Well, that was fun

On November 8, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Fall’s over, apparently, after a delightful couple of weeks; there’s a winter storm scheduled to roll in tomorrow that in theory could deposit as much as a foot of snow. We got our annual “Here’s how we handle snow delays” email from the boy’s school– and, as he’s an 8th grader, had a moment of reflection as we realized we were never getting another one after eleven years. We’ve been parking both cars in the driveway since March as the garage has gotten filled with bullshit, so the big task today was to de-bullshitify said garage and make it able to harbor motor vehicles again. The snowblower and mower have switched positions for the season.

You may remember that we had a synchronous e-learning day recently so that we could basically rehearse for snow days; I am entertained that one looks at least distinctly possible if not likely (“Hazardous conditions could affect Monday morning commutes” is a danger sign in a winter storm alert) and absolutely no one was warned to bring devices home over the weekend. We’ll see what happens, I suppose.

Tomorrow I am hanging the new curtains if it kills me. I will not go another day with the general public being able to see into my living room, God damn it. This may sound like it’s not much of a project, and it genuinely shouldn’t be, but I can’t believe I’ve been staring at these boxes on my dining room table for this long.

In which I’ve read this book already

On February 17, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

I’ll call it 50/50 whether we have a two-hour delay again tomorrow; Michigan schools have already called it due to the cold. We won’t cancel; it’s not going to be that cold, but subzero wind chills during the walking/waiting for the bus hours are dangerous regardless. On top of that, I have what feels like the beginnings of a sinus infection immediately after getting over whatever the hell I had last week, which feels unfair. I absolutely cannot miss any days of work between here and Friday for schedule reasons and I would really prefer to not miss any more days in February at all, so we’re gonna cross our fingers and hope this stays at a simmer until next weekend.

I have written, more or less, that exact post maybe fifteen times in 2025. I’m deliberately avoiding writing about creeping despair, political authoritarianism, or my own slow decline into supervillaindom, which pretty much leaves video games, books, and musing about the weather and being sick. My “Presidents’ Recess” went pretty well, I suppose, and now we enter into the longest stretch of the entire school year with no holidays, as Spring Break isn’t for seven weeks.

It’s entirely possible that I might die. We’ll see.

I don’t even know what I want any more

On February 12, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

I feel like I haven’t done anything at work all week except for talk about whether there was going to be school tomorrow or not. It’s supposed to snow all night and into tomorrow morning, with upper-end predictions being six inches of snow and a tenth of an inch of ice mixed into that, and that’s pretty ugly. The district has changed their mind– and sent out emails about said mind-changing– about what another closure would look like approximately nineteen thousand times this week. On Tuesday I was confidently told by a Downtown Person that we weren’t going to do e-learning at all if we had to cancel, and would just add a day to the end of the school year. By the end of that day we’d received five different emails about our procedure for synchronous e-learning, which are the Covid-style days where we’re in Google Meets all day. By today it was back to “traditional e-learning,” which caused widespread confusion because no one really knows what the word traditional means when it’s used in that sentence. Then they clarified that, without also clarifying that we aren’t allowed four asynchronous days during the school year and this would be the fourth, which was what set off all the speculation about what we were doing in the first place. Maybe we’ll lose the professional development day in March and just have school that day? Nobody fucking knows.

Incidentally, I recognize that this would require quite a roll of the dice, but if I go through the snow totals for each day for today through next Monday, I get the sum of eighteen inches of snow over the long weekend (Presidents’ Day is Monday, remember) which might cause fuckery with school being open on Tuesday.

I’m predicting a two-hour delay. I have moved into the I Have Shit to Do God Damn It point of the year, which means I don’t really want any more delays or closures, except I kind of do, because who wants to go to work if they don’t have to? Nobody. On top of that, it’s a Thursday before a four-day weekend when everyone has spent the entire week openly speculating that there will be no school on Thursday. What this means is that a lot of our kids will conclude that if there is school, it’s unfair, and they won’t show up anyway.

One way or another I am absolutely not making any Goddamn lesson plans for tomorrow until I know what’s going on. There’s no point.

Blech.

