I am a weird person.

Before you laugh and agree, let me explain.

A week ago, I was kind of in a bit of a dump. To be quite honest, this marks the longest I’ve continually and actively participated on the site at this high of a level; it’s now approaching 18.5 months of steady playing and nearly matching that with moderation. Most of that was simply because of circumstances in years previous demanding more of my attention than its true fair share; some of that was...

Gah. I've been in the dumps before (spent a week this summer just completely, physically unable to write) but this is just bad. It's been weeks since I last wrote a post where I knew it hit the mark. Lately it's just been rote and boring and terribad and not directed at all.

Thought I hit my stride again the other day, but showed the post to a friend and got the review of, "You sick or something? Not really your usual." Ugh. Guess I'm not back in on the pace yet. ...

I must confess, I gave in to temptation.

The last month has been a series of stress after stress for a variety of reasons in my personal life, my work life, my after-personal life, my after-work life, and literally just everything. When staring a rather busy weekend and 200+ exams to grade somewhere in between all of what I needed to do, I gave in and did precisely what I had sworn I never would -- I posted my depression through...

I have one of the hardest struggles with the idea that you simply can't save everyone.

There's a passage in World War Z that outlines the account of a man in South Africa who proposed and then enacted a play to save the country from the approaching zombie apocalypse. In order to stave off and attract away the advancing horde from the more heavily-populated southern regions of the country, he publicly...

A collection of my more amusing stories after a year of teaching college chemistry.

Halfway into the semester and after a dismal performance on two exams: "I didn't think you were actually serious when you said we'd have to study outside of class."

After including "bring a calculator" on the class syllabus and having stated it for...