summercomfort (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summercomfort) wrote2020-12-09 09:47 pm
summercomfort) wrote2020-12-09 09:47 pm
(no subject)
wooo I just finished grading my final pre-semester-end essays, which means I have ~10 days before the last batch of ~70 essays roll in for Winter Break grading. I tell myself now that I'll try to do a few per day over break, but lbr, I'm probably not gonna start until after Christmas. Maybe do half between Dec 26-29, chill for my birfday, then do another batch starting Jan 1.
Winter break this year is 2 weeks of no preschool for the child, AND not being able to go anywhere (even parks are closed, to say nothing of the zoo.) My current plans are to try to drag her to do some errands (fixing the lightbulbs, get a smog check, etc), maybe try a different takeout place every day for lunch, and try to have *some* sort of different activity or project each day, just to make it a bit different. I'll probably buy Mario Party on the Switch, one of her Christmas presents is a "science magic" kit, and another is a bunch of books, so between those things, we should hopefully get through the 2 weeks decently. Oh! She's also been getting into board games. We played Patchwork, Trellis, Robo Rally, and the 2 player version of Agricola that's just the ranching part, and she was into all of them. She's also been reading on her own for half an hour every night, which makes me just squee with joy. I can't believe she's going to be 5 in <4 months! Hoosband and I tried to do 2 hour shifts over Thanksgiving and it was extremely exhausting, so I think we're going to try half-day shifts instead, since playing with her isn't as hard as it used to be, and this way there's longer chunks of non-childcare time for us to do our own things.
Over Thanksgiving we downloaded and played Pikmin 3 on the Switch! It's the first "traditional" video game that I've been able to play all the way through on my own, so I'm pretty happy. I'm very bad at timed button presses and combo button presses, which a LOT of other games require, (I usually just tell people that I'm bad at jumping) but Pikmin is a lot more forgiving in that regard. There's also a nice logistics optimization aspect that I like, without the sort of daunting tech-tree-ness of typical real-time strategy games, so yeah, I really enjoyed it. There's also a "bingo battle" mode and a co-op mode, which allows me to play with Hoosband, and for once, we're on relatively equal footing. There's even some levels that Miss Rutabaga can use to practice her general hand dexterity in a stress-free environment (no monsters, no time limits), and the Pikmin are adorable. For every day this past week, she's been dressing up as a different-colored Pikmin. What a cutie.
I've been writing a bit recently (well, before I got trapped in Grading Land), and I've been able to clear a bunch of my WIPs, with a few more that I'd like to clear out. Here's an incomplete list:
- The SamSteve Small Gifts one, which I drafted up last night -- I'll need to go through and add some more words, but the basics are there. I'll also need to draw some quick pics for it, but I know what I want to draw.
- The Discord holiday exchange one, due Dec 31 -- I just started last night, but should get done in time.
- The 5+1 about Bucky losing the ability to choose
- The short Witcher one about Jaskier as a viscount, which is mostly done, I just need to decide whether I want to post it or not
- There's a Bucky one that I wrote but at the time felt it was too generic. I'll give it another read-through and decide
And there's another dozen or so WIPs on my desktop, but those seem like the easiest to get out the door, maybe even this week!
School stuff:
- Read the essay on China and give some feedback
- Send emails to Questies
Chinese School stuff:
- Finish grading Chinese School stuff
- Send out Amazon gift cards to teachers
- Mail out checks to teachers
- Send out an email to teachers wrapping up the quarter, talking about exporting/importing grades, and discussing getting a document camera
Errands:
- Write up something for carport charging
- Go Costco-shopping!
- See if I can schedule a milder COVID test for the childling -- preschool requires a test for returning on Jan 4th
- Lightbulbs that need to be replaced around the house: 4 florescent ones, 3 kitchen insets
- Smog check, for the first time in my life! (I totaled my first car before the smog check was due, and since then I've owned hybrids)
- I reaaaaally want to go to IKEA. Is it open? I want to buy those colorful kid cups from there. And eat meatballs and too many buttery carbs, but that's probably not likely.
