It’s late, and I’m tired. So, very briefly:

• Lunch with my Mom today at a Chinese restaurant very near my work. Much fun.
• A productive day at work, if boring.
• Wrote a bit more of the VR story. Posted some.
• At a friend’s excellent suggestion, organized an impromptu Guy’s Night Out for tomorrow night. Can’t wait.

Tomorrow should be interesting, as I have a phone call with Saalon, an Otherspace meeting, plus GNO. Plus a few regular chores, such as backups. I’m looking forward to this; it’s just going to make for a busy day.

Speaking of backups, tomorrow is the last Saturday of the month, so I’ll be backing up the server, and burning backups to DVD. So, tomorrow will be even busier than usual.

Again, I really am looking forward to tomorrow; there are far, far worse fates than spending a day talking with friends, directing an animation team, and watching cheesy movies with other friends.

Another quiet day at work, helping out a few people and generally organizing things. I plan to spend tomorrow tucking in to at least one major project, which at this point will be a relief. Finally, something to do!

I had intended to spend the evening running errands, but once I got home, nuked a frozen dinner, and got into a comfortable chat with Saalon, I decided against it. Didn’t have an immediate need for any of it. I can do it tomorrow.

Or this weekend, unexpectedly, as Saalon’s not coming down as planned. His trip has been postponed until next weekend, as he’s plum tuckered out and needs a weekend to regroup. So, I have an unexpectedly empty weekend. Whatever shall I do? Lounge around doing nothing, I’m sure.

Yeah, right.

Spent the rest of the evening on various Otherspace business. Got the proof for the Summer Storm poster, and checked over the sites I’ll use to order business cards and t-shirts next week (I’m low on funds, so will have to wait until I get my August rent payment). I also uploaded our financial information for the second quarter of this year, posted it, and printed it out to distribute to everyone on Saturday.

Briefly: I paid the employees $2,100 last quarter. Phew. That’s not a surprise, though; it varies from about $1,500 to a little over $2,000 every quarter. It’ll be really interesting to watch this quarter, because of all the expenses for Otakon plus whatever money we get for selling all this merchandise.

Sure is fun, though. I’m going to be selling merchandise of characters I thought up a few months ago. Cool!

(Note: I ’ve uploaded an entry for yesterday.)

This morning was brutally hot, as it has been for the previous couple of days. Walk outside and summer sits on your shoulders, weighing you down, slapping you with heat. As I drank my orange juice this morning, I looked at my backyard and realized I hadn’t watered in a few days. Everything looked pretty good—I have a few pots, and the plants in them weren’t collapsed like dead soldiers—but I knew they’d need water.

Well. Work’s been very quiet lately, so I slipped home at lunch and spent half an hour watering. This might strike some as a horrid, boring chore, but I enjoyed it. Fun to imagine the grateful plants slurping up this life-giving liquid: Thank you, benevolent god, for this sustenance! they might have said.

OK, maybe I stood out in the sun too long.

Anyvay. Went back to work, helped out with some computer problems (and that’s fun, too, since I know what I’m talking about and can just calmly offer suggestions), and by the end of the day was very much ready to go home. Stopped off at a nearby grocery store, Wegman’s, and grabbed half a cart of prosaic grocery store items: beef, broccoli (guess what Chinese dish I’m making this weekend?), more orange juice, paper towels, a catfish filet, band-aids, bird seed, cotton balls. The latter were named something ridiculously generic like “soft swabs”…and I looked closely and discovered that it’s because they’re not 100% cotton any more; part synthetic. 80% recycled steel wool, for all I know.

I mention this list because when I’m checking out, I sometimes look at my purchases and wonder what they say about me. If I have friends coming over, seventy percent of my purchases are potato chips and soda, and if I’m unlucky enough to also be buying a carton of ice cream for myself and a box of stack of frozen dinners, I feel like yet another unhealthy bachelor.

But I can’t very well pull out pictures of my refrigerator and show the clerk the normal set of vegetables, fresh eggs, and meats in there, and that my cupboards are mostly oils, various sugars, flour, rice, etc. Because I get the oddest looks when I do that.

