Goertz Thoughts

 Here's an interesting article I read this morning. Please don’t rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge TLDR: It is customary in Japan to remove your shoes when entering a house. It is also customary for the host to rearrange the shoes neatly. Paramedics are having trouble getting their shoes back on while carrying stretchers because the shoes have been tidied up. This is fascinating! It is so much a part of the culture that emergency workers will stop to remove shoes before giving treatment. And family members will stoop down to move the shoes while their loved ones are having a medical emergency. I've been trying to think what we do in America that would have the same level of compliance. I'm sort of drawing a blank. The only thing that I can think of is how I always answer "You too!" to someone who tells me to have a great day. I don't know if this is more an indictment of Japanese culture for being too rigid or American culture for b...

The title is just a bit of what the kids call "rage-baiting". I did finally finish the Amazing Digital Circus (Lauren M. made me watch the pilot years ago and I stopped then). My thoughts... meh. Similar to when I finished listening to Epic ... meh. (There's only one song that I really liked from that soundtrack - Warrior of the Mind) Quick roundup of my thoughts ( probably spoilers ): Caine reminds me a whole lot of the host in Mario Party 8. He has a sentient hat sidekick. Apparently his name is MC Ballyhoo Favorite character: Ragatha. Even though she is going through the same hell as the rest of them, she goes out of her way to try to make sure that everyone is doing okay. Least favorite: Jax - He is made more sympathetic by the end, but still is not a good person. Sure, we all have our own demons, but he makes it worse for everyone. Favorite episode: Fast Food Masquerade. Gangle got a brief taste of happiness. I do like redemption arcs, so I appreciate what happened w...

It was rainy. We were tired. We drove home. That's about it. I didn't take any pictures (sorry). Adjustments for next year: Try harder to get rooms at Indian Lodge (much closer to the Observatory) Forget the CDRI Nature Center (the students didn't seem to appreciate it) Get boxed lunches from the Astronomer's Lodge so we eat lunch sooner Scavenger hunt at the State Park Geology Animals Plants

 Here's what happened on the 2nd day of our annual trip. Cloudy skies. Not great for seeing the stars, but made our walks more pleasant The top of Mt. Locke We saw two of the big telescopes: The Harlan J. Smith and the Hobby Eberly. Fun fact: this telescope was shot by a mentally disturbed astronomer in the 70's. Students went to a grocery store to get lunch. It's fun to see what they get when they can get whatever. Some interesting options: A can of beans, a whole coconut, a ball of soft mozzarella eaten like an apple. After lunch, we did some hiking, resting, and more hiking. Students not pictured. They went too fast and left us adults behind. Aura farming? I don't know what these kids do. A couple of interesting coincidences today. One of our chaperones ran into a astronomer who we had seen at Little Caesars on Thursday. And at the Friday star party, we saw a Savio student on vacation with her family! The clouds prevented us from seeing any stars at the star party. T...

 Greetings from West Texas. I'm with most of the astronomy class on our annual (because we did it once already last year) field trip to the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis. It's quite a drive. And the observatory is still another 45 minutes. Summary so far: We've got 2 vans this year (just one last year). Mr. Flores was nice enough to let me have the better one. He says he's used to the older one. Despite leaving 15 minutes later than planned, an unscheduled stop at Starbucks (Mr. Flores needs his caffeine), snack stop, and lunch stop, we still got to the hotel around when I thought we would: 3:30. Getting in that early allowed time to climb Hancock Hill which overlooks Alpine. The famous desk Just living my best life. As you can see, there were clouds. It's supposed to be overcast on Day 2, so I was worried that we wouldn't see any stars this trip. However, when we went to the Marfa Lights viewing area, the clouds opened up just enough to get a glimpse at ...

Today is National Puzzle Day (apparently). Like most national days, it seems to be a relatively new celebration, most likely created to sell products. In honor of the celebration, I share with you my completion of Anatolian's 3000 piece Mystery Writers (#4918) Check out all its majesty! As I mentioned in my previous post, I got it from Goodwill so there was a chance of missing pieces. Look closely: two are not there. Since it is a 3000 piece puzzle, that means that 99.93% of the puzzle is present. However, I don't feel 99.93% satisfied with my completion. Don't get me wrong; I still feel massively successful (my last 3000 piece puzzle took me over a year (in part because I kept forgetting about it)). But I'd say I'm closer to a 98% feeling of success. My puzzle strategy: Edges first. I don't think I'm alone there. Major sub images. In this case, I did the clock, peacock, and ladder Sort remaining pieces by color. I have special puzzle sorting trays for this ...

