Part of my reason for collating and reorganizing my former blog posts is that I have wanted to make a physical copy of them. Years ago, my original plan was to print them out myself and put them into binders--one for each year. However, Amazon publishing is now a viable alternative. My plan changed to putting the posts together, format them correctly, upload them to Amazon, and purchase a copy for myself. 

For some reason, I decided that I wanted to test that process today. With my newly collated posts from 2020 available, I decided to organize and format them. Despite the fact that the process took considerably longer than I anticipated (it's almost midnight, and I still didn't get the eBook version up), I found myself enjoying the work. 

There is a review process that takes about 72 hours. After that period of time, my book will be available on Amazon for me to purchase. It's a bit more expensive than Dragon Hunter as I have color pictures included and (surprisingly) the book is about a hundred pages longer.

This is going to be my test run. I will see if the final product is worth the time, energy, and $20 that it takes to have this book in my hands. I have no doubt that I will write a couple more posts on this as the book goes "live" on Amazon and then later arrives at my home.

The title is 2020 - Life in the Land of the Weird.

I just finished collating (albeit in reverse order) my blog posts from the year 2020. Looking at the year as a whole has been an interesting experience. In a sense, building these year-long documents feels like binge-watching an entire TV series. I'm able to see some of the larger patterns and strange ironies that appear from my own view of the world--as limited as that might be. 

Basically, it was a strange year by any measure. The emergence of COVID during the a time of a weak and disorganized government under an ineffectual yet grandstanding president was definitely the centerpiece. It seems that many people today seem to forget that it was Trump's administration that locked down business and public areas--albeit too late and with continued vacillation--ultimately leaving the policies up to each of the states (that's right; it was Biden who lifted those restraints). It was also under Trump that the wavering and inconsistences (as well as misinformation) spread about mask usage, vaccines, and treatments. 

One of the most frustrating parts for me to relive by going through that year's postings was the way that educators were treated. When schools were first shut down for the fourth quarter of the 2019-2020 school year, there were about three months when people were praising teachers and the work that they did. We were overloaded by the crisis and making miracles happen while having to entirely pivot our teaching methods over and over again. However, somehow the blame for schools being shut down was placed on teachers. People were angry that teachers weren't willing to risk their lives and the health of their loved ones. That sharp turn in public opinion was deliberate--fueled by anti-education groups who galvanized nationwide campaigns against overworked educators. They did the same for hospital staff as well.

When it became clear that he wasn't going to win the election, Trump started seeding doubt as to the validity of the election before it even took place. Somehow, the Great Lie started to take hold. I will say that I never expected it to continue with this level of force for so long. Every single court case involving the election demonstrated that there was no fraud, and yet the falsehood grew with a complete lack of evidence (which was somehow proof itself of a conspiracy). 

On a personal level, this was the year that my first grandchild was born. We also said goodbye to our exchange student from France, Chloé, whose time with us was cut short due to travel restrictions from COVID. Our septic system had to be completely replaced. We lost the use of our two-year-old refrigerator for over a month and ended up having to replace it entirely. Also, I finally managed to get a prospectus approved and was able to start actually working on my dissertation. 

There were toilet paper shortages. We had to get extremely creative with how we held graduation that year--an event that I ran. Our school made the switch to the full-block schedule and dealt with simultaneous in-person and remote learning that would occasionally become entirely remote. Church services were remote for a while and even dropped music entirely for a longer period of time than I liked. We had more funerals than any year except the next one. 

2020 is a year that will go down in infamy. Some of its repercussions can be felt today. It has thus far been the most difficult year of my life. 

I accidentally closed the window that had my current draft of today's post. When I reopened it (ctrl+shift+t is a helpful shortcut), the page was entirely blank. This is one of the problems with typing these directly on my website rather than writing them in a word processing application. It's happened enough that you would think that I would have learned my lesson by now, but here I am doing it again. The short-term convenience outweighs the significantly less frequent problems that show up.

Honestly, I wasn't a big fan of what I was writing anyway. The loss of those paragraphs is certainly not going to do anyone harm. The only issue is the amount of time that I lost writing them. 

I'll try to write something of more consequence tomorrow--and I'll try not to lose it.

