Tag: weekendcoffeeshare

#Weekendcoffeeshare: Pearl Jam edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn Stories19 Comments

weekend-coffee-share

If we were having coffee, it would be startlingly like having coffee with a normal person with, like, interests and hobbies and things to do and stuff.  Life on the new medication is, so far, good, and there has been a refreshing absence of side effects.  I’ve had a little trouble sleeping the last few days, but that happens a lot, and since I’ve been mostly sedentary for the last few weeks I’m not surprised that sleep isn’t coming quite as quickly as I’d like.  For now, I’m not blaming the meds.

I’ve got all kinds of stuff to be excited about.  I like the short story I’m working on, a submission for the World Unknown Review that I really need to get finished this week.  I solved a story snarl with my next novel.  I have a book coming out on Tuesday.  I even have a Sekrit Project that I can’t really talk about right now!  How exciting is that?

Also, while you probably have seen the Star Wars trailer by now, and will no doubt want to swap theories about that, you may not have seen the Jessica Jones trailer, and while I can’t really say I’m just as excited about that, it’s a sizeable percentage.  Luke Cage is in it!  Luke Cage is awesome!  Hell, speaking of comic books, I’ve been reading a hell of a lot of good comic books lately.  We could talk about those!

God, I hope you’re at least almost as big of a geek as I am, or this conversation’s going to be awful.  Perhaps you’d wish to discuss books?  I’m reading Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves right now, and I’m not too far into it but I suspect I’m going to love it.  I just bailed on Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest, which is a sequel to one of the best books I’ve read this year, but not translated by the same guy, and the new translator is awful.  I’m sure it’s not a bad book, but it’s not readable in its current form.

I’m still out of work, because the doctor was concerned about the meds– I’m not seeing any side effects yet, but that could change, and my health has been flipping on a dime lately.  And if I’m being honest, I officially miss teaching now.  So apparently a month of sick days is what it takes.  I’d like life to get back to normal soon.  No doubt I’ll be climbing the walls by the end of the week.

How’re you?

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Anything But That edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting, Stories12 Comments

CL42-OSUAAAEGr5

Let’s see.

If we were having coffee, I’d…

Hmm.

I actually just got back from brunch with one of my oldest friends and her husband.  They’re in town about once a year, when they come in for a home Notre Dame game, and we tend to meet up for breakfast just north of campus.  What did we talk about?  The last three weeks, mostly, and doctors, and my job.  Shared some parenting stories; their daughter is a year and a half or so older than my son, and they have a 2 1/2 year old son too.

Problem is, I’m kinda tired of talking about the first 2/3 of those topics, because they’ve been consuming my life lately.  I made it through breakfast without mentioning a certain book I have coming out, too, and I feel like that’s a victory.  So it’s the parenting stuff.

Ooh!  I never mentioned this: we had our first parent-teacher conference as parents this week, which was kind of fun.  I’ve been on the other side of the table more times than I can count as an educator, but I’ve never before been the parent in that scenario.  The fun thing was figuring out that the teachers were a little gun-shy, almost as if after several years of working together at my son’s rather ridiculously expensive private school they were used to parents not really wanting to listen to criticism of their special snowflakes.

I love my son rather a lot, and he is a lot of things, but he is emphatically not a special snowflake, and he’s also not perfect.  My kid’s four.  He’s gonna screw up and do dumb stuff at four.  Their job is to let me know about it and my job is to fix it, not argue with them.  This is definitely one place where me being on the other side of the table is going to help.  He’d had some sort of stupid little personality conflict with another kid in his classroom this week, which required a bit of investigation on my wife’s and my part and a few clarifications from the other kid too.  I don’t know how the other parents reacted to it, but the teachers seemed to think we were gonna dig in our heels on the whole thing.

Nah.

Once I get past that, though, I’m not sure how much I’ve got left.  I’m looking forward to spending this week and next working on some short stories before I get back to the Skylights sequel in November.  I’m hoping to have the first draft of that done by the end of the year, but you all know how slow I write.  Not super likely.

