Tag: plans

Same, Charles Darwin. Same.

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

It’s been a weird damn day. I’m definitely in Okay School Can Start Now mode, and as of right now I basically have two more weeks of break. I’m going to try to not live at work during the week before school starts like I usually do, and I’m going to try to not spend much, if any, money on my classroom in the next couple of weeks either. I’ve spent most of the day obsessing about money and trying to figure out the best way to get rid of lots of my possessions. I’ll spare you the details; bog-standard Anxiety Brain at work, and for no good reason. There’s nothing bad going on; I’m genuinely in the best financial shape of my life right now (knocks on wood) but I’m going through another one of those occasional phases where I’m obsessing about The Next Car, and I accidentally figured out yesterday that I can technically afford The Next Car right now, which is not part of the plan, and I’m sticking to the Goddamned plan, which is to wait until the boy gets his license, give him the Kia, and then either lease or buy myself a new car.(*) That’s a little over a year away. I have a target in mind for my down payment; I’m halfway there, and I don’t think pulling together the other half in the time I have will be difficult– and even if it doesn’t happen, it’s not like there’s a hard deadline for something like give my son my car.

Further complicating things: he’s commented more than once that he’s not sure he wants his drivers license, which is a startlingly common affliction for kids of his generation. God could not have stopped me from taking my driving test on the first day I was legally able to. Also a potential complication: I think my dad’s car is probably on its last legs. It might turn out to be more sensible to give him my car, but that’s not something that’s going to happen on my timetable.

Forgive me; I’m thinking out loud, obviously, but hopefully typing this out will calm my brain down a little bit. I got a few things done around the house, took a shower in the new shower finally (it works!) and read about a third of the thousand-page book I started yesterday with the parts of my day that weren’t dedicated to kvetching. Tomorrow I plan on fixing the toilet and a ceiling light in the other bathroom, and hopefully I can get that done without electrocuting myself (unlikely, as I know how to turn the power off to the bathroom) or breaking the shutoff valve for the toilet … which is a bit more of a concern. I’m perfectly capable of swapping out the guts of a slow toilet, but our shutoff valves are, by and large, Not Good, and replacing those is beyond my skill. So if that fucker snaps off in my hand we’re going to have to cut off the water to the whole house and call an emergency plumber.

Cross your fingers for me, will you?

(*) Spare me, for now, any opinions on which is a better idea, although keep them in your back pocket for the inevitable moment when I have to actually make that decision, because we all know I’m going to ask for advice. It’s kind of a pointless conversation until I know what loan rates are looking like when I actually get the car.

In which I skipped today

On By Luther M. SilerIn life4 Comments

Woke up this morning with my head swimming, and while I’m not unused to occasional dizziness first thing in the morning, holy shit— this, with no other symptoms, knocked me flat on my ass for almost the entire day, and I took a four hour nap this afternoon. That didn’t really leave a lot of time for much else; I’ve been reading a book that I’m not enjoying very much, and I’m trying to decide whether I dislike it enough to review it after I finish it or if I should just put it down and not worry about it. Advice, to future writers: you are not allowed to introduce time travel as a plot element with only a hundred pages left in your book. Don’t do that. Please.

Tomorrow I go back to studying in the mornings, after taking a couple of weeks off– my test is July 1st, and I am bound and determined to pass this damned thing on the first try. I have one more practice test handy, so I’ll start going through my last remaining study guide tomorrow, and take that test Wednesday, maybe, and then use the last couple of days to make sure of things like “I know how to use the calculator” and “my computer will run the software without a hitch.” I have no reason to leave the house next week other than a handful of tasks to take care of on Wednesday, so I have plenty of time to get myself ready. I popped into my classroom for a few minutes last week, and told my boss that I was about to take the test, and she didn’t say “Oh, that class isn’t happening,” which I’m hoping means that there’s still at least a good chance.

I dunno, that’s what I’ve got. How was your Sunday?

In which I haven’t failed yet

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I was able to successfully get myself up out of bed and showered before 8:30 this morning. I had a cup of coffee and screwed around on my phone for a while, then spent an honest to goodness solid hour studying, and managed to successfully regain at least some of my knowledge of trigonometry in the process. I think what I’m going to do this week is spend the next couple of days filling obvious holes in my knowledge (“obvious” meaning “I remember knowing this, and now I don’t,” as opposed to, say, calculus, which is an entire domain of knowledge that I never really had a grasp of) and then take a practice test on Thursday. (Why Thursday? It’ll take a while, and Friday’s going to be busy. I’ll have time to study but not for an entire practice test.) If I do okay on the practice test, I may go ahead and take a shot at the real test next week and see if I can just knock it out. I only need like a 60% to pass, I think? If I do crap on it, I’ll stick with the original plan and study through June or until I can pass a practice test solidly. I don’t want to have to pay for this thing more than twice, and ideally, only once. I’ve also literally never failed a standardized test so I have some pride on the line here too.

In other news, school is out, and I’m finding that I don’t have a lot to say about that. This was a pretty good year, all told; it had its moments, like they all do, but my honors class was awesome enough to carry through the rest of the year and even my most annoying kids continue to pale in comparison with what I’ve had to deal with at previous schools. That said, I think I’m due for another round of reevaluating classroom procedures; everything I’m doing right now is still very COVID-informed and I’m seeing signs that certain policies may be starting to bite me in the ass a bit. I didn’t really try to reinvent the wheel when I changed districts, but I’m comfortable enough in the new place now that I think I can tweak some things. We’ll see.

