Tag: vacation

Second verse, same as the first

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Today has been more or less identical to yesterday, except with an hour or so of school stuff thrown in, the last hour of school stuff I’ll have to do on my own time for 2025-26. Thursday is my last day at work, and Friday is the last day of the school year– yes, I’m missing the last day of school for the first time in my career (forgive me if I’ve mentioned this; I don’t think I have, but who knows) because my son’s 8th grade graduation is right smack in the middle of the day. Ordinarily I look down my nose a bit at the concept of 8th grade graduations, but as he’s been at this same school for eleven years, I figure I’ll allow it, especially since it’s not as if I have any actual choice in the matter.

Hm. That looks familiar; I bet I have talked about this at some point.

Oh well.

I’ll follow my usual pattern for the next few days; the kids are getting lists of missing assignments tomorrow, and they can choose to use their time wisely or not depending on 1) whether they, personally, are wise or not and 2) whether they are pleased with their current grade. A bunch of them will have nothing to do! Some of them will do missing work that will have no effect on their grade, only because they want all the points. A somewhat larger number will do no work over the next few days because failure is fine now and they know nothing will happen to them.

As a society, we really need to bring back being ashamed of being stupid. People should know when they are stupid, and they should feel bad about it, all the time, until they do something about it. But whatever; I’m not succumbing to negativity this week, God damn it, no matter how reasonable it might be. I’m going to live through tomorrow one way or another, use Wednesday and Thursday to tear my room down, and then walk out of the door with a spring in my step Thursday afternoon. At some point during that time I’ll write lesson plans for my sub– unbelievably, I have a sub right now for the last day– that will basically say “no blood, no foul, and if there is blood, make sure it’s not your fault.” I’ll leave them a stack of various things the kids can color or draw on and a small stack of pencils and remind them to simply send away any child that displeases them because the office will be sending everyone home as fast as they possibly can. And if it goes poorly? Oh well.

Then I have a week of trainings and such, and … maybe I’m teaching summer school after that? Or maybe I’m leaving somebody in the lurch at the last second? Probably the first thing; I’d like to think I’m not that big of a jerk, but there are some blinking alarm lights about this summer program. Surely the pay will make it all worth it, right? Surely.

Anyway, I have a Wheel of Time book to finish, so I’m going to go do that. Go have a cheeseburger or something.

It’s a video game night

On By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

I actually got a fair amount of adulting done today, getting my car scheduled for some long-overdue recall repairs and putting 150 pounds of salt into the water softener, thus allowing it to, y’know, keep working. Read three books. That’s not quite the achievement it might sound like, since two of them were novellas, but still. And now I’m going to try and get Clair Obscur to click. It’s close, but I’m still bouncing off it a bit. Hopefully tonight’s the night.

Starting off slow

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Slept until ten this morning, which is the first time I’ve done that in a while, then spent the whole day reading and pushing through Veilguard, which I’m bound and determined to finish before Christmas. Now I’m on the couch, cat in my lap, watching British people make pottery.

Not bad for the first day of break.

I made it!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

Good news— I have survived the first semester of my 21st year of teaching and still haven’t gone to jail, although I almost got sent to the hospital again earlier this week. (Mental note: never admit your wrist hurts after breaking up a fight.) My students did acceptably on their final— more data to come on that later this week— and I am about to curl up in front of the television to watch, of all things, my Indiana Hoosiers play Notre Dame in the college football playoffs.

What a fuckin’ world.

Oops

On By Luther M. SilerIn BlogwankingLeave a comment

I damn near forgot to post today, what with doing all sorts of accident-related adulting early in the day, my son having a friend over for the whole afternoon, and then a Trunk & Treat at Hogwarts filling up my evening. I also managed to squeeze in some reading, my Arabic, and finally putting Black Myth: Wukong to bed, although I think I’m going to play for a bit longer to get the platinum on it. I’ll probably do a full review, but the short version is “It’s pretty fucking awesome and you should play it.” That said, the reports of insane difficulty on the final boss and the final optional boss are a little overstated. Erlang took maybe half an hour and The Great Sage’s Broken Shell maybe an hour, neither of which qualifies as enormous difficulty in my book, especially since the strategies needed became clear pretty quickly and it was just a matter of putting everything together.

Just, y’know, forgot the website until 9:00. Sorry!

In which I am melted

On By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

It is probably a good indicator of my current mental state that I just had to spend a solid couple of minutes looking at the front page of this here blog and my watch in order to determine whether I’d taken one day off from posting or two. Indeed, the answer was one, as today is the third, which means that if I posted on the first (which I did), taking one day off would mean that the numbers added up right.

That was very complicated math, and it took a while.

(stares into space for ten minutes, glances at phone)

…yeah.

Oh, okay, this again

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I have said this so many times that even I am bored with it, so feel free to ignore this post as you see fit: my inability to “relax” amazes me, and the surest way to guarantee that I’m going to be in a shitty mood is to put me in a situation where I’m not “getting anything done.” I did basically nothing over the last couple of days other than marinate in front of Twitter and fall into bleak fucking despair at the fact that literally everything gets worse every single day.

Today, I have done the following:

  • Successfully sold the 3D printer
  • Deposited a bunch of change at the bank
  • Contested the $100 bill I got from a lab for a Covid test; those motherfuckers had better go talk to my fucking insurance because there’s no universe where they’re getting $100 from me for a test that I had no choice in taking
  • Paid my car registration and remembered to put the receipt in my car, and did it early enough that I probably won’t even get pulled over and need the receipt
  • Mowed the fucking lawn
  • Murdered weeds
  • Went swimming (this counts!)
  • Went to the comic shop and engaged in capitalism
  • Bought my wife a present
  • Some light cleaning and organization

And I am in a much better mood than I have been for several days now, simply by virtue of having kept busy today. I mean, if I get stupid and start paying attention to the news again I’m sure I’ll go right back to being fucked, but at least I feel like I did something today. And my wife is about to leave town for a week, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be busy for the next several days. Maybe I’ll even write a compelling blog post sometime between now and then! The possibilities are endless.

In which this isn’t going well

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Trigger warning: I’m about to complain about having too much time off. Adjust your expectations accordingly and if your initial reaction is “Wow, fuck you, dude,” I would encourage you to roll with that feeling and just bail on the post right now.

Because my God, y’all, it’s just amazing how terrible I am at relaxing. And I actually got some stuff done in the last couple of days! The lawn’s been mowed, and we got the pool set up today, and so far I have been out of school for a week and I have already started to slide into nocturnal behavior (I was up until 2:00 in the morning last night– granted, I was in bed and finishing a book, but still) and I’m not sure but I assume the last time I managed a shower before noon was last Friday. We’ve got another week and then the boy’s summer camps start, so I have to be at least nominally human by 11:30 or so to get him fed and to camp on time, but … damn, it’s just amazing how fast I transitioned into a ball of greasy, overfed sludge.

I gotta start getting up at Going to Work time starting tomorrow. Up and out of bed by, say, no later than 8:00, have a cup of coffee, and the second that cup of coffee is done it’s get in the shower time. Like it’s literally 7:03 PM right now, I’ve been sweaty as hell for hours, because it was crazy humid outside while we were setting up the pool, and at this point I may as well make it two hours to bedtime before I shower. I have this thing where I don’t feel like the day has really started until I’m clean and dressed and that means that the way my brain works today effectively didn’t happen.

Also I had Arby’s for lunch and they have a burger now. Go ahead and have one if you’re curious but I doubt you’ll feel the need to have another. Just don’t do it right before having to go outside and sweat for an hour; it’s not gonna work out well for you.

Gonna go shoot Nazis now, g’night.