Chasing Wombats

one fun thing about being a teacher in march 2023 is that chess is a literal epidemic among teens. we are starting to have meetings about how we can STOP teenagers from playing too much chess which is like if we were trying to figure out how to stop them from reading for fun. When i was in high school five years ago chess was nerd shit only but now it is transcending every social and language barrier and is absolutely rampant. kids aren’t on their phone texting in class anymore it’s ONLY chess.com. kids are playing chess on their phones while playing chess in real life. this is still better than tiktok because at least the kids are developing an attention span from this

A lot of people saying "they're dead" and that's true, but a lot of them are also permanently disabled

hey. don’t cry. crush two cloves of garlic into a pot with a dollop of olive oil and stir until golden then add one can of crushed tomatoes a bit of balsamic vinegar half a tablespoon of brown sugar half a cup of grated parmesan cheese and stir for a few minutes adding a handful of fresh spinach until wilted and mix in pasta of your choice ok?

Don't get me wrong, I love the dreamy fairytale-ness of the Ghibli movie version of Howl's Moving Castle, but the book. The book. Sophie, first off, being so incredibly set on being the boring un-gifted un-adventuresome eldest daughter (as is right and fitting for an eldest daughter to be) that she doesn't notice she's working magic, like, constantly? And when a witch shows up like "hey girlie you are fully working SO much magic that I'm feeling threatened, so like I'm gonna put you in the old lady dimension ciao," she's like well. That was weird. Anyway I guess I better go find something to do as an old lady. And she reasons that this famously evil sorcerer who eats young girls' hearts is probably safe for her now cause like. She's old. What's he gonna do to me. And proceeds to bully her way into becoming his cleaning lady. And Howl, known flaky whimsical fuckboy extraordinaire, is like sure okay I guess that works for me. And just as well because it turns out he's also a fucking bottom who kinda digs this strong stubborn lady who's steamrolled her way into his life, kinda weird that she's disguised as an old woman but w/e he's not gonna question her life choices and like it's not actually a problem for him, and by the time Sophie's figured out that oh crap oh shit she's actually kinda into this flighty asshole, what am I gonna do, he'd never return my feelings in a hundred years, Howl's basically accepted that they're mostly married. And also how can you top "my extremely powerful and slightly fey wizard is just a Welsh grad student who wandered into a portal one day" for a character concept. You can't. It's the perfect book really

so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

i need all the help i can get for finals