Tag: wtf

Another first

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

After twenty-plus years of teaching, I don’t encounter a ton of circumstances any longer that I’ve never run into before. I had two in two days, though– first, despite being home sick yesterday, it was the first day that I’ve ever received an email from a school nurse with the phrase “cannabinoid hyperemesis” in it. Which, if you’re wondering if I immediately sent thirty text messages demanding that someone tell me what I’d missed … yeah, I sure as hell did. Apparently four of our eighth grade girls– two of them mine, judging from the suspensions today– decided to hit a THC vape on the way to school, because there’s nothing like being high in middle school at 8:15 in the Goddamned morning, and, well, apparently one of them didn’t react very well to it. Chunks were blown.

I don’t know if the hypervomiter was mine or not.

Today I got a series of emails from one of last year’s kids, now a high school freshman, asking for help with her math assignment. This, in and of itself, is not remotely new– my record for helping former students is a college sophomore, a former denizen of a 7th grade homeroom of mine, who reached out to me completely out of the blue in hope that I could help her with her statistics homework. I could, as it turns out.

No, what was new was that she was doing this while she was sitting in math class. Her current math class, in high school, with her high school Algebra 1 teacher. And, to add to the hilarity, I know her math teacher, and I don’t like her very much. I have received emails from way more of last year’s eighth graders than I usually do this early in the year, and several of them have been begging me either to move up to the high school (nope) or take them back (also nope), and every single one who I’ve asked has turned out to have this particular teacher. I don’t know if y’all remember the saga in my previous district of the teacher whose “medical leave” led to me getting stuffed into her classroom and constantly yanked around when she told people she’d be back on a certain date and then didn’t come back, but yeah, she’s back, and she works at the high school now. She still sucks, too.

Anyway, I got her through her assignment, while teaching my own students. Because that’s just how much of a badass I am, that I can teach two different classes in two different buildings at the same time.

Who wants to touch me?

Bookish braindump

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Reading2 Comments

You, uh, might have heard that Sarah J. Maas had a couple of announcements today.

I got a text from The Friend I Talk About Books With around 1:00 in the afternoon, which I can only assume was milliseconds after the titles and covers for ACOTAR 6 and 7 were released. I had to ignore said texts until I got home, at which point our conversation reminded me that I probably need to reread this whole fucking series before I read the new books, and I also very much need to wait for both of them to come out and then read both of them back-to-back. And apparently the spider on the cover of ACOFM is hinting to people that the Throne of Glass series, my favorite of Maas’ work, is being folded into the ACOTAR universe somehow?

Y’all, I don’t have time to reread ACOTAR, and I definitely don’t have time to reread ToG, which is 5,000 pages all on its own. I’ve got four more Wheel of Time books, probably right around 4K pages all by themselves. I’ve got four more Temeraire books. I have fourteen fucking Realm of the Elderlings books that I was going to dive into once I got WoT and Temeraire knocked out. I do not have time for this. I need y’all– and by y’all I mean every writer in the world, and yes, I’m looking directly at you, Adrian Tchaikovsky– to just … stop, for a while, while I get caught up. Either that or I need my job to agree to keep paying me for doing my job without me actually doing my job, so that I can just sit at home and read.

Anyway, I’m going to hit Publish on this and then go see how much of the history of the Iranian monarchy I’m reading right now I can get finished by bed. Tomorrow I’m going to tell my students to stfu and leave me alone because I have books to finish.

Christ.

You look like my next mistake

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Guess what’s happening later this week?

Let’s see. I promised a real post today, after several days of brief whines about being tired, only … really, all I did today was clear out my closet. A little bit of shopping for my son’s birthday later in the week. And I put together my parent contact log for this year, which, damn it, I’m going to use, and I’m going to use it because I’m going to be better about contacting parents.

I’ve been saying this for 22 years and it hasn’t happened; I hate talking to parents. This will be the year, though, I swear. I also dug into discipline data from last year and it turns out that my current group of kids had considerably fewer office referrals than either of the other two grades last year, which was an interesting thing to find out. Tomorrow, in between– ahem– some bouts of demolition work, I need to do lesson planning, because it turns out I do actually have to teach this week. And so it goes.

That probably doesn’t count as a real post. I guess it’s good that this is my blog and it’s up to me. 🙂

Two more hours

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

A double shift of Open House was already going to be bad enough— 1:00-3:00 and then 5:00-7:00– but I was not prepared for a fucking tornado warning to happen during the first half. Not fun.

Gonna die the moment I get home. Today started out with moving the cars away from the hail, so I’ve pretty much had enough of everything at this point.

