Category Archives: Personal

Another Year Mercifully Gone By

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Well, that was another one I’m glad is now days gone by.

I’ve mentioned before, although I can’t find the post to like to it, that the one year of my life I wouldn’t want to repeat was when I was twenty. I was in a bad mood that alternated between cranky and dazed and then all of a sudden one day I was 21 and the spell seemed to break.

Now I have to add age fifty to the years I don’t want to repeat.

Lots of stuff happened this year that caused lots of extra stress. There were deaths and illnesses and lots of extra crap from work.

There were also pressures from extended family, mostly as a result of illness and injury and that has muddled things up on this side of the island as such things stress out She Who Must Be Obeyed.

As for writing, except for this bit of blather, I’ve been in a bad mood that alternates between dazed and lazy. I’ve asked friends to read things, sent them manuscripts, and then gotten no response at all (I’m zero for three now). That has me feeling down and has Kimberly laughing and saying she told me so. Unfinished projects seem to abound and I’m stuck about what to work on first.

There are a lot of decisions that keep getting put off.

That said, I got through October better off than normal. I haven’t been productive, but I’m finally getting ink inventory out of the house which has picked up my mood some.

Now we’ll see what fifty-one is like.

 

What Wednesday Wrought

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Wednesdays, even the good ones, aren’t very good this year.

Although I have a late start, I open with an average class, then move to a decent class with a few bad students who have perfected the “Who? Me? What? Really? Why?” look in response to any disciplinary actions from me.

I then get to spend the next three hours planning and dreading the arrival of my worst class: a last period JHS 2 class that is made up of a large number of the students from worst JHS 1 class from last year.

Today, though, things got complicated.

First, I have a large number of students from this year’s worst JHS 1 who are supposed to turn in homework assigned over a long series of breaks. Chasing this homework down has required a bit of typing, some stair climbing, and a lot of waiting. The students seem to think that I will eventually give up on this when, in fact, I will merely assign more homework. (Note: All I do is make sure it’s been completed; I don’t actually read it.)

A few students turned in work, but a great many others are about to get a special homework: Spell all the Numbers from 1-100.

Second, I hadn’t seen my worst class for three weeks. This class’s attitude is slowly growing hostile but right now is in the “Not this crap again” phase. When the bell rings I almost literally have to drag some of them to their chairs and others I have to wake up. Eventually, they get into the book work and realize that they didn’t actually bother to get their books from their lockers. Time is wasted as they get their books. (Note: I now count “Damn, teach, I totally forgot my book” time toward the minute they are allowed to get settled before they get extra work and/or extra time after class.)

Today, they had the typical slow start, but more or less did the print I gave them. Then, when it was time to open the books, well, you can guess the rest.

I did surprise them by bringing them up one at a time to answer questions which got many of them to actually work in the book.

Next week they’ll have a long writing assignment. That will probably be funny to watch.

Back in Business More and Less

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Ready or not, and I’m talking to myself mostly, today marks the end of my five-ish week hiatus from this bit of blather.

For the most part I did miss writing it, although, oddly not at first.

I thoroughly enjoyed the time off for the first couple weeks. The hiatus also bled into other projects that I suddenly felt compelled to postpone. As Julian Barnes writes in his novel Flaubert’s Parrot: “It’s easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren’t writers, and very little harm comes to them.”

October thus became, in an odd way, the opposite of National Novel Writing Month. It became Not Writing Nothing No Way Month (NoWriNoNoWay).

After a couple weeks, though, I found myself assembling topics (there was a typhoon and flood, for example, that might have made for an interesting topic) but I stuck with the hiatus.

Also, I decided that since I’m paying for the site, I might as well keep using it in some form or another.

The plan from here until the next hiatus is to move to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule. with Monday featuring pen and stationery related posts and Friday featuring more personal posts.

Wednesday is officially designated as “Sure, Fine, Yeah, Whatever, That Works as Well as Anything Else” posts.

Tuesday and Thursday will be used for other projects, possibly even my long-neglected other site (which may get a complete scrub and reboot rather than an upgrade) or other long neglected projects. I also will be writing posts for other sites, if they’ll have me.

Weekends will be for rest and/or other projects. (i.e. booze, games, and time wasting to name just a few).

Welcome back those of you who’ve come back. I hope it’s worth your time and attention.

Crumbs, Broken Bits, and Breaks

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This is not actually day 1313 as there were a couple days of technical difficulties, but it is post 1313 and this is a good enough post to announce a short hiatus to this bit of blather. I had intended to start this hiatus at the end of September, but this number is too cool to not use.

I started this bit of blather to jump start a daily writing habit, partly inspired by a blog done by a friend of mine who was at least smart enough to stop at day 365.

At first there was a burst of energy and the posts were a lot longer and a lot less coherent and a lot more interesting. Then, over time the posts became shorter and more coherent but a lot less interesting, especially to me.

I’ve tried to remain reasonably funny and entertaining, but recently, all this has begun to feel like work. Even worse, the blog has become an actual blog which is something I’d hoped to avoid. I’ve not yet been reduced to talking about, and taking pictures of my meals (I’m opening the potato chips. I’ve take out a particularly large one. It has perfect shape. It was delicious … there is nothing left but crumbs and broken bits). However, crumbs and broken bits is what this has been feeling like lately.

