Category Archives: Personal

Another Day, Another Day

The more things change, the more I end up changing things.

After careful consideration, I’ve decided to slide this bit of blather over a day and begin posting on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday rather than Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I do this because I now have a part time job on Saturday mornings and this involves getting up early and teaching 9th and 10th graders for three hours. It’s easy work, but it requires me to go to bed a bit earlier than I normally would on a Friday and this has caused me to skip a couple Fridays now.

My goal is to use Saturday to process photographs, the dread of which has kept me from finishing several reviews and even finishing a post that explains why all bad boys in my classes will go to Canada this year.

More on that in a future post. Probably.

 

Growing into Uniforms and Placement

Note: Been in the oddly busy part of the end of break and that means I guess I decided that Friday was a hiatus.

The only exciting thing that’s happened recently is our youngest started 7th grade today.

This involved her, after all these years, finally getting a uniform and being more obviously segregated by gender.

They marched in with girls on the left and boys on the right.

There was the usual round of introductions in which every new student (71 in total) was introduced by name. There was some excitement as a student in a higher grade fainted or had an epileptic seizure and was escorted out.

Eventually, our youngest gave a speech on behalf of her class of new students. I still do not understand how she was chosen to do this, but she rocked. The speech was good and she read it like an old pro. She has clearly inherited speech-making genes from both me and She Who Must Be Obeyed, who also has been known to make impressive speeches.

Eventually the students left and we parents suddenly found ourselves being held hostage. It is tradition to observe the first homeroom, which was happening as we sat there. However we were assured we couldn’t get to the homerooms before they ended unless five people volunteered to serve on the PTA. As I was holding down SWMBO’s hands she couldn’t volunteer.

Eventually volunteers were drafted and we got to see the homeroom and run home.

I ended up having to go to work, but that ‘s a story for another day.

Back and Back to Normalish

The girls survived their trip to and from Niigata. They brought back the usual baggage, though.

This means that within one day we’ve already had arguments, a surprise latish night, and serious questions about the food I ate whilst they were gone. I’ve also been criticized for not eating something that 1) I didn’t know I was supposed to eat and 2) was buried under stuff where I couldn’t see it.

That said, it’s good to have them back and in one piece.

Now it’s time to settle in to something resembling normal and start thinking about the start of the school year, which may suddenly be more complicated than I’d hoped.

More on that in a future post. (Along with possible job hunting.)

Missed it By That Much

Missed a day thanks to a game. My intentions were good but my actions, well.

Before writing yesterday’s post I decided to play a few rounds of a game. I ended up teaming up with an old friend and that meant I played longer than I’d planned.

At 4:00 a.m. I decided it was time to get to bed as today is technically a work day (aka House Arrest.) At least it’s supposed to be. More on that in a future, possibly angry post.

I was mostly pleased to see that I could still pull an all-nighter and be reasonably functional the next day.

However, I opted for a few hours sleep rather than writing a post.

Now it may be time to play again, but She Who Must Be Obeyed and the girls are returning tomorrow. I don’t have to be coherent or awake, but I do have some cleaning to do.

 

Not Sure What I’m Doing Here, But I’m Here

Today my so-called mansplaining (aka research and knowledge) was confirmed by womansplaining and after something where I wasn’t sure what happened but it wasn’t too bad.

Several months ago our oldest figured out she could charge purchases to her phone and I would have to pay for it. I spent a couple hours with our provider figuring out how to stop this but I required the assistance of She Who Must Be Obeyed to finalize it. I explained this to SWMBO, however, she is totally too busy so solving the problem was was put off. At a price.

Last month, She Who Must Be Obeyed decided we needed a new phone provider (and she a new phone as hers, at age 12, no longer updates the calendar) and I assumed she was doing research.

Well Ass. U. Me.

Last night, after some, um, words, I reminded SWMBO that changing companies was her idea and she did a shocking amount of research.

Then, today, I was rushed off to a nearby office where our data plan was modified but nothing else. I thought we were getting new phones despite my having explained it was too soon but instead my job was to sit around until my signature was required.

In the aftermath, I was carefully informed of the things I’d explained months before and told it was too soon to upgrade our contract. I was pleased to be correct in all this. Sort of.

The next phase will involve new phones. I’ll have to figure out how to make SWMBO think it’s her idea.

 

Reversing the Polarity of the Normal Flow

Lately I’ve been reverting to university summer time. Either that or I’ve become a vampire.

