Things about stuff
I believe I've mentioned that a major component of my grad school experience is daily, now weekly, journal writing that is supposed to serve as a tool for reflection.
To me, this is a lot of writing on my part going to waste. Plus, some of this might (I said might) be interesting.
This is not my tell-all memoir. These are stories about real kids and their real teachers. I take great pains to leave names out of my work, regardless, I don't think it's right to serve this content up to the Google Gods.
So, if I post about school it will remain password protected for now. If you'd like to know what my internship experience is like in mostly long, boring, academic reflection, I would be happy to share the password with you.
If you're someone for whom that's appropriate, you know how to find me.
Trimester down!
Yes, that was a blur. Somehow I swung those grades despite my uncanny ability to leave every assignment for the night before and alternate between 14 hours and 2 hours of sleep.
What's frightening is that I'm muscling out this update while I'm in the midst of already having met for most of my classes already in the next trimester.
I did enjoy a lot of the research I've gotten to do already. There have been some late night psychotic breaks. Most of the time I am raving mad and declare, loudly, that I don't want to do this. A few times it's been because I've been really into my work. If I get around to it I may post a couple of my presentations or papers if I can figure out a way to make them internet entertaining.
Other than that things should stay pretty quiet around here on the update front.
Nerdy is the norm
The "tshirt store," if we want to call it that, just got expectedly nerdier. This is for a very select handful of geeks that grew up playing role playing games with Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition. I don't really expect you to understand.
Just know.
The dice are watching you.
Also available sexy style for you classier nerds:
Anything but homework
- Went home to the Scotia area on a deliberate and exclusive trip to see Jenna and Jordan and Jason last weekend. I could never some up how good it felt to be with friends again. No visit could ever be long enough to be all I need from them.
- Sometimes the Pre-K and kindergarten boys relate me a little too closely to their fathers. If I work with them on floor level they've been known to suddenly tackle me.
- Mary Morrison is 90% military sub base families. I asked one kindergartner today if he planned on showing his art to his mom and dad after school. He told me his dad was underwater for a long time. I saw his dad pick him up one day after school. Now that man is somewhere in our oceans.
- I don't know what to do about my handwriting. In 10th grade I made the conscious effort to learn how to write in all capital letters after I noticed my handwriting became more legible while staying just as fast. That's three years of high school and eight years of college where all the notes I've taken have been in uppercase writing. I can write lowercase neatly on a board in my old handwriting if I concentrate but if I have to take notes quickly my brain fights my efforts and my hand warps the neatness. Most of the time this is a non-issue as note taking is for me and board writing is for the children. Today I did some reading assessments and I went with lowercase as it seemed to make sense at the time. I made mess.
This is real
One of my favorite things I've ever, ever, ever, ever done was to design a line of tshirts for Camp Fowler.
Well, I've gone into business for myself.
Completely for fun, I present my first tshirt:
Here’s a damn entry
Why does school ruin everything?
Before school I liked to read. Now I never, ever read for fun. How does a flashlight-under-the-blanket kid become a sloth ridden couch potato.
Before school I liked to blog. Now I have to write a daily journal entry after each day of my internship.
That's where the writing goes.
Three months
I’ve always liked having my blog for the little stuff. It’s easy to have a cute tidbit about Jack climbing into the bucket of tools behind me. I like to complain about the town of Groton and the way they shut off streetlights during a snowstorm. It’s quite common for me to consider funny YouTube bits for reposting or to share my latest webcomic drawing. That’s how I keep an updated blog.
Then real stuff happens. I quit Target, I return to school, I get engaged.
Quite honestly the longer I went without seriously discussing these events on the ol’ internet the harder became to update the blog. I knew with each passing day I would have to start my post with what I’m typing out right now. My site would be come another classic sorry-for-not-updating-my-blog blog. I hate that kind of blog.
The whole idea of having my own website is to have a place where I can make people “look at me look at me!” Then I have to use the actual words, sorry y’all couldn’t look at me for a while there, and I have this realization of how silly and self-centered the whole project is. Who am I apologizing to right now?
The answer is me. I’m saying sorry to me. This is a place for me to write and I take that hobby away from myself when I get hung up about what my imaginary public needs from my imaginary stardom. I could have just filled the last three months with a daily photo of my cat (don’t test me) and the quality of this website as a blog would not have diminished.
That’s not how my writing mind works. I can only think about how I can’t comment on making catering decisions without some former grandiose testimony to the joy of my engagement. These are big events and they should have earned big posts. The only person who that really stopped was me. Now that I wrote this to undo the shackles on my keyboard let’s do this:
Hey, I quit target, I returned to school, I got engaged.