- Fix the internet
- Organize a bunch of stuff to take to Goodwill (is it gonna be open? I've always made Hoosband go deal with Awkward Social Interactions...)
Winter break this year is 2 weeks of no preschool for the child, AND not being able to go anywhere (even parks are closed, to say nothing of the zoo.) My current plans are to try to drag her to do some errands (fixing the lightbulbs, get a smog check, etc), maybe try a different takeout place every day for lunch, and try to have *some* sort of different activity or project each day, just to make it a bit different. I'll probably buy Mario Party on the Switch, one of her Christmas presents is a "science magic" kit, and another is a bunch of books, so between those things, we should hopefully get through the 2 weeks decently. Oh! She's also been getting into board games. We played Patchwork, Trellis, Robo Rally, and the 2 player version of Agricola that's just the ranching part, and she was into all of them. She's also been reading on her own for half an hour every night, which makes me just squee with joy. I can't believe she's going to be 5 in <4 months! Hoosband and I tried to do 2 hour shifts over Thanksgiving and it was extremely exhausting, so I think we're going to try half-day shifts instead, since playing with her isn't as hard as it used to be, and this way there's longer chunks of non-childcare time for us to do our own things.
Over Thanksgiving we downloaded and played Pikmin 3 on the Switch! It's the first "traditional" video game that I've been able to play all the way through on my own, so I'm pretty happy. I'm very bad at timed button presses and combo button presses, which a LOT of other games require, (I usually just tell people that I'm bad at jumping) but Pikmin is a lot more forgiving in that regard. There's also a nice logistics optimization aspect that I like, without the sort of daunting tech-tree-ness of typical real-time strategy games, so yeah, I really enjoyed it. There's also a "bingo battle" mode and a co-op mode, which allows me to play with Hoosband, and for once, we're on relatively equal footing. There's even some levels that Miss Rutabaga can use to practice her general hand dexterity in a stress-free environment (no monsters, no time limits), and the Pikmin are adorable. For every day this past week, she's been dressing up as a different-colored Pikmin. What a cutie.
I've been writing a bit recently (well, before I got trapped in Grading Land), and I've been able to clear a bunch of my WIPs, with a few more that I'd like to clear out. Here's an incomplete list:
- The SamSteve Small Gifts one, which I drafted up last night -- I'll need to go through and add some more words, but the basics are there. I'll also need to draw some quick pics for it, but I know what I want to draw.
- The Discord holiday exchange one, due Dec 31 -- I just started last night, but should get done in time.
- The 5+1 about Bucky losing the ability to choose
- The short Witcher one about Jaskier as a viscount, which is mostly done, I just need to decide whether I want to post it or not
- There's a Bucky one that I wrote but at the time felt it was too generic. I'll give it another read-through and decide
And there's another dozen or so WIPs on my desktop, but those seem like the easiest to get out the door, maybe even this week!
School stuff:
- Read the essay on China and give some feedback
- Send emails to Questies
Chinese School stuff:
- Finish grading Chinese School stuff
- Send out Amazon gift cards to teachers
- Mail out checks to teachers
- Send out an email to teachers wrapping up the quarter, talking about exporting/importing grades, and discussing getting a document camera
Errands:
- Write up something for carport charging
- Go Costco-shopping!
- See if I can schedule a milder COVID test for the childling -- preschool requires a test for returning on Jan 4th
- Lightbulbs that need to be replaced around the house: 4 florescent ones, 3 kitchen insets
- Smog check, for the first time in my life! (I totaled my first car before the smog check was due, and since then I've owned hybrids)
- I reaaaaally want to go to IKEA. Is it open? I want to buy those colorful kid cups from there. And eat meatballs and too many buttery carbs, but that's probably not likely.
- Fix the internet
- Organize a bunch of stuff to take to Goodwill (is it gonna be open? I've always made Hoosband go deal with Awkward Social Interactions...)