Now this

Luther M. Siler

I may have picked the wrong weekend to completely redo my office, as this week my wife is out of town on business and I’m a single dad until Saturday morning. Really all I’ve done so far is get up half an hour early to make sure I have time to make the boy’s lunch and feed the cats before I take him to school and I’m ready to curl up and die already. I slept like hell last night, probably not related to the lack of a second person in the bed with me, but I took her to the train station quite late– we left after I would ordinarily have been in bed, and it’s a good 20 minutes away– and it just threw my schedule entirely off, and I didn’t get to sleep until after midnight. Combine that with getting up early and … yuck.

And then it was Monday at work, and Mondays at work are never great, especially after three-day weekends. Today was really weird, though; first hour wanted to talk about anything and everything other than math– I rarely have to fend off questions about the afterlife from my students, but holy shit did they want to know every single thing about my opinion about what happens when we die today– and sixth hour was all about the what is this forrrrrrrrrr that I have a lot of trouble answering coherently for some reason.

Here’s the thing about algebra, right? You don’t use algebra, necessarily. Nobody majors in algebra in college. But if you don’t know algebra it locks you out of a whole lot of shit that may or may not have any direct connection to whether you can properly square a binomial or not. And if you want any future in a career involving math, forget it. I tried to make an analogy today to the alphabet. Imagine a kindergartner asking how they’re gonna “use” the alphabet in the future. Well … you don’t, really? Because the alphabet itself is just a baseline entry skill to a shitton of other stuff that is not, in and of itself, the alphabet. Do you want a career that involves reading or writing, kindergartner? Well, sure, or at least maybe, but what does that have to do with learning which letters are vowels right now? Am I gonna have a job in vowel-identifying later on?

You’re not gonna “use” a whole lot of algebra, honestly. You’ll need it because it’s building blocks to all future mathematics, which are useful to a whole lot of skills and careers, and even if you don’t go into those careers, I’m training your ass to think logically, which is useful to make you a more functional person.

But they don’t want that. They wanna know why they have to multiply binomials, and tomorrow they’re gonna be all about when am I gonna have to factor things, and my answer will be “Today, shut up,” and on we go.

This isn’t normal

Luther M. Siler3 Comments

Depending on how you count, since we were actually married on February 29, my wife and I will celebrate fifteen years of marriage … sometime this week. Or at least we should. We have no ideas, and no presents have been purchased. I tried to float the idea of going to Chicago and having dinner at Alinea and she was having none of it. That’s as good as I got. Right now I have Friday off, but I’m planning on playing Wo Long: Hidden Dynasty all freakin’ day. And the way I know I picked the right lady is she doesn’t mind.

That said, if y’all have any great ideas about what we could do with ourselves on either Tuesday or Wednesday night, feel free to air ’em out. Neither of us have any better ideas, after all.

On 2022

Luther M. Siler1 Comment

Every year, I spend time during the week between Christmas and New Year’s thinking about writing a retrospective post about the previous year, and I almost never do it. I mean, I do blogwanking and sales recaps and top 10 lists and all that, but it’s rare for me to look at a year in any sort of semi-formal way and talk about how it went.

I mean, other than “That was the worst year of my life,” which I said of every single year between 2016 and 2020. 2021 wasn’t great, but was a better year than 2020. I mean, 2020 was not only the year the Covid epidemic hit but it was also the year my mom died, although part of me feels like I can blame that on 2019. It would have been difficult for 2021 to have been a worse year than 2020, and I really don’t think it was.

2022? It feels weird typing this.

2022 might have been a good year.

I feel like just by saying that I’m either bragging or tempting fate, y’know? But it’s hard to deny. I am, for the first time in years, Doing All Right, and by some measures, Doing Well. My family is all healthy and doing well. My son is thriving at his school and started playing ice hockey this year, which he seems to really enjoy. My relationship with my wife is as strong as it’s ever been. I have a new nibling on the way in a couple of months, and my nephew is walking and jabbering.

Financially? 2022 was the year my student loans went away, in and of itself probably the biggest thing that happened to me this year, as that was nearly $70,000 in loans and a $545 monthly payment that I’d been making for over 20 years. Gone. The personal loan that I took out that wiped out my credit card debt is over halfway paid off and my payments are over a year ahead of schedule. Both my wife and I are making more money than we’ve ever made before. We’re slowly working our way through the whole house getting things renovated and fixed up; this year featured a new bathroom, a vastly improved basement, flipping the dining room and the family room, and new carpet and new furniture in the living room.

Professionally, I finally quit the dysfunctional wreck of a district I’ve been working at for nearly the entire time I’ve been back in Indiana, and my new district and my new school have, so far, been absolutely wonderful in every way. I’ve actually been happy teaching for the last month or so, which hasn’t been true in a very long time. The blog is … well, still here; there was a reason there was no blogwanking post this year– but I’m back to having fun with my YouTube channel, which you ought to be following me on, damn it. And, honestly, for someone well out of the age range of your typical YT video game streamer, I feel like I’m doing pretty well.

I’ve kept up two months and counting of learning Arabic with Duolingo, finally starting to fulfill a promise I made myself when I dropped the class my freshman year of college. Calculus? I’m looking at you. I mean, I’m doing it from a distance, and with a fair amount of distaste, but I’m looking.

Hell, even the world in general dodged at least a couple of opportunities to go further to hell. And Biden has been a much better president than I’d ever have believed in 2020.

Really the only thing I have to complain about is my health; I have pretty much contracted all of the Fat Man diseases at this point, and it really might be a good idea for me to do the utterly stereotypical thing and resolve to lose some Goddamned weight in 2023. I don’t do resolutions and I’m not doing one now, but I’m literally fatter than I’ve ever been before and I have to wear a mask to bed, so … doing something to change that is probably a good idea? You never know; now that I’m not spending 90% of my spoons on stressing out about work and money I might have the headspace necessary to take a shot at dropping weight again. No promises, though. I can’t break them if I don’t make them.

I dunno, y’all. I’m unused to optimism, although I feel like I can make an objective case for at least considering the idea. Although part of me is pretty well convinced that I’ve screwed the pooch by typing this. If my house burns down tonight or something, it’s probably my fault. On to 2023, I suppose.

Thanksgiving IV

Luther M. Siler

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.

A couple of FYIs

Luther M. Siler

I have been injecting Twitter directly into my fucking veins for roughly 24 hours now, in between games of God of War: Ragnarök and ferrying my wife and child around, and I’m at the point where I don’t even care who wins for everything else (except for Boebert Boebert must go God damn it stop teasing me) any longer because I don’t feel like I have the right to ask for much more than we’ve already got. I’m going to be out of town tomorrow night because my dad and I are running some stuff up to my aunt in Michigan, so I’ve got my shit recorded through Saturday afternoon.

I am starting to have some concerns about next week, as we get closer to the actual start date. I feel like I don’t know nearly enough about how things are supposed to work in this building and, weirdly, I can’t get anyone to send me any information. Like, I don’t even have a class schedule yet. I have asked multiple people for a staff manual and the request hasn’t even been acknowledged. It’s starting to piss me off, frankly. Help me be good at my job, please.

Anyway. Good chance of no post tomorrow, or maybe a picture or two, but I’ll be back on Friday and then the cascading anxiety disorder can take over. Excited? So am I.