The Winter Weather Advisory that is in effect until noon tomorrow has been updated to say that we can expect an additional 3 to 7 inches of snow accumulation by its end. We've already received upwards of 8 or more inches at my house. I came home expecting that my wounded Mera might not make it up the driveway (she barely made it down the road) only to find that Janelle (with Rowen's guidance on the back) had plowed a path for me. She let me take over as I have more experience in clearing the edges.

I have to say that there's only so much snow that Scarlet (my ATV) can push, and our driveway is starting to get narrow as a result. If we get closer to the 7 inch side of the 3-7 inches, we might need to call in someone with heavier equipment to clear the paths back again. If it's on the smaller side, Scarlet might be up to the job on her own even if there will be a little less space for us to drive.

To be clear, I still love the snow! In fact, I not only wore a snow sweater yesterday, but I plan on doing so tomorrow. Sure, the chances of a snow day are slim, but it doesn't hurt to show my support.

The year I was going to turn 30, I had a bit of a midlife crisis. Thus I went out of my way to 1. learn to play the guitar, 2. write a book (but I did not publish it--that came later) 3. learn a language (which did not pan out), and 4. teach myself how to juggle. In learning to juggle, I never made it past three bags (which I figure is good enough to count towards checking off that goal). I will say that, at this moment, four or more bags up in the air seems like child's play compared to dealing with everything going on right now.

Today, I returned to school with only five hours of sleep and a left arm that I cannot raise and tried to catch up from my missing day (and missing weekend when I usually grade work that's turned in on Friday) as well teach. We had a DDF meeting after school where we discussed last weekend as well as another fundraiser I'd like to do and the possibility of my team giving a performance or two of their Reader's Theater skit. I then headed down to the library to check in with our librarian (and technology wiz) since I was holding the last meeting before my Rome and Athens trip there this evening. After that, I was already running late to choir practice and had to leave early from there so that I could run home, pick up Connor and some things for the meeting, and head back to the school to set up for the meeting--which finished around 7:30.

Connor and I returned home where we ate dinner while watching the most recent episode of The Last of Us. I then made my lunch and came up here to write this post. After this, I'm headed to bed.

I still have to catalog the tip money, bus money, and forms that were turned in this evening. After which, I need to send out emails to those travelers who are missing any of those things. I still have grades to catch up on and plans to write. On top of that, I need to get an appraisal for the damage done to Mera. I'm certain that there's something else that I'm forgetting that I need to do, but it will have to wait until at least tomorrow.

Today had its triumphs and tragedies. Despite being first to go this morning, our Readers Theater managed to get second in it round despite the amazing competition. Sadly it was not enough to get our team to the final round (held tomorrow). While I feel that my team was robbed yet again, I also feel that we did quite well considering that it was our first year (8th out of 21 entries). More than that, we even beat one at least one of the final round teams in an earlier round. 

Similarly, my students have hit highs and lows in their individual events. Those events all have a third round tomorrow before finals. One of my students is in a great position to make it to the finals with a couple others in striking distance , but (as we learned with the RT) a great deal relies on the luck of the draw. 

Tomorrow has a packed morning, but the afternoon will depend on our students’ third round placements. Even if they don’t make a final round, I want my students to watch some of the finals to see some of the top performances. This has been a real learning year for the entire team, including me. 

I just got to my hotel room in Anchorage, and I’m just about done in, but I need to write this anyway. 

I was in a minor accident after school on my way from picking up cash at an ATM and heading to Freddy’s to swap vehicles for the trip up to Anchorage for the DDF State Tournament. I was in the rightmost lane, heading through town toward Sterling when an SUV in the opposing left turn lane turned in front of me to get to Dairy Queen. She didn’t see me because a truck in the left lane (not turn lane) on my side had stayed stopped when the light ahead turned green and waved the woman to make her turn. 

