Janelle received a notification from Netflix that the first episode of what has become our favorite "reality" TV show was available today. While the bakes are wonderful to watch (although I would not want to do them myself), it is the people on the show that really make it compelling. Basically, I love how overall positive and supportive everyone on the show is displayed as being. More than that, the people behind the casting do an absolutely amazing job of recruiting amateur bakers that are representative of so many different backgrounds, lifestyles, and regions of Great Britain. 

With twelve new bakers in the tent, there never seems to be enough time to get to know all of them, but I found myself already attached to all of them by the time that they announced the Star Baker (for whom I was already rooting) and the contestant who was going home (which I also called, but was still sad about).

Yesterday, Rowen was quite upset that he had left his new zip-up hooded sweatshirt at his cross-country meet. He thought he had it in his backpack when we left. When he discovered that he didn't, he was unreasonably hard on himself. He had just been informed that he was missing a couple of math assignments (which it turns out he had turned in but were mismarked in PowerSchool), and the loss of the new sweatshirt had him quite upset. 

I emailed Rowen's coach last night, but she replied that no one had turned the sweatshirt in to her. After picking him up from practice, we called Kenai Middle School, but they did not find it in their lost and found. Thus, we decided to take the drive to see if it might still be where he left it. Despite there being a large crowd in the pouring rain, Rowen was able to find it right away. 

Meanwhile, Connor has been missing his AirPods for about a month. The "Find My Device" feature made it so we knew that it was in our house, but our poor-quality Wi-Fi did not allow it to make the sound that would let us know where it was. Connor has been looking all over the place for it, finding other strange articles (such as a ring whose provenance we do not know), but not the AirPods.

After returning home with both boys (Connor's practice was over early, and we had just picked up the sweatshirt and were returning towards Soldotna when he called), I decided to give the living room a thorough check. It was the last room where Connor remembered having his AirPods. I checked one couch and the surrounding area, finding only misplaced Duplo LEGOs from the visit of our grandchildren. It was only near the end of my complete searching of our newest couch that I found the AirPods. I suspect that they had fallen into the couch and slowly made their way to the floor (where I found them) as people used the recliner function time and again.

Both of my sons were quite a bit happier this evening.

I'm currently waiting for my phone to download IOS 16. When I first started the download five minutes ago, it said "20 minutes remaining." It now says "22 minutes remaining." I don't have it downloading on the home Wi-Fi because I know that will make the download go even slower and will clog up all of the other devices that use the Wi-Fi. Unfortunately, our nearby cell tower has been underperforming lately. AT&T says that it is aware of the problem and that a fix is coming in the next week or so.

Meanwhile, I still have received no word from Starlink despite them now having more satellites in orbit than all other satellites combined. I made my deposit in 2021 and watched as the date was pushed to 2022--which it still says on my account even though Connor has pointed out that it says 2023 for our area when we look at the map without signing in. I'm still maintaining my optimism.

In general, our Internet speeds could be a lot worse, so I try to stay positive about them too. Likely, it's the demands of more and more devices on our Wi-Fi that is probably dragging down the entire service. We can still stream shows with few interruptions, and while downloading software is not as fast as I would like, it is still feasible. 

However, it's been another ten minutes since I last checked, and my IOS 16 download now says "28 minutes remaining."

I hate seeing dogs in the beds of pickup trucks. Now, I might be more forgiving if it's on a ranch or a farm and the truck is going slow. However, these reckless dog-owners who are driving down the highway at 55+ miles per hour deeply raise my ire. That sort of careless neglect is dangerous for other drivers on the road and can be absolutely deadly for the dog.
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Sadly, to my knowledge, there is no state or local ordinance about this sort of animal endangerment until one drives down to Homer or up to Anchorage. Thus, there is little that I can do except grit my teeth and give the moron in front of me extra space. It's bad enough that the dog could go flying out; I don't want to cause further harm by hitting it.