In which I have no idea how that happened

On February 6, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn BlogwankingLeave a comment

I got the best kind of snow day today, the one that takes you by surprise; the area got blanketed in ice last night, so I was anticipating a two-hour delay but I really wasn’t thinking we were actually going to get the day off. And then … I blinked, and now it’s 8:45 somehow, and I came closer to just forgetting to put a post up than I have in a good long time? I took a nap today but it wasn’t the whole day. I have no explanation.

In which it got brought

On December 5, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

We ended up with a two-hour delay this morning, which didn’t get me any extra sleep but did mean I could sit in my comfy chair and drink a leisurely cup of coffee before leaving for work, and then buy a second cup of coffee on the way to work. It took about twice as long to get there as usual, but the drive itself wasn’t scary, just slow.

Then somehow it spent all day snowing like hell but without any significant accumulation at the end of the day, and I’m not sure how that happened. It snowed hard today, and the two inches or so that was on my driveway when I got home was the deepest snow I saw all day. I feel like at least four or five inches of snow fell. I’m just not sure what the hell happened to it once it hit the ground.

There’s a slight chance of a second delay tomorrow– the storm is supposed to end late tonight, but it’s still going to be cold as hell in the morning– but I think I’d prefer to just have a regular day. Either way, we’re about to hit the two-weeks-until-winter-break point, and so far, so good.

Bring it, bitches

On December 4, 2024December 4, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, TeachingLeave a comment

The storm that was supposed to hit Monday night fizzled, leaving us with not even a dusting of snow, but I am assured that the predictions of 4-8″ in the next several hours plus 45-50 mile an hour winds are real. We have a new superintendent this year and it’s always hard to predict how the new dude is going to react to things, but nobody wants kids walking to school in the middle of a blizzard and definitely nobody wants kids walking to school in the middle of a blizzard featuring 50 mph winds.

So fuck it, I am predicting an actual snow day tomorrow. There are literally no consequences if I’m wrong other than mild disappointment early in the morning so I’m making the call.

The best thing about this? Because my building is planning on some standardized testing tomorrow– today went as predicted; I don’t have any real complaints other than I’m tired as hell– we kept everyone’s iPads. There are always going to be some kids who leave their iPads at school rather than taking them home, but in this particular case it’s all of them, so if we have an e-learning day tomorrow there’s genuinely no point in even posting something because nobody will be able to do it. Which means no one will be bothering me about it all day.

Does the district know this? They do not. Don’t tell ’em, either.

There’s a new book in Brandon Sanderson’s massive Stormlight Archives series coming Friday. It’s going to be over thirteen hundred pages in hardback, supposedly, and no volume of the so-far five-book series has come in at under a thousand. I have read the first two. I started the third one when it came out, way back in 2017, and never finished it. I should check and see if I wrote anything about it here, (Edit: I did!) but my recollection is that I decided the books thought the wrong people were the heroes, and I ended up not ever picking it back up.

It crossed my mind yesterday to see if I can read the entire series in the month of January. That would mean rereading the first two books, finishing the third, then reading the fourth and fifth for the first time– nearly six thousand pages in 31 days.

For a normal person that would be insurmountable. I am not a normal person. I’m up to 161 books in 2024 so far, with three weeks left to go, and this is Brandon Sanderson prose, which reads faster than normal. I also have the entire first week of January off and a three-day weekend for MLK day, plus potentially another snow day or two if I get really lucky. It’s not even 200 pages a day. I’m pretty sure I’m already pulling off higher numbers than that, but I’m not about to do the math and my Goodreads summary isn’t out yet.

What do you think? Should I do it?

Staring out the window

On January 22, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

…no, I’m not giving you a picture, as it’s dark outside, but the district sent us all home today with an email darkly suggesting we “prepare for a delay or cancellation” tomorrow, as the entire region is expected to be blanketed in ice tonight, and given that fact, I have absolutely no intention of doing any lesson planning tonight, so I’d prefer if they would just get it over with and cancel something. The smaller and more rural districts are already starting to pull triggers, so … let’s just do it now, okay? I want to know when to set my alarm for tomorrow, dammit.