School's In. Brain's Out.

Hey, why am I getting pageviews all of a sudden?  Don't you people know I haven't updated in a week?

Sorry for absenteeism of late - not so much here (cuz I don't expect anyone's been frantically autorefreshing this thing) but elsewhere.  Been behind on blog-reading and commenting - and speaking of which, if anybody knows of a good tool for tracking comments/discussions across multiple sites, I sure would love to know about it.  I found some, but they've almost all gone belly-up.

Anyway, so real life's been eating my lunch lately, mostly in a good way.  See, I'm a private instructor/tutor for high school students, which means that work always goes bananas at the beginning of the school year.  That's fine, but this year my company has moved a huge majority of the business online - so now I am NOT ONLY available to the aspiring apple-cheeked youth of the DFW metroplex, but ALSO serving all four time zones in the continental United States.  This is fun as hell on the one hand (I can scream at hysterically tired 17-year-olds from the comfort of my fetid pajamas!) and brutally exhausting on the other. 

More annoyingly, it's taken a ginsu knife to my free time.  As in, chopped it all into tiny, non-contiguous pieces, which I seem to be using to stare, slack-jawed with wonderment, at Wikipedia pictures of dugongs.

THAT FACE.

More annoyingly still, doing so many encore performances of the great instructional song and dance is draining my batteries bigtime.  At the end of the day, I can handle chores or bills or whatever the hell else is on the honey-do-list, but the thought of turning around to get leisure-time sociable just makes me want to press my face between the couch cushions until I can inhale the comforting potpourri of stale Cheeto crumbs and cat gas.

But you know, I reckon there's no shortage of teachers and nurses and parents - oh God, you poor human bouncy-castles! - who've had to pull a double and still get things done on the side.  Which means I don't have too much excuse.  So if you hear any unseemly slurping sounds over the next couple of weeks, that's me sucking it up and getting back on track.  Hopefully without too many juvenile casualties.

Children, your performance was miserable. Your parents will all receive phone calls instructing them to love you less.