Sun, 8 Sep 2024, 05:35 PM (-06:00)
1. Waymo
When Paul came out of the restaurant, Trudy and I got up from the bench where we had been sitting in the sun. We all started to walk across the parking lot.
I had been watching a man with a bag getting into a car with no driver. There was a large spinning device on top of the vehicle, and odd protrusions sticking out from the two front corners. It drove off after the man got in, but I knew the street to be a cul-de-sac and that it would return.
“You just missed it,” I said to Paul. “There was a guy who just got a bunch of togo food and jumped into a Waymo. They’ll be coming back around any moment.” And sure enough, just then the future-car came around the corner with no one at the wheel and a man sitting in the back seat.
“Oh wow,” Paul said.
He was genuinely excited.
2. Cybertruck
On the way home, as we cruised southbound in the right lane, a Cybertruck drove quickly by, passing us and the traffic in the other lanes, as Cybertrucks are want to do. It was flat-black with no markings. If the navigation radar had been turned on, it would have registered nothing in that lane with that stealthy truck, but as it was, I had no navigation radar to turn on in the first place.
“Oh wow,” Paul said. “My first Cybertruck!”
He was genuinely excited.
“First a Waymo. Now a Cybertruck. What a trip!!”
…
The future reveals itself incrementally.
Fri, 6 Sep 2024, 10:07 PM (-06:00)
In the dead of night through the eyes of infrared cameras after an autonomous deorbit burn, two drogue parachutes and then three mains slowed an uncrewed Starliner to a successful touchdown.
Thu, 5 Sep 2024, 08:34 PM (-06:00)
The idea of baby steps has an intuitive obviousness about it. For years, I have loved using the term, illustrating it with examples. Preaching it to others. But practicing it was a different matter. You’re looking at a card-carrying procrastinator.
Yet to survive as a teacher, you must work efficiently. Otherwise… well otherwise you burn out and get a different job.
So today, when I have 5 minutes, I sort the jumbled mass of homework papers in the purple turn-in box. Group the papers by assignment. Bind them with paperclips color coded to class. No grading. No looking at names. No red pencils. Just get them organized. And then back to teaching the class.
I know this is something you already know. And I distinctly remember my mother giving me baby steps advice long ago. But I didn’t want to hear it, and I didn’t take it. This late in life, becoming a teacher forced it on me.
My Procrastinators International membership card lies abandoned on the floor. I am a better person for it.
Sat, 24 Aug 2024, 10:07 AM (-06:00)
Friday afternoon after the last school bell. The halls are empty. The classroom doors are all shut and locked, except Room 255. I’m putting up some decorations on the door.
“Don’t waste your time!” someone calls out from the end of the hall, and then she laughs. “Face it. You might as well just go home. I’m going to win.”
She laughs again. I do, too.
The thing about the door decorating contests in my experience is that minimalism gets you nowhere. Yet that’s how I do documents and presentations. It’s how I adorn my classroom walls. And how I decorate doors. But these are seasoned teachers, y’all. Next to them, I am an amateur. They do decorations in a way that… well, is unmistakably teacher-like. Fringe. Flowers. Smiles. Happy notes written on stars. Nothing wrong with that. They’re usually stunning. But my jam is less is more, which judges often interpret as lame.
So my door is plain. Two colors: a black and gold (for the “Go for gold” theme). A plain background with a wavy border. (Elmer’s with glitter is so perfect for this!) A Cartesian plane with an exponential function climbing to infinity (of course, because I teach Algebra 2). Two words: “Let’s go!” following the climbing curve.
Nothing else.
Wait. There’s also an admittedly lame streak of glue that dripped despite my best efforts to let everything dry first. Dang!
She’s was right. It won’t win, which of course is just fine.
Sun, 18 Aug 2024, 11:22 AM (-06:00)
#silentsunday #aisd-new-teacher
Sun, 11 Aug 2024, 10:02 AM (-06:00)
#silentsunday #freshmorningweb
Sun, 4 Aug 2024, 07:36 PM (-06:00)
#silentsunday #rideauriver #ottawa
Sat, 3 Aug 2024, 07:27 PM (-06:00)
Let’s talk about the Yellow Garden Spider again, shall we? She’s still there. (Indeed, we found another one near the front door: Beware garden walks in the evening!)
I walked out to check on her this afternoon. She saw me coming, and she scrambled. Not out of sight, just higher up on her web. And you know she was watching me. So I busied myself elsewhere, distributing rainwater in an attempt to encourage the flowers to continue blossoming despite the heat, and to provide for the birds and toads.
After a few buckets near the house and a few by the curb, I checked on the spider. She had moved back to the center of her web, evidently satisfied that I posed no threat. As I took a step closer, I startled two butterflies and a grasshopper. The butterflies leisurely fluttered around the web, but the grasshopper jumped smack into it.
The spider didn’t move. The grasshopper struggled. I thought the story was about to end. But the spider did nothing. I am convinced she had her eyes on me and was therefore less interested in the vibrating strands of her web. So the grasshopper desperately struggled and eventually fell to the ground.
I guess I owe the spider an apology.
Thu, 1 Aug 2024, 09:34 AM (-06:00)
My brother likes music continuously playing in every room. I often turn it off when we leave. My brother runs his dogs for miles sometimes twice a day. I walk ours around the block in the morning before it gets hot. My brother organizes swims across the lake. I paddle. My brother sets up tents in giddy anticipation of the arrival of his adult children. I am oblivious while mine panics when he realizes he won’t have a place to sleep. My brother lugs buckets of soapy water into the woods to scrub every surface of the outhouse. I sit in there gazing at the spider-discarded pile of dead flies and make a mental note to bring a whisk broom next time, which I never do. My brother celebrates our grandfather’s antique wooden tent stakes that held up the Army tent when we were very young. I pound in shiny aluminum stakes with a shiny sledge. My brother makes joyful music by pounding on a cardboard box as he sings the Wabash Cannonball. I used to sing in the shower. My brother never stops. I struggle to start.
The joys of my brother are many. His days are filled with multitudes, the likes of which I never quite understand. But he is the yang to my yin. I cannot imagine a world without him in it.
Wed, 31 Jul 2024, 09:01 PM (-06:00)
1. 1967
They ran out the back door into the field behind the farmhouse. It was summer. The air was warm. The sky was blue. And cousins were everywhere.
The kids ran across the lawn and into the nearby farm field. They ran into the corn rows. And somewhere in there, he encountered a spider web strung between the tall stalks of corn with a huge Corn Spider dangling in between.
He came to a screeching halt with the spider in mid-air inches in front of his face. He was glad he noticed it before running thru. He turned around. And to this day, he has no other recollections of running up and down those corn rows, likely because … he didn’t?
2. 2024
We’ve been out of town a while. The yard has had a chance to wild to itself, and the unusually cool and wet weather has meant that the yard is not the usual brown, crispiness to which we’re accustomed at this point in the summer. (Although starting tomorrow, we’ve got triple digit highs, no rain in the forecast, and certainly crispiness will soon be upon us.)
But for now, there is greenery. There is water in (some of) the birdbaths. There are wild flowers blooming generously. There is grass growing gladly. And there is this suspended in midair on the walkway between the Texas Persimmon and some tall sunflowers.
A Yellow Garden Spider, almost as big as the palm of your hand with its legs stretched out. First one I’ve seen in this yard. Shades of the 1967 corn field.
I’m glad I noticed it before walking thru.