Some realizations

On September 12, 2021 By Luther M. SilerIn life2 Comments

First, that it is 7:30 PM, and I probably ought to blog today;
Second, that I am officially closer to retirement than I am to college, even assuming I wait to 65 to retire;
Third, that my student loans are due to be paid off four years prior to said 65th birthday, which should be a crime;
Fourth, that even if the notion of living another 20 years much less teaching for that long is difficult to wrap my head around, I probably ought to take this retirement thing seriously since I have, y’know, a wife and child in the mix now.

In case you can’t tell, I met with a retirement … dude, of some sort, at work on Friday, and several mortality-confronty sorts of things were discussed, and then this weekend I managed to keep my shit together long enough to dig through the folder that I throw anything even vaguely investment-related into and find not one but two different investment-related accounts that appear to no longer be receiving active contributions; I did some strategic scanning and sent them off to The Dude with a note attached that basically said I don’t know any of the money words, please help and we will see if anything happens. I have never really believed in retirement, to be honest; not in the sense that I don’t want to eventually quit working– I want to quit working now— but in the sense that I suspect any money I “invest” in my “future” will be stolen or siphoned off somehow before I’m able to actually benefit from any of it.

Today also included mowing, putting all my laundered clothes away like a big boy, finishing a book, starting another one, getting my grading done, writing a number of important emails, and a couple of videos recorded for The YouTubes. All in all, not bad for a Sunday.

One down

On June 7, 2021 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I’ve said this before: I don’t know how to relax. I had my first day of Real Summer Break today, distinguished from the end of last week (which seems like a distant memory already) by the fact that my wife had to go back to work and the boy and I had to fend for ourselves all day. I don’t have a routine yet, or (much of) a plan for one, but I did spend some time this morning planning for next year and Sending Important Emails that I’ve been putting off.

Specifically, I’m putting together a list of 28 (seven per quarter) skills that I feel like my kids should have mastered before 8th grade– some of them, well before 8th grade– and which we’re going to be working on during one of the two class periods I’ll have with each of my kids next year. I’m experimenting with several things at once here that I don’t have a lot of experience with– heavy differentiation, complete with (maybe?) centers, where, in theory, the kids in the room could be working on as many as 8 or 9 different skills at once, since I’m going to have kids who can “pass” a standard almost immediately if they already know how to do it, as well as standards-based grading and much heavier skills tracking than I’ve used in previous years.

What I need is for this to actually work, and not collapse under the weight of discipline issues and the number of kids in the room who are going to try and choose to opt out of being educated at all. I’m worried that I’m going to spend the entire summer planning and then end up abandoning the whole thing by the middle of September.

(Thinks about something, throws an email at his boss)

I did some initial studying today, too, and some of the Important Emails that got Sent were trying to nail down exactly how this process of National Boardsing actually works; I had my plan provisionally approved by my coach, who doesn’t actually have to approve my plan, but it was nice that she did, but now I need to know what to do to actually, like, tell these people that I want to take their lil’ math test, and it would probably be useful for me to know when/how often that test is administered, too.

And then there’s all the other stuff. I got some organizing done in my office, mostly finished a bookbinding project I’ve been working on for a while, and did some light cleaning. Played some Returnal and discovered that suddenly I suck at it. Would have jumped in the pool, but it rained all day so I didn’t.

I need to get into a rhythm as quickly as I can, and I probably need to get into the habit of being showered and dressed as quickly as I typically was during the school year. I’m going to focus a bit more on the cleaning and organizing side of things tomorrow; we’ll see how well I do. Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll have my topics pulled together and can start organizing them by quarter and figuring out how this entire process is actually going to work.

Let’s go.

PRODUCTIVITY!

On May 23, 2020May 23, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I cleaned about half the house today, and in between vacuuming spent a pleasant hour out on the back porch enjoying the one (1) day of nice weather we’re going to get before Too Fucking Hot starts kicking in tomorrow. I will get the rest of it done tomorrow, along with finishing the week’s grading and driving over to my dad’s to give him a Covid haircut.

I also cooked breakfast, but I did that before the rest of the stuff. Turns out the boy likes omelets.

Tonight shall be spent finishing Season 5 of She-Ra, finishing my third playthrough of Nioh 2, and getting as far as I can into The Ten Thousand Doors of January before sleep.

Not a bad Saturday, as they go.

6:56 PM, Saturday May 23: 1,618,471 confirmed cases and 96,983 American deaths.

