… my first one without my mom. 44. And, frankly, it has already been a rough day and I’ve only been up for about an hour. I didn’t get to sleep until about 2:30 in the morning last night because I couldn’t shut my brain down.
Every time I say things like “I probably won’t be around much today,” it leads to a 6,000-word essay, but it’s still pretty likely that I won’t be around much today.
I just got off the phone with my dad (we saw him yesterday) and so far the highlight of my day has been trying to take a fatherly nap in my recliner in the living room while my son was playing video games and barking an endless series of questions at me. It was only marginally successful. But dinner is going to involve mashed potatoes, so the day is a win no matter what else happens.
…I dunno, that’s all I got for right now.
First, the pointless griping: Film director Bong Joon-ho apparently won a pile of Oscars last night. I have not seen Parasite, which as far as I know features no American superheroes, although my wife has expressed an interest in streaming it once such a thing is available, but I have no reason to disagree with the award given that I saw virtually none of the nominated films, and in fact I’m saying “virtually none” here because I have no idea what was actually nominated for anything and it’s therefore possible that I’ve seen some of them.
Man, I remember when the Oscars were a big deal, personally, and I was seeing 40-50 movies a year. I really miss that, believe it or not; I just don’t have that kind of time any longer, and living in South Bend instead of Chicago means I’m much more limited in what I can see.
Anyway, point is the Goddamned Snowpiercer post is surging again; it’s gotten about as many hits today all by itself as the entire site typically gets in two days, and as it’s only 6 PM I suspect that ratio will be increasing fairly radically by the time I go to bed tonight, and the bump will probably last at least another few days. That post will never, ever die.
So:
We typically make a fairly big deal out of Real Anniversaries, although the last big celebration was for our 10th anniversary when we went to see Hamilton in Chicago. We are … somewhat bereft of ideas for any of these things this year; I asked my wife if she wanted to do anything either for her birthday or for Valentine’s Day an hour or so ago and I could see part of her soul die when I asked the question. Before you jump on my case, be aware that neither of us are either especially romantic people or big celebrators of arbitrary dates; we don’t make a big deal out of my birthday either, and Valentine’s Day has always been treated as more of an annoyance instead of an actual thing. So chances are this weekend is not going to be all that big of a deal.
But I wanna do something for our anniversary, dammit, and my first choice– going to Chicago and having dinner at Alinea— got shot down on account of being insanely, grotesquely expensive.
This is where you come in, Internet. What shall we do for our 12th/3rd anniversary? Give us good ideas; we’re broken and don’t have any.
How many years have I taught for again? Is this sixteen? Seventeen? I think it’s sixteen. At any rate: I have certainly had harder Last Days Before Winter Break, and I survived this one without any real stress or even any particular stories to tell.(*) My main problem at the moment is that I keep forgetting that, yes, I do have to go to work tomorrow for the teacher record day even if my grades are all already finished. I’ve got some stuff to finalize, some redecorating to do, and a classroom to rearrange as I’ve grown tired of my current layout. That should keep me busy through the district-mandated half day; I was already planning on leaving early as I currently work in a building whose principal isn’t going to be watching us, but they’ve officially announced that anyone who showed up for Parent-Teacher conferences can go home at lunchtime if we want.
And I do, and I will.
I have, as per usual, all sorts of plans for shit I want to accomplish over the next two weeks; we will see if I get around to any of it, and whether I’m much inclined to care about what I didn’t get around to at the end of the break. I’d like to get at least a little fiction written; I’ve been off of that particular horse for far too long and I need to either start writing again or start removing any references to being an author around here. It’s time, damn it.
Then again, maybe I’ll spend a week playing video games and sleep for an entire day at some point. That wouldn’t be bad either! Not bad at all.
(*) This is not quite true, as I distinctly remember at least one conversation with a student that led to me thinking remember this and blog about it later and as I sit here I swear to you that I can’t even remember the gender of the student I was talking to much less any actual content of the conversation. Perhaps it’ll come to me tomorrow, who knows.
PS: I am as startled as you are that I appear to have nothing to say about the impeachment of the piece of shit in the White House. It may be that I will have something to say about it soon, or this may fall into the same hole that the piece about Kamala Harris dropping out of the Presidential race fell into. We’ll see.
Gonna wear these to work on the day before Winter Break and see if the kids notice.