Anyway.  How’re you?  Read any good books lately?

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Mostly Human edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn Stories8 Comments

coffee2

If we were having coffee, I’d clue you in to a monumental development: last night I felt normal for the first time in two weeks.  That is not a minor thing.  This week I was reminded rather emphatically that my blood pressure medication includes a water pill, which I had completely forgotten about, and that it is sometimes possible to become rather badly dehydrated despite drinking water all the goddamn time.  The reminder was rather unpleasant.  My doctor used the phrase “perfect storm” to describe the wicked bout of dizziness and exhaustion that closed out my week, and it turns out that I need to start slamming a bottle of Gatorade as my first act of the morning until I run out of the current bottle of blood pressure medication, at which point they’ll yank the water pill part of the prescription.  Also, the Lexapro has been cut in half.

I’m out of sick days for the 2015-16 school year, by the way.  In October.  That’s… kind of a problem, but there are ways to get some of them back that I’m looking into.  Hopefully I won’t follow up two weeks of struggling with medication and anxiety issues with actually getting physically sick.  But hey!  I feel human.  Let’s focus on the positive, hmm?

I’m also kind of sick of talking about medication, so let’s hope this is the last time for a while.

This would be the point where I’d realize that drinking coffee is probably not the greatest idea, as coffee is a dessicant.  Waiter!  More Gatorade!

Book news: Searching for Malumba is out in just a few weeks, so I really ought to finish the damn thing.  As you might imagine, the last few weeks have not been good for any sort of creative work, and while the book mostly requires some fiddling around the edges– it’s 98% releasable in its current form without another touch–  I need to actually do that fiddling.  I’m hoping to be working on the print cover by tomorrow, which will mean the manuscript itself is ready by tonight.  Early commentary has been good, so if you enjoy my commentary on teaching around here, you may wish to pre-order.

There’s no #SilerSaturday this weekend, by the way, as I currently lack the time and energy to be a salesman all day.  However, my buddy James Wylder’s birthday is this weekend, and he’s put all his stuff up for free, so go download his books instead.

How’re you?

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Mood-altering drugs edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn Stories6 Comments

coffee2If we were having coffee, I’d spend most of my time yawning, possibly mixed with a few by-now patented glassy stares.  Week One of being on Lexapro hasn’t been unpleasant, necessarily, but being tired all the goddamn time has officially gotten old, and my motivation to do much of anything has been chopped to the bone.  This is a bit of a problem; I have a final manuscript for Searching for Malumba due in a few days, and haven’t really found the will to do much of anything about it, and I literally forgot that I was supposed to write a recap of last week’s Fear the Walking Dead for Sourcerer today.

Forgot.  Clean, completely forgot, until waking up this morning, well after it would normally have been published.  And the way my mornings typically work on Saturday there’s not an hour and a half to go sneak away and watch the episode and recap it, so right now who the hell knows when I’m going to get that written.

(For those of you thinking “Why not do it right now, instead of the post you’re writing?”: Reasonable thought, but this post will take ten minutes.  I have ten minutes.  I don’t have ninety.)

This is also a big birthday weekend.  Fun fact: my father-in-law’s birthday is the day before my mom’s, and my mother-in-law’s birthday is the day before my dad’s.  Well, mom’s birthday is today, so FIL’s birthday was yesterday.  Inverting the proper order of things, we saw my parents yesterday and we’re seeing my wife’s today.  We’re going to go see The Martian tomorrow, too, which I’m really excited about, in a sort of Lexapro’d “yeah, whatever” sort of way– I’ve been looking forward to this movie since the day it was announced.  There aren’t any superheroes in it!  And I’m seeing it anyway!  It’s like a miracle!

(Skylights is free today and tomorrow.  I’m hoping to steal some Martian thunder.  We’ll see if that happens.)

This is the part where I’d usually go “Hmmm, what else?” but the simple fact is all I’ve done all week is sleep and stare at the internet.  There really is no more “else” here.  So I’m kicking it over to y’all again:  what have you guys been doing while I’ve been trying to alter my brain chemistry?