 As I believe that I have mentioned before, I collect board games. Christmas and my birthday (in early January) are good times to get these. Here's a rundown of what I added. I haven't play them all yet (and maybe won't every. I collect more than I can possibly play). Goodwill Acquisitions: Purchasing games from Goodwill is dicey due to possible missing pieces. However, they're usually about 10% of the new cost. It's worth the risk. Q-bitz An easy, pretty fun puzzle game. It says it's supposed to improve your brain power Threads of Fate A very highly rated mystery game. It's a risk to get these used because pieces might be missing. I took a chance anyway since it had an envelope of replacement items for the pieces that get used up. Unfortunately, the previous owner wrote all over a bunch of the rest of the stuff as well. I think I can print new ones. 7 Wonders A well made classic Plunder: A Pirates Life Mixed reviews on this one. It's not hard enough for...

The New Year is an artificial construct. There's nothing special about it other than the meaning that we assign to it . It's not really even that close to the winter solstice (which would make sense). As such, I see no particular reason to celebrate it. In my house, we toasted New Year's Eve with sparkling cider at 9:00 and then went to bed. As arbitrary as the date is, it does provide a useful moment to pause, reflect, and reset. That means it's time to update and brush off my daily goals tracker. I'll follow it for about a month and then give up (probably). Mr. Goertz's Goal Tracker Here's what I like about this: I print it out weekly. That makes it physical. To me that's important to owning goals. I always tell students who are struggling with deadlines to get a physical planner. These aren't really SMART goals. Due to the number of things on the list, attaching times and completion dates would not be a good idea. There's no penalty for non-co...

It is well known that I have issues with some Christmas song (see here and here ). Here's a few more: Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer The song is pretty bad ( The Good Place  is right). Further, Grandpa is an awful person. Not only does he not care that his wife is dead, but he also let her stagger home alone and drunk on Christmas Eve. I'll Be Home for Christmas A minor point granted, but how can you put presents on the tree? Did Christmas trees use to be stronger? Luckily, modern versions have changed it to "round the tree". Do They Know It's Christmas? There actually is snow in Africa. In South Africa, during June and July, but high altitude areas such as Kilimanjaro and the Atlas Mountains do get December snow. The Little Drummer Boy Sister Carita (who taught me at St. Mary's) loved this song. She said that it showed that we always needed to give our best to Jesus. The problem is it's an unaccompanied drum. That's not soothing or even good music...

As mentioned in a previous year , it is not time for Christmas music yet. Rather than to launch into a complaint about this, I will instead give a little longer list of songs that you can  listen to right now. You can switch to Christmas songs after your Thanksgiving meal. There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays - It doesn't mention Christmas at all. In fact, it highlights pumpkin pie: a traditional Thanksgiving  dessert Jingle Bells  - This was written as a Thanksgiving song Sleigh Ride - Some students tried to convince me yesterday that any song with a sleigh is a Christmas song since Santa has a sleigh. You know who else has a sleigh? Jadis, the White Witch from Narnia. It means nothing. That's how you travel in the snow.   I've Got Plenty to be Thankful For - From Holiday Inn , the same show that gave us White Christmas. I can't fully endorse the movie as it has some scenes that were considered appropriate by some people at the time (they were never approp...

NaNoWriMo is dead. It has a lot to do with their stance on AI (their website doesn't exist anymore, but here is an author that has their take on it). It really upset a lot of people, including members of Savio's Writer's Guild club. The use of AI is one of the few things that you can do to get removed from our club; it's in the bylaws (I included an AI generated image in a story pitch I presented last year before the rule was made and students were less than pleased). The Writer's Guild is continuing to celebrate November anyway. In the spirit of NaNoWriMo, many of our members (not all. Despite the name, the club is home to all sorts of creatives: artists, gamers, composers, as well as authors) will be attempting to write 50,000 word pieces during Novel November. It's a tough task. I've never done it before, but I will also give it a shot. The closest I ever got to a novel was in sophomore year English class. I wrote an 80 page novella. I don't remembe...

