STW Calendar Revisited, Part IV

January 22-31

Away we go again…

I still feel like this, 12 years later! Except now I use various forms of alternative assessment and I’ve seen student mastery go way up, so hey, I don’t feel like this very often anymore. Pretty sure in my hand that’s my discrete math textbook from the course I took at Connecticut College during my senior year of high school; Connecticut College’s mascot is the Camels and yet they are located on the cowtown side of a state far from a desert, so you figure out how that nickname got picked.

Wakefield and Sprite! Two wonderful cats. Before Wakefield passed away in December, we had about eight months where we were living with four cats and yes that was a bit much. “Waffle” is so simple it’s pretty funny as a word of the day. Not even going to check but I bet this holiday refers to John Hancock.

I think I made this comic when I was in a stretch of trying to see how many comics I could make inspired by the title of a different webcomic. This one is inspired by Meredith Gran’s “Octopus Pie”, a truly tremendous piece of work that everyone should read if you haven’t already. Delirious Love is a great Neil Diamond song so yup, this must be his birthday.

I don’t like this comic now so I don’t have anything to say about it, can we just move on to the next page?

Oh, huh, the holiday is about the Mars rover. Okay, that was kind of clever, at least.

To be fair I don’t understand most music criticism so maybe this is harsh but I also don’t think many people understand how to criticize anything well.

“Zebulon” is a good name, I wonder if I can name a future pet that.

What’s really funny about this is that I can’t drink caffeine anymore! I developed some weird kind of allergy to caffeine in 2019, a year after STW ended, and now I just kind of writhe in pain while lying on the floor if I accidentally ingest anything caffeinated. (Duck eggs are worse for me, though.) But I used to drink close to 10 cups of coffee a day, often right out of the pot while teaching, so I’m sure I just hit my lifetime limit and that’s what happens!

This feels like a comic from a different time and I don’t really even know what it means. Reviewing these old comics are painful, let’s skip this one, too. Kacey Musgraves’ “Follow Your Arrow” from the soundtrack is a great song that is much better than this comic.

I see we’re on an animal theme for these words of the day, now. Are you familiar with the word ‘bear’? A bear is a type of animal! Now you learned something.

Our planet has too few moons, and frankly I think instead of trying to get to Mars, we should be in the process of creating more moons instead. Sure, it’ll wreck havok on global tides and I bet we’ll have huge surges along all coastal cities and many metropolises will now be underwater and we’ll need boats to traverse various main streets, but on the other hand, hey, more moons! I think we should do it. In fact, I’m getting started on a proposal to the NSF about this right now, I’m sure they’ll be in agreement as long as I don’t say anything about diversity.

There’s a reason I wear two Halloween costumes to work every Halloween, and it’s pretty clear that I would go utterly rogue with professional attire if society would allow it. We should work to change that! (puts finger to ear) I’m told we have indeed tried to do so and those in charge are now trying to repeal the previous century. That seems like overkill.

Dunyasha is a good name. And I’ve spoken about Vasili Akhipov many times, but I think he should be far more well known than he actually is. Lissie’s “I Don’t Want To Go To Work” from the calendar soundtrack is a great song for when you, well, don’t want to go to work.

I joined a new gym a few months ago, and they tried to convince me to sign up for a personal trainer by telling me that I should lose 21 pounds. I’ve since determined that they were working with a scale that was purposely off by 10 pounds and also that I’d look incredibly unhealthy if I lost that much weight, so there’s maybe they weren’t exactly operating out of the most genuine interest.

More old comics to flip through together coming soon!