Saturday 30 September 2017

Now Teaching: Week 4

It all came together on Wednesday. Now it’s a bit of a waiting game. Meanwhile, I pulled together a computer assignment and didn’t hand it out yet, so mild reprieve with school. Thursday I didn’t go to a math thing, Saturday I didn’t go to a social thing. I’m sort of mending. As a reminder that for everything that ends there’s more things starting up, I got news on Friday about being 6/152 for the I&I Rose Story Writing, as well as being accepted as a writer for the Time Travel Nexus.
Previous INDEX Next

So, many good things that would feel more good if I wasn’t so spent. But other teachers are feeling similarly, so I know a chunk of this is simply the job. And the fact that I frigging care, which adds exhaustion. Anyway, I now have new pants. Onwards?

*
Item counts run Sunday (Sept 24) to Saturday (Sept 30).

Step Count 2016: About 62,500.
STEP COUNT 2017: Over 65,500. 14 stars.

THIS TIME LAST YEAR:
-Had an eye appointment, queued T&T for all Oct, started playing Sakura Dungeon.

SchoolMail 2016: 74 (2 sent)
SCHOOL EMAIL 2017: 131 New (19 sent)
We have completed DAY 19.



TEACHING RELATED ITEMS:
 -Stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. Including an On Call.
 -Returned first test, it still takes me a week. Two hadn’t written.
 -Pins: Mayu, Stardust, Miku, Avanna, Xin Hua.

WRITING + ART RELATED ITEMS:
 -Thursday stArt Faire Comic Chat.
 -Drew, inked comic for Oct 2.
 -Drew, inked comic for Oct 9.

OTHER ITEMS:
 -Caught premiere of “Star Trek Discovery”. At 2 hrs, I’m counting it.
 -Tuesday Yoga class.
 -Wednesday medical appointment.
 -Saturday brunch with friends.
 -Cut lawn, did sweeping and yard work



UPCOMING FOR SURE:
 -Math Meeting Monday. Cappies training Tuesday. ALP due in. Progress Reports. Play at the NAC. Flying home for Thanksgiving. GAH.

STUFF I MAY NEVER GET TO:
 -Recap for ConBravo 2017
 -Write a TANDQ article on Polling and Bias
 -Write a post about types of praise/encouragement
 -Read some of the books sitting at my desk


RH Stress Level: 7 (Starlight Breaker)

Saturday 23 September 2017

Now Teaching: Week 3

This week was supposed to be lighter. Not so much. For mostly good reasons. We’re at daily injections, which makes little sense unless you know me well. Still, all the things are happening at once, which is rough. A lot rough, I’m back on the potato chips. And stress levels definitely reached 9, but on average I think we’re still 8?
Previous INDEX Next

Here’s the social media post I put up, which is relevant:
“I suppose it might be prudent to clarify my posts this month so that people aren't worrying about me, or so that if they are, they're at least worrying about the right things. The problem is, all the things are happening. Bad things. Good things. Everything.
My coping mechanism in such cases is to take things about six hours at a time. If I look at a full 24 hours (or more) at once, the howler monkeys can take a foothold, and all is lost. Six hours. Sometimes four. This is not unusual, it tends to be how I survive around exam time. But it's happening in September, and has been for about two weeks straight now, and that's unusual.

All the things. Teaching, for the first time in 14 months. Years of medical issues (that I'm not bringing up on social media) are peaking. Technology issues, after 10 YEARS of lying fallow, are back with a vengeance, in the worst timing possible. I've resumed doing role-play, which frankly I need right now, though it is another thing. And other things in my life continue, like secretary work, replays of my writing efforts, and social forums online.


I am cutting back on those last. I HAVE to cut back. I'm trying not to cut back on all the things I enjoy (like my comic). I'm trying not to cut back on things that will be problematic in two weeks time (like work emails). I am starting to forget things. Sometimes things that happened half an hour ago. This worries me, but at least I'm aware of it. My window is six hours going forwards, not back.


This week was supposed to be better. I can say it hasn't been worse. I can do another six hours. Or at least another four. Then I'll re-evaluate.”


*
Item counts run Sunday (Sept 17) to Saturday (Sept 23).

