I haven't replied to the Three Big Accomplishments of 2017 question on Twitter, because I don't feel like I had Three Big Accomplishments in 2017, but, weirdly, I got inspired by tkingfisher's GIANT LIST OF STUFF. I realize that this is bizarre, since a normal reaction to that list would be to run screaming in the opposite direction, but, I dunno, I can do a list. Pick Three Big Accomplishments? That's hard. Write a long disorganized list? Much more my style.

- I wrote 108,128 new words and spent upwards of 22.3 hours editing/etc. (The imprecision because I started counting editing hours partway through the year.)
- I wrote a first draft of Parallax, cleaned it up into a reasonable second draft, and sent that out to beta readers.
- I turned Little Hab in the Big Crater (2015 NaNoWriMo) into a serviceable draft of On The Spokes of Sector H and sent it out to beta readers.
- I started three novel-or-novella-length projects, none of which are going anywhere at this particular moment, but all of which seem like they might: Expeditionary, Falling Sideways Past the Sun, and Requiem for a Childhood.
- I think that vorindi and I had some good discussions about stories and plots and what works and what doesn't.
- Short fiction? I think I did some short fiction. I definitely cleaned up "Naughty, Nice, Nothing" and halfheartedly sent it out to a few places. It looks like I wrote "Field Promotion" this year, too.
- And today I started the next pass of On the Spokes of Sector H.

- I attended three (I think it was three? at least three) rallies/marches things.
- I called my elected officials (and some appointed officials, I think), A LOT. Significantly more than I had ever called them before. And did some resistbot, too.

- I got my act together to get a tooth pulled and actually get orthodontia, and my teeth are already better-aligned and easier to keep clean.

- I went to Rotterdam for work, by myself, for two weeks, and led trainings with our staff there. (And while there I saw Kuekenhof and Kinderdijk, both of which are lovely, in different ways.) I want the US to do city planning and infrastructure the way the Netherlands do. Not sure how to make that happen.
- I was in charge of buildouts for two floors, which I had previously participated in but not been in charge of.
- I set up a switch all by myself that A said that was good.
- I solved my 3,000th Zendesk ticket last month sometime (most were not this year, but it's still a nice milestone).

- Since I was in Europe anyway, I visited T&C in Norway for a weekend, which I've wanted to do for years.
- I went to Arisia and Conbust.
- I saw Ursula Vernon, Yoon Ha Lee, Daniel Jose Older, Malinda Lo, and E.K. Johnston (and got books signed).

- I gave a sermon about the Parable of the Workers.
- I completed my third year on church council (and I'm going to hit my three-year term limit any minute now, so then I can STOP being on church council). This year we made good strides towards moving from three-hour meetings to two-or-even-one-and-a-half-hour meetings, which I will consider a victory.

- I joined iNaturalist.org and contributed 70 observations.
- I did some bookbinding for the first time in eight years. Not up to what I was producing in Spain, but I also don't have all the nice equipment we had at the school, and I'm pretty pleased with the book.
- We got a proper shelf to mount our plant lights on. No more plant lights all over the corner of my room!
- vorindi and I spread 7 cubic yards of mulch and 1 cubic yard of soil. (That is too much. We should get less next time.)
- Relatedly, we accidentally started a feud with a neighbor, dealt with the fallout of that, and discovered that a number of other neighbors don't like her either.
- I tried started a hugelkultur garden bed. We'll see how that goes.
- I made a hoophouse for the garden (and discovered that hoophouses are WAY easier than cold frames).
- I briefly had enough shelf space for all my books, but need to do some reorganization to be able to fit the two I got for Christmas.
- After a several-year hiatus, I fell into two(!) IRL tabletop games and have found myself GMing a third over Google Handouts. It's good to game again.
- I found people with whom to play board games occasionally and played for the first time: The Captain is Dead, Evolution, First Sparks, Power Grid, Splendor, Bunny Bunny Moose Moose, Antidote, and possibly a few others that I'm not remembering. I did not like Antidote at all and was meh about Power Grid, but would play all the others again, and particularly like The Captain is Dead. It's also good to boardgame again.
- I saw a partial solar eclipse.
- I turned 30, and held a belated party at which we fit 11 or 12 people and one dog into our shoebox apartment.
EDIT: I also read 126 books.
And paid off my student loans. That was definitely a thing.

And now I'm going to go to sleep and start the new year well-rested.

Me: Isaac, do you care about the aloe in the bathroom?

Isaac: The what?

Me: The aloe.

Isaac: There's aloe in the bathroom?

Me: The plant.

Isaac: Oh. No.

One of the interesting things about having a public professional blog is the ability/responsibility to screen posts. On the one hand, a part of me says, "The internet should be FREE!" but a wiser and more cynical part of me knows what the unmediated internet can look like, and feels that curation and moderation is entirely appropriate, particularly on the blog that represents me to the world. Being a sensible sort, I listen to that part of myself, and keep the first post screening up.

( Of course, this then introduces the question of what to unscreen and what not to unscreen. )

So, I'm on vacation right now. I am still checking work email about once a day, though, because there was some stuff relating to the yearbook, and so it doesn't pile up too much, and in case there is anything really important that I can deal with remotely. Or things that aren't *that* important, but should be dealt with anyway. Such as this.

