Tag: weekend

Some realizations

On By Luther M. SilerIn life2 Comments
  • First, that it is 7:30 PM, and I probably ought to blog today;
  • Second, that I am officially closer to retirement than I am to college, even assuming I wait to 65 to retire;
  • Third, that my student loans are due to be paid off four years prior to said 65th birthday, which should be a crime;
  • Fourth, that even if the notion of living another 20 years much less teaching for that long is difficult to wrap my head around, I probably ought to take this retirement thing seriously since I have, y’know, a wife and child in the mix now.

In case you can’t tell, I met with a retirement … dude, of some sort, at work on Friday, and several mortality-confronty sorts of things were discussed, and then this weekend I managed to keep my shit together long enough to dig through the folder that I throw anything even vaguely investment-related into and find not one but two different investment-related accounts that appear to no longer be receiving active contributions; I did some strategic scanning and sent them off to The Dude with a note attached that basically said I don’t know any of the money words, please help and we will see if anything happens. I have never really believed in retirement, to be honest; not in the sense that I don’t want to eventually quit working– I want to quit working now— but in the sense that I suspect any money I “invest” in my “future” will be stolen or siphoned off somehow before I’m able to actually benefit from any of it.

Today also included mowing, putting all my laundered clothes away like a big boy, finishing a book, starting another one, getting my grading done, writing a number of important emails, and a couple of videos recorded for The YouTubes. All in all, not bad for a Sunday.

In which I don’t wanna (again)

On By Luther M. SilerIn BlogwankingLeave a comment

This post could be a couple of different posts, only I don’t want to write either of them. I don’t want to do a full review of Day of the Oprichnik, the Russian novel I just read, but it was so insane that I feel like it deserves a write-up, and I also had a conversation with a parent via text message today that I kind of want to reproduce here in its entirety, but doing that will mean that I’ll have to strip out all of the references to her name and anonymize the images and this was somehow a real long week and I just wanna sleep.

So instead I’m going to go play video games. This is about to be a three-day weekend, so hopefully it will be full of words one way or another. Just not tonight.

It’s still fall break

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

… halfway through, or depending on how you choose to look at it the break part of fall break is over and I’m into the weekend. One way or another I’ve been reasonably successful at doing that thing I do where vacations are useless unless I get a lot of stuff done with them, as opposed to, say, relaxing, which I don’t really know how to do except in the context of basically monetizing it.

(I’m not being clear here. “Spend an hour reading” can be a perfectly cromulent way to “get stuff done,” provided that I intended to do a bunch of reading over the break. If “read a lot” isn’t on the list, it’s wasting time, not getting stuff done. There is no “relaxing.” If I can’t describe it, it doesn’t exist.)

Anyway. Point is, I finished the second-to-last, 660-page Throne of Glass book yesterday, leaving only the thousand-page monster that ends the series, and I’m taking a break to read something else in between Sarah Maas rodent-killers. I’ve been to both the dentist and the doctor. I beat my latest run of Dark Souls 2 and went back to Salt and Sanctuary, which didn’t catch on with me the first time I tried to play it and holy shit has it caught on on the second try. I have reclaimed the garage for my car, if not my wife’s; we’ve been parking in the driveway for far too long and we need to sell or toss a riding mower if we’re going to find a place for both cars in there again. I got one room in the house reasonably cleaned up and decluttered and I’m working on the office right now. Or at least I would be, if I wasn’t blogging, which still counts, because “blog every day” is definitely on the Shit to Do list.

But I got some decluttering done before I started blogging, so that counts. You can see the surface of a table in here that you haven’t been able to see for a while. Now if I can just get the floor cleaned up; it’s gross.

“Buy a feather duster” is on my list for this weekend, believe it or not. I don’t plan on feather dusting the floor, of course, but holy hell are the corners in the house getting troublesome. EDIT: Turns out we have a feather duster! I completely forgot about it, and found it just now while looking for the mop thingies for the “ReadyMop Mopping System” we have, which is basically just an oversized menstrual pad that can be rubbed on the floor. So I can dust tomorrow! Woo!

Yes, I just “Woo”‘ed dusting. I never said I was interesting. EDIT ENDS.

On the list for this weekend: my wife’s job has a family day/fun fair thing going on tomorrow, so we’re doing that; I have nothing at all to do for work, having quite sensibly prepared for next week before leaving on Wednesday. So the rest of the agenda is to get some shit going on Patreon, which has been languishing in October and is awfully close to becoming another free month. (I don’t charge my Patrons in months where I don’t feel like I’ve earned it. I don’t know that anyone would actually begrudge me the dollar or whatever they’re pledging, but it rubs me wrong.)