Step Count 2016: About 67,900.
STEP COUNT 2017: Over 61,500. 14 stars.
Didn’t reach 7500 today. It’s all slipping a bit to maintain sanity.

THIS TIME LAST YEAR:
-Felt like I’d be busy until end of year. But with writing, etc.

SchoolMail 2016: 76 (1 sent)
SCHOOL EMAIL 2017: 138 New (22 sent)
We have completed DAY 14. Emails are harder to track, I’m filing them away into separate folders.



TEACHING RELATED ITEMS:
 -Came up with a new coding assignment to buy time. Didn’t help.
 -Dept meeting Monday lunch. Clubs Day Wednesday issues/Anime Club.
 -“Meet the Teacher” BBQ evening.
 -Marked two sets of quizzes, one from each math class. Like last week.
 -This section blurs fast. Re-developed math lessons a bunch?
 -Also dealing with benefits problem, other emails.
 -Pins: Xin Hua, Maika, none, Miku, Avanna.

WRITING + ART RELATED ITEMS:
 -Thursday StArt Faire Comic Chat.
 -Inked, scanned, coloured comic for Sept 25.
 -Wrote an “Epsilon Project” serial entry.

OTHER ITEMS:
 -Monday dinner with friends.
 -Tuesday Yoga class.
 -Wednesday medical appointment.
 -Friday medical appointment.
 -Saturday RPG Gaming after creating Torg character

UPCOMING FOR SURE:
 -Wednesday medical.

STUFF I MAY NEVER GET TO:
 -Recap for ConBravo 2017
 -Write a TANDQ article on Polling and Bias
 -Write a post about types of praise/encouragement
 -Read some of the books sitting at my desk


RH Stress Level: 8 (Starlight Breaker, Extension)

Saturday 16 September 2017

Now Teaching: Week 2

Glerk. I’m not sure how I pulled through this past week. Thursday night was my only free night, in that I used it to get quizzes marked and figure out some new programming things for students to play with. Because that new CompSci course remains a horror show. I still have to research... everything, frankly, and come up with new coding assignments, ones that aren’t ones they saw the previous year. And no one can really help me, because my teaching style is different. Well, okay, actual tech help might be good.
Previous INDEX Next

This week I had a network fail for where things save making me a wreck first thing Monday (I have no backup plan any more), and downloading assignments is a pain (half hour shot on Friday), and you can’t run Processing off a plug-in hard drive, and less people use Google Classrooms than I thought, and one person already has one player pong going while another is struggling with how static images overlap. FML. Missing that class for medical reasons once was simultaneously a relief, and problematic in that my personal life remains complicated.

I’m trying to stay positive. But I took today (Saturday) off. I had to. And not only because I got some feedback on my writing that I wanted to address.

*
Item counts run Sunday (Sept 10) to Saturday (Sept 16).

Step Count 2016: About 76,300.
STEP COUNT 2017: Over 69,000. 19 stars.

THIS TIME LAST YEAR:
-Went to BC with Anne-Lise. Considered making these posts into a newsletter.

SchoolMail 2016: 45 (2 sent)
SCHOOL EMAIL 2017: 129 New (21 sent)
We have completed DAY 9.



TEACHING RELATED ITEMS:
 -Monday, math meeting and typing up minutes
 -Tuesday, staff meeting
 -Wednesday, Teacher’s Council meeting
 -I can’t even daily. Friday was insane, especially at lunch.
 -Pins: Maika, Mayu, Miku, Stardust, Avanna.

WRITING + ART RELATED ITEMS:
 -Thursday stArt Faire Comic Chat. Upgraded to CTP VIP.
 -Wrote a bit more of my comic into October.
 -Sketched out comic for Sept 25.

OTHER ITEMS:
 -Sunday niece’s birthday lunch.
 -Monday dinner with friends as I tried not to melt down.
 -Tuesday yoga classes restarted.
 -Wednesday medical appointment, left materials for one class.
 -Friday NAC musical “Onegin”. (Ran into teacher there...)

UPCOMING FOR SURE:
 -Dept mtg. Medical appointments. Meet the Teacher BBQ. RPG.

