true chaotic neutral

yesterday at snack we had cheerios and milk. as I'm walking by a table a 4th grade girl says, "look, Andy! now someone else can use it."

and she using a spoon to move her leftover cereal milk back into the milk carton. big smile on her face. 

she said, "I love recycling!"

and I said, "that is true chaotic neutral. "

another good moment

yesterday we were heading in to the new afterschool woods and to be dramatic I said, "we claim these woods in the name of afterschool."

And this boy goes, "no , andy. it's cooler if we're trespassing. then we can be arrested and go to jail."

And I said, "okay, we're TRESPASSING."

And a girl over heard that and she was very excited about the dress she wore to school that day and she said, "no, Mr. Andy. I'm DRESS-passing."

And I said, "that was very clever."

and my life is a cartoon. 

a good moment from today

today the kids met up in the woods and held auditions to see who would be the next judge on our judge show that we film.

a boy was auditioning and I thought of a question that I hoped would stump him.

I said, "hey, you know judges have to wear dresses, right? is that going to be a problem for you?"

And he pauses for a beat and says, deadly serious, 'maybe'.

probably not funny to anyone but me but it was an answer I was not expecting. his confidence made it a complete power move. 

boil me down

it was one of those days where I ate a whole bag of kale for dinner

and I'm FEELING it.

I did pretty much everything I like to do today. I made art. I went climbing. I ran. I bought groceries. I did laundry. I ate a lot of kale.

a near perfect sunday.

the kids at afterschool have gotten really into the dungeons and dragons game I've set up for them. when we left on Friday they were preparing to enter a gigantic evil looking tree where the alien/insect/robots are believed to reside. It's great. Most likely they're going to end up being swarmed by bugs.

ran a good race today

I ran 26:14 for 8k, or 4.95 miles. It felt really good. I hit 5:13 for the first mile and didn't deviate too much in pace and it very gradually became less comfortable. 

It was a promising performance and in line with where I was in the Fall. What I need to do is find a way to build off of it. Which should be pretty straightforward. But I feel like I've been stuck at this plateau of performance for a while. I'm optimistic though. 

I have two and a half weeks until Costa Rica so that's a good amount of time to do some good workouts. One thing that's been helpful is to think about how I'm healthy and fit enough to be able to push myself and enjoy it. I think I'll keep focusing on that and hopefully that will lead to exciting training that will lead to exciting races.

What I'm Working On

- in my art classes I'm still having the kids do 3D art. I'm trying to make some large paper mache sculptures and they haven't really caught on with the kids yet which means my progress has been a little slow. They're really interested in building with hot glue guns and popsicle sticks. They've made some really interesting things.

-at afterschool we've been exploring a second, larger area of woods that I call Woods 2. It's pretty exciting for the kids and for me. we've also been playing a version of Dungeons and Dragons that I'm calling Potato Farmer Simulator. The kids are all potato farmers and strange robotic, insect aliens are coming in the farm at night and causing all kinds of mischief and havoc. A lot of them ignore the storyline completely and focus on things like making friends with a duck, becoming rich, trying to destroy their friend's basement. It's good fun. We played for about an hour straight yesterday.

-I'm running a race this weekend in Charlotte with my friend Peyton. We're going to drive down tonight and race in the afternoon. It's an 8k. I think I can do really really well. I've put in a lot of good work and I feel stronger than I've ever felt before. I'm really looking forward to it.

-I've been rock climbing about twice a week and making progress. I'd like to be able to do V4's soon. At the gym they rate each route by difficulty from V0 to like, V8 or so. The first time I went I could do all the V0's and some V1's. And then after about a month or so I could do a good amount of V2's. And for the past few months my limit is mostly V3's. I went on Wednesday though and I can get to the middle of about 3 different V4 routes and I think it's the kind of thing where I'll be able to keep making progress on them and will probably get at least one within a month. So that's exciting.