I was going slow as I had slowed down for the light before it turned green and was just starting to speed back up, but the icy road made it so that there was not enough time to stop. Mera barely bumped the SUV’s front passenger wheel, but the edge of the SUV’s wheel well must have caught the superfluous front license plate on Mera, ripping it off (I had to go back to the side of the road to find it) and tearing the front bumper with it. We both pulled into the Dairy Queen lot, but the driver of the red truck who waved the SUV driver to turn just drove off. The driver of the SUV was a pregnant woman with three children in her vehicle but no registration or insurance with her. I called 911 and reported the accident. 

I had so many things going on in my mind and was supposed to be back at the school in another hour and a half to drive my team up. The officer arrived soon, but it was another half hour before he gave us leave to go after making it clear that the woman was entirely at fault and that she needed to text me her info once she returned home (which she has not yet done). Mera’s and the SUV’s damage are both cosmetic (the officer was really surprised that the airbags didn’t deploy, but like I said, I really wasn’t going that fast) and they were both deemed safe to drive. However, I no longer felt that I should drive to Anchorage (I was still shaking over an hour later), nor did I want to leave Janelle with a damaged vehicle (which she already doesn’t like to drive) while I took hers. 

I remembered that Homer managed to get a last minute bus and that they would be coming through Soldotna soon, so I called their coach and asked if we could hitch a ride. She asked if we could be ready by 4:45. I still had to drive home, pick up my stuff, and return to the school, but I had just enough time to message my team and do that. 

Connor (who was in the car with me) and I seem fine. My left shoulder has been hurting the past couple of days, and the accident seems to have made me even more aware of the pain, but I don’t think the accident actually made the shoulder worse. My frustration and stress, however …

… not to mention my guilt at leaving Mera wounded and alone in the SoHi lot until I return Sunday night. 

Despite the enthusiasm that our pastor presented towards the beginning of Lent, I feel that it arrived entirely too fast and overstays its welcome. Certainly, it makes me long for Easter even more, but the overall dreariness of its focus on self-deprivation makes me wonder if it might contribute the general malaise that hits so many people at the beginning of spring. In short, I dread its coming and am relieved when it is over. Perhaps my focus for Lent should be trying to improve my attitude towards it.

Speaking of my Lenten focus, it took a while for me to come up with something to give up or add for Lent. I think that I've settled on, at least for now, not using my phone to consume entertainment content. Specifically, I'm going to avoid the analysis shows that I watch on YouTube and the trivia I read off of IMDB, but I'm going to try to avoid using my phone as a "time-waster" even though I'm still allowing myself to stay updated on the news. I will likely have to lift this moratorium while flying internationally, but we will see.

Lent will be great! ... Yeah ... that doesn't feel convincing yet ...

I just spent the past hour (or more) composing and sending another email for the fellow travelers on my trip. There's so many moving parts! I will say that I have already learned a few things that I could do better the next time I run a trip--especially with a group this size. 

Meanwhile, I'm also getting my DDF team ready to perform at the State Championship in Anchorage this weekend. Once again, it feels like plans keep getting changed on us, making the travel and accommodations more of a moving target than I would like. Hopefully, everything gets straightened out tomorrow.

I'm just hoping that I'm not forgetting something with all of the plates that I already have spinning.

I don't have a lot of opportunity to play video games while school is in session, but there are a number of games that I am interested in playing.  

With The Last of Us TV show playing on HBO, I've taken the opportunity to play through the original game--this time with the help of the Internet so that I don't miss any of the hidden documents scattered around the chapters. For those wondering, the show is remarkably close to the game with some scenes playing out exactly the same and others going in a different "what if" sort of direction. As much as I like the show, I still feel that the game is a superior experience.

Probably the most anticipated game in my house is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom that's coming out on May 12th. I have a feeling that people are going to be fighting over who gets to use the Switch for a while after that game is released. I'm a little concerned that the game might try to do too much, but Breath of the Wild is still one of my all time favorite games, so I'll take any excuse to delve back into that type of game again.