STUFF I MAY NEVER GET TO:
 -Recap for ConBravo 2017
 -Write a TANDQ article on Polling and Bias
 -Write a post about types of praise/encouragement
 -Read some of the books sitting at my desk


RH Stress Level: 8 (Starlight Breaker, Extension)

Saturday 9 September 2017

Now Teaching: Week 1

Oh right, teaching. Tues through Thurs evenings I was trying to pull together CompSci work, having used my prep for paperwork (new phones!) and handling my actual math courses. Next week will be worse, meetings almost every day. >.< Don’t get me wrong, I actually like meetings, but I don’t like worrying about being able to teach the next day as I attend them. The stress will continue because of this, even through this weekend.
Previous INDEX Next

Google/Gmail randomly shutting down my course website midday on the first day didn’t improve things. I put in a ticket. It seemed to be back by end of day Wednesday with no further communication. (Apparently happened to Denise once too.) I was going to set up this series’ Index page Tuesday, forgot, put in a placeholder Friday, need to get to that. “Epsilon” took priority.

For steps, I knew we’d lose the 20 stars streak. But 7500 per day is feasible; looks like an average teaching day is about 6,000 steps, followed by another 1,000 (to get a single star at 10 minutes of more intense activity) by going out for a jog later. Also this week, nice chat with a colleague, and in general people (students included) seem happy to see me around. My ability to handle names feels even worse though. I’ve reinstated the nametag random seating thing. I guess we’ll see how it all fits together.

*
Item counts run Sunday (Sept 3) to Saturday (Sept 9).

Step Count 2016: About 49,000.
STEP COUNT 2017: Over 69,800. 14 stars.
Half the stars on the weekend (Sun/Sat).

THIS TIME LAST YEAR:
-Labour Day Parade, CanCon 2015 posts, and start of CanCon 2016. (Also when I got RWBY from Scott, so took 11 months to get to that.)

SchoolMail 2016: 57 (1 sent)
SCHOOL EMAIL 2017: 79 New (16 sent)
We have completed DAY 4.



TEACHING RELATED ITEMS:
 -Monday, Labour Day Parade
 -Tuesday, figuring out Wednesday (mostly CS)
 -Wednesday, figuring out Thursday (mostly CS)
 -Thursday, figuring out Friday (made new learning strats sheet)
 -Friday was weirdly calm
 -pins: Miku. Stardust. Xin Hua. Avanna.

WRITING + ART RELATED ITEMS:
 -Created Meme comic update to provide extra buffer
 -Thursday stArt Faire Comic Chat
 -Wrote an “Epsilon Project” serial entry.

OTHER ITEMS:
 -Monday at underground exhibition Kontinuum with Anne-Lise
 -Met financial advisor on Wednesday
 -RP on Saturday with friends (as Ezren of Pathfinder)

UPCOMING FOR SURE:
 -Niece birthday, Math meeting, Staff meeting, Medical appointment, Council meeting, NAC play, possible Cappies and Anime club meetings. Ow.

STUFF I MAY NEVER GET TO:
 -Recap for ConBravo 2017
 -Write a TANDQ article on Polling and Bias
 -Write a post about types of praise/encouragement
 -Read some of the books sitting at my desk


RH Stress Level: 6 (Break Shoot)

Friday 8 September 2017

Now Teaching: Index

This is (going to be) an index page! I will possibly get back to editing it tonight. Or not. Basically, when one is teaching, there is definitely a list of priorities towards staying sane while getting things done. (Okay, it's an index now.)

What makes this year more interesting? I took a year off (Not Teaching) in 2016-2017 before returning to work here (Now Teaching) in 2017-2018. Couple that with teaching a new course (I did teach a variant of it in 2007, but it's tech, everything changes) and... yeah. Away we go. Fingers crossed.

I anticipate much horror for the first month or two (Sept/Oct), followed by spikes of uncontrollable sobbing during the usual worst months of the year (January, June, April and November in that order). There should be some bright spots as well though, and I can draw comparisons with statistics from when I wasn't teaching. Enjoy this look into a (strange) teacher's life.

Spoiler: Yeah, it didn't turn out the way I thought. At all.




