In which I forget that posts need titles until after I’ve hit Publish

On July 22, 2016July 22, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Parenting4 Comments

It is not as hot outside as I was expecting it to be today– which is to say, when I look outside nothing is obviously on fire. That said, I have at least one customer out on the golf course at OtherJob right now who I am not entirely certain is going to survive the experience. I’m comfortably ensconced in an air conditioned gameroom that hasn’t had many people breathing in it, so I’m doing fine– but I need to figure out how to get to my car at the end of the day without leaving the game room, which might be a bit tricky.

In other news, despite above-average caffeine consumption for the morning, I’ve been yawning for six solid hours and have formally taken next week off from OtherJob, meaning that my string of five straight six-day, 53-hour weeks is about to finally be snapped. My day off yesterday featured taking my son to day care, grabbing breakfast, doing a competitive shop at a furniture store that I don’t work at (after waiting in the parking lot for 45 minutes because I couldn’t think of anything else to do to kill the time before the place opened) and then coming home and staring at a computer screen for two more hours before taking a three-hour nap. Despite that, everyone in my house was still in bed before nine last night. Needless to say, no fiction was written. Once I leave here I have to go back to the other furniture store for a moment– I was informed that I had managed to miss a critical piece that we need to know the pricing of– and then off to my mom and dad’s for pizza with my brother and new sister-in-law, who I haven’t seen since their wedding. I’m excited about it, but I also kind of wish I could find a way to have pizza and see family from my bed.

And then it will be Saturday, which is my Monday now, and everything will start over again.

In other, entirely unrelated news: did anyone reading this post have a dad like this? One of those “I’ll kill you if you touch my daughter” types? I don’t know why, but I caught myself thinking about this type of guy (note: I do not have a daughter) earlier today, and it occurred to me that the way you treat your daughter’s boyfriends has got to be a reflection of the way you, yourself, treat and/or treated women. I feel like it’s got to say something fucked up about you that you feel the need to go all alpha gorilla and shotgunny when some dipshit teenager comes near your daughter.

(The picture is probably a joke. Almost certainly. But we all know these guys exist. Or maybe they don’t; I dunno, maybe it’s a stereotype that isn’t really real– the father of the only girl I ever really dated in high school was literally on another continent and I met very few dads in between her and the woman I ended up marrying. Needless to say, by that point we were both grown and her dad very clearly understood that he no longer had any say in the matter one way or another.)

Any thoughts on that, anybody?

It’s 5:15 AM

On July 12, 2016July 12, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Work1 Comment

…I’m awake, fuck it. Not quite the 3:00 in the morning blues, but it’ll have to be close enough.

I am pretty sure that I have been sweating for 20 straight hours, guys. Yesterday was a bit of a scorcher– I say “a bit” because 1) by historical standards it actually wasn’t really all that bad and 2) it’s going to be worse today, but the first thing I did when I got to work yesterday morning was help to unload an eighteen-wheeler full of furniture. At the time I commented that it wasn’t actually that bad of a truck, and it wasn’t– mostly big, square boxes that aren’t difficult to balance on a dolly and very few sofas, which are impossible to balance right and are the bane of my existence. What I wasn’t aware of was that for the next eleven hours of my work shift, constituting nearly 18000 steps and nearly eleven miles of walking, I was not ever going to actually stop sweating at any point. Which may have accounted at least partially for my poor performance as a salesman yesterday, come to think of it. I went through eight refills of the liter-sized water bottle I keep with me and never stopped feeling dehydrated.

I have blisters on my feet. I have to do it all over again today.

Then I got home from work, said good night to my son, ate some dinner, watched PREACHER, and went to bed. See anything missing? For some reason, I declared myself too tired to take a shower, which was some seriously poor decision making right there. Why am I typing on my blog and not in the shower right now, since I’m awake? Well, my wife leaves for work way before I do and I’m letting her do her morning ablutions before I rinse the filth off my disgusting meat-shell. I can smell myself, guys, and when I woke up this morning from a mild nightmare and had to get out of bed because I could hear a sound I couldn’t identify in the house, I came back to what was basically a pool of sweat in my fucking bed that I couldn’t make myself lie back down in.

