Halfway there

On February 8, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

After getting sick three separate times in January, I swore that I was going to make it at least to our Presidents’ Day break without getting sick again. Assuming I’m able to get up and go to work tomorrow, I’m halfway there, and seeing as how we have a field trip for half the day I probably ought to go to work.

(It’s not much of a field trip. We’re taking them to the high school for a tour.)

But either way I appear to have made it to work every day this week, and given how shit of a day Tuesday was, I’m going to call that an accomplishment. The kids in my LGBTQ club this afternoon were particularly fun. They’re so fucking weird; it makes them all kinds of fun to hang out with.

Hey, did you know you can embed a .pdf in one of these? Because I just dragged this thing I’m using tomorrow onto the screen and it actually looks like it embedded pretty nicely. I mostly found these people through Wikipedia, so I don’t know much about them. Maybe I’ll tell the kids I’ll give them extra credit for picking somebody and writing a paragraph about them or something. Why not, right?

black-mathematicians Download

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Annoying Toddler Edition

On February 20, 2016February 20, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories11 Comments

newcoffee

If we were having coffee, we’d be doing it in short-sleeved shirts. I don’t know if the sudden warming trend is a Midwestern phenomenon or if everybody’s seeing a spike in temperatures yesterday, but my yard was covered in a few inches of snow on Thursday and by the time my wife got home from work yesterday it was ALL gone and now the universe is made of mud. We literally went from 20s to 60s in a matter of a few days. And the zoo’s open today! It’s going to be insanely crowded, but we’re going anyway.

Also a fun feature of yesterday’s weather: insane winds. I spent all day working in the office and waiting for a tree to fall over, and the winds managed to rip a shingle off the roof, which I’m not completely sure how to fix. Plus I don’t know how much weight your average roof is okay to handle (the Googles will probably help with this) and so I don’t know if it’s a good idea for me to go up there myself to check it out. No trees down, though, at least not near me.

(Considers Googling “Am I too fat to go on the roof?”)

If we were having coffee, I might kvetch about parenting a bit. Tell the truth: how many of you have had the urge to bark the words “You’re four, what the fuck do you know?” at your kids at least once? Because I was just informed that blueberry juice exists by a very small person with the unshakeable confidence of a serial killer. And you know this how, person who can’t read? Don’t get me wrong: I like four way more than I liked three, two, one, or especially zero. But dammit boy I know better than you so shut the hell up.

(NOTE: I am reasonably sure all kids do this, and one way or another this is a turnabout-is-fair-play moment. One of my earliest memories is barking “It’s a sword holder!” at a friend of my mother’s who had just innocently tried to teach me the word scabbard. This is the shit I’m talking about. I’m sure all the parents have encountered it before.)

The plan for this week: back to Sunlight, which got put aside so that I could frantically blast through writing a Benevolence Archives story that grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go, and make some damn headway for an anthology story that I committed to months ago and have made a shamefully low amount of progress on.

Also maybe get a job. That would be nice too.

How’re you?

RIP, Leonard Nimoy

On February 27, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories5 Comments

There are many, many pictures of Mr. Nimoy being shared on the Internet at the moment; I would genuinely like to think I found the WTFiest of them all.

I’ll be honest: I would not, three days ago, have described myself as either a big Star Trek fan (although I’ve had my moments) or a big Spock/Nimoy fan. So I have a lot of trouble explaining why, when I found out this afternoon that he had passed, I had to shut my office door for a few minutes because I was struggling to hold back tears. You are a mean, nasty, vicious motherfucker, February, and I will quite glad to see the end of you.