Summer Projects mode, maybe

I am nothing if not encouraging.

I have spent all day thinking of Decluttering, which is kind of a ludicrous term for me to use under any circumstances, but especially under these: I need to get rid of a lot of my shit so that I have room for more shit. I do not at all intend to lead a life of acquiring less shit, which would be the more sensible approach to … well, everything. Most of my ideas for this summer involve either getting rid of shit or clearing any of half a dozen different backlogs of unread books, unplayed video games, TV shows and movies I want to watch, and unbuilt Lego sets. The biggest need around the house, other than cleaning and organizing, is to fix the fence in the back yard that the tree fell on, which my wife is convinced we can do on our own. She has to catch me in the right mood to do it, but that’s at least imaginable.

Part of me really wants to review the book I posted about yesterday, but I don’t think I’m going to. Those of you who figured out what it was (and I apologize for being coy, but sometimes I don’t want a pan to show up on a Google search) may possibly have remembered that I reviewed the first book in the series and did not mention constant terrible writing. I kind of want to pick it back up and reread a couple of chapters to see if it has the same writing problems and I just was able to ignore them for some reason. I am interested to see if it had a different editor than the first book. If so, there are two more books and some novellas, and I really hope he had the original editor for all of those. We’ll see.

Anybody have big plans for Memorial Day? We do not, which is what I want; I need to create some substitute assignments (as in, they substitute for assignments I can’t print, not “I’m planning on needing a substitute”) for Tuesday and Wednesday and finish grading about an inch of final exams, but that and eating a couple of brats pretty much sum up my plans for the day. Let me know if you’ve got anything cool going on.

Bleargh

It is the morning of Memorial Day.  I have to spend 33 of the next 59 hours at work.  It is going to be 95 degrees today and the air conditioners in the part of the store I’ll be working in haven’t been working lately.

Enjoy your cookouts.

But maybe my standards are too high

We attended my mother-in-law’s funeral service a couple of weeks ago.  Before we left, I had a quiet word with my five-year-old about my expectations for his behavior at the cemetery, and I reminded him of those expectations once we got there.  He performed admirably.

This sort of behavior– today, at Arlington– would not have gone over well.  We would have had words, and had them quickly.  My son– who is, again, LITERALLY FIVE FUCKING YEARS OLD, is better behaved at solemn events in public than this… person.  So was every single one of the dozens of seventh and eighth grade students I have taken on tours of the place. 

It’s fucking unhealthy how much I hate him.  I thought I hated George W. Bush.  I had a shirt that said so, and I wore it! A lot!  

That was fucking tee-ball, Pampers pull-ups hate compared to this shit.

ADDENDUM: Also, it seems pretty clear that he doesn’t know all the words to the anthem.  Yes, I can be pissed about that too.

Memorial Day

Miss you, Grandpa.

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