In which this is really actually true

On June 11, 2014June 11, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

I’m, like, fifty followers away from the big 3K. REPOST ABUNDANTLY.

I received a thank you note today– from a parent of one of my students, mind you– that started with the sentence “Thank you for being a cynical, sarcastic, grumpy asshole.” And, like, it meant thank you, and not weird reverse-psychology I’m using thank you to mean I hate you nonsense.

What can I say; some of them get me.

Today was Field Day; it went just fine, as these things tend to do, except it had rather less Field than I might have liked due to torrential rains at the beginning of the day (when all of the outdoor stuff would have been set up) and at the end of the day as well. In between, though, it was beautiful outside. Unlike last year, as you’ve seen in the post below this one, I managed to remember to get a picture of the last bus as it pulled away from the building. So, yay: achievement unlocked. I also found out today that there’s at least one other school wanting a phone interview. And another actual interview Friday. So double-yay.

Goals for this summer:

Get BA 8, currently untitled, written. I’m about 3600 words in.
Get Skylights online. This will require talking to my artist tomorrow. And, uh, the revisions. Damn revisions!
Finish the bathroom. Soon.
Get my comic books categorized and, hopefully, sold.
Go through the four enormous crates of vintage 1980s toys that my mother unleashed on me last weekend and figure out what to do with them. Yes, that’s a big enough task that it counts as a summer goal.
Oh, and, uh, get a new job.

I still technically have one more day at work; the teacher record day is tomorrow, but literally everything is done and if I wanted to I could check out of the building five minutes after walking into it tomorrow. I’m not going to, but I could.

For right now, though? Bed. Early. I didn’t sleep well at all last night– not, like, end-of-year related, I just couldn’t sleep– but I intend to make up for it tonight.

(Random late addition: the lack of an apostrophe in the title of this YouTube video is annoying me enough that I may actually change the video. Something is wrong with me.)

Summer

On May 23, 2014May 22, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography4 Comments

I think I prefer these to the winter shots.

SOON.

On May 9, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy5 Comments

10247457_10152353417968926_7517047325752612395_n Unless you have spent a lot of time wandering through my archives or you’ve been here since very close to the beginning of the blog, you probably have not seen this post yet. It’s a shame, because it’s one of my favorites; go take a look if you like. And while you’re reading, note the part about the milkweed.

The fucking milkweed still isn’t dead.

However.

It’s gorgeous out tonight; it was crazy-humid all day but it’s cooled into a perfect evening. The boy wanted to play outside so I went out with him and my wife and randomly decided it was time to mow. This makes today the first day of summer, by the way; not only did I mow the front lawn for the first time in 2014 but I dodged the first couple dozen Deathwishes of the summer.

(There are ten thousand toads living in my yard. They are all named Deathwish on account of their constant insistence on hopping underneath my mower. I used to be careful about nudging them out of the way or mowing around them and then I realized that in three years of mowing I have never once managed to accidentally murder a toad with my lawnmower, which means that they can burrow or hang on or something like that, so I don’t bother dodging them any more.)

Anyway, yeah, I mowed. And I did something else tonight: I took another step toward unwelcome adulthood and spent good money on my lawn. It’s official; my lawn-zany neighbor has won. We hired Trugreen tonight. I was already strangely excited about it, which hurts me in my soul. But I am sick of hating my lawn and supposedly they help with that sort of thing.

Then I mentioned the milkweed. And the salesman dude (Oh. There was a salesman dude. He came by yesterday while the boy was taking his bath and came back again tonight at my request while I was mowing.) told me that they have some sort of liquid death that they will put on the milkweed and the milkweed will die in horrible pain. As will all living things under the circle they put the stuff on, straight down to the center of the earth.

Which is worth the summer’s $277 fee all the fuck by itself.

I am sooooo looking forward to this.

DO YOU REMEMBER LAUGHTER???

On February 5, 2014February 4, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography4 Comments

…or, hell, at least summer? I remember when it was nice outside.