Hogwarts Legacy has been on my radar, but because it is an open world game, I was planning to wait until this summer to play it (likely while other people are using the Switch). However, Connor couldn't wait for me to get it on the PS5 and instead bought it off Steam. Based on his, and other people's, impressions of the game, I think that I'm going to enjoy playing it.

God of War: Ragnarok came out late last year, but I knew that I wouldn't have the time to play it, so I also put off getting the game until the summer. I deeply enjoyed most of my experience in the last game of the series, and I heard that this game is more of the same. If nothing else, I'm looking forward to hearing Christopher Judge's amazing voice work again.

I'm kind of dreading Elden Ring. I already own the game and played it for about an hour, but I just wasn't hooked. I figure that I will get into it once I have the time (again, summer) to devote to it. It's just that I'm not looking forward to the punishing difficulty that the game is known to have--even if it is one of the highest rated games ever. 

I'm also looking forward to playing more of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands with Rowen. The bit that we played over Christmas was hilarious in both gameplay and dialogue even if the split screen made it a little difficult to see. I told Rowen that I plan on playing more with him after the DDF season and Spring Break trip are over. 

There are even more games (such as Pillars of Eternity) that I've had for a while and still want to play, too. This doesn't even count the numerous games (such as the Final Fantasy games) that I would like to play again, or the games (such as Starcraft II) that I keep going back to for more. Decisions ... decisions ...

This might not seem like an important Sunday, but to me it is. Like the last, deep breath before diving into the ocean, today was our final Sunday mass before the beginning of Lent. Thus, it was our last time to sing the Gloria or say “Alleluia” until April. For this reason, I tried to savor those moments today, knowing that it will be nearly two months that I will be wandering the “desert.”
 
We don’t always get these opportunities to realize something is coming to an end. Too often, life hits us with surprises or takes us in directions that we did not intend. There were moments in our past that we had our last meeting with a friend or family member without realizing that we would not be in their presence again. Our world is replete with these sorts of endings.
 
However, we are often just as surprised by new beginnings in our lives as well. We never know when the person we have just met will turn out to be a life-long friend. A new experience might deliver to us our new favorite food or activity.
 
I brace myself for the beginning of Lent, but I do so knowing that Easter comes at its end. 

Despite the negative reviews, I decided that I wanted to see the new Ant-Man and the Wasp movie in the theater anyway--and I was genuinely glad that I did. This was a fun movie to watch. It's not groundbreaking, it's full of holes, and it is my least favorite of the three Ant-Man movies, but it is still a movie with heart and humor that I would place above most of the Phase 4 MCU movies. 

In terms of it being called Ant-Man and the Wasp (with the cute fact that "Quantumania" hides Ant-Man in the center--quANTuMANia), I almost think that it could be called Ant-Men (Ant-Mans?) and the Wasps considering the roles that the original Ant-Man, Hank Pym played by Michael Douglass, and Wasp, Janet Van Dyne played by Michelle Pfeiffer, have in this movie. In fact, I think that Michelle Pfeiffer gets more screen time (and certainly more story focus) than Evangeline Lilly, who plays the new Wasp, Hope Van Dyne. With that in mind, the movie title should include Ant-Girl--Cassandra Lang who is now played by Kathryn Newton (who replaced Emma Fuhrmann from Avengers: Endgame who replaced the much younger Abby Ryder Fortson from the first two Ant-Man movies ... even though she would really be the correct age to play the comic book version of Cassie at this time) who is also a major focus with a massive amount of screen time in this movie--all of which is worth it.

I do understand some of the critics' concerns regarding the movie, but I'm glad that their opinions did not keep me from seeing this enjoyable (if often messy) film. It's just a shame that they didn't have a place for Michael Peña. I don't know where they would have put him, but the movie did suffer from the lack of his character. Still if nothing else, it's worth it to see Jonathan Majors chew the scenery as the MCU's new "big bad" and to watch Paul Rudd just be the adorable Paul Rudd that he is. 