PRELUDE


Week -8: July 2017. I'm very depressed.
Week -7: I CLEAN EVERYTHING.
Week -6: Stats video made, general reflection.
Week -5: Vacation to Stratford.

Week -4: August 2017. Mood swings! Start re-learning how to code.
Week -3: Stubbornly back to creative stuff.
Week -2: Final writing push, then back to programming.
Week -1: Crunch time. Fit in everything I can.
Week 0: Spent time at school. Allons-y.


FREIGHT TRAIN HITS


Week 1: Sept 2017. Working almost every night this week.
Week 2: CompSci remains a horror show.
Week 3: I start cutting back on life.
Week 4: Mild reprieve, stress backs off to 7/10.

Week 5: I haven't snapped yet.
Week 6: I'm dead inside.
Week 7: *SNAP*
Week 8: Medical leave.


THE GOOD DRUGS


Week 9: Nov 2017. A year of sick days are gone now.
Week 10: A not-exactly-helpful return.
Week 11: Report cards done, writing's happening too.
Week 12: Stress level's dropped to 5/10.

Week 13: Dec 2017. Juggling responsibilities.
Week 14: The anti-anxiety drugs are helping?
Week 15: Not thinking about the holidays yet.
Week 16: A roller coaster ride of a week.
Week 17: Survived the year. Now what.


WE HAVE NORMALITY?


Week 18: Jan 2018. Got all my creative stuff set up.
Week 19: School's working out so far.
Week 20: Why am I not panicking, it's troubling me.
Week 21: School musical's been ramping up.

Week 22: Feb 2018. Semester turnaround's a bitch.
Week 23: Settling back into full time (math).
Week 24: My comic takes centre stage on Discord.
Week 25: Extra-curriculars ramping back up. 6/10.


BUSY BUT DOABLE


Week 26: Mar 2018. Almost 100,000 steps.
Week 27: Somehow caught up, so movie time.
Week 28: March Break mixed bag.
Week 29: Interviews, clinics... we're back.
Week 30: Unmotivated on school, assembled a crib.

Week 31: Apr 2018. Taking it day by day.
Week 32: Working things out for report cards.
Week 33: Weird weather has the assist.
Week 34: A birthday amid the meetings.


MAD RUSH RETURNS


Week 35: May 2018. Prep and trip to OAME conference.
Week 36: Did not go as planned.
Week 37: Busy everywhere, mood swings.
Week 38: Stress levels rising.

Week 39: June 2018. How am I getting this stuff done.
Week 40: Stress eating. I know that I know nothing.
Week 41: Great time to get sick. Not.
Week 42: Grading pile grows, as does the family.Week 43: 

Saturday 2 September 2017

Now Teaching: Week 0

I will be coming back after a year away from teaching. There were nine weeks until the start of school (which is right after labour day) but any teacher who doesn’t come in at least once in the week prior to that (to figure out classroom setup, make photocopies, et cetera, all at no pay) is crazy. So if that’s “Week 0”, we’re... there. That happened.
Previous INDEX Next

I’ve been a little bit all over the map this week, but I guess average stress was the same? Wednesday’s the only weekday I didn’t leave the house to do something teaching related. I think maybe I’m good for the first day of classes? Not for the days after though, those remain very sketchy. So I guess I got in as much writing as I could. I also did that summer summary post, which crystallized where the last few months have gone (I know where 2016 went).

Housekeeping - from “may never get to” - nixing “weed through/organize emails”, I probably got as much of that done in passing as I ever will. Also “French Citizenship project” because I don’t want it glaring at me for the next 10 months, it’s definitely a summer project at minimum due to the paperwork. And “series on BIAS” for similar reasons. I may junk the articles next week, we’ll see. I guess I’ll keep books; I still have too many to even enumerate separately.

In two days, everything changes. I won’t be able to stay up on Monday to watch all of “Radio Dead Air”, for one.

*
Item counts run Sunday (Aug 28) to Saturday (Sept 2).

Step Count 2016: About 57,550.
STEP COUNT 2017: Over 68,000. 20 stars.

THIS TIME LAST YEAR:
-Posted ConBravo recaps, continued T&T rewrites, read and walked.