So here’s a thing I’m thinking about

On August 27, 2013August 27, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, TeachingLeave a comment

pile-of-money

Anybody ever heard of the Lilly Endowment’s Teacher Creativity Fellowships? I found out about them on Facebook the other day– it’s a $10,000 grant given out to 100 teachers across the state of Indiana for the rather nebulous purpose of “creative projects that are personally renewing and intellectually revitalizing to individual Indiana teachers and education professionals.”

In other words, ten grand for writing a grant proposal about a creative way to fucking relax during the six weeks of the summer. And they even say that if your budget for your relaxing thing doesn’t add up to ten grand you can designate the rest as a stipend. Here’s some examples of some of the crazy nonsense that people got handed ten grand for this year. These are all direct quotes from the website:

travel to Costa Rica to dive on a coral reef; study environmental conservation; learn to speak Spanish
“Hooked on Becoming a Nova Scotia Hooker”—attend workshops in Nova Scotia to learn wool dyeing and rug hooking; visit textile-arts museums in Vermont, Massachusetts and Maine
travel the country, taking lessons from master guitarists in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, Maine and Hawaii; write songs and post a blog; record new songs written during the journey
create artwork from debris found while scuba diving and beachcombing; participate in workshops in Oregon and California that promote using trash to make artwork
attend workshops in Montana and Oregon to learn landscape quilting; visit and photograph four national parks; prepare quilts of national park scenes
visit historic sites in France, Greece and Italy; capture images of sites using high-dynamic range photography and video techniques

I swear I’m not cherry-picking the ridiculous ones, guys; the recipients are listed by alphabetical order by the city they’re from and I didn’t get through F. That last one boils down to go to Europe and take pictures of shit, gimme ten grand. And it got funded. That’s insane.

I am pretty damn sure that I can come up with a way to spend someone’s ten thousand dollars this summer. They apparently have way too much money if they’re giving it away for nonsense like this. Which means that some of this shit is gonna be mine.

Now that it’s over…

On August 21, 2013August 20, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Let’s talk about how the summer went.

In a word? Weird.

As I write this (which isn’t at 8:00 on Wednesday morning, which is when this is going to pop; I’m probably passing out locker numbers to my homeroom girls right now) I still don’t have ISTEP scores for the 2012-13 school year. We can argue– and I have, no link necessary– about how important these tests should be, and how much they actually accurately measure student learning, but the simple fact is that they’re really really important right now even if they should be. In a very real way, I’ve spent all summer unable to close the book on 2012-13 because I never got my ISTEP scores. I have kids who have already transferred or moved who I’m never going to get to be able to tell that they passed for the first time, or that they brought their scores up by more than they ever have before.

That’s kind of a big deal for me. Now, granted, I’ve got a lot of these kids back, so I can have the conversation with them this year, but it’s not the same. Psychologically, I haven’t let go of last year yet. I haven’t been able to process how well they/I did– for better or for worse– and figure out a way to adjust and/or do things better for this year, because I don’t yet know how well the changes I made last year worked out. And that’s a damn weird position to be in. (I’m hoping that by the time this actually publishes I’ll actually have scores in-hand, but I’m not holding my breath.)

Outside of school… well, it was still a weird summer. It started off too wet, transitioned into too hot– expected in northern Indiana in July– but then took a weird detour straight into Octobersville, which is where we’ve lived for the last month or so. Business at OtherJob hasn’t been what I’ve wanted it to be, because the weather never cooperated with us. And it’s made the job less fun in a way that I don’t like at all, because having something fun to get paid for is the whole point of OtherJob. I don’t like it when that doesn’t happen.

I built a deck. That was awesome. I cooked a bunch of stuff; also awesome. Ripped up some carpeting in my hallway and started working on the year’s biggest project, the new bathroom, which I’m hoping will be awesome once it’s done.

I failed at ukulele. That was unfortunate.

