2018.10 minutiae

  • Hey, all⁠—this is going to be pretty brief, since the teacher credentialing program I’m in is all‐consuming and I don’t really have time for anything else.  My days currently go like this:

    • Wake up around 6:30 a.m., wash up

    • Go to the high school

    • Observe and/or teach classes until 1:30 p.m.

    • Eat lunch

    • Get on the train and sleep for 45 minutes

    • Arrive at the university, go to seminar

    • After seminar, tutor test prep for a couple of hours

    • Get on the train and sleep for another 45 minutes

    • Walk to the car I parked 14 hours earlier, drive home

    • Make dinner, watch Masterchef Australia rerun

    • Do homework

    • Get some non‑train sleep

    Anything I write for the next while will have to be mostly during those rare windows of time when I am on the train but not sleepy, so don’t expect much.  Sorry!

  • I have been able to keep up with a few comics, and am currently picking up some titles that aren’t my usual thing: historically I have very rarely followed the X‑Men, but I am now getting X‑Men Red, and I had barely even heard of Domino, but now count Domino as one of my favorite reads each month.  In a sense, this just goes to show that writers matter more than characters: Tom Taylor is great, and Gail Simone is great, and thus any title they’re writing is sure to be great.  And yet!  While I can happily follow my favorite writers from Iron Man to Wolverine and from Thunderbolts to Karnak… I just can’t make the jump to DC.  I’ve tried more times than I can remember but it just never takes.  Even when it’s Priest⁠—I tried following Deathstroke for a long while but DC just bounces off me.  I don’t get how I can pick up a comic featuring a Marvel character I know nothing about, and who therefore might as well be a DC character, and respond, “Hot diggity! Can Gail Simone ever tell a story!”, but then look at a DC book by the same writer and have it do nothing for me.

  • I am still playing host to the cat I have mentioned in these minutiae entries from time to time, and it has helped to clarify the qualities I would be looking for should I ever adopt a cat of my own.  Like, for the most part this cat is great.  Is she playful?  You bet!  She is up for playing with her cat toys for as long as you are.  Ah, but can she make her own entertainment?  Again, yes: she’s one of the most curious cats I have ever encountered, and can spend hours investigating any little doodad she can find (e.g. a twist‑tie or a sprig of parsley), or examining every last nook and cranny of the room she’s in. She’s also intelligent enough to have discovered how to get into all sorts of places I would have thought were inaccessible, and has figured out how doors work⁠—she can’t actually work them, lacking thumbs and all, but I have caught her batting at the deadbolt lock and then at the doorknob since she’s seen that that’s the pattern that gets the door open.  She’s even chatty and will converse with you using an impressive variety of different meows.

    And then you try to pet her and she either turns into a mulching mower or just nopes on outta there.

  • I went to the supermarket and dangling under the sign for Aisle 10 were a couple of informational placards with the following message:

    Dang, that early puberty trend is getting out of control.

  • Here’s an ad in front of a store on University Avenue that I thought was pretty audacious:

    For reals?  C’mon, this is on a par with those student body election flyers in middle school that say “SEX! Now that I got ur atention vote 4 Brad!”  (I guess with an addendum that, note, if you vote for Brad you will not actually receive sex.)

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