Because it’s a holiday/house arrest time, I’ve been staying up later and getting up later. This is something I haven’t done much since summer time during university. In those days, I’d invert time to the point I was staying up all night and sleeping a good portion of the day.

This doesn’t help me remember what day it is but eventually I get up and do the “work” required of my house arrest.

The funny part is, I’m actually doing actual work as I’ve foolishly decided to change things next year. Sigh. Perhaps it’s not too late to change my mind.

The Blather and the Tears

Our youngest graduated from elementary school today in a ceremony that was kind of mixed.

First, in order to reduce crowd size, there is a farewell ceremony for the sixth graders with all the first through fourth grade classes. The lower classmen were then sent home and only the fifth grade and the graduating class remained. (Note: She Who Must Be Obeyed and I accidentally crashed the farewell for the lower classmen. Long story.)

This means that not only did all the parents of graduating students get seats, there were also a lot of good seats to be had.

However, after that things get kind of odd.

The entire ceremony took two hours which, I’m pretty sure, is longer than both my high school and university graduations. In both of those cases the goal was 1) give me the damned diploma and 2) where’s the beer? (Note: I was technically of drinking age when I graduated high school although I wasn’t when I got to university. Another long story.)

What made the sixth grade graduation go on so long was the 50 minutes of speeches from various adults. Diploma presentation for 60 students took 25 minutes. Speeches a bit longer.

There was also a 15 minute section where all the 30+ VIPs (a few of whom gave the long speeches) were introduced individually.

After that was a final performance that took 30 minutes and tested my arm strength (as I was running the video camera). The sixth grade gave a speech that involved each student speaking part of the speech and, occasionally, all of them speaking in unison. That was followed by a song and the fifth graders repeating the process. This was all kind of cool and lots of people cried.

After that, the graduates marched out and I got to escape. She Who Must Be Obeyed remained behind.

Out and About

Spent the day doing nothing. Spent the evening with old friends. Because of that, this post will be only filler. (I may throw out an extra on Saturday, if I can only be bothered.)

The last time this friend was here I was working hither and thither and we couldn’t arrange a meeting. This means we haven’t seen each other for 14 years. We met a thousand years ago in the last millennium. (1999, which was in the last millennium, which was 1,000 years ago. More or less.)

A lot has changed during that time, including spouses and the number of children. She’s met our oldest but our youngest didn’t exist. Also, my hair didn’t look as gray back then because the lighting was better back then. (Yes, my hair isn’t turning white; it’s just bad lighting. No. Really. There’s bad lighting everywhere. It follows me. Something like that.)

Hopefully we won’t have to wait 14 years for the next meeting.

 

Not Another Apocalypse

I knew that what I was doing was probably a bad idea, but I did it anyway.

We got snow last night but it didn’t do much more than get things wet. I went out to meet a fellow pen addict and minutes before I left, as I was preparing to leave, it started raining. Even though there was a chance of snow, I wore sneakers and a lighter coat.

A few hours later it started to snow. It didn’t cause any train delays and I was able to get home with no problems. The walk from the station was more annoying than wet. The streets were still clear, although snow had begun to build up on lots and cars.

Near our apartment, there is a 30 yard long strip of sidewalk that apparently gets no sunlight this time of year and it still has snow from last week’s snowpocalypse. It also had a thin layer of freshly fallen snow that made the trip down the hill “interesting” at times.

In front of our apartment, a layer of snow reached several feet into the parking lot and the ended abruptly in a clear line as it reached the part of the lot that actually got sunlight.

Today it wasn’t that bad, which is good as I had to do some running. Now I’m hoping for no snow until after Valentine’s Day. (More on that in a future post.)

Once More With Caution

The guy I wanted was there, but he’d just finished another guy so I ended up with a woman.

This actually ended okay.

A couple weeks ago I got a haircut at my usual place and a woman who’d cut my hair before was in a mood to ignore almost every instruction I gave. The result was a decent hair cut that was much longer than I wanted. This wouldn’t have bothered me that much except they guy who’d cut my hair before had done a great job and she hadn’t.

Today, just over two weeks later, my hair was already starting to look shaggy and since I was in the area I decided to stop by and see if the guy was there. If he wasn’t, I was going to walk past and try again another day.

Luckily he was there and appeared to be finishing with a client. I walked in and was immediately redirected to a woman who walked out of the back room.

This woman had cut my hair a while ago and, as is the tendency of the women in the shop, she’d left it kind of long.

However, this time she seemed to understand what I wanted and did a surprisingly good job.

I kind of wish the other woman had been there, though, so I could show her what to do next time.