It’s a lot of work to do for free and I’ve decided to take a short break. My goal is to start back up, in some form or another at the beginning of November. In the interim, I’d like to focus the daily writing habit on other projects.

Those who stuck with me this far, thanks for your eyeballs and your patience. Hope to see you again in a a few weeks with more blather and, I hope, more energy.

 

Preparing For the Next Culling

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Spent part of the day cleaning pens and making a new list of things that I want to get rid of.

The goal is not just to try to sell stuff, but also to toss out a couple pens that have been more trouble than they’re worth. (They were cheap, which means they weren’t worth that much to being with.)

I’m still stuck with a bunch of ink, but hopefully I can start whittling that down now that some of it is not longer available except through me.

There are also a couple projects I have to decide what to do with, but more on that in a future post.

There’s a lot of crap that needs cleaning, and now’s a good time to clean it.

Rethinking the Blather

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This is post 1311 of this bit of blather and it has me thinking that after three and a half years of blather, it’s time to to start rethinking things.

Although I like the daily writing habit, lately it’s begun to feel like more of a chore than it should be. Out of laziness I’ve ended up writing about work and  what I’ve done for the day which is exactly what I’d been hoping to avoid when I started this bit of blather.

Because of that, I suspect a short hiatus is in the works, although I’m also considering a different kind of writing project.

I’ll keep putting out some blather until the end of this month, and then I’ll make some decisions about how to proceed.

Back Home Again

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As it turned out, there was nothing to worry about. The storm passed us and we got the warm, muggy, clear weather that follows a storm.

She Who Must Be Obeyed and our youngest made it back with no problems, although they did encounter some rain.

The rain before had messed up her reason for going: rice harvest. Now a group of cousins are being dragged out of retirement to help with harvest and we’ll probably have new rice in a couple weeks.

Our oldest also made it back from school on time, although there was some confusion about whether or not she needed lunch:

Me: When are you coming back today?
Her: ——————
Me: Do you need lunch today?
Her: ——————
(door slams)
Me: (shouting out window) Do you need lunch today?
Her: ——————

It turned out she did need lunch, but she arrived home after I ate so I sent her on a mission to buy a lunch at a convenience store.

Then, I tried to teach her how to answer questions.

 

One Dreary Day in Autumn

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Between typhoons, missiles and rain, it’s been a pretty dreary weekend.

The missiles don’t bother me as much as they probably should, mostly because they don’t trigger migraines. (Yeah, I know, death, destruction, and mayhem, but when you have a migraine that’s pretty much what you wish on the world anyway.)

The typhoon, though, triggered a migraine yesterday and offered rainy, gray, dreary weather today.

This, as you might imagine, inspired me to do very little.

I got some writing done, but mostly I researched a bunch of nonsense based on one or two random notions that got stuck in my head. I also finished watching season five of Angel.

Now the big worry is She Who Must Be Obeyed and our youngest getting back from Niigata safely. They plan to travel back tomorrow and I’d tell them to wait, but I’m not He Who Must Be Obeyed and any suggestion that they should wait might actually trigger the opposite reaction.

Instead I may tell them to rush home. Either way, I’ll probably spend the day worrying.

Always Forgetting What You Forgot Before

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Neither I nor She Who Must Be Obeyed seem to be able to remember that I’m supposed to take lunch on Tuesdays.

For SWMBO it’s a power thing. She always tells me the night before that she forgot to get anything for lunch. She’ll got out at near midnight to get something for our oldest’s lunch so that she can complain about having had to do so (long story) but I get an early announcement that I’m on my own.

This doesn’t bother me that much as I always pledge to grab something on the way to work. (To do otherwise risks the wrath of SWMBO in the form of heavy sighs and “I was saving that for X’s”.)

This also would not be a problem except that every time I’ve been on my own I’ve gone directly to school without stopping to pick something up. It’s only after I’ve arrived at school and begun prepping that I remember I was supposed to remember to get something.

This leaves me a short time to rush across the street to find food, carefully pick a line that’s not full of little old ladies who will spend hours trying to make exact change, and then get back to the office in time to eat and prep for class.

I always vow that next week will be different. Thus far it hasn’t been.

Thoughts After the Bar

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We took our youngest to a bar tonight because our oldest was out with her friends and doesn’t understand English or Japanese for “Get home early, we want to go out”. (Long story.)

This means She Who Must Be Obeyed finally got some beer tonight. However, although we had fun, it wasn’t as good as she was hoping.

We went to a local izakaya called “Yakitori Big” which features a good selection of things on skewers and a decent selection of alcohol flavored beverages.

The beer was fairly watery, which disappointed SWMBO, but the food was good. I started with watery beer, then ran through a selection of drinks, finally settling on sake which turns out to be the best deal for the money.

Our youngest had soft drinks, of course, but we got her to try gizzards, hearts, and tongue. (She was unimpressed with the first and last; tolerant of the second.)

Hopefully next spring we can make plans for the Spring Craft Beer Festival. If we start planning now, we might be able to pull it off.