I’ll end on a question: certain sectors of American society have been claiming that attempting to impose any sort of penalties or punishments for the obvious criminality of certain individuals was going to cause widespread civil unrest. Locally, I am aware of one (1) house that is now flying a very small (comically so, in fact) American flag outside their house, upside down. Is anyone reading this aware of any civil disobedience or protests literally anywhere other than the tiny little group that’s been outside the courthouse in New York since the trial started? Any downtowns flooded with fash lately? Trucker rebellions? Anything at all?

On the most minor of milestones

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I have no further lesson planning to do for the 2023-24 school year. I know exactly what my students will be doing each class period for the rest of the school year.

Now, granted, “what they will be doing” on some of those days is nothing.

And I have some practice finals I need to write this weekend. Like, I know what days they’re doing them, but they don’t actually exist yet.

But the planning? That’s done.

In which I plan

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

I always feel like I need some sort of master plan any time I have a break in class lasting longer than a weekend. I have never actually been any good at relaxing as a thing unto itself; the good news is that I do consider a number of my leisure activities as doing something, so if I come out of the next four days having read three books that’s actually a Thanksgiving well-spent. We are not especially observing the holiday; there’s going to be ham and au gratin potatoes for the three of us tomorrow, and there will be additional food distributed to our (socially distanced, mask-wearing) dads this weekend, but nobody’s risking anything. I already feel like I’ve dodged enough bullets just with the covid that’s passed through my classroom; we’re not about to tempt fate by having even just family over.

So, yeah. I’m going to try to get something done over the next four days, if only so that I have an answer to “What did you do over your break?” next week, but right now other than a lot of video games I’m not sure what the hell that’s going to look like.

I need to have a word with you, Internet. I have joked several times on Twitter that anyone who wanted to hack into my student loans was welcome to, so long as they paid them.

When I said that, I meant with your own money, and I randomly glanced at my bank account earlier today to discover, rather unpleasantly, that I was overdrawn. Somehow my student loans had processed twice, which was … a problem. A quick balance transfer kept me from getting hit with any overdraft fees, but further investigation revealed that a third payment was pending and just hadn’t shown up on my bank account yet. I was able to straighten everything out with no more damage than an hour of my time, a fee from my bank for reversing the two charges, and I’ve changed all the relevant passwords, but … yeah, this one’s a mystery.

Seriously, though. It was supposed to be your money.

In which I stay in my square

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Be it known that I managed to accomplish nearly all of the tasks on my list yesterday– and the one that I didn’t get to, the beta read, is being worked on right now. Amazingly, this means that I not only posted to Patreon for the first time in a while but that I wrote fiction. I actually have some decent ideas rattling around right now, and I just need the wherewithal to actually get them set to screen.

I made it official today that I plan on returning to my current job and my current building next year, meaning that for the first time in a while I will hold the same teaching position for two years in succession. For most of the year I was planning on taking at least some time to look around for a new job this summer in a sort of relaxed, no-big-deal, no-panic sort of way, but at this point everything else in the world is so screwed up that I’m going to be happy to have something secure and not fuck around with it. It’s always possible that something is going to magically drop into my lap, but that’s going to be what it takes for me to not be back teaching 8th grade math again next year.

Speaking of teaching, I’m experimenting with office hours again, where I basically post a link to a Meet video chat on my Google Classroom and then sit in front of the computer for an hour to see if anyone comes to talk to me. So far in about three hours of sessions I’ve had one kid that popped in for maybe two minutes and two kids who were in the room just long enough for me to get the notification and then bailed. So … fuck it, I’m trying, right? We’ll see if today’s afternoon session goes any better; if nothing else, it’s forcing me to be in front of the computer, which means that I’m mostly listening to music, reading comic books, and getting work done. There are worse ways to spend my afternoons.

Is it a bad idea to admit that the election results in Wisconsin yesterday give me a little bit of hope for this fall? It’s a bad idea, isn’t it? I won’t say it.

2:11 PM, Tuesday April 14th: 584,073 confirmed cases and 24,485 Americans dead.

Y’all cain’t kill me, Chapter 16

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

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.

And the livin’ is easy

On By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

So today’s my first real day of summer vacation, or at least I’m counting it as such– I suppose I could have counted Friday but I had all kinds of shit to do and the boy started his summer camp today so let’s say it was today.

I am, therefore, at the same place I’m always at whenever summertime starts: looking at something like seven or eight weeks off before school starts to ramp up again and pretending that I’m gonna be super efficient with all that extra time and Make My Summer Count.

Let’s take a moment and just contemplate the pure American-ness of being given time off and immediately feeling guilt that I, in the future, won’t spend it working hard enough, and mourn our deeply stupid culture.

But anyway. This is the first summer in a very long time that I haven’t actually had a job. Since the summer The Sanctum of the Sphere was written, I think, and technically I did have a part-time job that summer so this may be the first genuinely job-free summer since early in high school.

So, therefore, knowing that my one real responsibility all summer long during the weekdays will be to get the boy to his summer camp and pick him up a few hours later, I would like to do each or at least most of the following things every day until school starts again, excepting weekends and major holidays:

  • Eat something vaguely resembling breakfast;
  • Write a blog post;
  • Write a minimum of 500 words fiction and preferably 1500;
  • Be showered and dressed by 10 AM, if not before I take the boy to camp;
  • Once a week, at least, put something on Patreon, preferably a microfiction or excerpt from item #3 up there;
  • Play video games (yes, I have to schedule this);
  • Clean and/or organize and/or maintain something;
  • Move around a bit somehow so I don’t gain 300 pounds in the next two months;
  • Spend an hour reading, and time before bed doesn’t count.

So far today I have done all but three of those things, and I’m betting you can guess which three if you’ve been around here for more than a couple of weeks.

I want a new book ready by Kokomo-Con X in October. And unlike my last several I want to launch this one right. That’s only gonna work if I get to work now.

Anybody wanna take bets? Let’s take bets.