Graaaah cannot brain

On April 17, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

… you ever have one of those days where you are convinced that you have several hundred tasks, mostly mid-sized or smaller, that all need doing today but at any given moment you can’t remember what any of them are? And simultaneously you feel like you’ve been working on those tasks all day but actually naming anything you’ve done is also something you’re not capable of?

… what’s that you say? That’s every day now? Oh.

Damn.

2:09 PM, Friday April 17: 679,374 total confirmed cases; 34,180 Americans dead.

Things what I should be doing

On April 13, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn WorkLeave a comment

Various “work” tasks I could and/or should be doing right now, in no particular order:

Finish a second beta reread of a friend’s novella
Provide commentary for same
Get something on Patreon, since I forgot to cancel them last month and they sent me money
Get tomorrow’s lesson planning done (critical)
Get this week’s lesson planning done (would be good)
Get the next eleven days of lesson planning done, taking me through to the end of April (best choice)
Maybe some grading (not really necessary, but would be nice)
Write some fiction, since I actually have some ideas bubbling around right now
Play Nioh 2 (not a joke; the boy has been begging me to play all day because he likes to watch. I will actually disappoint my son if I don’t play any video games today.)

What I have done so far today, at 4:13 PM, in this order:

Twitter
Attended a Google Meet session with the rest of the math team
Twitter
Eaten lunch
Twitter
Showered
Got dressed
Put on socks
Twitter
Blogged

I am nothing if not a winner, y’all.

4:16 PM, Monday April 13th: 572,169 total confirmed cases, 23,070 American deaths.

First Day of Vacation: I Went to Work edition

On June 18, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn life2 Comments

giphy — I was looking for a .gif of the “Get me a G-O-B” scene, but this’ll do.

Last week was an exceptionally shitty week to be a furniture salesman– easily the worst single week in my entire two-year tenure, in fact, and is is nearly unimaginable that June will not end up as my worst single month as a furniture salesman as well. So when a previous customer called last week and said that she was out of town but wanted to make an appointment to come in and spend a few thousand dollars, I happily scheduled her for 10:00 this morning and came in anyway. While I was there, I caught a customer from yesterday who had had to postpone his purchase because of a freeze on his credit accounts– meaning that I had, in a single hour, on a day when I was not supposed to be at work, more total sales than in the seventeen days prior to that hour.

So, yeah. Come into work on my day off, but make hundreds of dollars in commissions during that hour I came in? No problem.

Then I returned something to Best Buy, came home, played video games, mowed the lawn, played more video games, got some important emails, responded to those emails, finished my renewal for my teachers’ license (which will expire in 2028, a year that is so far away I cannot comprehend it), played more video games, got some light cleaning done around the house, ate dinner, and now I’m writing thishere blog post.

My big plan for tomorrow? Breakfast is gonna be sausage grits and a fried egg. Ask me how excited I am about my breakfast tomorrow.

I am so excited about my breakfast tomorrow.

The remainder of the day will be split between more video games– can you tell I caved and bought Dark Souls Remastered once I realized I’d have a solid week where I didn’t have to go to work?– and the Composition of Fiction.

Not bad for my first day off.

In which I need an app

On May 7, 2018May 7, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

Maybe the internet hivemind can help me out with this one. I need an app that fits the following criteria:

Preferably iOS, but I can make Android work.
It is mainly a contacts app, but– and this is critical– it does not fuck with the existing contacts on my phone. I need this for work and I don’t need ten thousand customers clogging up my contacts. A database app with fully definable input fields would work just as well.
It allows me to add pictures and notes to said contacts.
Email addresses being clickable to send a message would be useful.
It is fully searchable/sortable in any of those fields. In other words, if I want to find anybody named Smith, I can, if I want to find any entries I created in January I can, and if I want to find anyone who was looking at a particular piece of furniture, I can.
Ideally, it has OCR and can scan most of the important stuff into an entry from an invoice or a computer screen so I don’t have to type everything twice.
Free or a one-time payment, preferably less than $10, but I’d look at something more expensive if it hits all those points and I only have to buy it once.

Suggestions? Don’t say Evernote, Evernote’s useless.

Here we go here we go here we go

On April 27, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Work2 Comments

Okay.

I’m going to have a productive day today, people. If it kills me. I have a job interview in half an hour, and once that’s done I have a literal list of projects from which to choose from, and I’m gonna bloody well get to as many of them as I can before I have to go collect the boy from school this afternoon. Today will be productive.

You hear me, world?

Productive.

Getting stuff done.

Yeah.