Today's Gospel reading includes the famous parable often referred to as the Good Samaritan. In today's homily, we were informed that for the Jewish population at the time, the Samaritans were some of the worst people that they knew. They were considered profane and unclean. However, it is not the priest or the scholar of religious law who stop to help the injured man, but it was a person whom the injured man would have hated to see. Jesus tells us that this is the type of person whom we should consider as our neighbor when following God's law of love "your neighbor as yourself."

Jesus does not make a hierarchy of care. He does not say that we should treat our family better than others. He does not say that fellow citizens are more deserving of our love than immigrants (legal or not). He does not say that we should only love those who agree with our way of thinking. He specifically has us (like Father James did today) imagine the worst type of person in our worldview and then tell us that we have to learn to love them.

This a difficult thing that is asked of us, and we will make all sorts of justifications to avoid following this basic law. For example, modern "christians" often try to hide behind the laws written in the Old Testament when it comes to categorizing our level of help for others. However, even then, Moses tells the people that the commandments of God are not something that people need to seek out to find, but that they are "already in you mouths and in your hearts." God's love is for everyone; our love should do the same.

Thanks to a good suggestion by Peter (which involved opening up the tracks more with a screwdriver) and a better drill bit and drill, I was able to finish installing the transition strips for the new flooring. With Rowen's help, I was even able to fix the strip that was stubbornly refusing to fit into place yesterday. All told, the project took a couple of days longer than I had expected. I will also say that I am at the point in my life that I have started to really hate sitting for hours on a hard floor. 

Meanwhile, Peter has been working on replacing the broken spigot for the downstairs bathtub. Whoever originally installed it made some poor decisions--such as connecting copper and galvanized piping together. Thus, this project has also taken longer than was expected. This has been a bit of an issue as we needed to shut down the main water lines. I think that he is getting closer to getting it done.

Katrina and Peter also picked up materials to construct the fencing around the raised garden beds that they've created. I think that we've been fortunate thus far that the local moose have not been around lately to notice all of the delicacies that are currently easily accessible. Still, that will have to be a project for another day.

I spent entirely too much time today on just one threshold/transition strip (actually, there were two, as one managed to get demolished (note: not out of anger, but poor design) as I tried to install it. It's a vinyl cover with a vinyl plate that does not fit well and comes apart all too easily. I gave up with only about 80% of the cover on its track.

My writing has also not been on track this week. I try to get 5-10 pages written for my book on teaching each week, but this week only scored two. Similarly, I've been trying to collate a 5-10 months worth of blog posts a week; this week I finished one. The same target is true for reworking my study guides--both in goal and in the amount completed.

A doctor's appointment (heh, for a doctor), other errands, working on the hallway floor, and having our septic system pumped all had me step away from my planned schedule for the week. I don't believe that next week will be quite as busy. At least, I hope not, as I would like to finish some of my writing projects before school starts.

So that I don't bury the lede, I want to start by saying that I just got in from watching the new Superman movie, and I really enjoyed it. For me, this is the Superman that I like to see. At present, I would say (without any disrespect for the other Superman movies--which I also generally like) that this is currently my favorite Superman movie. I have a few issues with parts of the story (which has thus far been the case for every Superman movie), but I feel that the characters, themes, and overall story were all well done. Even if it was sometimes a bit more campy than I would prefer, it was still a lot of fun with a great deal of love for the source material.

Earlier in the day, we had watched two of the lower tier movies from Phases 4 and 5 (these were both in Phase 4) of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU): Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder. I still enjoyed watching both of these movies, but there are multiple elements that hold them back from being ranked higher on my listing of MCU movies (the link for which is here). In particular, I'm not a large fan of the horror and dark magic elements put into the second Doctor Strange movie, nor did I like what they did with some of the superhero cameos (especially since it came out immediately after Spider-Man: No Way Home which had done so much better in that area). Meanwhile, Thor movies tends to be near the bottom of my list even though I like Chris Hemsworth. In this case, the movie was entirely too goofy--particularly when dealing with some heavy themes.

Thus, the new Superman movie is definitely the best of the three movies that we watched, and is probably my favorite DC movie since The Dark Knight--no, I don't have list for DC movies.

