§ This was our first truly snowy week of the season. Not cleaning out the garage last fall truly came back to bite me when I couldn’t find an ice scraper as I was rushing off to work in the morning. I resorted to using a broom.
§ We recently passed the halfway point for this school year. I would say that this first year of teaching has been… not as bad as I expected? It is tricky to assess accurately though. Conversations with other teachers led me to set extremely low expectations for this year so it would almost be difficult to not exceed them. I am sure it helps that, at the ages I teach (K-5), the low points have been surprisingly self-contained — i.e. even if Monday is a really difficult day, Tuesday is a fresh start.
It will be really interesting to look back at this year in the future and see how this current assessment holds up. Maybe it really has been a relatively smooth year. Maybe I have been flying by the seat of my pants this whole time and not allowing myself to realize it. Time will tell.
§ I just realized that apparently I haven’t had a functioning voicemail since switching phone carriers three-ish months ago. It is really a testament to how unimportant phone calls have become over time that it has taken me this long to notice. At the same time, it has revealed a fatal flaw in my practice of never answering calls from unknown numbers under the assumption that anyone attempting to contact me about anything important will always leave a voicemail. Oops.
§ Links
- Who predicted 2022?
- Scott Alexander analyzes the results of his 2022 prediction contest
- Zvi reviews the movie M3GAN
- Disfrustrating puzzles
- Randall Munroe shares some of his grandfather’s hand-drawn puzzles
- The wonders of Google Street View
- Eryk Salvaggio made a short film using generative AI
- The contagious visual blandness of Netflix by Haley Nahman
- Pegasus documentary by PBS Frontline
§ Recipes
- Pasta with fennel, sausage, and arugula
- One of my favorite super fast weeknight meals. I typically add kalamata olives and ricotta cheese. Definitely don’t skip the lemon juice.
- Mushroom risotto
- I made this on Friday for the first time in at least a year. It was really good! I forgot to add peas and parsley though, which I remembered after the fact are worthwhile additions. I might try adding a little more white wine next time too.