Happy New Year to one and all from The Portly Politico!
2025 is a big year for yours portly. I turn forty—gasp!—in two days. My sister-in-law turns forty in December; my niece turns ten in August; and my Dad turns seventy in the same month. My maternal grandfather turns ninety—whoa! Lots of decades this year.
Trump will be back in office in nineteen days—praise the Lord!
It’s a good time to be alive.
Eat your black-eye peas and collard greens and have a wonderful New Year!
—TPP
Yours portly has been all over South Carolina and North Carolina (and part of Georgia) the last couple of days, so I’m woefully behind on the blog. More updates to come! For now, suffice it to say that it was a good Thanksgiving with my extended and immediate families, and Murphy enjoyed her quiet time with Dr. Girlfriend.
More to come!
—TPP
Yours portly is enjoying one of the benefits of working in modern education: ludicrous amounts off time off from work. As such, here I am indulging in Thanksgiving Break, a time-honored tradition that now lasts an entire week.
Thanksgiving Week is an opportunity to catch up on all of the little errands of life. On Wednesday I’ll get an oil change, a haircut, and an eye exam. A properly lubricated car, a properly cut head of hair, and a properly examined set of peepers—what a day! My doctor is apparently out on a much-deserved sabbatical, so he and I won’t see each other until 2 January 2025—the even of my fortieth birthday!
I’m currently spending time with my personal physician, my sweet girlfriend. Doctor Girlfriend and I enjoyed an early Thanksgiving dinner last night, and the girls—Murphy and her pup—enjoyed cans of turkey-flavored dog slop.
I’ll leave Doctor Girlfriend’s house tomorrow morning, leaving chunky old Murph in her capable hands. My parents have a full house of people coming in for the big day, as well as two young kittens, so out of concern that Murphy might maul the kittens (she hates cats) and generally stink up the joint (she’s a smelly dog, what can I say?), Dr. G has graciously agreed to take in the succulent chunk until I can get back this weekend.
Thanksgiving Break is something of the calm before the storm of the end of the semester. When I get back on 2 December 2024, we’ll have two busy weeks: the school play is Friday, 6 December 2024, and my students’ big concert is during the school day on Friday, 13 December 2024 (what luck!). There’s also quite a bit of Town Council-related business to resolve before the end of the year, and I’m unclear what impact that will have my increasingly tight schedule.
But then all the busyness and pressure lifts for about three weeks. Exam week is easy-peasy for a grizzled pedagogical grognard like yours portly. Followed by two weeks of Christmas Break, and I’m barely working for the next month.
Of course, isn’t that the promise of America? I distinctly remembered friends’ parents who didn’t work the month of December. Granted, they worked for the Savannah River Site, the massive Cold War-era tritium processing facility, so they were essentially federal employees. Naturally, the feds believe it’s a basic human right to get five months paid vacation each year. They’re practically Germans!
But I digress. I’m thankful for what I do, and for time to spend with family and loved ones. Doctor Girlfriend has a real job, so she’ll be working on Thanksgiving Day (and Christmas!). For the rest of us societal freeloaders, let the relaxation begin!
With that, here is 21 November 2022’s “Memorable Monday^2: Thanksgiving Week!“:
Yours portly is woefully behind on the blog, dear readers, but regular programming will return soon.
As Trump said upon winning the 2016 election, “Complicated business!” I am dealing with some Town Council business, which had me out late on Sunday after a wonderful weekend with my girls.
But all is well. I am very blessed.
Stay tuned!
—TPP
Yours portly has been out of town for a few days and is behind on the blog. Today is my first day back to Reality, so I’m going to do some adjustments and come back strong tomorrow with some fresh content.
Here’s hoping everyone is having a great week. Thanks to everyone for leaving such great comments on Monday’s post; I’ll be catching up and responding to those soon.
Happy Hump Day!
—TPP
Yours portly was pretty on the ball this week with posting, but by Friday, I was wiped out. You see, dear readers, it was Homecoming Week at my school, and your friendly neighborhood Port has to step up big time to meet the demands for high production values.
I was planning a post for SubscribeStar Saturday about the Vance-Walz VP debate, but I’ll have to forestall that for another time.
For now, I’m dashing off—after a good night’s sleep—on another footloose adventure, with Murphy in tow.
Happy Saturday!
—TPP
Yours portly had a pretty quite weekend before the resumption of the school year—classes started this past Monday—and while I keep feeling like I didn’t do anything, I was actually fairly productive in a number of small ways.
One of those was in regards to my composing. While I didn’t write much new material—I was mostly editing some pieces I’d written last week—I did list several new (and old) pieces for sale via Noteflight.
When I compose for an album, I like to have some kind of organizing theme. For example, Heptadic Structure is built upon the “gimmick” of writing every piece in 7/X time (7/4, 7/8, 7/16, etc.), in which each measure of music consists of seven beats. White Boy Summer attempted to capture the moods of summer, especially the chill, relaxed vibe of the season.
Sometimes, though, I’m just jotting things down for my own amusement and seeing where my scribblings take me. I don’t have perfect pitch, and while I know roughly what intervals sound like, when I write by hand away from a piano or my notation software, I can sometimes get very unusual results. My instrumental music often has an angular, geometric quality to it because I’m composing in a theoretical vacuum, as it were.
Good morning, faithful readers,
Yours portly is taking today off from SubscribeStar and the main blog here. All is well, I’m just behind on blogging with school prep this past week.
I’m ready for the first day of school, and working registration on Thursday and Friday has gotten me even more excited for the school year. Seeing the new sixth and seventh graders coming in (my school runs 6th-12th grades), all cute and nervous and excited, really reminded me of why I do what I do.
As I wrote earlier this week, I’m also looking forward to teaching World History for the first time since the 2011-2012 school year. I can’t wait to talk about Ötzi the Ice Man! After the first quiz in World History, we’re going to watch this video, which recreates the doomed Ötzi’s least meal:
For now, though, I’m going to rest up and take care of some mundane chores around the house. This last week has me beat—and I didn’t even teach any classes!
Happy Saturday!
—TPP
Yours portly is back at work, although students don’t return until this coming Monday. Naturally, I’ve been getting prepared for their imminent return this week.
Well, here it is! Today (Friday, 21 June 2024) marks 2000 days of daily posting! That’s roughly 5.48 years of daily posting—whoa!
It’s not always been easy, and there have been several times where I thought about throwing in the towel due to time constraints, stress, etc.
I’m grateful to my contributors for seeing me through these difficult times. Audre Myers and Ponty have provided thousands of words of quality content, which has often buoyed yours portly during busy seasons. I hope, too, to one day feature some of the works of Son of Sonnet again. Of course, if readers would ever like to contribute to the blog, let me know!
A big thanks, too, to my readers for your unflagging support. I don’t know who reads daily and who catches up when they can, but I know many of you are coming back again and again to drink at this portly trough of mediocre commentary and analysis.
Of course, if you’ve like to support my content further, I’d encourage you to consider a subscription to my SubscribeStar page. Currently, subscribers help me to pay for the WordPress bills, so I am very thankful for your support. You can also make a donation using the form below; might I recommend 2000 cents ($20.00)?
I also have tons of awesome music!
Regardless, thank you so much for your continued support. If you have any favorite TPP moments, share them in the comments below.
Here’s to another 2000 days—maybe!
Much Love,
TPP
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