Answering the question "How's your summer been?" has been strangely difficult this year. In my personal life, I've had a lot of great experiences this summer. I've also made some significant progress on several projects that are important to me. On top of that, my family is amazing, and I've felt so blessed to have so many of them here.

At the same time, one disaster after another keeps hitting my nation, my state, and my local area. Just when one problem has been figured out (and I should point out that the problem is rarely solved), another one jumps into the picture. In particular, the continual attacks on our schools' funding has led to some frustratingly difficult cuts--only to have more funding suddenly cut in a different area.

The attacks on personal liberties, the movement of more wealth to the extremely wealthy at the expense of the rest of the nation, the continued destruction of our nation's standing and credibility in the world, and the number of people doing nothing or even cheering it on makes me concerned that any amount of happiness now might be short-lived. The long-term consequences of some of these short-sighted moves are not only devastating, but not as far off as some people seem to think. I suppose that this makes it more important to enjoy what life offers us now.

... Such as a purring kitty who keeps tapping my face so that I'll rub my own whiskers on his head. 

It's a short post today. Somehow, I ended up getting roped into starting a project to put in new flooring in our downstairs hallway tonight. I have not completed said project, but was just asked to stop working on the project as the process is too loud. 

There's at least enough done for people to walk on new flooring rather than sticky cement in the morning.

Scores for this year's Advanced Placement exams went live today. As most of you know, scores range from a 1 to a 5, with 5 being the highest. Most colleges accept a 3 as college credit for most courses. There are some schools that require a 4 (and a few require a 5) to give credit depending on the subject, and there are some schools that will even give some level of credit for a 2 (usually as a substitute for a low level placement course at a--let's say--less competitive institution). Basically, most people consider a 3 to be "passing."

Last night, Connor went over to a friend's house where a number of other AP students were hanging out in anticipation of their AP scores being revealed. They're a highly competitive group of kids, and several of them (including Connor) had taken four AP classes this year--a heavy load. We weren't certain as to when they would be released as the main site only said that they would be released on the 7th.  One official page said that they would be released by 8AM in the time zone that the exam was taken. However, last year they were released around midnight.

Thus, it was 1AM when I awoke to Connor shaking me, saying, "Guess what I got on my AP exams." When he was confident that I was understanding him, he said, "Three 5s and a 4! I even got a 5 for your class!" At this point, he gave me a high five and nearly bounced out of the room. 

I waited until quite a bit later in the morning before I checked on the scores for my classes and then started texting the other AP teachers in my school. The short of it is that our SoHi students did very, very well this year, beating all of the state and global averages in each of the five subjects that we offer. In fact, our Calculus and history classes each had a higher percentage of their students score 4s and 5s than the state and global averages of 3s, 4s, and 5s combined!

An AP score should not be a student's (or teacher's) identity as it is a snapshot of a single day. Still, these were such impressive scores that I gave a much more in depth description at today's school board meeting. We keep having people talk about how terrible students have become, but I have to say that I see the amazing abilities of these young people on a regular basis. 

It's one of the best parts about my job. 

Time and again, Jesus said "The kingdom of God is at hand." He didn't say that it was in the future. He didn't even say that it was coming soon. He said that it was right then, in the present moment, within anyone's grasp.

This is as true today as it was two thousand years ago. God's kingdom is present here and now. The question is whether people accept His dominion or not. It means giving up our hatred and joining one another in love. It means accepting all people on the earth as part of our family, excluding no one. 

When He sent out his seventy-two disciples, He did so relying on the acceptance and hospitality of others. They were foreigners in the towns that they visited and were accepted in every place that they went. They had specific instructions to entirely disassociate themselves from any place that rejected them, but not one of them reported that they were turned away.

We are tasked with being both the disciples and the townspeople. We are to spread Jesus' message of love and mercy, but we are also to welcome those who have nothing and help those in need. Anyone who tells you differently is anti-Christ.

A little over five years ago, the shower in the upstairs bathroom began to leak from its drain down into the ceiling of our master bathroom downstairs. We called in a professional plumber who was able to locate the problem and give it a temporary fix. Unfortunately, he said (and several other people with plumbing experience would later agree) that the shortcuts taken by whoever had installed our shower necessitated that we would need to entirely remove its basin and rework the plumbing for the drain. Basically, as long as we were doing that level of work on it, we should probably renovate the entire bathroom.