 It's been 8 years since my last Halloween post , so I guess it's time to update my complaint. To sum up: trick-or-treating is for children. If you're not a child, buy your own candy. To be clear, I'm not anti-fun and I'm not anti costume. Case in point: What I am against is co-opting something that is meant for children and taking it for adults/teens (Disney adults is a gray area. It's okay to like Disney, but taking up all the space in the lines at the parks is rude). For the record, I am also against: Adults sitting in costumed Santa laps Adult Easter egg hunts Adults playing on playgrounds during the day while children wait for their turn on the swings with tears in their eyes (most of these scenarios involve crying children in my imagination). I think Halloween is a great time for celebration. It's the nature of the celebrations that change. For my 40th birthday, did I rent a bounce house? No, I rented a movie theater and we watched Stardust. Is Christm...

You may have seen several students with enameled character pins on their blazers or backpacks. They may be from Brandon Sanderson's Dragonsteel website . Today, I'd like to convince you to read everything written by my favorite author, Brandon Sanderson. Here are 5 reasons. (Formatting is a little off. I don't know why) The print that I have was given to me by my friend Jesse Sky . You won't soon run out of things to read. While some authors make their fans wait years ( decades? ) for new books, Brandon cannot stop writing. During Covid, he secretly wrote 5 novels! Below is a sampling of some of his works. Cosmere - his main series of interconnected novels. They take place on different planets, but many characters cross over. Stormlight Archive - 5 novels, 2 novellas Mistborn - 7 novels, 3 novellas Elantris - 1 novel, 2 novellas 8 other assorted novels/novellas Here's my suggested reading order (to avoid spoilers). If you pick up a random book, you will be confuse...

This post is inspired by a listicle about 50 movies you should see before you die. I don't know who wrote the list, but every other movie was a "psychological thriller". No one needs  to see "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". This is my list. I really do think that you should see these movies (hopefully you already have). Some because they are just really enjoyable. Some because there are a lot of references that people will make in college/life that you might miss (the same reason we read Shakespeare ). I don't watch movies that are too sad, so you won't see many of those on this list. I am not a cinephile, so these won't necessarily be the "best" movies. A few notes: I found it impossible to rank these, so they're in alphabetical order. There are many movies that you should be aware  of, even if you don't see them. I suggest taking a look at AFI's list . This article started out 2 years ago as "25 Movies You Should ...

Nowadays, it's so easy to find music. You can just google any song (although it's probably better to use Spotify, YouTube Music, or another service. It can avoid some tricky copyright issues). However, it was not always so. Spotify didn't come to the US until 2011. Let me share with you some of the ways that I listened to music throughout my life. Older media: Vinyl records are making a comeback recently. I listened to them because they were cheap (I don't care about audio fidelity; I can't hear a difference). We also had some old 8 tracks laying around. Lots of John Denver and Peter, Paul, and Mary . My mom was a little young to be a hippie, but she liked their music. Tapes: Tapes were great: cheap (you would sometimes get them for free in Happy Meals), lightweight, portable, and most cars had a tape deck that you could play them in. You could also listen to them while exercising, thanks to Walkman . One cool feature was the ability to make mixtapes. Using a tape...

When I was growing up, Sunday Mass was different. Not necessarily wrong (except in some instances), but definitely not what you are used to. I'm not talking about pre-conciliar Latin Mass (I'm not that old). I grew up in the 80s and 90s. During that time, the church in the US was still experimenting with new forms of liturgy. Architecture I went to St. William growing up. It's not the St. William that you know. For one thing, it was about a half mile further down McNeil Road. For another, it didn't look like a Catholic Church. It was built in 1981, if I remember correctly Inside, it was also weird. Here's a series of pictures from Christmas/Easter over several years. See if you can spot what's missing. Nice hat, mom! Did you (not) see it? There's no crucifix! I guess that was "too depressing"? (There was usually a cross, off to the side, but no corpus) Life Teen Mass These days, a Life Teen mass usually just means a Sunday evening Mass with rock mu...