Well over thirty years ago, I made the conscious decision to sign up for my high school's debate and forensics class rather than take freshman English. My secondary motivation was to improve my public speaking as I still held (and hold) onto the hope of one day starring in a Star Wars movie. However, my primary motivation was to avoid reading Lord of the Flies which was a required title for the freshman class. I had heard enough about the story, and I emote deeply enough with characters to not put myself through that sort of sociopathic sadism. Note: to this day, I still refuse to read that book.

Instead, I had a strange freshman year which required no literature (aside from my forensic delivery of a portion from Patriot Games) and required the memorization of a massive amount of facts regarding the social security system and some of the possible "fixes" for it. We did not do spectacularly, winning some events and losing at others, but I remember the entire experience with a kind of bored fondness. It was in that class that I made some of my best friends as well as made the fateful decision to audition for The Sound of Music and later for Vocal Dimension (our school's top choir).

I suppose that it's time to give another generation the same opportunity.

I was asked if I would be willing to start up a Drama-Debate-Forensics team here at SoHi. After a good deal of consideration [I originally wrote "debate," but it was too on-the-nose], I told those in charge of such things that I would like to start such a program. It will not be a class, but an extra-curricular team--which I prefer as it would allow me to continue to build and train students from one year to the next. There is a great deal about how this works that I still don't know--in fact, I currently don't understand enough to even know what questions to ask. Still, I figure that I will work it out ... you know, during all of my spare time. 

​Stress aside, I feel like this was the right decision.

As our pastor said in his homily, today's readings are about sin and mercy. Each of the readings discusses how a person or people had fallen into sinfulness--even the greatest sinfulness of the Bible: apostasy--and was still forgiven through God's mercy. We tend to forget both of these ideas: that humankind has the capacity not only to do great evil, but to take pleasure in it; and that God's mercy is ready for all of those who truly seek it.

In the story of the Prodigal Son in today's Gospel, the young man squandered everything and did so in the most debaucherous ways, yet his father still celebrated his return and restored his position in the family. Many people misunderstand the word "prodigal," thinking that it means lost, based on its use in this famous parable. However, it means "extravagant" or "lavish" usually in a reckless manner. While that certainly pertains to the son in this story, I also believe that it applies to his father's mercy towards him--and thus God's mercy towards us. 

Yet so many Christians act like the other brother in the parable, angry at the forgiveness given to others who so clearly did not deserve it. Jesus has us spend some time with that brother just as He spends time with the envious day-workers in another parable of His. Jesus wants those who would deny forgiveness to understand that doing so is against God's nature and His law.  God's love is infinite, and we should not be jealous of the pieces of it which others receive. 

Traditionally, Saturday is my one sleep-in day of the week, but with Connor's C-Team games, that has not been the case lately. I dropped him off to prep for his game before heading home to change into somber attire as I then drove into town to sing at a celebration of life service for the husband of one of our church choir's members. There, I learned that another of our parishioners (one whom I was supposed to meet up with this month to rebalance the sound system) had just passed away.

I then got to the field in time to watch the second half of Connor's game with Janelle (who was there for the entirety) while wearing my dress clothes and coat with a baseball cap. The weather was perfect for the game. The game itself was quite fun, if extremely one-sided, with our team winning 55 to 6. 

We returned home to eat lunch, after which I took an hour nap. I then had to head back to church to play guitar and sing for the evening mass. I returned home, made some suggested modifications to my outfit, and went out to the Flats with Janelle for a date. After some great food (and time together), we returned home and watched the finale of the second season of Yellowstone. 

I am now going to bed so that I will have the energy to get the grading done tomorrow that I did not work on today.

One of my friends today said something that had been on my mind since hearing about the death of Queen Elizabeth II yesterday: "She was queen for my entire life." As the longest reigning monarch in the history of the United Kingdom, Queen Elizabeth II had been queen for the entirety of the lives of most of the humans on Earth.  She reigned for nearly seven years longer than her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, who was last to hold that distinction. I wonder, then, if history will remember this time period as the Second Elizabethan Age just as much of the 1800s are called the Victorian Age or just at the time of the English Renaissance is often called the Elizabethan Age after Queen Elizabeth II's eponym (I had to look up that word, as I was going to use "namesake"). 