The pillow is still awesome, though.

I will get used to this schedule, where I have three really long days to balance out two of what are basically half-days and two days off. I’m not there yet, but I will be; I’m not worried about it. But I’m wearing tennis shoes to work today, and when I get off from my half day tomorrow I am driving directly to the New Balance store in Granger, handing my credit card to the first salesperson who talks to me, and telling her that money is no object (how much can shoes possibly cost?) and to put something black on my feet that will make them feel like they are surrounded by love and honey and magic all day long. Because my current dress shoes do not fit that qualification. At all.

You think my bed’s dry yet? Technically I don’t have to be up for another hour.

EDIT: just in case, for some reason, anyone doubts me: last night’s sleep and yesterday’s steps. Today is going to be rough.

That time of year again

On May 28, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn PhotographyLeave a comment

Upcoming

On June 17, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

My boss seems to think that my school year will be ending on Friday; I disagree and think I’ll need at least a couple of days next week, but one way or another it doesn’t look like I’ll be going until July like I originally thought. This is good, as I’m chomping at the bit to get moving on a couple of projects. All of the following are slated for some serious movement in the next few weeks:

Essay collation (no editing, rewriting, or new material yet) for Searching for Malumba, still planned to be my fall release. I did some work on this already but not much.
I’m starting the Skylights sequel, currently tentatively titled Starlight. I probably need to spend a couple of days in research mode before I write anything at all but I really want to get moving so maybe I’ll just fix up the science later. Starlight is currently slated for early 2016 but who knows.
At least one Benevolence Archives short story, this one for submission to Lightspeed magazine. Once Lightspeed rejects it it’ll become the first story for the next Benevolence Archives book, which will be another short story collection, tentatively called Tales from the Benevolence Archives. Release date? Who the hell knows.

Also, during the first weekend in July I’ll be signing and selling books in Creators’ Alley at InConJunction in Indianapolis. It’s a three-day con, and tickets are cheap, and the last day of the con is my birthday, so everyone ought to come by and say hello.

Sometime in there maybe I’ll look for a job, too. Whee!

School’s out! Sale! Sale! Sale! (EDIT: It’s live!)

On June 10, 2015June 10, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing6 Comments

As of right now, school ought to be ending, and all of my students ought to be going away for a couple of months, and I am probably not dead or in jail. Let’s celebrate the end of the school year with a book sale!

Right now, until about 20 hours from now– just before noon tomorrow, in other words– Skylights, The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 and The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 2: The Sanctum of the Sphere will be only ninety-nine cents at the Amazon. That’s not even a dollar! And a dollar is not a whole lot of money!

(Well, I hope right now. Chances are it’s either already started or it will within an hour or so. But it was supposed to start at 3! Amazon doesn’t do clocks very well.)

Roughly every 20 hours after that, the price will go up a dollar on everything but BA 1, which is always 99 cents at Amazon. The sale ends Saturday night, when both books go back to regular price. So if you don’t get around to picking it up immediately, or you’d prefer to give me more than 99 cents of your money, the sale will still continue for a bit longer.

Celebrate the end of a school year with some summer reading!

(EDIT: 5:38 PM Eastern, two and a half hours late, and the sale hasn’t started. Will update when it does. Am growing aggravated.)

My Current Dilemma, in bullet point form

On June 8, 2015June 8, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Work10 Comments

I do not want to teach any longer.
However, I want to be employed more than I want to not-teach.
However, if I have to teach, I would prefer to be outside my current district.
However, I tried this last summer and it didn’t exactly work out, and I think people can smell burnout on me regardless of how hard I try to conceal it.
However, I’m fully expecting my entire district to go bankrupt next year, and it’s probably better to take a salary hit now then have my paychecks start bouncing in April.
However, that might not happen.
However, it’s entirely possible that it won’t matter because I’ll have killed myself/others by the time April rolls around anyway.