(Kidding!)

So I took my half-full cart outside…into the pouring rain. It was as though God had said to himself, “Shoot! I forgot to water Virginia!” and dumped a bucket on us. If it had been raining any harder, I would have been looking for a twister.

I looked at my basket: two full loads there. I looked back at the rain, and said to myself, “Oh well.” Grabbed two handfuls of bags, ran to the truck, tossed the bags in, and by the time I was back, I was completely soaked through. The return was more leisurely; the rain couldn’t get me any more wet. I was tempted to strip off my shirt when I got into the car, but (A) the sight of my white, naked chest would frighten passing motorists, and (B) I just don’t think it’s the right thing to do in public. We have shirts for a reason. I got into the truck, turned up the heat, and I was fine.

Got home, looked at the waterlogged garden, and thought: I’m so glad I came home from work at lunch to water my garden. Oh well; I really did enjoy myself, and who can live their lives at full efficiency?

Then, a good evening: changed into dry clothes, re-uploaded the Summer Storm artwork for a poster (and there’s a story), made a few phone calls, and watched two episodes of a Flash Gordon serial (and there’s another story).

And then, bed.

Brennen‘s been posting a multi-part essay (see part 1 and part 2) about the state of American primary education. He’s working very hard to make a case with which I generally agree. However, I want to argue two points.

One:

Our culture has codes of conduct. Note that I don’t mean arbitrary cultural beliefs; I’m talking about the standards embodied by the idea of dressing nicely when meeting with a customer. It’s a matter of good culture. We encourage kids to avoid swearing just like we encourage them to comb their hair.

Why? Because these things are important. Culture is important. When you belong to a group, it’s important to respect the cultural norms of that group.

I like the Rule of St. Benedict, because Benedict addresses these sorts of issues in a beautifully practical way: Societies need simple rules, and humans in those societies needs to humble themselves to obey those rules (unless harmful). The best societies mute power, and this is one of the ways in which they do that.

(Similarly, allowing any and all language unleashes those who use language to abuse others, both directly and indirectly. We all know people who, if given the chance, won’t shut up, abusing this power. Children have a particularly strong tendency towards this behavior.)

Anyvay. Two:

The problem here, I think, is a matter of scale.

Brennen describes the democratic and free-form Tamariki School as a school that, overall, works in the way he’d like. I agree. However, as he points out, Tamariki has around sixty pupils and nine paid adults.

What happens when you have to serve, not sixty kids, but six thousand? Will you be able to afford the same adult-student ratio, and will all the adults be as good teachers as the ones at Tamariki? No.

So, how do you ensure that the poor teachers at least get across the basics? Hand them a textbook and say, “Make sure the kids learn at least this much.”

Seriously, I think that education of the sort Brennen is advocating does not scale.

Note that this can be okay, depending on the type of education you want. If you want a holistic education that prepares a child ethically and philosophically, you can’t find it in public education. That sort of thing simply doesn’t scale up, from what I can see.

This is why I’d like to see public education become much more focused on skills. In my opinion, public education works best when it’s teaching something relatively straightforward, rather than coaching a child in concepts of freedom, personal responsibility, etc.

(Put another way, asking why public education can’t be like Tamariki is akin to asking why McDonald’s can’t serve six-course French meals. French cuisine works on a restaurant-by-restaurant basis, but not when you’re trying to serve fifty million customers a day.)

At least, that’s my take on it. Thoughts?

Hot day. As soon as I stepped outside, summer wrapped me in a thick blanket of heat and humidity. I practically staggered under its oppressiveness. More is expected tomorrow.

Which means…what, exactly? Par for the course in D.C. Our summers can be vicious brutes. A lot of people around here talk wistfully of moving to the Carolinas, where you still get the seasons but summers aren’t as nasty. Of course, they never move. D.C. has a double-whammy, two gravitic pulls: Politics and the Pentagon. Some member of your family is either stationed here, or serving a political party here. Of course, once your tour of duty is up or your party falls out of favor, you’ll move…but you’ll move to be with your family in Oklahoma. The Carolinas are the greener grass on the other side of the fence from D.C.