I've been drawing a good amount but I haven't posted much anywhere because I got it in my head that I really wanted to start putting things out in the world. like street art. but I haven't been able to make time for doing that. I'll figure something out.

and yeah! that's pretty much my life right now. going good.

I'm doing well

I asked kids to make memes today. Here's one of the ones they made:

more things that you can say to anyone

because I don't have work today

-what does it really mean to be "it" in tag?

-a bag full of bananas. but no ban full of bagagas? get it together, english.

-is it arbitrary or arbartartartreetree?

-play it fast and loose like a...cheetah with ehlers-danlos

-I'm totally unbiased. I swear. I have no bias. I'm a completely objective judge. Seriously. Absolutely no bias.

-The word pinky could just be a nickname for pencil.

-0546. The way I'd remember that is....I don't know. That's a hard combination to remember. It's a tough one. Nothing jumps to mind immediately. You're just gonna have to do it. Like mowing the grass.

things you can say to anyone

what does it say about a person who would give up the use of one of their hands to hold an umbrella in the rain? how desperate are they to avoid water?

nose. no's. knows. The no's a nose knows. What are the no's a nose knows? Stinky stuff, probably.

If it happened to be butter from a long time ago, well then.

Scarcely anyone can see in this fog. (you can only say this one if there is fog.)

Oh. Better ask the police for permission first.

Leg plus leg. Double leg.

Leg end. Legend. Foot. A foot is a leg end. 

One trick that's useful is that if you ball certain things up then they'll look more like balls than what they normally look like.

Yesterday I paid with cash at the grocery store and the guy gave me change and I counted the change and checked the receipt to make sure he gave me the proper amount. He did. It was 56 cents. Then when I took my keys out to unlock my truck, the change that was in the pocket fell out and landed in the snow. I stopped and looked for the change and found it all. 56 cents.

trying to keep a writing streak going

a  picture of me from 2016 in my natural habitat. at a summer camp.

At some point in college I think my mom told me that my grandpa would read this blog. I really liked that. He's a pretty quiet person who doesn't tend to speak too much unless there's something he really wants to say. Anyway, I liked that he enjoyed reading what I wrote, even if it probably didn't make any sense a lot of the time. It feels like a really good connection to someone I admire and respect a lot but don't talk to as much as I would like. He's been having some troubles for a while and I'm not sure if he still read this or not. I saw him over Thanksgiving and Christmas. I wish we could have talked more. I think he's a really strong person and it's hard to see him be so down on himself. I know he's done a lot in his life that I will never have to do and that's part of the reason that I'm even here at all. I'd like to say that I still think he can do more than he might think he can right now. I don't know. It's stuff that feels hard to bring up and talk about and this seems like maybe a good space for it. That's about it.

2020

Oh man, I only posted twice last month. What a way to end the decade. I do want to keep up this blog though. This will be the third decade that this blog has existed in.

Some things I'm excited about:

today I found out about two exciting opportunities!

1- I was asked to be the director of a leadership school--an offshoot of the summer camp I worked at last summer. It pays more, has a fancy title, and makes me a professional adventure leader guy. That's really exciting! I can't wait for the summer!

2- a local musician in charlottesville asked me if I would be interested in making a poster! that's neat!

another thing I'm exciting about

-I think running is going to go really well this year. I've been having really good workouts. getting really strong. I'm excited. 2017- I had the best races of my life before getting injured for a long time. 2018- I started with injuries and worked through them and then started running A LOT! 2019- I was still running A LOT (probably too much) and had some disappointing races. Then I was starting to figure it out by the spring, had nagging injuries all summer, and things started clicking again by the Fall. So, after working through injuries and training wrong, I think I'm finally in a place to get back to or surpass that 2017 fitness. Time will tell.

another thing I'm excited about

I'm cautiously excited about this but I decided to put myself out there more and get on some dating apps 😬 we'll see.

In summation, my goals for the year are as follows:

-make after school the best it can be
-make things: art, writing, videos
-running
-teaching art
-summer camp
-relationship???