Let’s get back to blogging.
That time of year
I've been spending my time not at work either motionless on the couch or motionless at my desk. I don't work any more hours than normal at the big red bullseye but somehow they're all the more soul crushing. I've even had the recent experience at getting on the naughty list for working forty hours and five minutes and then coming in the next week and having the tasks I didn't complete pointed out to me. Breaking that down: I worked too much not working enough.
Things are moving forward with grad school. I've been awarded an internship (most likely) and I picked up a substantial financial aid package.
My internship interview was a strange experience. At one point the principal and assistant principal looked at each other and briefly confirmed with each other that, "Yeah, we're staying open."
I was struck by what a strange country it's become. When the Mohawk Mall slowly became an empty husk or the retail football that was the Glenville Fay's Drugs building finally was razed to the ground it was change but it was good old fashioned American change. Schools closing and restructuring feels entirely different, although maybe that's because I grew up in a district that was pushing against the size of it's buildings. I've seen schools closing in the news but this was the first time I sat across from actual professionals what that shrug in their shoulders: we don't know where the country is going.
The financials were the last thing really holding me back from committing to grad school. I'm going to get swallowed up by a really nuts schedule over the next month. Enjoy this nugget. I'm going to go disappear again.
Game night
- Image via Wikipedia
Tonight was the first ever Connecticut hosted game night since I've moved here. It was much needed. I am convinced that dudes need, well, time with other dudes to survive. Plus, the male species seems to enjoy excuses to drink beer and the chance to mow down bags of chips. We had those consumables and an evening where the only drawbacks were our approaching bedtimes and unseasonable humidity. Here's what went down:
Arkham Horror (x1)
This game is a beast and ran the evening as it usually does. When a game features not one but two half-foot tall card decks and something around 20 total draw piles you know you're in for a mental workout.
It's a cooperative game which means the group wins or fails and the enemy here is the game mechanics themselves. The setting is that of the collective works of H.P. Lovecraft and his demonic visions which, incidentally, mean nothing to me. The Ancient One slumbers beneath Arkham all the same and it is up to the Investigators to keep him there or snuff him out. Tonight we drew Nyarlathotep, whatever that is, and as the game progressed we were sunk under piles of monsters and mayhem. It was not a lack of weaponry, which can sometimes be the case, and we were a touch low in the vital 'clue token' department, but tonight it seemed to just be in the cards that we had to go face to face with the beast. Actually, this is the kind of rules packed games that for every 10 rules you remember to follow you forget about 20 to 80. We forgot to awaken the Ancient One. So we did and then we took it on head on. This was probably the highest point of satisfaction in the evening as we wiped the floor with the baddie and won the game handily.
On to game two.
Pandemic (x2)
This was my first chance to get my dice rolling hands on this new legend in the cooperative gaming field. I found it as satisfying as I hoped. In this game the players are CDC scientists squashing out four strains of virus. It has the complexity I enjoy but an all important factor hard to find in the games I love. Speed. When Arkham ends I always feel like I ate too much at the Thanksgiving table and need to push away and rest awhile before I take another crack at the feast. As soon as game one of Pandemic ended I knew I needed a game two. I had the game learned in one setting and watching the little virus pieces fly around the globe with our researchers in hot pursuit was a thrill. In game one things got out of hand way to quick and North America exploded in a hot mess of disease meaning our demise. Game two was the exact opposite and if you feel disease free today, well, you can thank us.
Red November (x2)
Our nightcap was yet another cooperative masterpiece and the game I know best. The first I heard of this game was also the first time I knew I needed it. This scenario features a doomed submarine,check that, doomed gnome submarine and you and your friends must survive the catastrophe for a full sixty minutes to ensure your rescue. With my dad, my girlfriend, and good friend Chris all familiar with subs in some way this seemed like the kind of thing that we were destined to all enjoy. Tonight the ship went down both times which is starting to tip the scales to more failures than successes in this one. As often happens in cooperative games this is probably a strong indicator that we're finally starting to know the rules well enough that we're actually following them.
Thanks to everyone who bought me games, expansions, and brews that make these nights possible!
Heath’s Twitter
- Sports are stupid. They make me mad. And that's stupid. 4 hours ago
- Aaaaah, who am I? This is not what I do!! http://t.co/1G1wt9Rp 2 days ago
- Watching NOVA always reminds me of my dad. Half of what I know in this world was learned Tuesday nights at 9. 4 days ago
