Snowpocalypse 2014: Still doing this

On January 5, 2014January 5, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Same spot, 1:30 PM. My favorite detail, I think, is the way the snow caps on the neighbor’s bushes have broken so cleanly under their own weight. The driveway was cleared at 11:30 or so, so what you see is what’s fallen in two hours. And it’s only getting worse as the day’s going on.

On the plus side, it’s not very cold yet. And school’s been cancelled for tomorrow, too, surprising exactly no one.

(And, now that I’m looking at both of them in thumbnail, it really doesn’t look much different. Blowing them both up and comparing them is neat, though.)

(I swear, there really will be a non-weather post at some point. But this is kinda fun.)

Snowpocalypse 2014: why not, one more

On January 5, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized3 Comments

There will be a post with words in it at some point today, I promise. It may even be about something other than the weather!

Click for a waaay bigger version.

Snowpocalypse 2014: the prettifying

On January 5, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized4 Comments

Still not a lot of it yet, but man does it look nice:

Uh-oh…

On January 4, 2014January 4, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

In which we’re all gonna die

On January 4, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking, Teaching15 Comments

Storm’s coming; not sure if you’ve heard about it or not. In my neck of the woods they’re predicting somewhere between six and twelve inches of snow tonight through to tomorrow morning, depending on where you look, and temperatures– not wind chills– around ten to fifteen degrees below zero for Monday. Along with 20-30 mile an hour winds, which will probably mean wind chills around forty to fifty degrees below zero.

The governor of Minnesota has apparently cancelled school in the entire state on Monday. He did this yesterday. My local school corporation/state government isn’t quite as on the ball but I figure there is exactly zero chance that there’s going to be school on Monday (and if there is, I’m betting we’ll have around 30% of our students) and a pretty damn good chance that there won’t be school on Tuesday either. There’s always a delicate balancing act in situations like this; on the one hand, fucking cold; on the other hand, many of our kids are flat-out going to be safer and, more importantly, better fed at school than they will be at home. I know for damn sure some of my students get their only hot meals of the day at school. Then again, a lot of those kids who aren’t getting fed properly at home don’t have coats, either.

Now, in this specific case, it’s pretty clear-cut– if there are really ambient temperatures of fifty below zero outside, the buses aren’t even going to start– but if you’ve ever wondered why the big districts don’t close at the same rates that smaller/more rural ones do, that’s probably a big part of it; student safety cuts both ways. Either way, I don’t really mind; I’ve had enough of being off of work and am looking forward to getting back– which will probably last through all of an hour or so of actual school.

The wife made a trip to the grocery this morning, returning with piles and piles of food; the two of us sat down and put together three or four days of meals and went out and got everything we needed. I’mma eat real good for the next few dinners, y’all:

Beef Stroganoff tonight; and then, in some order or another
Skyline chili
Hoppin’ John
Pappardelle with an authentic ragù.

As usual, recipes are heavy on Thug Kitchen and Albert Burneko, and both of these sumbitches need to give me a cookbook I can buy now.

Also? My wife bought me a mortar and pestle. Which means I can grind up those dried ghost chilies I bought a while ago and make death chili. Which I won’t even be able to eat, and neither will anyone else, but omg excited. I need to find some uses for it other than grinding up those peppers, I think, but surely there’s something out there.

Wait! I have one: I can also commit felonious assault, because holy shit is this thing bigger than I thought it was going to be:

Stay warm the next couple days, y’all.

In which I dodge a bullet

On December 5, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn ParentingLeave a comment

Had a bad moment with the boy the other day.

He’s been throwing things lately. This, in and of itself, isn’t such a big deal; toddlers throw things. We encourage throwing when it’s a ball, so long as he’s throwing to and not at, and discourage throwing just about everything else. Generally, something along the lines of “Don’t throw things!” or “We don’t throw books” or “You’ll hurt the dog” has been good enough to get him to stop. Rarely– I mean, it, rarely— we have had to tell him twice.

He is almost 2 1/2, just for the record.

The other day, he threw his fork at dinnertime. This earned a sharper reprimand than usual as throwing a metal fork is somewhat more dangerous than throwing many other objects. We picked it up off the floor and gave it back to him and he threw it again. This time, he missed my head by maybe an inch.

I… reacted somewhat strongly. Verbally only, mind you, but more severely than perhaps he’s used to. He was done eating anyway, so we washed him up and then told him to walk around the table and pick up his fork and give it to me. Which he did– mostly. He walked around the table. He picked up the fork from the ground. I held out my had for him to give it to me.

And he gets this look on his face.

Oh hell no, boy. Don’t you even think what you’re thinking right now, because goddammit I’ve never spanked a kid in my life and I swear to god I may not be able to stop myself if you throw a fork at my face right now.

Out comes the teacher voice.

“Give. The fork. To me. Now.”

He very clearly spends a moment considering his options, and hands me the fork.

Which… good, because I really didn’t know where I was going after that, and heading into a potential You Really Need to Understand I’m Serious Right Now moment without a game plan is never a good idea, either in my classroom or in my house. I’m ambivalent about spanking right now; I don’t see that in general it’s going to do much good with a 2-year-old who wouldn’t know what “I’m going to spank you if you do that” even means, and in general I’d prefer to never hit my kid. But given a choice between hit my kid and have him believe that throwing sharp things in my face is okay… well, I’d prefer to dodge the issue altogether and not have to face that choice, actually.

I may need to spend some time reading up on discipline with toddlers.

You remember the tree that came down in the storm, right? Our insurance company estimated the cost to have it cut up and hauled away at $700, which doesn’t hit our deductible. The first estimate we got was two grand, and even getting that guy out to look at our shit was a huge pain in the ass because of all the much-more-important bigger jobs that were available all around the northern part of the state.

I’ve got a guy coming out tomorrow who will do the job for $575. Which is nowhere near $2000, and makes me very freaking happy.

Cue the normal concerns that you have when you get lowballed, of course, but if they do the job well I’m going to be recommending the guy to everyone I know. I may knock down other people’s trees to drum up more work for him.