I find it interesting that the Second Elizabethan Age has seen its own Renaissance of arts, culture, and technology--in fact, to a degree that far surpasses the original Elizabethan Age in nearly every aspect. Unlike the Victorian Age, this recent Age saw a decrease in the overall power and influence of the United Kingdom, yet at the same time it saw a sharp decrease in international conflict and a rise in overall globalization and communication throughout the world. As an Age, it started shortly after the defeat of the worst sorts of fascism; it is rather sad to see a resurgence in those fascist beliefs as the Age came to an end. 

More than anything, this makes me wonder what comes next.

Dark shadows thunder
Depressing the light around
A prismatic arc

I hit my deadline for coming up with a topic. Thus, there are a number of things that I am not going to write about.

One of them is how to deal with colds (especially ones that pop at almost the exact same time every year) in this almost post-COVID world. On another front, I'm pretty certain that you don't want to learn about yet another PowerSchool issue that has been giving me grief this week. I also don't want to get into why I agree with assigning a "special master" in the Mar-a-Lago case, nor why I think that it will end up turning out even worse for Trump and his political backers in the upcoming midterm elections. I definitely do not want to talk about the continuing rain ("it's only rained twice: once for 23 days and once for 41 days").  I could have written about how I noticed the colors start to change a couple of weeks ago and my interest in fall-type foods, but I seem to dip into that well too often.

Instead, I'm going to just wish everyone a good night and head off to bed.

I really don't have the energy to give this topic justice, but I wanted to note that Juul just settled with a dozen states for somewhere close to $450 million due to their marketing towards underaged users. This case has been over three years in the making. During that time Juul gained over $6 billion in revenue. They aren't going to stop.

I'm generally not a person to side with the vengeful aspects of Christianity, but I would like to think that there is place reserved in Hell for people who profit from addicting children to drugs.

I used my day "off" to catch up on grading in all of my classes. I've still been stymied by a change in PowerSchool over this summer that doesn't allow for the transfer of "extra credit" or "bonus" assignments from Canvas. Considering that my course set-up relies on students having multiple pathways to earn their grade in my point system, this is a serious issue.

The best workaround that I or the IT department could come up with is to give those assignments one point. Once they've transferred, I can adjust their point value back to zero in both Canvas and PowerSchool. As an added frustration, I can only do this for assignments where I have entered a students' grade, so I have to wait for a student to attempt an assignment before I can go through that convoluted process. I thought about making all bonus assignments out of one point and lowering the anchor grades by an equivalent amount, but that would require making students' assignment lists full of zeroes that they don't really have to do. Students and parents are confused enough by my system without me adding that kind of frustration to it. 

This is the second program that I use for my classes that "upgraded" over the summer in a way that made them less functional and more frustrating. With the boys' sports schedules and this seven period day without the additional Friday prep time from last year, I was already struggling to stay ahead. I certainly didn't need this additional nonsense too.

That said, I'm still really liking the school year, my classes, and my students. 

Today's Gospel is not an easy one. Jesus, who brought a message of love, warns His disciples that to follow Him they would have to hate their parents, their wives and children, and their very lives. I do not believe that Jesus was prescribing actions needed to be one of His followers, but rather a warnings about what would happen to them.

Especially at that time, following Jesus was a dangerous thing to do. Doing so meant that one would likely alienate one's family, perhaps even put them in danger. A person must "hate" their family to put them through that. Worse, many of His followers faced torture and death. A person must "hate" their lives to be willing to follow Him in spite of such threats.

Today, the threats aren't quite as strong, but the difficulties and alienation can still exist. It is still quite possible to be mocked, derided, and shunned for holding to the teachings of Jesus and His Church. However, I am fully willing to face such opposition as I believe that Jesus not only holds the keys to everlasting salvation, but to making the world a better place in the here and now.

We just got back from the Homecoming dance. I enjoyed being there. Despite a few challenges, the students were well behaved and seemed to be having a good time.

​I’m quite tired, but the kittens immediately insisted that I pet them.