Notes from the Multiverse

(Cross-posted from Facebook)

So, I went on the Medifast diet program, because nothing else was working, and I'm tired of being this big. In a little less than a week, I'm seeing amazing results.

Ok, so I know that my weight loss will slow down after a couple of weeks, but as long as it continues, I'll put up with the "meh" food.

Some of the stuff, I love--the Tropical Punch is good, the shakes are good, the lemon bars are ok, the Cinnamon bars are YUMMY. The oatmeal is pretty good, the brownies are good. The chili and the veggie sloppy joe are pretty good. The fajita mix made a great beef patty following the recipe that came with it.

On the other hand, the Fruit & Nut bars taste like ass. I can't get the pudding to actually gel.

But you know, it's not too bad. Especially when I imagine myself 100 pounds lighter, wearing size 38 or even possibly 36 pants again. Imagining myself in a kayak not feeling compressed. Imagining not feeling too big for the world, being able to slide into a student desk like most of my colleagues can... yeah, moderately ok food for a few months is a small price to pay for that. And I am definitely learning more about what my body needs as opposed to what I want.

Mind you, I'm still hungry a lot. But that's more about my body being used to eating more than it is actual hunger, I think. They say it will even out after a couple of weeks; we're almost at the end of week 1; it's getting a little better. Only a little, but that's something.

It does require some self control. It's easy not to cheat when I'm with my family; they're great motivators. But when I'm alone I have to exercise self control. Not cheating isn't really the hard part; the hard part is how often I think about how I COULD, just a little, if I wanted to. So far I'm good at saying "No, that will not happen." I hope that, as time goes on, I think about it less. One thing that helps is the cost of the program; I'm not spending that much money each month and then screwing it up; that would be crapping on my family. NO THANK YOU.

Anyway. Hope y'all don't mind, but I'll be posting occasional updates about this. Not going on my writer-journal, because hey, that's not what it's for. I will probably cross-post to LiveJournal though, if you follow that, so you won't miss anything unless you want to.

Got some writing done. Not as much as I'd like, but about 3000 words for the day. I guess that's probably pretty good, actually, especially considering my original plan was to play Mass Effect 3 for hours. Unless they suck, but let's not go there tonight, mmkay?

One of the negative aspects of privacy is that it's now impossibly hard to get information about people. I've been searching for the woman listed on my father's death certificate as his wife for nearly 10 years now. I cannot find her. Now, it's been almost 20 years since he died, so I assume her name has changed, but I cannot even find a record of her marriage to my father, which tells me it likely happened after 1985, since everything before that is indexed and available online, but nothing else. Her name is almost as common as my dad's, and I can find no record of her under her maiden name, either. The last known address is a Salvation Army facility in Los Angeles--19 years ago.

Feh.

(reposted from my other blog)

Of work issues, anyway.

Today was the last day I need to set foot on campus until August, when I’ll go back for some inservice learning and Common Planning Time with my department, as well as setting my room up for the new year.

It LOOKS like next year I’ll be teaching English 11, Journalism, English 9, and Advanced English 9. Adv. English is really just the same thing as English 9 (freshman stuff), but with added expectations and complexity. Where I might read two novels all year in English 9, Adv. 9 will do four. Where Eng 9 will write a 2 page essay, Adv. will write 3 or 4 pages.

English 11 is American Literature, and I love to teach that class. I only get one section of it this year, but I’m hoping I impress someone and get more of it the year after; it’s actually my favorite class to teach. I love to teach English 12 (British Lit) too, but the kids really don’t give a rat’s ass about Chaucer and Shakespeare, but I have ways of making them care about Native American lit (which I start with), and they really tend to love the filter through which I teach Eng 11, which is “What makes an American?” We start off with that question, then look at the ways each successive wave of immigrants has changed the American discourse, with of course a liberal dose of grammar and writing instruction, too. It’s really the class that has made successive years of students ask me if I was teaching English or History, because in English 11, the answer to that question is “Yes.”

That brings me to today’s slight depression. Slowly, I’m learning not to look at ratemyteachers.com. I loathe that site. I know I should stay away from it, but I can’t help it–I have this entirely naive idea that if I look at the “reviews” of my teaching posted there, and apply a slight filter of reality over them, I’ll come away with at least somewhat valid critiques of my teaching that I can use to improve. Sadly, this does not often happen. See, the site allows students to comment anonymously, and so there are lots of “reviews” that are 99% lies, or at best distortions. And then there are the ones that are just written to be mean. And then there are the ones where I’m sure the student actually believes what he or she is writing, but they tend to rate teachers based on their idea of what the topic of the class is, not the reality of it. So my English 9 freshmen this year often said I wasn’t teaching them, because they thought English 9 was an English language class–grammar, etc–when it’s actually the beginning of analysis, and focuses more on critical thinking skills and writing than the “laws” of grammar. And no matter how often I told them that, they got mad. So even the kids who have no grammar issues were pissed because I wasn’t teaching grammar every day, but only teaching mini-lessons when the class had shown they needed one. Meh.

Anyway, I’ve learned. I’m no longer looking at it–especially as today, I looked up a lot of the other English teachers–and even the ones I KNOW are good teachers have pretty shitty ratings, with terrible things said about them, too. I also need to remind myself that I’m there to teach them, not to be their favorite.

I know I made mistakes this year. Those things are no longer in play, and I know how to fix the mistakes I made and make sure they don’t occur next year.

