"Mostly-weekly"

Haha! Maybe on average, given that I was posting daily for a good stretch in March, but it's now been almost three months since my last post.

There are several reasons for that.

One, I just couldn't keep pace with the MCU reflections and reviews when we were watching a film each day. That was especially true once we returned to "remote learning" following spring break.

It wasn't a break at all for me; I spent several hours each day of it prepping materials that were then shared through Google Classroom with my 9 classes of students once the break was done.

The weeks that followed that were full identifying the students who qualified to participate in the program for academically talented students that I coordinate and teach. A great deal of the data and processes usually used for that were unavailable, so considering alternatives, sharing and discussing those with our district leaders, and then communicating (and, when questioned, justifying) those to many teachers, principals, and parents were all huge untertakings.

Communicating with the parents and teachers of qualifying students took me all the way through early June.

Whew.

Also: there's Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It's been about a decade since I dove into an AC game. Our copy was shipped to us on March 25th, and it's been a comfortable and captivating second life since. I can't think of another game that's had a more tragically fortuitous release - an escapist game with intentional community components, arriving right at the time that gamers were given carte blanche to stay at home for days and weeks and months at a time. I sense the intensity with which many played it is waning - for us, too - but I still log at least a couple hours every day, sometimes much more than that if I am up early and Melanie is watching something at night in which I'm not interested.

Plans for Geek Fire Oil in these summer months:

1. I have notes on all the remaining MCU movies that we watched. I will compile those into posts at least once a week, in a looser format probably won't lend itself to as much structure or detail as those posts that came before. Our lives were ultra-structured in those weeks.

2. Comics are starting to release again. The 11th issue of my current favorite, Die, comes out today. I would like to get on a schedule where I respond to one individual comic or series every week, too.

3. Tech stuff. We are cutting the cable cord, and have started using alternatives already. I'll share what is and isn't working for us. There will probably also be posts about New Horizons since it's such a significant part of our recreation time right now.

4. I am playing in a Tales from the Loop online game with friends and also prepping work for a long, exciting, quirky Pathfinder 2nd Edition campaign (the Extinction Curse Adventure Path), so expect occasional posts about one or the other.

5. Noah and I have started collecting Marvel Legends again, so we'll share what's new with those - maybe some unboxing photos and videos that will be cross-posted to his YouTube.

6. Rasslin'. We watched Undertaker: The Last Ride on WWE Network and I have some thoughts on that, as well as the production of their shows through this pandemic/LEFTIST HOAX.

That should lead to at least a couple posts a week!

I'm also struggling to get started on the work of a distance learning Learners Edge course - much prefer in-person classes, but they are also significantly more costly, both from price and time perspectives - so there might be lapses in activity here when I am making headway on that work.

I hope these words find all who read them in good health and high spirits. Geek On.