And then there was this place. I haven’t been a regular blogger for several years, and I managed to write damn near every day through the summer (when the hell did I start this place up again? Early June?) regardless of what else was going on. I think I only missed two or three days all summer, and while the posts haven’t exactly all been brilliant at least I’ve been writing. I’m hoping to hell I can keep up at least a four- or five-days-a-week pace once school starts; we’ll see. Weirdly, I think my schedule– my prep period is last hour– might help with that; it’ll give me time to get stuff done before school lets out, which will mean I won’t be at school as long, which will mean I’ll theoretically have time at home to write. I don’t want this place to wither, but I can’t pretend there’s not a real risk of it. The plan will be to always try and write for the next day so I can keep posts popping in the morning. We’ll see.

The biggest failure of the summer has been where it always is: writing fiction, which I’ve barely done at all. Which I never do, despite my constant desire to the contrary. But you’ve seen that rant before, multiple times, so I’ll spare you.

And that was that. Here we go again.

Okay NOW I’m ready for summer

On August 14, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Seriously– how is it that I started getting my classroom ready in July and here we are a week before school starts and I’m so far behind I can’t believe it?

Long day today– union thing starts in an hour and I’m not showered yet, that’s supposed to last until 1:00, then over to school for as long as they’ll let me stay there and get stuff done, then back home. I really want to go shopping for some stuff tonight but I’m also broke as hell and have to stretch my current money out for an extra week to account for the fact that I’m not getting paid again until September 6.

So, yeah, don’t expect anything terribly erudite or fascinating around here. I may try and get a real post up later but don’t hold your breath.

In which I suck

On July 16, 2013July 16, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

No, seriously. I am absolutely terrible at being alive. And I’m ready for summer to be over. This notion that two months more-or-less-off in the summer is a “perk” for teachers makes me insane, people. If I don’t have a schedule to follow of some sort I degenerate into a fat, unwashed mess of unmotivated sludge so fast that it’s astonishing. Right now? I got home from work thirteen hours ago and I’m already so bored I want to die. Most of that time was spent asleep.

There has been more than one point in my life where I was working three jobs, and for my working life I’m pretty sure there has been more time where I’ve had multiple jobs than when I haven’t. So summertime, where I not only have only one job but that job isn’t even full-time, is torture. I have been awake for four hours and these few, crappy little sentences are all that I’ve done. Wait, no– I dragged myself into the kitchen twice, once to eat two granola bars and let the dogs out, and a second time to eat a microwave pizza and let the dogs out again. I’ve technically eaten two meals and I haven’t showered yet.

I have about a month left until I can start spending ten hours a day in my classroom and griping about that. I seriously don’t know if I can keep my shit together until then. Also it is a hundred thousand degrees outside and fuck that. It was so humid yesterday afternoon that I could drink the air. It’s not that bad just yet but it’s supposed to be again later.

Arrrrrrrrgh.

Twice this week I’ve run into people in public who I used to be really close to but haven’t seen in fifteen to twenty years. In both cases it’s led to half an hour or so of relatively pleasant conversation (“relatively” because one of them started off with me saying “what the hell are you doing here?” before I realized how rude that sounded and the other because it started with an accusation of Unfriending on Facebook, which, while it was almost certainly true, I didn’t remember doing it and therefore couldn’t defend myself adequately; plus, as everyone who is in regular touch with me knows, I’m not normal about Facebook; in both cases the conversation started with me way off-balance) but I’m seriously wondering when the hell the almost-inevitable third shoe is going to drop. I spent some time last night going over everyone I’ve ever known in my head and trying to figure out who has the most reason to be pissed off at me and now I’m thinking about doing some cyberstalking to figure out if those people live anywhere near me. Of course, that won’t be terribly helpful– one of the two lives in bloody Norway and still managed to run into me in a bookstore in Indiana, which is a pretty fuckin’ impressive feat.

I should take a shower, shouldn’t I?