Not tonight

Luther M. Siler

I am absolutely and undeniably going to die if I’m not asleep within, like, two hours at the most. Today was not a bad day by any stretch of the imagination but it’s been a minute since I’ve had to get up and actually do anything, much less something starting at 7:30 in the morning, and I am about ready to fall down. Have yourself a lovely evening; I’m going to go learn some Arabic and read a little bit and then it’s 8 hours of sleep tonight or bust.

(Remind me to talk more about the CPAP, btw. tl;dr it’s going well.)

Seriously, come hang out

Luther M. Siler1 Comment

The YouTube channel is, at least by my not-quite-lofty standards, blowing up lately, and the current series I’m doing on A Plague Tale: Requiem already has four or five videos over a hundred views. I’m not sure what’s driving it but I’m definitely happy about it, especially since all of my other social media stuff has been pretty stagnant lately. We’re back to two videos a day until I’m back at school again, so this is a good time to jump on, especially if people being eaten by rats in fourteenth-century France is your bag.

(sudden realization)

I’ve been seeing big jumps in page views at night, although today that pattern has been broken somewhat. I just now figured out why– it’s because I’m playing through the game in French, and I bet if I check in a couple of days I’ll have been getting lots of traffic from France. That’s cool for now but it’s not great in terms of people sticking around once this series is over. We’ll see, I guess.

Let’s see, what else is going on? Carpet Man is coming tomorrow to measure my living room. After that Project Empty The Living Room starts, which I’m not looking forward to, and then over the next week we have two different sets of contractors coming over for two different projects, and my brain is melty as hell right now because there’s too much going on.

I read Kara Jorgensen’s excellent The Reanimator’s Heart, which you should read and I should do a full review of. I’m starting Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Eyes of the Void tonight, which … I may talk about that tomorrow too, because it’s not the large print edition and yet somehow has the biggest type I think I’ve ever seen in any non-large-print book. We all know Tchaikovsky can write long, so it’s weird that they felt like they needed to increase his page count like this. I’ll post pictures eventually, trust me, but it’s gotta be 14-point text. I should check the first book in the series and see if it was huge type too. It’s actually distracting.

… yeah, that’s what I’ve got. What’s up in your neck of the woods? Do you even live in the woods? Nobody lives in the woods anymore.

In which some was gotten

Luther M. Siler1 Comment

As I have become sadly accustomed to when attempting to sell things, we did not make a ton of money at our garage sale. We made enough to cover the tables we had to rent and probably the gas to get to and from the place we had to rent them from, and the rest will maybe get a delicious McDonald’s meal for two of the three of us. During the last hour, we switched to “get this stuff the fuck off my driveway” mode, however, and my wife posted on a couple of come-get-free-shit groups on Facebook, and indeed, people came and got free shit, to the point where there was very little left by the time we closed up shop, and nothing that we’d have to make any phone calls to get hauled away. Which is good! We did this to clear space, not to make a ton of money, and the space is cleared, and some folks got some stuff they need. I’m good with it.

Tomorrow is Father’s Day. My wife and I just had a brief conversations about my expectations re: said holiday, and really, all I need/want/care about is to be acknowledged. And, like, even that doesn’t require much, but I’ll admit that last year I was a little upset, as my father, my brother, and three former students all said “Happy Father’s Day!” to me before my son or my wife did. I don’t need presents or a special meal or anything like that; we’re going to a local art fair for an hour and a half or so in the afternoon, assuming either of us can make our legs work, but that’s something we both want to do. I’d just like it if my ten-year-old manages to remember.

(“But what about Mother’s Day?” I can hear you asking. And the answer is: for reasons that are hers and therefore I’m not going to get into here, my wife loathes Mother’s Day, so beyond the perfunctory Acknowledgment of Holiday Status it is generally best ignored. And she’d probably be just fine without even the acknowledgment. I want that much, but not more.)

Let’s see, what else? I’ve now seen two episodes of Ms. Marvel and it continues to be the best thing Marvel has ever done. Yeah, I said it. It’s maybe not up to the emotional level that the first Iron Man and the first Avengers got me to, but it’s coming close. I fucking love this show.

Okay. I’m tired. Books and chairs for the rest of the night.

In which I am inconsistent

Luther M. Siler

Do you know what I did when I got home from work today?

Well, okay, I ate a pile of Arby’s. But after that?

Yeah, I fired up fucking Elden Ring again. I only played for a few minutes, but there was this one minibus I hadn’t killed yet, and … well, I wanted to, so I did. I am currently trying to decide whether I want to go ahead and dive into New Game + or hold off in hopes of being properly leveled for the inevitable DLC, which hasn’t been announced and probably won’t be released for months yet. I think the answer is probably “dive into New Game+,” except for … everything I said yesterday, which is all still true even if I’m apparently too dumb to act like it.

Today went well, I suppose; there are 31 days of school left as of right now, and I’m being observed tomorrow. I should probably figure out what I’m having the kids actually do during said observed lesson. I’ve never actually done an observed lesson by the seat of my pants, though, and if there was ever a time to do that just for the hell of it, the last month of my boss’ time in the building is probably it. He’s not going to give me a bad observation. He’s just not. I know this, which allows me a certain amount of freedom. That, and the fact that even if he did give me a poor evaluation I don’t think it would actually matter to anyone.

(I’m not going to do that. I’ll come up with something. We’ll see what it is, though.)

Let’s see, anything else? I wrote a post about the Expanse series a month or so ago, and while looking for books to compare the Expanse to, I commented that I’d never read any of Iain M. Banks’ Culture books. That wasn’t 100% true, as it turns out; I have owned the first book, Consider Phlebas, for long enough that my single, aborted attempt to read it doesn’t show up on Goodreads anywhere. I decided to take another shot at it and finished it the other day. The good news: I can’t figure out why I put it down all those years ago; the bad news: that doesn’t mean I thought it was especially good. I’ve heard that Phlebas is among the weaker Culture novels if not the weakest, so I might go ahead and try the second book anyway. Anybody out there have any observations to make? If I didn’t like the first Culture book, should I continue on anyway?

It’s quiet uptown

Luther M. Siler

There has not been much to today, and the highlights of yesterday were pork chops, mashed potatoes and lemon cake. I am listening to something called Little Simz on Spotify (related: I have a Spotify account now) and grooving to it.

I have a couple of longer posts bubbling, but I think they need to bubble a bit longer. I’ll see y’all tomorrow.