The character of Grand Admiral Thrawn is fascinating to me, and has been since Timothy Zahn first released the Heir to the Empire trilogy. Thrawn is one of the best Star Wars villains as he is not motivated by evil or the dark side of the Force, but by his desire for order--and his belief that he is the one best suited to bring it to the galaxy. I was saddened when Disney removed his storyline from the canon of the Star Wars universe and placed him into the category of "Legends."

Except that David Filoni brought Thrawn back into canon when he made Thrawn the primary antagonist in the last two seasons of the cartoon Star Wars: Rebels. The cartoon version was not quite as powerful as Thrawn was in the books, but he was still fairly intimidating. Then, Thrawn's name was dropped by Ahsoka in the second season of the Mandalorian, suggesting that he will be the antagonist in her show when it releases sometime this year. 

I was thus interested to discover that Timothy Zahn was writing more books (six in total, so far) with Thrawn in them, and that they were in line with Thrawn's reappearance in Star Wars canon. Ironically, the second trilogy takes place before the first one and establishes Thrawn as a much more sympathetic character than he is in Legends stories. In fact, taking the six stories all together, a completely different picture of Thrawn is formed--one where he is skillfully using the Empire in preparation to fend off an even greater evil. 

I enjoyed the books as Thrawn is portrayed as a kind of Sherlock Holmes in science fiction space battles. Each book presents at least one mysterious adversary that Thrawn manages to outwit by the end while still exploring other deeper mysteries that underlie the larger narrative. I'm now a bit concerned that Thrawn's appearance in Ahsoka will be more of the canned villain type than the more nuanced character that I have come to know.

The book series is a niche within a niche within a niche, but I recommend it for those who either already like reading about Thrawn or who enjoy the more logically presented side of the Star Wars universe.

As I've noted before, I've come to really enjoy parent-teacher conferences. For struggling students whose parents attend, the conferences gives us all a chance to reorganize, reprioritize, and hopefully get the students (and parents) to see that we are on their side. For exceptional students whose parents attend, the conferences provides to parents, students, and teachers a sense of validation--that the effort they have put forth has been recognized. For students who fall in-between, the conferences provide a little bit of both. All-in-all, I feel that the conferences build stronger relationships between the school and the larger community.

For me, the day went well. In fact, I even managed to be productive during the gaps between conferences. Unfortunately, those gaps were too many for my liking, even if that is to be expected for the often under-attended conferences during the spring semester. Still, I appreciated each of the twenty parents (or set of parents) whom I had a chance to see today. 

The reviews coming out for the new Ant-Man movie are not looking that positive. In fact, the only movie in the MCU with a worse showing on Rotten Tomatoes is the (in my opinion) absolutely terrible Eternals. I was concerned about this even before the reviews came out as nearly all of the clips from the movie show it to be largely held in the "Quantum Realm" which means more green screen/CGI backgrounds than the Star Wars prequels. As much as I love Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly, I think that I'm going to wait to watch this one on Disney+.

The fact is that the MCU really sputtered its way through its cinematic showings in Phase 4, with only Spider-Man: No Way Home really living up to (and exceeding) its expectations with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings being a welcome surprise. The other movies, even the fairly good ones, seemed bound by their own ambitions while not hitting their marks. The lowest point was Eternals, but Phase 4 missed the mark with Black Widow, Thor: Love and Thunder, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and even Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (although I'm still moved by its first trailer).

Perhaps, part of the issue is that there were many fantastic TV shows and specials introduced in Phase 4, starting with the astounding sitcom homage in WandaVision. While some of the shows were not as strong as the others (cough, Moon Knight, cough), on the whole, I would rank many of them higher than most of the movies. Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, and even the Werewolf by Midnight and Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special were all a lot of fun to watch. All of those shows had more time to present their stories, and thus had time that the movies did not have to recover from any missteps. 

I hope that the MCU can regain its footing. The first three phases were amazing, but they also had some missteps along the way (cough, Iron Man 2, cough). There's still time for it to get better.