesn’t change I’m not expecting to return to work until Thursday, since we’re currently expecting wind chills of 20 below or colder for Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. As children are idiots and show up to school without coats and wrapped in thin blankets (and this is, to be clear, often a choice, unrelated to poverty) we cannot have them outside walking to school or waiting on the bus when the windchill is 20 below. So.

And now, I am dying, and I shall sleep. We absolutely aren’t going anywhere tomorrow on account of the weather, and my plan is to spend the whole day doing as little as possible.

Frozenween 2023

On October 31, 2023October 31, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Pictured: the exact and precise moment that I decided Halloween was done for the year. I have sat outside on cold Halloweens before, and in fact for at least one that was much snowier than this, but this one defeated me. I had a Goddamn space heater right next to me and as soon as the snow actually started really falling– that accumulation took less than five minutes– that was it. I was done. We had one more group of kids after I went inside and they got the rest of our candy.

It cannot be literally true that I have never been colder than I was sitting outside this evening– it’s hit -40 around here in the last few years– but I think it’s fair to say that I’ve never been this cold when my body hadn’t adjusted to winter yet.