It seems, given those facts, that I might look at jobs outside of education!

I am good at many things.
However, few of those things will be immediately apparent on a résumé, and “trust me, I can handle this” is hardly a winning schpiel at a job interview.
However, letters of recommendation are good!
However, I don’t especially relish the idea of telling my boss I’m going to do my best to bail on him this summer.
However, he’s not an idiot and he knows full well that it’s time for the rats to desert the ship, and he’s likely looking for a job himself.
However, every time I look for other jobs, I’m reminded that I don’t really have any sort of concrete idea of what else I might do, and jobs that my current skill-set clearly qualifies me for frequently don’t meet salary needs.
However, see above regarding salary needs, because again, making $IOU in April is a distinct possibility this year.
The word however is getting old, so we’ll point out here that I actually don’t know what the hell people do to find jobs nowadays. Finding teaching jobs is pretty specific and simple, but when you’re in the situation I’m in (“I want at least $45K a year so that I can keep paying my bills, and don’t much care what I’m doing so long as it’s not teaching or illegal”) the actual search process can be kinda difficult.
LinkedIn appears to be useless, and their dedicated job search app worse than useless. I searched for nonprofit jobs yesterday and received several screens of jobs at Taco Bell. A search for education jobs suggested that I apply for a job as a surgeon for the Army Reserve.
You may recall that a manager at Taco Bell makes considerably more than South Bend will pay a teacher.

I really loathe the adage “Those who can’t do, teach.” I can do. What I’m not sure about is convincing people to hire me for jobs that I’m not immediately and obviously going to be a good fit for. I have to get my foot in the door, and I just don’t know that my résumé is going to do that– and that’s after the important “what the hell am I even applying for?” step happens.

Ugh.

Buy some fuggin’ books. Once I’m independently wealthy I ain’t gotta worry about this nonsense no mo’. 🙂

Let’s see

On June 8, 2015June 8, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

SATURDAY: Wake up, go visit wife’s family, a number of whom are in town for the day. Go from there directly to the high school graduation of the first group of fifth graders I had in South Bend, wearing the same clothes I wore at their 8th grade graduation, a fact that entertains only me as there is no chance any of them will notice. Go from there directly to OtherJob. Proceed to have one of the busiest nights of the year. Don’t get home until after midnight.

SUNDAY: Wake up early. Go to brother’s, who is liquidating his home in preparation to move to Illinois and live with his fiancée. Spend three hours moving furniture, including an antique oak armoire and three old-ass tube televisions that weigh so much that I can’t believe TV was ever even a thing before flat-screen TVs. Go home. I don’t remember the rest of Sunday; it involved a nap and a lot of moaning.

12:30 AM SUNDAY NIGHT: I am jolted out of a sound sleep by what sounds like glass breaking. I stagger around my bedroom with a baseball bat for a moment, thinking rather unreasonably that someone has thrown a brick through our bedroom window. It turns out that the cat has jumped up to a shelf of photographs and knocked the shelf over. Not the pictures on the shelf. The entire fucking shelf.

I never really get back to sleep.

MONDAY: There are three days of school left, and I have ordered tens of thousands of dollars of supplies for next year. I arrive to 25 large, heavy boxes that need to be opened, unpacked, checked in and sorted. Miraculously, no one bothers me all day and I spend the day doing this, including taking care of the extra boxes that arrived today. I send repeated emails to teachers saying things like “I know I emailed you earlier that you had stuff and you should come get it. This is not a reminder. This means that you have more stuff and now you should come get that.”

I don’t speak to students all day. No one even asks me to. There have been two days so far this year where I have felt like the invisible man in the office, and I’m not complaining about that– I need to figure out how I tapped into that power so I can use it more often.

There are two days of school left. 8th grade graduation is tomorrow and after that they go away and aren’t supposed to come back. This ought to lead to an easier day than usual with 25% of the students occupied during the morning and gone after that but who the hell knows; after how easy today was I’m not making any predictions.

It is hot. I want fall back.

The end. Have a music video.