SchoolMail 2016: 22 (2 sent)
SCHOOL EMAIL 2017: 59 New (13 sent)



TEACHING RELATED ITEMS:
 -On Monday got keys, did physical room setup, checked logins, etc
 -On Tuesday, PD session downtown
 -Organized all the electronic clutter from school
 -On Thursday, cleaned up files, learned Google Classroom
 -On Friday, finalized course outlines, photocopied

WRITING + ART RELATED ITEMS:
 -Coloured “Epsilon” image and wrote a behind the scenes post
 -Coloured banner/intro and launched on Tapas(tic)
 -Thursday stArt Faire Comic Chat
 -Drew and inked strip for this Monday
 -Drew and inked strip for next Monday



OTHER ITEMS:
 -MosaiCanada exhibition with family
 -Dinner with much friends Monday
 -Lawn care (mowing and weeding)
 -Dining with in-laws
 -Saturday brunch with friends

UPCOMING FOR SURE:
 -TEACHING OMG WTF. Also Labour Day Parade.

STUFF I MAY NEVER GET TO:
 -Recap for ConBravo 2017
 -Write a TANDQ article on Polling and Bias
 -Write a post about types of praise/encouragement
 -Read some of the books sitting at my desk


RH Stress Level: 5 (ACS Standby)

Friday 1 September 2017

Summer's End 2017

Like always, the end of August is more of a conclusion to a year than the end of December could ever hope to be. I wrote one of these “summer wrap-up” posts for 2013, 2014 and 2015. In 2016, I was off work, but now we’re back into old habits. Here, have a “Year of Summer” AMV (courtesy my AMV Friday #49, 2014).



Am I ready to go back on Tuesday? Yes and no. There are things I didn’t get done, but I think that will always be the case - for 60 weeks, I was always on the go. My reluctance is more a fear of being overwhelmed, particularly now that I’m back in a tech class after 10 years. (Verified: My old files are from 2007.) It’s not only the new material, it’s a whole new way of evaluating and delivering content too. On the flip side, it’s good to reconnect with people and colleagues, the bank account is nearly drained, and one hopes that I’ll be making a difference out there.

Oooh, the waking up before 8am is going to be painful though.


LESSONS LEARNED


Before going into a roundup of the old categories, there’s a few things I realized about myself in the past year or so.

1) I Cannot Focus. The only exception to this seems to be in my writing, when I can vanish for a few hours as I play with my characters - but even then, sometimes I need to walk away for a bit. Or I’m distracted by a shiny thing. Or I’m scrolling through Twitter to confirm I’m not crazy. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing... until you pair it with grading.

I have this mental block on grading, where I feel like I need to be as consistent as possible (perfectionism!), hence a need to do a full class set at the same time. So I procrastinate, not wanting to do a half hour here and a half hour there. But then I can’t FOCUS for a three hour long stretch of grading papers. And at exam time, there’s too much of it, and everything blows up.

I don’t really have a solution for this yet, aside from trusting in my ability to recall what I do in a sequence of short bursts (which is a thing I’m capable of, my memory’s good). But the diagnosis is something of an eye opener.

2) I Am That Damn Introverted. Often when out with friends, or even when spending time with family, I’d stress out over the other things I needed to be doing. Mostly school related things, like quizzes sitting on my desk. But remove the job, and the deadlines, and I STILL stress the SAME. Turns out I simply can’t be around people longer than about two hours.

Oh, it’s different in a classroom, because I’m not having to wrack my brain to come up with social questions or charming details about my life - we’re there for math. Or tech, or drama, or whatever, there’s a PURPOSE. I can do purpose. I can’t do extended before dinner conversations. Which is not because of other commitments or time management, I simply get tapped out spiritually. So yeah.

3) The Week Starts on Sunday. I’ve posted my weekly summaries for 60 weeks now on Saturday nights. I think this is in large part because my step counter summaries end the week then, so it makes those tallies easy. But by documenting Saturday, I find myself doing OTHER things on that day, so that I can mark them complete before the next week starts. Like drafting posts, lawn care, or what have you. I then start the week not by waking up at 7am, but with a day open for anything that didn’t get done.

With those universal truths out of the way, let’s break the rest down as usual.


