As always, let’s start with the numbers.

Media consumed # (remaining/total)
Movies Watched 2 (151/155)
Books Read: 4 (123/139)
Comics Read: 82 (549/738)
Podcast Episodes Remaining: 120

Movies

I knocked one of those Netflix DVDs out–the last disc of the first season of The Greatest American Hero, which I’ll be covering at some point on Pop Culture Affidavit.  I also finally watched my Blu-Ray of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which I hadn’t watched in years and with the exception of seeing it upon theatrical release, mostly watched on my old VHS copy.  I also saw Avengers: Endgame last weekend, which outshone anything I could have possibly watched … except maybe Beyonce: Homecoming.

Books

Two works that I finished that were not on my to-read list were Lord of the Flies and Romeo & Juliet and they were read outside of this “mission” because I am teaching them.   I need to review these, especially the book of essays on John Hughes movies.  Look for a cross-post from Required Reading on that one soon.

Comics

So, so very many.  Many more than I actually have reviewed because I can’t seem to keep up with the reading versus the reviewing.  More on that after this review, but I think I’m pretty close to eliminating if not another longbox then at least another shortbox–although I am thinking of turning everything into shortboxes so they’ll be easier to rearrange in the closet.  More on that later.

Podcasts

I continue to move through First Strike: An Invasion Podcast but did set it aside to go back through a true crime podcast I’d downloaded as well as took some time to stay current with some of my regular shows.  The net result is having ten fewer episodes to listen to.  I’m hoping that I’ll be able to finish the Invasion podcast this month and move on to the episodes of Shag’s JLI podcast or maybe even all of season three of Tanis. And with this particular aspect, I think I can declare it “at zero” when I’m more or less listening to things as they drop instead of having huge backlogs.

So, this was the month where some things got away from me.  Part of it comes from being very busy with other stuff, especially work.  April began with spring break, but that break was filled with travel (to Washington, D.C.) and then having things delivered/putting together furniture/household projects.  It then moved into the fourth quarter of the school year and a fair amount of work piled up; I will say, too, as much as I enjoy where I work, I am feeling pretty burned out lately.  But I read 82 comics and a huge pile of them is sitting on the floor in my office ready for some sort of review to be written.

And don’t worry, I’ll get to them at some point.  It just make take a little bit of time, especially since I am coming up on all the grading.

I was looking at the calendar the other day and noticed that I have just over a month left in the school year.  That is crazy, and while I am trying to hammer it through some of my students’ thick skulls (seriously, they have no concept of how fast this is going to go by and they better turn the effing work in), I have been thinking about what plans I want to make for the summer.  So what I did was literally sit down with a legal pad and a pen and sketched out a “daily summer break routine”.  This included such exciting activities as “workout”, “watch a movie”, “podcast”, “do chores/run errands”, “read’, and “write.”

I know that you feel so excited hearing about this.

But really, I think it’s necessary because I have set a couple of goals for writing, professional development, and other activities, and I know that if I don’t take some time to plan at least something out, I’ll probably wind up doing nothing for half the summer and then try to get everything done the last week.

By the way, it’s not the planning that I noticed as I was doing it this morning; I was struck by how I still use pen and paper for these things.  I mean, even though I put appointment reminders into my phone’s calendar app, I write everything down in a paper day planner because I find that it’s easier to keep track of stuff that way and I actually start my work day by pulling out said day planner and checking off what I got done then looking at what I need to do.

I seriously just looked at that last paragraph and yawned.  I am seriously the most boring person on earth.  And if you want to get even more bored, I have eaten plain steel-cut oatmeal every morning for the last week.

I party hard.

My point–if there is one and I’m not rambling and desperately trying to find my way out of this inane blog post–is that I have found some contentment in being able to plan something or go into my day with purpose.

Now if only I could plan my blog posts to be readable.