Monday, June 27

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I had a doctor’s appointment today, and after the doctor’s appointment, I had to run over to the post office to mail a couple of packages. You will note that the post office is closed on Sunday, and while it isn’t impossible, doctors that have regular appointments on Sunday are few and far between. However, since today is Monday, neither of those things were a problem for me today.

I got a call yesterday(*) that a medication was ready for me at my local pharmacist. On the way back from the post office, I drive past my pharmacy, and I did not turn into the parking lot of the pharmacist to retrieve my medication, because it was Sunday. No more than five minutes after leaving the post office.

I’ve been talking about renewing my teaching license; I decided to go ahead and get myself set up with my required CPR certification today, since I had discovered (unsurprisingly) that I do, in fact, need to have an in-person training where I interact with a CPR dummy and can’t do the whole thing online. So I need a class, and that’s probably best done before school starts. Conveniently, there was one available next week on Wednesday, on June 29, which seemed good, so I paid for it and then opened up my calendar to put it in my schedule.

And it was good that I did that, because it is, in fact, the 27th, and typically on the 27th of any month it takes two days and not nine before it is the 29th.

EDIT: You will notice that the headline for this post says “June 27” and not “July 27.” I swear to you that I did NOT do that on purpose, and now I’ve noticed it I’m leaving it in. My doctor should perhaps have checked for recent head injuries.

(*) JESUS, YESTERDAY WAS ACTUAL SUNDAY. THIS HAPPENED ON SATURDAY, TWO DAYS AGO.

In which I am unreasonably angry

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Reading2 Comments

That’s not a sticker.

I made multiple attempts to acquire this book through physical retail channels– I’m not sure why, but I really wanted to buy it in person– before noticing it was like 60% off or something like that on Amazon and giving up and ordering it, and it shows up with that … thing on the spine. I’m genuinely considering returning it and just reading it on my Kindle, because that’s going to bother me every single time I look at the book for the rest of time.

Maybe I’ll go to Half Price Books tomorrow and see if they have an earlier edition.

A couple of quick notes

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, TeachingLeave a comment

I finished another really good book today— maybe you can use context clues to figure out what it was!– but I feel like I’ve maybe used up all of my holy shit this was good you have to go read it now reviews for July? Or maybe that’s not a thing, or maybe I ought to just review the two books I DNFed in between this one and There Is No Antimemetics Division. Y’know, to combat the idea that all I do is slobber all over every book I read. I dunno. Are my book reviews too positive? Maybe I’m not trustworthy anymore.

I will say that July has been weird in that it’s featured both more amazingly good books and more DNFs than a typical month does.

Anyway, what else happened today? I spent part of my afternoon clearing out my Literal Physical Inbox, better known as the wire racks on my desk that I dump mail and paperwork into when it is too important to throw away and yet not quite important enough for me to file away immediately. Getting this done was a goal over Winter Break that didn’t happen, and then a goal over Spring Break that didn’t happen, and I swore to myself that I wasn’t getting through July without taking care of it.

I found stuff dated 2022, by the way.

Along the way I uncovered a ton of professional growth paperwork for my license renewal, which isn’t a critical necessity yet– my teaching license doesn’t expire until July of 2028, which means that technically it’s good through the end of the 2028-29 school year, but I figured I’d get a jump on getting the paperwork filed.

About half an hour ago I told my wife I was going to worry about getting it done tomorrow, expecting it to take the whole morning, and then I logged into the license renewal site just to see what I was getting myself into … and I’m done with the paperwork already. It took less than fifteen minutes. I have to wait for them to approve everything, which shouldn’t take more than a couple of days, and then I need to get my CPR certification up to date, and I think after that I can officially apply for my renewal, so in theory this might be done before the school year starts. Tomorrow morning I’ll find a CPR recertification class, which will probably take longer than uploading my paperwork did.

That will square up my teaching license through 2038, a year so far into the future as to be meaningless, and it might be the last time I have to renew my license, as I’ll turn 62 in 2038 and you best believe I’ll be retiring as soon as possible, even assuming that I make it through twelve more fucking years of teaching. That, all by itself, feels completely crazy. Not as crazy as the idea that if I don’t retire in 2038, I’d have to renew through 2048. That year’s not even going to happen. Let’s be real.

Watch this

On By Luther M. SilerIn MusicLeave a comment

I came across this video while helping out a friend who is having jambalaya tonight, because having and especially cooking jambalaya without listening to Fats Domino is kind of sinful. I’m sharing it with you because of the two absolutely outstanding saxophone solos and also the completely inexplicable yo-yo guy. The one guy waving a hankie ends up playing the trumpet eventually. The other guy? He’s a mystery.