Cat's Musings

Good morning, afternoon, or whenever it is that you read this. Who would have thought teacher in-service could be a muse? When I decided to start working again on my novella earlier in the summer, there was always one section of the book I adamantly avoided: the beginning. The first act takes place during teacher in-service and the first week of school. I was avoiding working on it because I didn't want to think about the end of summer break. But now that we are fully preparing to jump into a…

Good morning, afternoon, or whenever it is that you read this. Schools in Texas generally begin the fall semester in mid-August. However, teachers go back a week and a half to two weeks beforehand for a ‘magical’ period of time called in-service. During this time, schools provide teachers some of their mandatory professional development hours, as well as deliver information about data, mission statements for the year, and other legal requirements such as safety meetings. My current school is…

You don't always know the moment when your life is going to change forever. Sometimes you step into it, look up, and realize the place you're at now could have gone a vastly different direction if you had moved slightly just a year or two back. But, sometimes you get to lean directly over the edge. You see what will happen before you take a plunge, for better or worse. 2011-2013My years in graduate school were another high point in my life. I was living with my grandmother in Bryan, and didn't…

Content Warning: Chronic back pain for an animal. Also, as a reassurance, my dog is okay and is on the mend Our dog, Oolong, is about seven years old. Not exactly sure how old (he's an adoption dog) but we've had him since May of 2020. Not sure what he is, but he was listed as a corgi mix. Regardless, he is a short legged, long bodied dog and suffers from all the back problems that entails. He started moving a little slower starting on Saturday, but he had a vet appointment for Wednesday, and…

I don't exactly remember how I got my original Sony PlayStation, but it was either my 9th or 10th birthday. It was after I had moved from my childhood home outside Bryan, Texas into the city proper but before I lost contact with the neighborhood crew. The PlayStation was near the end of its run, and fairly affordable. I didn't specify any games to my parents so they took a gamble and one of those was on a niche game called Suikoden. Don't worry, this cover has little to do with the game. I'll…

Good morning, afternoon, or whenever it is that you read this. This morning I read this post from Desi at Stitching, who was inspired by a different user, Becky/OnlineGoddess. So, since I love gushing about my cats, I decided to make my own contribution to #BearCats. As an interesting aside, the mascot of my undergraduate alma mater is a bearkat. Not that the mascot makes any sense, of course. I live with two cats, and a dog. I got both of my cats together just around ten years ago, and they…

Good morning, afternoon, or whenever you read this. My state is once again failing Texas students. This conflict of curriculum set by the State Board of Education has been ongoing. It has officially passed, meaning that, barring some kind of intervention, this will be in public classrooms with a target date of 2030. There are two major changes: the mandatory reading list by grade level and the K-12 Social Studies TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills). I plan to write about both, but my…

Good morning, afternoon, or whenever it is that you read this. Earlier this year, my wife read M. L. Wang's Blood Over Bright Haven at my recommendation. While she was in the middle of reading it, she suggested the Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart. The Bone Shard Daughter is the first book of the Drowning Empire series. There's quite a few mysteries that drive the plot, making it difficult to make a spoiler free review. But that honestly is it's greatest strength - the book presents a…

Good morning, afternoon, or whenever it is that you read this. This is the third and final part of my recollection from New Mexico in 2020. You can read the previous installment here. Alternatively, if you are new to the series, you can find the first part here. My destinations so far. From my KOA in Carlsbad, it is around 130 miles to Cloudcroft, and then White Sands NP is another 35-ish miles. I woke up a little before sunrise on my penultimate day in New Mexico. So far, I had seen two US…

Good morning, afternoon, or whenever it is that you read this. In far West Texas, the threat of land seizures for a border wall has families on edgeI went to Big Bend National Park back in March of this year and much had changed in the intervening nine or so years since I had last visited. However, two major things remained the same: first, Big Bend is vast, lonely, and heavily underdeveloped. Second is that this land is extremely vulnerable and requires protection. The biggest change I…

Happy Juneteenth tomorrow, USA! A History of America in Ten Strikes by Erik Loomis is the fifth nonfiction book I've read in 2026 putting me squarely at the halfway point of my overall 10 nonfiction goal. This blog post is slightly delayed - I read and finished this back in May, but was drowning in end-of-the-school-year shenanigans. I’ve read a whole other book between then and now. First off, the title is a bit of a misnomer as not all of these are strikes. All of them have strikes, but it's…

This blog post is about my second day in New Mexico in March 2020. You can read about my first trip here. My destinations thus far on my journey - around forty minutes from my cabin to Carlsbad Caverns, and another thirty or so to Guadalupe Mountains My second day in New Mexico started bright and early. Today was technically not going to be spent in the Land of Enchantment. Instead, I was going to Guadalupe Mountains National Park to hike Guadalupe Peak - the highest point in the state of…

