I cleaned about half the house today, and in between vacuuming spent a pleasant hour out on the back porch enjoying the one (1) day of nice weather we’re going to get before Too Fucking Hot starts kicking in tomorrow. I will get the rest of it done tomorrow, along with finishing the week’s grading and driving over to my dad’s to give him a Covid haircut.
I also cooked breakfast, but I did that before the rest of the stuff. Turns out the boy likes omelets.
Tonight shall be spent finishing Season 5 of She-Ra, finishing my third playthrough of Nioh 2, and getting as far as I can into The Ten Thousand Doors of January before sleep.
Not a bad Saturday, as they go.
6:56 PM, Saturday May 23: 1,618,471 confirmed cases and 96,983 American deaths.
I’ve been pretty good this year about keeping on top of my grading, but the last couple of weeks I’ve fallen off the horse a bit. I worked through about five inches of assignments today but that’s probably only about a week’s worth; there’s still another week waiting for me, and I’m going to have to suck it up and get some grading done during the week this week.
In lieu of actual Sunday content, please view this entertaining video:
It is Saturday. I need to emphasize this– Saturday. And I am, in midafternoon, getting grading done. This is bloody unprecedented. It is Staying On Task to an unreal degree.
So naturally the God damn entire grading system has just gone down midway through me grading an assignment that a hundred students turned in, and it doesn’t appear to be interested in coming back up.
This thing I’m doing on Saturdays lately where I get up and spend the first two or three hours of the day reading is really working for me. I finished an entire book cover-to-cover this morning. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about me, but I like books.
Also, I finally gave up and went to the doctor last night after work, only to be told that my suspicion that my cold had morphed into a sinus infection was probably correct, but that said sinus infection was almost certainly viral and so there really wasn’t anything to be done other than wait it out and drink something called “throat coat” tea, which strikes me as a weirdly pornographic name for a beverage.
Today, I feel shittier than I have in the last several days. We’re up to two weeks and some change now, I think, and I’m heartily tired of this.
Not a whole lot to talk about today, unless y’all want to get into the absolute wonder that yesterday’s politics news was– Roger Stone getting arrested, then the air traffic controllers shutting down the Eastern Seaboard and LaGuardia Airport and the shutdown being done only a few hours later was a thing of wonder and a testament to 1) Nancy Pelosi holding the Democrats together and 2) the power of unions. ‘Twas awesome.
Today has mostly been a day for burrowing into blankets and avoiding the cold; we spent a pleasant 45 minutes or so checking out a relatively new local independent bookstore but other than that didn’t really go outside, and the three of us have basically been trading off the TV for Pokémon and Dark Souls since then. I’ve been doing this thing on Saturdays for several weeks now where I get up, have a large cup of coffee, and read in my recliner for a couple of hours. I’m rereading Yoon Ha Lee’s Machineries of Empire trilogy, or at least the first two books, in preparation for finishing the trilogy with Book 3, which I expect to be amazing.
Speaking of amazing books, you may want to check out The Tiger’s Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera. There’s very likely to be a full review but I want to wait a couple of days for … reasons. In the meantime, it’s the first shortlist-for-the-top-10 new book I’ve read in 2019.
What are you doing to keep the cold away this weekend?
I’ve said this before, on more than one occasion: forget about what year you were born; the clearest delineating line between those of us commonly assigned Generation X and the Millennials is the answer to the question Did Pokémon play any role in your childhood? If no: Gen X. If yes: Millennial. Now, that falls apart when talking to people younger than the Millennials, but it’s a pretty damn good rule of thumb for the “currently middle-aged or approaching same” generations.
If you are seven, Pokémon has a good chance of being your life, especially if you are a seven-year-old boy. Which my son is. He has hundreds of Pokémon cards (he has never actually played the game, at least not correctly) a wide variety of Pokémon-themed clothing, Pokémon stuffed animals, Pokémon pajamas, books, you name it.
I don’t know shit about this stuff. I am 42. I think in a lot of ways I have more in common with Millennials than my own generation (I have never really identified with Gen X; if pushed, I’ll claim the Star Wars or Oregon Trail generations) but I am totally in the cold on this Pokémon thing. I think it started hitting when I was in high school, too old to notice it, but I’m not really sure. My younger brother was never into it either so I missed it by a good several years.
Point is, we bought Pokémon Let’s Go: Pikachu for the Switch yesterday and the whole goddamn family has been playing the game all day today. It was my idea; I am bound and determined to understand something about this weird-ass bullshit and if a roleplaying game can’t pull me into Pokémon on at least a superficial level then nothing can. I gotta say, other than the standard garbage control scheme that comes with every single Switch game (motion controls can die in a fire; I don’t ever want them again in anything I play, ever again) it’s actually a pretty good time; the boy was ecstatic about it, and the Switch has owned the TV all day. Under ordinary circumstances I might look askance upon the idea of literally spending the entire day playing video games; it’s snowy as hell outside and a three-day weekend and right now Daddy don’t care. I’m gonna find out what the fuck a Machamp is this weekend if it kills me, and I swear to God I just looked over and told him to go find some “ground types” to fight in a “gym” so he can earn a “badge.” I think I might have even used the terms correctly.
So, yeah. Weather outside is frightful and all that. What are y’all doing?
Be awakened by the boy at 7:10 AM, who informs us that he has finally lost his first tooth! The bad news: it fell out while he was asleep and is nowhere to be found, and we are forced to reluctantly conclude that he swallowed the goddamn thing in his sleep. We are hoping he didn’t aspirate it.
While drinking my cup of coffee, read P. Djéli Clark’s The Black God’s Drumsfrom cover to cover.
Eat a piece of leftover birthday cake.
Tweet a bit.
Read Walter Moseley’s A Red Death from cover to cover.
We went to the zoo today. I haven’t been to the zoo in two damn years, and I love our zoo. I am probably going to have a sunburn on the top of my bald-ass head tomorrow and I feel good about it.
They have two peacocks; they just let them wander around.
A brief note about the dog, if you’ll indulge me again a bit: you may recall that while I was finishing up that piece yesterday the doorbell rang and I didn’t answer the door. That wasn’t an invention for the piece; it actually happened. My wife and son were out of the house for a little while and they got home just a few minutes later.
There was a vase of fresh flowers on our doorstep, delivered to us on behalf of our vet’s office. The dog had been gone for maybe three hours. Guys, if you live anywhere near me, and you have pets, you could do a lot worse than letting Clayview Animal Clinic take care of them.
Tomorrow should be an exciting day: I actually get to find out what my job is! I’m not teaching this year, as you’re probably aware if you’ve been paying attention, and while I know the broad outlines of the new position it’s not necessarily immediately clear what I’ll be doing on a day-to-day basis. For example: the first day of school? I have absolutely no idea what I’ll be doing right now on the first day of school, or really even the first couple of weeks. I mean, I’m on the administrative team in a school; there’s gonna be stuff to do if I decide I wanna do things (and I do,) but none of those things will be my job. The next couple of days I’m in training for my specific position and I’ll be much clearer on what my day-to-day job is going to look like by the time it’s over.
We went to the zoo today. I haven’t been to the zoo in two damn years, and I love our zoo. I am probably going to have a sunburn on the top of my bald-ass head tomorrow and I feel good about it.
Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com 