I got an email two days ago:

hey miss Miriam this is -Name Redacted- what is everything that is supposed to be in the business plan (sic)

The business plan being a project that was assigned six months ago that was supposed to be REALLY REALLY due July 25th, the last day of fake makeup school before summer recess. I (and other people) have been in contact with Name Redacted, and he knew that this was a graduation requirement and that he needed to finish it and that I wanted it before the 25th so that I could edit it and he could correct it and give me a final version by the end of the day on the 25th. (Or perhaps sometime last week, if he was really late with it.) Furthermore, I don't HAVE a copy of the business plan handout with me: the paper copies are in my office, and the electronic copies are on the share drive, which I can only access from the school network. And while I could take a pretty good stab at listing all the things that are supposed to be there, I'd want to have the paper to refer to before giving a student an Official Pronouncement (and this is not a student whose behavior makes anyone feel inclined to give him extra slack), and also I don't trust him not to cut any corner he can, and while he can still cut corners on the handout, at least they're nicely delineated corners that will take a bit more effort to cut.

So I sent him a reply:

Everything that's in the handouts I gave about it. If you no longer have your handout, ask Ms. -Boss- for one. You can tell her that they're with my lesson plans.

Ms. Miriam

ok but all i need is stuff like a letter stating my business plan and the plans that i will take to make it happen right?

No, student, no. You need a business plan, with all the information that entails. Like is spelled out for you, step-by-step, specifically designed to make it as easy as possible to include all the information you need, in the template/worksheet handout.

It's not a letter. It's a specific document providing all the information that is asked for in the handout.

Ms. Miriam

Mind you, this whole exchange happened within the space of two hours. Which I think is pretty good for a random email sent to me WHILE I AM ON VACATION.

I just found this email, which was sent at 1am this morning:

ok i have to turn it in tomorrow and i don't have the time to come up there and get can you just tell me ms. Miriam and i can get it done

Upon reflection, I strongly suspect that "tomorrow" means today. (And, y'know, I would feel a lot more inclined to put effort into this, like maybe trawling through my work email to see if I can find a copy of the handout in question, if he'd showed ANY interest in getting this done during the last two weeks of sort-of-actual school, when everyone and her mother was getting on his case about finishing all this stuff. Or even if he'd managed to pay any attention to it last week. This student needs to learn to deal with the fact that deadlines are deadlines and you need to meet them. And by this point, I'm not feeling very sympathetic. And I don't have the information he wants.)

No, I can't. I told you that I needed it by three Thursdays ago. If coming to school was not convenient for you, you should have made sure at that point in time that you had all the information you needed.

I'm not in Pennsylvania right now, and I do not currently have a handout with me.

Ms. Miriam

I CCed my boss on that one. I'm pretty sure she'll back me up.

What world-broadening experiences did you have in college?

And/or:
Who or what in college took you outside of your comfort zone?

At church on Sunday, I sat down next to my father as the prelude started. He wrote something on the corner of his bulletin, then showed it to me:

E.L. Konigsburg died
Age 83

That may not mean anything to you. I've come to realize that, for as prolific a writer as she was, most people don't know her name. But if I ask, "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler? Silent to the Bone? A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver?" Sometimes their faces light up and they say, "Oh, the one about the kids who go live in the art museum? Yeah, I read that when I was a kid!"

She was never what I considered one of my favorite authors. Her work was too varied, to wide-ranging. I didn't even like Journey to an 800 Number. But I probably read it 15 years ago, and yet found myself thinking of it just the other week, going, Hm, I should see if I like it better, now that I'm an adult.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler was one of the staples of my childhood. The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place held its own on my 1GB iPod Shuffle for years, despite the 3-minute tracks, because it even on the hundredth listen, it was still fresh and interesting, and I could slip into the story at any point. I still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I read Silent to the Bone, because it stuck with me -- enough so that I read it again in college, because my memories of it were haunting.

And that's what many of her books were, for me. Books that stuck with me, that made me think, even when I didn't really think I liked them on the first read. I made an E.L. Konigsburg reference on Saturday. Neither of my coworkers got it, but that was okay; I don't make E.L. Konigsburg references because other people will recognize them, but because she precisely, concisely, captured something about the nature of the world, and I cannot say it better.

There may have been a time when The View From Saturday was my favorite book. Maybe not. I don't remember what else I was reading at the time, and realistic fiction has often had a more uphill battle than genre fiction, in the arena of my enjoyment. Either way, her writing has influenced me, and I did not wish her to pass without salute or acknowledgement.

I have a very important question:

Suppose you're a teenage-equivalent alien stuck on Earth because your parents work here, and you're upset that you're stuck on a dirtpit of a planet with bad reception, no social life to speak of, and a bunch of confused ape-descendants who haven't even figured out the basics of interplanetary travel. If you were looking to American popular culture for What Aliens Do, what conclusions would you reach? (Bonus points for things within your budget and available technology level.)

So far we have: make crop circles, disrupt utility networks, and cause general low-level mayhem.

I have a job! I have a job! I have a JOB!

It's an Americorps position here in Philadelphia, teaching computer skills to young people without high school diplomas.

I have a job!

Pardon me while I go phone my mother and dance around the room.

My mother and grandmother and I are plotting a road trip west, visiting various people and attractions in Ohio and Iowa. Because of the way these united states are arranged, there will also be a good deal of driving through Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Indiana. Right now, current plans seem to place this trip around the beginning of October.

Off-hand, I don't recall any of you being in this area, but have I forgotten someone who would like a couple of hours of visit? (No promises.) Or suggestions for must-see things we'll be driving past?

Who washes clothing with ammonia or acids?

Chlorine bleach I understand, yes, and it's nice for the washing machine to warn me. But I wouldn't even think to put ammonia in with laundry, nor acid, except possibly vinegar, and even that would be a bit weird, or tomato products (those are mildly acidic, right?), but that wouldn't be intentional, nor in sufficient quantities to be a problem.

I mean, presumably someone did, or there wouldn't be a warning about it, but who says, "Let me mix some bleach and ammonia with the dirty laundry"? (I realize that this is a thing that people accidentally do sometimes, which is why it's nice to be warned about it, but . . . the washing machine?)