#WeekendCoffeeShare: How are you? edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn Stories16 Comments

weekend-coffee-share

If we were having coffee… I think maybe today I let you do as much of the talking as I can.  You may have noticed it’s been a little on the stressful side around Casa Siler lately; hell, my friends have noticed– people I don’t typically see in person during a normal week have been contacting me and asking if I’m okay just based on the blog posts from this week.

I dunno.  Probably.  No.  Maybe.  I’ll be fine, let’s stick with that.  I mean, hell, I had a car accident this week, even if it wasn’t a bad one.  I got a right to be hostile.

Hm.  What else is going on?  I’m really excited about The Martian coming out soon.  It was my favorite book of 2014 by a pretty good margin and I’ve really been looking forward to the movie.  I am, as many of you know, a huge astronomy nerd, so anything set on Mars is going to catch my attention anyway, and this is a superb Mars book that I’m hoping is also a superb Mars movie.  Plus I do have a vested interest in people searching Amazon for books about Mars, so, y’know.

I’m also thinking about audiobooks.  Much in the way that I only barely read ebooks but spend a lot of time and energy trying to get people to buy and read mine, I don’t listen to audiobooks at all but am looking into moving into either recording my own books or having someone else do it.  I’m going to do a couple Benevolence Archives stories this weekend as a test and see how it works out.

Not much else… or at least, not much else I want to talk about right now.

Let’s talk about you.

Because my accountant says I have to: It’s #SilerSaturday again, and this week’s free book is The Sanctum of the Sphere.  No risk!  It’s free!  Go forth and download!

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Reasonable Positivity Edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn Stories5 Comments

CL42-OSUAAAEGr5

If we were having coffee, I’d be pretty happy.  I badly want to be having coffee right now, but our coffeepot wants for a vinegaring, and it’s running slllooooowwwwww.  

All in all, it wasn’t a bad week.  The boy made it through a week of school with no poopery issues.  At my school, we had a couple of notable suspensions that kept my afternoon class functional all week, and the first math test of the year went way better than I thought it was going to.  My homeroom girls ate the thing alive, and my afternoon class showed a somewhat unexpected haves-and-have-nots pattern, where the kids either did great or very poorly.  I was expecting the poorly part, mind you, as they don’t pay attention and there’s way too many special ed kids in there to be able to teach them effectively, but the number of them that did really well was really gratifying.  What I didn’t see was kids in the middle.  They either missed one or two or they missed eight.

I would probably point at my wrist at some point and remark about how there wasn’t a brand-new Pebble Time Steel on it, because the post office is screwing with me (if you want to take it personallly) or having some issues with their tracking system if you don’t.  The tracking on the package is simultaneously insisting both that my watch is in California (where it has been since “shipping” on Tuesday) and that it will arrive yesterday.  I’m crossing my fingers that a slew of updates will pop all at once and I’m getting it today.  We’ll see.

I am looking forward to being mugged when some nitwit mistakes my $250 red and gold Pebble for a $17,000 Apple Watch, by the way.

And then I’d point out that it’s #SilerSaturday again, and Skylights is free, and since Skylights is my favorite of my books you really ought to download it and give it a read because it’s great.

How’re you?

#Weekendcoffeeshare: Fear and Self-Loathing edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn Stories20 Comments

coffee2

I’ll be honest: if we were having coffee, the very first thing I’d do is point out that it’s the inaugural #SilerSaturday and hey my book is free at Amazon have you downloaded Benevolence Archives yet you really should no risk it’s freeeeeeee.

After that I would look sheepish and apologize and try not to bring it up again but I’d probably mention it at least once more because the book’s good dammit and if you love me you will download a thing for free.

But anyway.

After that?  Parental and husbandly anxiety, mostly.  My son, who is four, is enrolled at an insanely expensive private school that my wife and I can only barely afford, and that was before I took a twelve thousand dollar pay cut since my last job isn’t my job anymore.  And he got suspended at the end of… well, not last week, the week before that, because he’s still pooping himself, for reasons that I’m not getting into right now (because coffee) but just trust me they make sense.