Google DeepMind CEO Says we don’t have much time to prepare for the ‘new human era’Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, is calling on students and Americans to 'lean in' on AI, which he claims is an inevitability of the future. There is some genuine advice here: mechanization and digitization did drastically change how we work, live, and operate. And I won't discount how AI may have its application to modern society. There is, however, a big disconnect between what the corporatists want and…

Good morning, afternoon, or whenever it is that you read this. I am a Gemini, so my birthday's proximity has me in my memories. Generally speaking, my birthdays as a child were good when my father was home. When I became a teenager, my birthdays were much more humble aside from one that I spent in DC - which I should put to text sometime soon. I have a few distinct birthday memories as an adult as well, the best of which were because of my wife. However, today I am remembering the first…

Finals week is, in theory, the culmination of an entire year of work. One more assessment that is supposed to be the gauge of a student’s learning. It’s supposed to be the last half mile on a long hike or the plating of a home-cooked meal. And while that may be the case at the college level, in my own experience teaching middle and high school, finals are perfunctory at best. One of the schools I’ve worked for made their final worth a piddly 7% of the total semester grade. Admittedly, that…

I arise from the dead to review a book as I drone on to the end of the school year. There are some very disturbing descriptions with this book, especially around loss of autonomy. Definitely check out the content warnings. If all of that sounds good, jump on in. Take Brothers Grimm, mix it with a dose of body horror, and you will have something close to A Sorceress Comes To Call by T. Kingfisher. A Sorceress Comes To Call (referred to from here forward as Sorceress in italics) is part of a…

It's been rough the past few months. Every quarter of the school year has its own unique challenges. But the fourth quarter is exhaustion. The fourth quarter manifests as gradually coming in later and later to work. It manifests as kids shifting into summer mode. It manifests as survival meals, extra trips for ice cream, and later nights. It is overstimulation. This has been a rougher year under the Trump administration, which has continued to inflict racial, political, and economic violence…

This will contain some very minor spoilers for Shadow of the Fox, the first book in this series. I read the first of this series, Shadow of the Fox last year. I enjoyed it but felt, at the time, that the story around the characters was ultimately less interesting than the story of our main leads - Yumeko and (to a lesser extent) Tatsumi because most of the ‘adventuring party’ joined quite late. As a result, we learned considerably less about them. Daisuke had some foreshadowing, at least, but…

If you didn't know, I am a geography teacher. I've been in social studies for a decade now, with half of it spent in AP Human Geography. When I was first offered geography, I had assumed it was largely focused on physical land masses mixed with some aspects of world cultures. And I had no idea what AP Human Geography was even about. I flew by the seat of my pants that first year, and was shifted to APUSH/US History as my scores in the STAAR tested subject were high. But when I returned to APHG…

Good morning, afternoon, or whenever it is that you read this. Like many millennials, I found Fire Emblem through the Super Smash Brothers: Melee pipeline. Two of the secret characters in that game were Marth and Roy. Marth was the series' poster boy, and Roy was the protagonist of the most recent installment of the series, which to that point had only been released in Japan. My friends and I were intensely curious about who these two swordsman. Then Nintendo Power announced the next game would…

I don’t generally like to write about the same topic twice in a row, but 2 days after I posted my gerrymandering post, the Supreme Court completely contradicted something I said. To quote myself: "In essence, [Rucho vs. Common Cause] protects the ability of a state to draw lines how it wishes outside of a few fringe cases" (Emphasis added) That fringe case I was referring to was race due to the Voting Rights Act, which has been weakened by the SCOTUS in the decision Louisiana v. Callais from…

There has been a lot this week or two. I have been baking this one for a few days now, though, so I didn't want to do a NewsThoughts. Gerrymandering has been front and center in the news, with one of the most recent developments being the narrow vote in Virginia to redraw the congressional district lines to more heavily favor Democrats, which was recently approved by the Virginia High Court. This conflict began in earnest in Texas last year when alleged grafter and current United States…

While my main focus is non-fiction reading this year, I still want to indulge myself in fantasy. I have 4 books read this year, all of them non-fiction. But in the background, I have been doing a couple's read of The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Ali Chakraborty. About two years ago, I suggested to my wife that we start reading together since we've enjoyed sharing audiobooks on road trips in the car. We are generally pretty consistent - either through audiobooks or actually…

It is Saturday night. Technically, it's Sunday morning. Houston, for once, seems quiet. I was delaying sleep after a night of intoxicating substances when I felt like finding some soundscapes to listen to. I happened to find one I used to enjoy before I realized how many of these videos across YouTube were AI generated. I was pleasantly surprised to find a video of the content creator on camera, showing his work process, including his keyboard and software. I suppose that also could have been…

I have been making steady progress on my novella, but accidentally dug up an old scar about censorship in Texas schools.

How The Word Is Passed is a thought-provoking journey through the history of black Americans through memorials and sites

Banner of the Maid is Fire Emblem meets French Revolution: The Anime

I recount my trip to Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, in the Spring Break before COVID-19

I ramble on about the sweet spot between high school and college in the mid 2000s

Florida's attack on sociology is just the most recent attack on education and diversity.