Now my focus shifts to summer, and how I’ll spend the next few months. Of course a lot of time will be spent with my four year old daughter, having fun and getting her ready for kindergarten, which she starts in August. And I want to get at least half my current work in progress done, which means at least 50,000 words. I want to get my home office back together–it’s currently a room full of crap–and I need to exercise a lot. That’s the primary goal of Summer Vacation, and my daughter is in on it. We’re calling it Operation: Made Daddy Skinny.

O:DS is all about changing how and what I eat, being more strict that I perhaps need to be (but not going crazy; I’ll still eat burgers now and then), and more than anything, getting off my butt. I need to shock my body into losing the weight, because eating better alone isn’t going to cut it for me. I’m not going to lose all 100 extra pounds in 2.5 months, of course–it would be stupid to even try that–but the goal is to get myself going enough that I can keep it up. And I want the loss I do manage to be noticeable.

And, finally, I want to get this blog actually going somewhere. So hopefully more regular updates. But I’ve said that before, so let’s not waste the time again, eh? Sarcasm: The Fun Part!

One of my students is posting lies, damn lies, and gross exaggerations about my teaching on ratemyteacher.com. That annoys the bejeezus out of me.

I removed the Mass Effect community from my feed because, drunken jaysus on a pogo stick, it was spamming the everliving frack out of my friends page view, and I missed a lot of posts by actual people I give a toss about.

My writing is suffering, as I'm in the "Oh god can it please be June NOW" stage of the teaching year. All of my creative energy is going into trying to keep 150 kids from imploding while also fending off the BS complaints that I don't teach anything. Dear gods, kid--if you honestly don't know what I've taught this year, then you're not smart enough to be in high school. MLA Essay Format, the Heroic Journey pattern, the proper use of semicolons, how to annotate text, how to take notes, how to create a powerpoint presentation that doesn't make your audience want to kill themselves, how to present to a class, how to debate an issue, how to research a topic, how to choose sources... and more.

Annoying little git.

Mass Effect: I'm almost done with my first playthrough. I know, I know--but I get maybe two hours in a given week to play, unless I stay up really late on a Friday, which I rarely have much energy for. I played for something like six hours today, and am at the point where I am about to rescue some Elcor, then assault the Illusive Man's hideout. Then I guess the push is on for Earth and the finale. Which I've managed to avoid spoilers for.

Parenting: My daughter is awesome, and getting sweeter each day. We're dealing with some "not listening" problems, but for the most part, she's doing pretty well for four. She got into the school we wanted her to be in for Kindergarten, so that's good.

Stuff: Violin practice proceeds. It's hard, man--I'm almost at the point where I can read the music and know which fingering position they are (which is less important in the style I'm learning, Celtic folk, as that style is traditionally taught by ear, but I want to read music as well), but I haven't played regularly in a long time, so I've lost a bit of the ability to tell if my fingers are in the right place. This is where woodwinds have an advantage--on an instrument with keys, it's relatively easy to produce a given note, but on a stringed instrument, it's a pain in the butt. I know approximately where to place my fingers, but if I'm a fraction of an inch off, it sounds bad, and that throws me off.

Writing is NOT proceeding. I'm trying, but it's not coming along very well. We'll see what happens when I put more effort into it, but that's sometimes hard. I think I need to do more nights out on my own with the laptop when I can.

Not much to journal about lately, and I'm staying clear of the Mass Effect community until I finish Mass Effect 3. I do NOT want to be spoiled on the ending. If friends post anything about it, I'll do my best not to read it. :)

This is sad, because it appears that Tycho over at Penny Arcade posted a rather interesting analysis of it, as well as the fan cries over it, and I'd love to read it--but I got about a paragraph in when I realized he meant it, he was going to spoil it--so I took his advice and hightailed it out of there. I'll go back when I've completed the game.

I think, however, that one thing he said (which spoils nothing) is interesting--that those complaining, in his opinion, seemed to be those who do not read extensively in Science Fiction genre. I'll be interested to see if I agree with that once I finish the game and then go back to read all the criticism of said ending.

At most, this will take until the week of April 4, when I'm off all week and will have my daughter for half the day, spending the other half finishing the game--and writing, of course.

I haven't actually had a chance to go much past the demo--I'm at the Citadel right after escaping the Solar system--but so far, I am loving this game.

As a player who loves Adepts, I was somewhat bothered by the fact that in ME1 and ME2 I really couldn't rely solely on my biotics. So far I've carried only a pistol and an SMG I've never used, and for long stretches of the first two missions I was using biotics exclusively. This ability to own the map without using my guns may not last, but for now? I am a Biotic GOD.

Now, ( Spoilers for those who haven't begun the game )

My daughter's preschool is a private P-6th school. We've had some issues there, primarily that they are more religious than they advertise; they are stuck in the 1950s socially (which we were concerned about when we signed her up, and were assured it wasn't as bad as it looked), etc. My wife talked with the VP about some of our concerns.

Today we got a letter saying that due to that conversation and a few others, they were not accepting our application for enrollment next year because it "would not be a harmonious relationship."

So now we have to scramble to get her a placement in another school for kindergarten next year. Which isn't impossible, but it's not something we wanted to have to deal with right now. We might send her to the local public school, but it isn't our first choice for several reasons.

It's been a week since my grandpa died. And I'm ok. I was numb and sad for several days, as you'd expect, but now it's begun to wear off. And truthfully, I've been expecting it for two years, since his stroke. I saw him a week or so earlier, and he'd been able to recognize me (which wasn't always the case), had smiled at me and looked me in the eye... now I think he knew it would be soon.

So. Life continues, according to the ancient patterns: I wake. I go to work. I play with my kid, kiss my wife, go to bed. Some other stuff happens in between these events if I'm lucky.

More soon.