And my wife has been home with him for the entire time, because I’ve missed too many days of school already, and she’s letting me get away with the sort-of-excuse that it sort-of is.  My kids have a math test this upcoming week and they’ve had a week less instruction than the other fifth-graders because I’ve either been sick or pulled out of my room to do something else so many times already.  The boy is still inexplicably diarrhetic and he’s been back in pull-ups for the last couple of days after months in underwear, and we’re quickly getting to the point where we’re worrying that they’re just going to suggest un-enrolling him and trying again next year.

Now, my kid’s birthday is in August.  He’s the youngest kid in his class.  It would have been entirely reasonable to leave him in day care for another year (where they change diapers) and wait a year to enroll him in school.  Plenty of people have made the decision that they’d rather have their kid be the oldest in his grade instead of the youngest, and some of them will defend it fiercely.  We didn’t make that call, but there is a non-zero chance that we may be about to have it made for us.

And… hell, I’m taking it personally, I’ll be honest.  This is a perfectly normal damn thing and I’m acting like he’s doing something to me, which he’s not, but… dammit.  Insanely expensive private school, did I mention that?  Insanely expensive exclusive private school. Like, I don’t feel like I belong there.  Masters of the Universe type private school.  And there’s a chance that my kid is gonna get kicked out because of poop.

It’s got me twisted.  Really twisted, in a way I don’t like.

Eventually we might get around to the fact that I saw someone from high school this week who I haven’t seen in maybe fifteen years, and that’s still got me weirded out too, which happens every time I see someone from high school.  I’ve not made a secret of the fact that I’m not super happy about living in the same state I grew up in, much less the same town.  The conversation was perfectly happy and innocuous and pleasant, mind you, and even ended refreshingly, without the typical “We should hang out sometime!” lie that frequently accompanies these sorts of things.  But… yeah.  I’ve got a lot of reasons for my head to be muddled right now.  I need to get it cleared out.

Download a free book.  It’ll help.  🙂

#Weekendcoffeeshare: math edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

CL42-OSUAAAEGr5

If we were having coffee, I’d likely keep trying to talk about long division, and you’d probably spend the entire conversation trying to change the subject.

After three weeks of this, I’m starting to suspect that I may not be very good at this whole “having coffee with people” thing, honestly.

But anyway: long division.  I realized something this week.  I have never taught long division before.  I’ve always had at least sixth graders, and by that time most of them have it down and the mathematics are complicated enough that I’m frequently willing to hand a calculator to the kids who are struggling anyway, at least after being shown sufficient effort.  These kids, though?  Some of them appear to have had it last year, others don’t.  Maybe a third of my kids are comfortable with it, and all of those are concentrated into one class.  My entire afternoon group is basically clueless.

One girl in particular makes me want to go find her fourth grade teacher and slap the shit out of her.  She appears to be the only one who has been in this particular teacher’s class, but I’m told the teacher “didn’t like” the standard algorithm so she taught the kids a different way.  Without getting too deep into details, the “different way” works all right when you’re doing something like 55 divided by 6, which will give you a small answer in a couple of steps and a small remainder.  It becomes insanely complicated when the problem is a more fifth-grade-ish 8108/9, and will become flatly impossible to use once two-digit divisors or decimals enter the picture, which they’re going to do soon.

Professional malpractice, is what I’m saying here.  You don’t teach kids a method of doing something that is going to completely break in the very next year of school.  You particularly don’t do it to this specific girl, who appears, to put it mildly, to not have been born with the usual allotment of confidence in math skills that one might expect, and was in tears when she didn’t understand my first example.  Typically I expect at least three examples before I’ll allow don’t-get-it crying to happen.

Got my work cut out for me here, is what I’m saying, and I’m seriously in need of some research time this weekend for better teaching strategies.  Lucky for me, it’s a three-day weekend.

Thank a union member, by the way.

tumblr_m5dvl9b82C1qchs1zo1_500