WORK RELATED


I went to “Twitter Math Camp” in July 2016 (and the Desmos Pre-Conference). Math debates still tickles at my senses, but in the name of not changing over 10% of one’s practice in a semester to stay sane, teaching programming would seem to be that 10%. Let’s file debates away for another year. I also went to the French AFEMO conference in October 2016. I participated in the MTBoS January 2017 initiative again. And this past month I’ve been trying to re-teach myself programming.

Through COMA I also ended up coordinating emails for a conference (that didn’t have the numbers in the end), and I did present at uOttawa with Cathy. My online video on the Cubic Formula has played well (just hit 900 views in 14 months, making it about 9 times more popular than my other videos combined). There was an accompanying post. I did another Christmas video, and another video last month. Two per year seems to be the limit. I also got my files organized.

I finished JLV’s “This is Not a Test” book (bought at TMC). I got no further in “Fooled by Randomness” (by Nassim Taleb). I caught up in all my Conference Recap Blogging. I didn’t go to OAME 2017 because they were full by the time I thought to register. I did just attend a PD on Aug 29th, not sure if I’ll blog that or not. A blog post I made about MTBoS and ITeachMath gained some traction.


UPKEEP RELATED


Finally cleaned up my home office. And organized all the boxes of old materials downstairs that my parents brought me. And hung pictures, and the spoon rack. Installed new smoke alarms, learning about electrical wiring. Cleaned the back deck (last done in 2015). Swept out downstairs and cleaned the air filter. Removed rust from shears. Installed netting on the eavestroughs to keep out leaves. Cleaned the ice out of the freezer in May.


We had to replace the air conditioner (2016) and washer/dryer (2017), which was a downer, but hopefully that won’t be an issue for years to come now. The car broke down briefly in October (which led to the attending AFEMO) and later the airbag component was replaced. Also, just called insurance to tell them the car’s being driven back to work, so $10 more expensive per month. Trimmed hedges in 2016. Also we renegotiated our mortgage.

On the personal side, I kept with the TLC (Therapeutic Lifestyle Clinic) program through to last month (the program’s now effectively dissolved, but I can still book an appointment). Related, I think nothing of walking to and from the store - or yoga sessions, which I have now maintained for a full year. I did get a persistent tingling in my left arm in January, went to the doctor, and have since had some massages. Got new glasses in October 2016. Depression is still a thing, I hope I continue to keep it at bay.

Family-wise, a wire transfer was done in early 2017, we’re into the third attempt at treatments. Me and Anne-Lise went to British Columbia in September 2016 and Stratford (Ontario) in July 2017.


HOBBY RELATED


Went to ConBravo in July 2016 AND July 2017. Went to CanCon in 2016 (including a workshop). Went to Anime North in 2017. I’ve caught up in all the serials I follow, and in the webcomics I’ve latched onto this summer as well. Not quite caught up in blogging (owing to ConBravo 2017) but a lot was pushed out.


From July through October 2016, I wrote “Time & Tied” Book 4. In a sense it was edits, but there were massive changes and lots of completely new scenes. Those 26 parts would later get published to my serial blog. From November through December 2016 I wrote 90,000 words in “The Girl Who Speaks With Algebra”, an LGBTQ/math crossover story in first person female. Yup, I did NaNoWriMo. That would get edited in April 2017 (with Camp NaNoWriMo) and the first 10,000 words were submitted to “Ink & Insights” (results in this past month) to good reviews.

T&T Commentary posts were written, and more T&T drawings were done towards the end. I wrote a TANDQ article in December 2016. I dropped my math comic in August 2016 because (as usual) it was an echo chamber, focussing on T&T - but I resumed the comic on October 31st and have kept it running weekly ever since. In April I even created an entire Personified Math Series BIBLE, with new sketches of most old characters (except fractals) and historical data to match (this after putting navigation tables into old entries). And I even got fan art for a couple months, whoa. Launched the comic on Tapas(tic) yesterday.

