Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com
The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
Okay, not really, there are still four days of school left— but the first Big Projekt of the summer has been accomplished. My wife decided that she hated how the porch looked (sadly, I lack a before picture at the moment, but I’ll see what I can find) so she spent the week stripping, etching, washing and repainting the floor out here, and I spent yesterday putting furniture together, and I’m pretty damn pleased with the results.
Four more days. Just four more. We can do this.
I have a cold, and I don’t like it one bit.
I actually missed a day of iLEARN on Friday, as my wife’s aunt passed away; funerals are genuinely just about the only reason I can see myself taking a standardized testing day (especially a math standardized testing day) off, and, well, it happened. Yesterday and today I was in Chicago at my nephew’s birthday party. I have discovered something about my brother that has changed since he married his wife: if he describes something as a party, I am to take that shit seriously, and assume that it’s not going to be six family members I’ve already met. It’s gonna be twenty people and a bunch of kids and since I officiated his wedding they’re all gonna come up to me and go hey, nice to see you again, how have you been? and because I’m a social coward I’m not going to look any of these epos in the eye and dare them to produce my name.
(Everyone was perfectly nice, to be clear; her family is great, as far as I can tell; my brother married very well. That said I was not prepared for a ton of loud noise and adult mingling.)
Anyway, the point is my ass is tired, and on top of all this there’s some other shit going on where either I am a colossal idiot or my doctors have been seriously misleading me. All of this has eaten up all available headspace that I’ve got at the moment, and I still need to put lesson plans together for tomorrow, and after that I’m going to bed. My own bed. Granted, hearing the phrase “We’ve upgraded you to the presidential suite” Saturday night was pretty cool, but not cool enough that I took any pictures, and my bed is always better than a hotel bed.
So, yeah. I’m home. And I’m tired. How’re you? Anyone want to recommend any low-carb meals by any chance?
One of my students asked me today how much I hated paying taxes, and I think I slightly blew the kid’s mind when I told him that I don’t mind paying taxes at all, because I enjoy living in a society and paying taxes helps ensure that. He didn’t press for additional details, but had he done so I’d have pointed out that there were probably examples of specific taxes that I wouldn’t be especially fond of, or taxing systems that I had preferences on, but the concept of paying taxes itself? No, I’m fine with that, and there are any number of reasons why I might, in theory, advocate increasing my tax burden with no argument. In fact, having voted for a tax referendum for our local public school system in the last couple of years, I have already done that.
Anyway. This is leading toward a humblebrag, so brace yourself as necessary. My tire pressure sensors have been acting concerning lately, and I have three road trips planned in the next three days, so rather than adding air to my tires for the second time in eight days and crossing my fingers I decided to swing by the local tire shack and have someone take a closer look at them.
And that ended up costing me $650 for four new tires. And that’s after a visit to the comic shop, and buying myself dinner, and a visit to CVS for certain supplies that cost me $60, meaning that I left work and looked at my bank account and thought damn, I did pretty well keeping my spending down this week, and then dropped eight hundred dollars in a little over an hour and a half.
This is where the humblebrag comes in: for the first time in my life, I don’t mind the tires at all— to be honest, I wasn’t surprised when the diagnosis was “Well, you’ve got this giant screw in your tire here, so that’s the specific problem, but you’ve had this car since 2017. Have you ever put new tires on it?” I wasn’t certain that was what was going to happen, and I probably could have waited a few months if necessary, but I was able to look at a fairly substantial unplanned-for car expense and just shrug and pay for it because the money wasn’t going to kill me. Now, don’t get me wrong (he said, fending off the forces of karma), I don’t want any more unexpected $650 expenses anytime soon, but being able to just pay for that shit was nice.
The next couple of days are going to be busy– my wife’s aunt passed away and her funeral is in Michigan tomorrow, and then my nephew’s birthday party is in Chicago on Saturday, and we’re staying overnight for that so there’s a (shit!) hotel bill to pay for, but my classroom was a hundred and thirty degrees today so I’m happy to not be there for a couple of days. Hopefully Sunday will be relaxing enough by itself to get me through next week.
As you are no doubt fully aware if you’ve been around here for a while, I am bad at Hot. I am especially bad at the first Hot of the season, and it’s been over eighty degrees every day this week. My classroom is entirely interior, with no windows and really no way to get air to move around. The mornings haven’t been bad, but by the end of the day it has been fucking rough in my classroom. And for the most part I have been getting home from work this week and dying. I haven’t even had the energy to read at night, really, which almost never happens; watching a video on my phone has been about all I’ve been capable of.
You will not be surprised to learn that we have one more day of eighty degree temperatures coming tomorrow … and then Monday it is supposed to snow.
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