Boy, you can tell I wrote 547 words of fiction tonight, and in forty minutes.

Anyvay. Can’t sum up the day with any single word. Work was a grey blur; I accomplished quite a few jobs of various importance, but there’s nothing immediate or urgent drawing my attention. In fact, I spent a lot of the day working on things to prepare for the future. This is good, obviously, but it doesn’t focus the mind like a good emergency.

I came home determined to make some progress on home renovations, which has lapsed for a couple of months now, really. I got sick of the old Venetian blinds in my room yesterday, tore them down, and put up the curtains that had sat on the floor for months. That emboldened me to work on the house tonight. I don’t like to paint, but I had a few bits of trim and such that needed a coat or two of Ultra Pure White. So I taped them up, laid down old newspapers, popped a can of paint, and began painting.

…And enjoyed myself immensely. I had fun, and I’ve never had fun painting before. Perhaps it had to do with the empty house, me alone and the only person around to actually do anything, and actually doing it. Perhaps it was the simple success of accomplishing a task, right now. To quote a Terry Pratchett character: “She liked digging pits. You know where you are when you’re digging a pit.”

Then iTunes began playing Mozart’s “Ave verum Corpus,” which is my signal to start writing. So I did: 547 words of my modern fantasy novel. I’m now a hundred words shy of three thousand words, which is about 5%.

I guess it has been a good day.

Hey, I managed to update every weekday last week! Hurray for me.

Saturday was a quiet, lazy day, though “lazy” for me means that I completed ten tasks instead of twenty.

My primary goal this weekend is to catch up on Gundam Seed Destiny, so I watched a handful of episodes yesterday. I’m now up to episode 32 (out of 50, probably), so I ’m now well into the main plot. The show is finally establishing some solid characterization for one of the main characters who, up to now, has mostly just been a jerk.

But I’m impressed with Destiny thus far. I think it’s one of the better Gundam shows, which says a lot. It helps that it’s a dark show, and Gundam is often best when it’s flat-out serious.

I also made some Beef with Broccoli, thanks to a recently-purchased 1960′s book on Chinese cuisine. I haven’t been able to screw up any of the dishes yet, and the Beef with Broccoli turned out well (but a bit too salty). All these dishes are tremendously easy to make, too; just slice up some meat, slice up some vegetables, toss ‘em in an oiled pan for a few minutes at appropriate intervals, and you’re done.

Sasha the Space Corps Boy just left my house, where we had a great time watching the new Appleseed movie (I’m now annoyed by the reviews that sniffed at its mediocre plot; it’s little more than a high-powered action movie, but it does a great job at being one. The plot is somewhat complex, but this is not a deep movie, and it never pretends to be. That’s why there are mind-blowing action scenes literally every ten minutes.)

Let me back up. I had planned to have a mini-Redemption party at my house tonight, but nobody could make it. That was a good thing; I was feeling exhausted from this week anyway, and in fact came home early and slept for most of the afternoon. But Sasha called, saying that he’d be able to drop by, and I was thrilled that I’d be able to see him again.

So he stopped by, and we caught up, watched Appleseed, and swapped music. A very good thing, if just to spend some time with a good friend.

He also asked if I could drive him to Otakon, which I agreed to. Amusingly, after I attended Otakon alone last year (and suffered for it; cons are much less fun when you’re alone), this year I’ll be attending with six friends. Again, this is a very good thing.

…But, no, that’s not going to happen. I spent all evening on the phone doing business with Saalon, and vegging out in front of MST3K (“The Killer Shrews”), exhaustion seeping into my bones like dry rot. I’m beat. I’m so beat that I’m calling off a bunch of my commitments for this weekend, and plan to spend the next few days recharging.

I need it. Lots of good stuff this week, but too much of it. I feel like I’m burning a candle from four ends.