I did guest posts for Stable’s serial, the website Time2TimeTravel, Drew’s serial site, and an April Fool for both serial (Fantasia) and webcomic (M9 Girls). I gave a writing interview in December for Alastair Luft (appeared in January). Edits on all of T&T were done to make small parts for RRL (plus changing Woodlands’ location) as well as to make characters sound less like technical journals. (“Algebra” went on Wattpad, was less well received.)

“Epsilon” started a new arc to start of June 2016, with a new emblem and story art. “Marmalade Mercury”, a fanfic begun in Dec 1996 was finally finished after a 16 year hiatus. “Off Target”, a temporal lemon was written. A number of shorter stories were put on the blog (including post 300). “No Reason” (post 200) was revamped into “Free Will” and “Relative Change” was written (both submitted into the ether and rejected).


I transcribed old “mathNEWS” columns into the computer. I started a new column, “Series Scan”, watching all 24 eps of /Steins;Gate/, 24 eps of /Certain Magical Index/, 24 eps of /Certain Scientific Railgun II/, 12 eps of /Erased/ and Volume One of RWBY. (Also caught up in /Sailor Moon Crystal/ in Summer 2016, no blogging.)

I watched far too much “Andromeda” (blogged about it ALL), “Stargate” (skeleton of a blog post exists for 200), and “Mayday” (no blog planned). I kept up with “Supergirl”, “Agents of SHIELD”, “Timeless”, “Doctor Who” and “The Librarians”. Caught up with “Bones”, which then had it’s last season. To a lesser extent, I also saw many pieces of “Castle” and “Wynonna Earp” (and Star Trek reruns).

I stayed tapped into the pulse of the WebFictionGuide Forums. Thanks to AngelicEmpress, via another forum, I found a Discord community of webcomic authors (connected through StArt Faire, a monthly publication) and have participated in weekly chats for a couple months now. I’ve tuned into “Radio Dead Air” pretty regularly for community and media purposes. Also, I bought and played “Sakura Dungeon”, just because, so there.


MISCELLANEOUS


Made it to the Fringe Festival in June for some plays, along with the usual ones at the NAC. Also events at the Aviation Museum (Star Trek, “Doors Open Ottawa”, Global rallycross, eclipse). I figured out slightly more complex recipes in terms of cooking, being in charge of dinner most nights; that’s why Rose knows how to cook fish.

Celebrated our 9th anniversary at a new restaurant (and the 8th happened in there too). Gathered all the Doritos Guardians and won a movie pass, that was weird. Finally put in paperwork to replace my red stripe health card. Dealt with benefits switchover too.


WHERE TO NEXT


What DIDN’T happen? Well, T&T Book 5 aka “Time Untied” still needs a kick start. I never did anything with Simon’s story “The Last Magical Girl” either. And actual READING wasn’t a thing, as far as physical books go (versus online).

I managed to get through “The Temporal Element II”, a collection of time travel short stories. I then started reading James Gleik’s “Time Travel” in early February. I’m still reading it. Behind it are “Doomsday Book” (Xmas gift, I did start it, wasn’t pulled in), “All Our Wrong Todays” (b’day gift), “Air Awakens” (gift from #K8Chat over a year ago, the chat doesn’t even exist now), “Making Comics” (b’day gift), “Random Dingoes” (CanCon 2015), “You’re Never Weird on the Internet” (found in Stratford), “Thinking in Numbers” (bought in 2014), “Mindset” (from my former principal), “Finding Zero”, and at least a half dozen others. I am not a fast reader.


What else? Well, at one point I was going to turn my weekly posts into a newsletter. Nope. That column “Becoming Informed About Statistics” (BIAS)? Nope. And I still can’t market. Tumblr never really worked out, and while I’ve joined reddit and Instagram, I haven’t done anything with them. There’s also the low song parody output, but I can accept that two per year is my speed.

I’m also writing without a buffer on all three blogs. This blog still needs ConBravo posts, my serial site’s “Epsilon” vote closes Saturday, and my math comic has written content only for the next month. Yet I applied to write for the “Time Travel Nexus”, we’ll see how that works out (applications close Sept 15th).

I guess that’s it. 60 weeks of “summer”, done. Thanks for reading, consider following one of the aforementioned blogs as I continue to try and churn out content. Assuming I can function for a full day, after getting out of bed at 7am. >.<