The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
I would like to pretend to be surprised that I got home from work, sat down, blinked, and it was 8:00. However, I sat down in what I’m beginning to think of as the Danger Spot on the couch, there was a kitty cat on my lap, and the blink was three hours long.
So maybe I’m not surprised.
Today was exhausting, and not in a way I can talk about, so I’m just gonna hope y’all had a good day and go shoot some Nazis on my PS5.
I am giving the antibiotics 24 more hours to make the pressure and the constant ringing in my ears stop, and if it does not I plan to fully lose my mind, at which point I will either fling myself off a bridge or begin murdering people. It’s 50/50 which it’ll be. Ear infections fucking suck.
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’ll try and do something coherent tomorrow, but I’ve been feeling like crap all day and the world isn’t helping. I’m going to bed early, I think.
January 2025 has been a long year, and I am way too tired for Sunday night right now, especially given that I was literally in bed by 8:00 last night and made it eleven hours before I even woke up to pee. I didn’t actually get out of bed until 9:30 or so, and other than taking the Christmas tree down, doing some reading– I am going to finish Wind & Truth tomorrow– and writing an assignment for tomorrow, I really haven’t done much. This image is prominent in tomorrow’s assignment:
This is going to be one of those annoying assignments that conceptually isn’t actually that difficult– you have two numbers in your coordinates, and you have to manipulate them in one of three ways to get your second set of coordinates, and those manipulations only involve making them their opposites or possibly putting them in reverse order– but it’s gonna break some brains anyway, because the sensible way to do this is to write down the coordinates of a point, look at the rule, then rewrite the new point, but my kids don’t want to write anything at all ever, and they’re going to try to remember the coordinates instead, and that’s … not gonna work.
Then I’m gonna get a chorus of “this is too hard!” and have to resist the urge to reply with “no, you’re just too lazy to do it right,” which is true, but … unhelpful. Also, if I’m tired, I’m gonna start making mistakes myself. So yay.
I hate teaching this unit. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned that or not? But I hate transformations. I really do. I think Pythagoras is next, and that’s a little bit more fun.
Maybe I’ll go to bed early again tonight.
I just looked at my watch and oh my GOD where the hell did the evening go? I have nineteen thousand things I have to do before going to bed and all I want to do is stare at the wall, so my adoring public is going to have to be satisfied with this meager offering on the blog front tonight.
Also, if you ever wondered “Luther, how many pages of Brandon Sanderson can you read before you are tired of Brandon Sanderson?” the answer is approximately 5,600 in 23 days, because the thought just put it down and never speak of it again to anyone floated through my head earlier today as I was continuing to make my way through Wind and Truth. I’m not gonna– I started this and I’m ferdamnsure gonna finish it– but God, am I tired of it.
I’m back to work on Monday, and I’m not exactly Sundaying yet, nor do I currently feel like I wasted my entire break, but there is a bit of ennui and just general blech going on right now. So I’m gonna play video games and put the book down for a while and see if I snap out of it.