I only had to fix the temporary fix twice over the past five years. In that time, we had a couple of contractors and a handyman look over the project, but one thing or another always led to it getting delayed. Two years ago (perhaps more), Connor said that something funny was going on with the ceiling. We had noticed condensation problems with the ceiling fan since we bought the house, but it was clear that the sheetrock in the ceiling was starting to rot. That issue was added to our list of things that needed to be fixed when we could get around to finally renovating the bathroom.

Today, the bathroom is finished. Peter dealt with the ceiling issue first a while ago as there were multiple issues in the attic that had led to the problem. He and Katrina then figured out how to hit a full sized tub into the bathroom--something that we had not thought was possible. A major component of this process meant removing the raised floor which had been added to make the pipe drainage simpler (even though the person who installed it had clearly cut a number of corners anyway). With the floor now all on one level, Peter was able to move the locations of the toilet, tub, and sink in a way that makes the bathroom much more functional.

I've looked for pictures of the old layout, but I can't seem to find them. You'll have to just take my word that this is a massive improvement. I'm tremendously happy with the entire result!

It's difficult to feel celebratory about our nation when it is being actively torn apart by the very people who should be protecting it. Flag waving and fireworks don't make up for the freedoms that are being taken away and the protections lost just today with the signing of what will likely be the only piece of major legislation that this government composition will be able to pass. That said, our country has been through worse.

My hope is that people spent at least a portion of today thinking about the foundational principles of our nation. Our Declaration of Independence is not a perfect document, but it opens with some vital aspects to our great nation's creation: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. With these words, our nation's founders set forth to create a new type of government, one that could serve as an example for the entire world.

I hope that people also think about the warning that was placed in the Preamble: That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Our nation's history has been filled with people who believe that the rights laid out only apply to them and not to others. That blatant racist attitude literally tore our nation apart before and is now threatening to do so again. 

I believe that our nation can weather the current storm. Hopefully, with such broken aspects laid bare, we will have a better understanding as to how to repair our nation for the better in the future. For now, we continue to hold our government accountable as their powers can only be derived "from the consent of the governed."

I still do not like Eternals. I still absolutely love Spider-Man: No Way Home. It was certainly interesting to watch one directly after the other. In fact, doing so truly pointed out where Eternals falls short.

I really wanted to like Eternals both the first time that I saw it and this time. It has an amazing cast, fantastic cinematography, and some excellent effects. Unfortunately, it has several glaring issues that derail what could have been an excellent concept.

The primary issue is the story itself. It's an absolute mess with glaring plot holes. The biggest issue is the primary conflict. Now, I don't have any experience with the Eternals (the characters) in the comics, and I have no problem with writers deviating from the source material to make a better movie. In this case, they created a twist that is not only completely different than the lore (so I have discovered) but that undermines the entire heroic element of these characters. With the foundation so askew, the rest of the story falls into tatters--in particular, they get their history and mythology terribly wrong. The final solution is one that should have destroyed the world and requires a tremendous suspension of disbelief to swallow.

There's really no comparison between that mess and the story in No Way Home. Not only does this third MCU Spider-Man movie stay faithful to its source material, it manages to tie together eight previous movies (and more) in a way that actually makes those movies better. It's twist is true to the heroic nature of its protagonists and provides a tremendous set of redemption arcs that fit together seamlessly and believably.

Honestly, of the two, Eternals has better cinematography. Some of its scenes are absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, modern cinematography has also had a great deal of emphasis on an overuse (in my view) of darkness. I would say that about a third of the movie was entirely too hard to see. Sure, it made their light-based powers stand out, but that only emphasized how out-of-place those powers were to have been part of our history for the past 7,000 years. No Way Home also had multiple scenes that were held at night, but they were lit so that the audience could still easily follow (and enjoy) the action. That might be less cinematic, but it was certainly more accommodating for its audience.

I really think that Eternals could have been an excellent movie that set up intriguing stories throughout our history and into the future. Instead, it gave us characters that we didn't care about and an unbelievable story (even for a comic book) that caused problems for future MCU stories. Meanwhile, I cannot think of a way that No Way Home could have been improved. I literally laughed and cried over the course of that film. Every time I see it, I like it even more.