Oh: and the bathrooms. Gotta take care of the bathrooms, or at least the main one in the hallway. That’s Sunday sorted, right?

Sure.

In which I’m certificated

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

UnknownFrom the Not Especially Important Life Achievements file: I spent the last couple of hours (they give you three, and it has to be all in one sitting) getting my Level One Google for Education certification, which means … I get to put that little image to the right there in the signature portion of all my email messages and make people who don’t know better think that I’m really impressive and knowledgeable about The Googles.

It does not really mean that.  I had to sign an NDA before taking the test, and I’m not about to take the risk of pissing Google off, so I’m not going to share a lot of details, but I suspect the vast majority of those of you reading this right now could go into the exam with no preparation of any kind and pass it.  This particular level of certification doesn’t really signify any particular expertise other than 1) that needed to know that the certification exists, and 2) the desire to actually hold said certification.  There is a Level 2 certification and also a Trainer certification, and I suspect I’ll be getting both over the course of the next couple months, but until then: Hey!  I’m Level 1!  Woohoo!

Now let’s see what sorts of other trouble I can get into with what’s left of my weekend.  It’s been cool the last couple of days and I’ve had a hoodie on, so the happy season has begun.  Will there be tortellini soup for dinner tonight to celebrate?  Yes there will.

Sunday music video dump

On By Luther M. SilerIn MusicLeave a comment

Yes, I know good and goddamn well it’s Friday out there in the “real” world, but Thursday and Friday are my weekend and I have to go to work tomorrow so to hell with your normal human days of the week.  It’s Sunday, motherfuckers, let’s rock out:

Self-improvement is exhausting

On By Luther M. SilerIn art3 Comments

1*8Ar3DCW48UrBB8YiA2J6XAI remain fully caught up on the “draw every day” project, if only because I drew two pictures tonight.  I am beginning to think that the best use of my time might be to actually find some sort of art tutorial thing rather than constantly drawing from .jpg files of animated characters.  I can whip up a Buttercup in a hot second but I’m not convinced that being able to draw Buttercup well is the same thing as being able to draw.  I remain vaguely terrified of the idea of drawing something unique for some reason.  This is, of course, not why I started this project.  Fuck fear.  But if I’m going to take this seriously I feel like I ought to try and find some sort of resource more useful than thinking of a kids’ TV show I like and Googling good images of the characters.

Speaking of creativity, I left work today after telling my boss that I was only coming back on Saturday if I’d managed to get some writing done in the next two days.  Luckily I have nothing in particular that I need to get done tomorrow or the day after, or at least nothing that I can think of (well, okay, I could use an oil change for my car, and I have to take the boy to school both days; I don’t think either of those really count) and so I won’t have any good excuse to not get something done.  Then again, I’m really good at generating excuses.

I’ll finish Fonda Lee’s Jade City tonight, so expect a glowing review in the next couple of days.  It’s an early frontrunner for my favorite book of the year, I’ll tell you that.  I’m considering spending February only reading books by black authors, so if you have anyone in particular you’d like to recommend, please feel free to chime in in comments and make some suggestions.

Today’s agenda

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Unknown…such as it is:

  • Get caught up on reading my comic books;
  • Finish reading Time Salvager, by Wesley Chu (interim verdict: enjoying a lot, but starting to drag juuuuust a little bit);
  • Read The Only Harmless Great Thing, by Brooke Bolander (a novella, so it’ll go fast, but I’m psyched);
  • Possibly write a blog post more substantive than this one;
  • Video games;
  • Pay some bills;
  • Write fiction;
  • Apply for at least two jobs;
  • Draw a picture;
  • Be dressed and showered before my wife gets home from work;
  • Clean up the house a bit, including getting the Christmas tree into the basement.

I’d better get started, I guess.

This is a short way of saying “it’s bedtime”

On By Luther M. SilerIn WorkLeave a comment

We had a corporate visit from a half-dozen or so Lord High Muckety-Mucks today.  I spent the last two days cleaning the living hell out of the store, and while the visit literally could not have gone any better without them showering all of us with candy and bonus checks I am tired as a motherfucker right now and my knees and hips are screaming at me every time I sit down for more than a couple of minutes and then try to stand back up.

So naturally I’m watching videos about installing vinyl flooring, because that’s totally what I need to be doing right now.