(I did manage to do a little weeding in the garden, and go through all the mail that had piled up since Monday. So, things got done, just not as much as I’d hoped. Which, of course, is typical, so why does this situation always disappoint me?)

The front page of today’s Wall Street Journal carries the story of a six-year-old who competes in sheep-riding competitions. That’s the entire story.

Slow news day, hmm?

(A real post later, I hope.)

This was the last day of the certification audit at work. As yesterday, I just had to wait for information requests, and today, I received none. I did attend the final briefing, at which I received a round of applause for my efforts.

So. A good day.

I arrived home, ate dinner, started a load of laundry, and received a phone message from a member of my role-playing group, who asked if we could switch role-playing to tonight. I glanced at the clock, swallowed the last gulp of my dinner, called him back, and accepted. I raced out to his place and they spent nearly three hours shooting cops (they’re members of the Mafia). Quite fun, though they’ve worked their characters into a corner: everyone hates them and they’ve been thrown into jail. I’ll have to come up with a way for them to get out and get on with saving the world.

And that’s been pretty much the entire day. I’d hoped to spend some of tonight recharging, but I can do that tomorrow night. Well, after I call Saalon to go over the Otherspace stuff, and before my big party Friday night.

This is turning into quite a week.

What a peculiar day.

I returned home from the game last night at midnight, trudged upstairs…and felt heat like an oven was left on. Now, my oven doesn’t work, and it’s not upstairs. Uh-oh. I went back downstairs and realized: Yesterday, I switched the A/C off so I could talk to a friend outside while standing next to the A/C unit and he wouldn’t think I was standing next to a running jet engine. I forgot to switch the A/C back on. That was late at night, so the house had stayed cool that night, but after the heat of the day, the upstairs felt like the Mojave at noon. I switched the A/C on, and it began to cool down a bit, but it takes awhile. Ah well; this is what shorts are for.

But I felt bad, because my roommate had come home that evening and had to suffer with a hot house all day. I’d also forgotten to switch off my bedtime alarm (my computer plays Mozart’s “Ave verum Corpus” at 9:00 p.m. each night, to remind me to stop what I’m doing), so that was softly playing Beethoven. Not the worst thing to be trapped in a house with, but still, a situation I wish I’d avoided.

This morning, I forced myself awake at 6:00 a.m. so I could get in to work by 7:30 so I could make a presentation at 8:00. Managed to shove myself through the motions until I got to work, where professionalism took over, and I brightly took my paperwork over to the meeting room: Nobody was there. I tried the meeting room next door: Full of people I’d never seen before. Hmmm.

I eventually made my way to the receptionist, who told me they were meeting in another building entirely. Ah; it would have been nice if I’d been informed this. So I marched over there, walked in…and was politely told that they were in the middle of a particular set of work and I wouldn’t be needed until 10:30. Oh.

A wonderful start to the day, which had the following general form: I would spend ten-minute bursts receiving information, entering it into their system, and printing out information. Then, I’d spend the next several hours waiting for more information. I couldn’t start anything else of importance, as they needed me able to respond to requests quickly. So I spent the vast majority of the day in a holding pattern. Odd.

But by arriving at 8:00 and eating lunch at my desk, I could leave at 4:00, stop by the grocery store, and be home by 5:00, in time to catch up on chores (bring the garbage can around back, empty the dishwasher, refill the bird feeders, water the pots in the garden), make a quick dinner of pan-seared tilapia and corn, and bang this out, before heading off to writer’s group at 7:00.

(Those chores are odd things; I was always afraid that I’d get intensely bored by them, want to fob them off on other people. But no, not yet, not with my own house. Maybe someday I’d let other people do these things, if I simply don’t have the time, but it would be a sad response to a need.)

Writer’s Group was sparsely attended—just me and two others—and we discussed the need for more content. After batting around a few ideas, someone suggested each person writing a story based on a photograph. I volunteered, and just sent everyone a link to this photograph:

What germ of story does that conjure up to you?