Author: gallopingcow

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Side Quests

I wanted to get up a little early today so I could spend some time time cleaning up around the house and yard. Summer ended up having to go in to work for a while, which only partially derailed my plans. Eaddie also didn’t want to get up or come with me. I ended up sticking around their house for a while, and found a whole bunch of leftovers to clean up, including the Indian food we had a few weeks ago. Dad wanted to try and uncover the pool, so I just planned to go over there a bit after noon when Mom got off work.

After we uncovered the pool, I continued home to start some laundry and get cleaned up myself. Summer brought Eaddie over after the gym and showers, and the three of us went to my parents’ house for egg roll salads. Though it threatened thunderstorms all day, we didn’t really see any rain until later in the evening.

I thought we would at least watch a movie when we got back to my house, but Eaddie just wanted to go to bed. Summer and I watched several episodes of Modern Family, and eventually went to sleep ourselves.

Zero tasks completed.

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The Existential Review: Year 6

I finally got back on a bike today, and rode the Shadow to work. I knew we had eSCO coming to pick up some more stuff to recycle, but I didn’t have any other real need to haul anything around. Gary split us up into three pairs, and Kyle and I were on a mission to do the work orders Gary hadn’t had time to address. It ended up not being very much, and Kyle really did all the legwork by going upstairs to install Microsoft Office on a Mac.

As soon as we finished up with that, we headed up to the graveyard to make a path to get everything onto the box truck. I convinced the guys to back up to the corner of the dock like they had done in the past, and it made things quite a bit easier. We still have a lot more carts to go, but we can almost see the end of the tunnel.

Lunchtime came around pretty quickly, and Gary decided on Wendy’s. I rode separately to get some bike time, and Zach surprised us there while he was on his week of vacation. Even a bunch of the maintenance guys walked in behind us. We had a good chat and had some time to chill before going back to work.

The afternoon was really quiet. We had to unbox the rest of our new Lenovo Chromebooks to confirm that they wouldn’t auto-update. Then I mostly just hung out in the shop until my one-on-one review time with Thomas. I thought Gary and Zach would be in on it, but it was just Thomas. He ranked me higher than I think Ben had ever ranked mee before – even higher than I had ranked myself, and had some really nice things to say, so I was quite happy. In the end it doesn’t do much for me, but it did give me some additional confidence.

He let everyone leave a few minutes early for the weekend, but I trailed out a bit late as I often do. Eaddie was still out with Maristella, so I went home to start on some more laundry until Summer got home from the gym. Eaddie rode in on her bike just a few minutes after Summer, and we went to Taco Villa for dinner. Eaddie and I both had taco salads, and both of our shells were way undercooked and chewy.

I had ridden the Grom behind them so Eaddie and I could go straight to the high school to practice riding after we ate. She was fussy about it like she always is, but I tried to press her on until she really seemed to just be unable to focus. She still wanted to go for a night ride on the R1 though, so we went home and swapped, and I took her for a big loop around town. I was pretty exhausted when we made it back to the house, so we put everything up and headed up to their house for the night. Summer was already in bed, and I didn’t waste much time finding my way there as well.

Yes, I keep repeating the same things over and over again because you are repeatedly doing none of those things.

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Cartagain Weather III: Certified Pre-Owned

I had completely forgotten that we were delivering carts to Oakland today. I made it in to work, and Gary had Greg, Josh, and Jacob ready to roll. He went to the middle school to scan Chromebooks while the rest of us loaded up the trailer for two trips to Oakland. I got pretty sweaty already, just from the humidity. There was a small chance of rain, but we never saw any.

By the time we finished, everyone was ready for lunch with still an hour to go. We met up with Gary, who had discovered a bunch of the Chromebooks we need to return this summer. I sat down to verify how he was checking his devices, and discovered that I had somehow made a mistake on our original sheet, and we hadn’t been correctly identifying devices the whole time. That meant re-scanning every device in the graveyard.

We loaded some scrap into the trailer, then headed back to the shop for lunch. We picked up Thomas and went to Fat Daddy’s in London. For some reason we always end up there on Thursdays, which is an awful day for specials. I had a pulled pork sandwich, which was edible enough, and fortunately a bit larger than I expected.

When we got back to the shop, I built a new scanning sheet from scratch, then joined Josh and Greg in the graveyard to re-scan devices. We made a pretty good dent in them before we ran out of boxes. It was also about time to head to the Center for our end-of-the-year pat-on-the-back.

With new leadership, this was the shortest event I had ever seen. The whole thing took like 15 minutes, which was insane. We only recognized retirees and the teachers of the year, which was kind of lame, but I guess at least we had an excuse to leave early. Ben called me in the middle of it, and said he was passing through town. Everyone else took off, but I waited there for him, and we ended up chatting for a while until they closed the place down. Tina came around with some plastic bags for the leftover cookies, and let us take a bunch home.

I started on laundry when I got home. Eaddie had been out on her bike all day, and ended up never coming back home. She called a few times to check in, which was good. After going back and forth about it, she decided she wanted to stay the night with a friend, so eventually I had to run some clothes to her.

On the way, I stopped for a couple 50 cent corndogs from Sonic, and a large order of onion rings. After I left, I realized my bag only had three onion rings in it, so I wound up going back after I delivered Eaddie’s stuff. One of the girls ran out with a new order of onion rings for me, and said they knew what they had done, and were just waiting for me to come back. I wish they had been able to just call me to let me know.

I ended the late night just barely missing my goal of washing all of my shirts. I’ve got a performance review at work tomorrow, so I didn’t want to be up too late finishing up, so I left the last load for the weekend.

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Little Time

Summer dropped Eaddie off at my house this morning so she could ride her bike during the day. Work was a bit different today, and it was nice moving around instead of sitting in my office all day. We started off finishing the quote for Thomas, and then I spent a little time with Jacob. He was trying to figure out how to transfer YouTube videos to another user, so when Terra retires, her math videos won’t be lost forever.

Evidently Jacob hasn’t had much to do this week, so he spent a lot of time in the shop cleaning up. Then I took him to Oakland in case I needed a hand carrying out some “technology.” It ended up being a single plastic case with a few old headphones in it, so that was easy. We still had some time before lunch, so I took him to the back of the building to try and fix or replace a video cable in the autism room. I didn’t have what they needed though, so I would have to come back later.

We picked Eaddie up before heading back to the shop, because she wanted to go out to eat lunch with me. I picked up Thomas and Gary, and we met Greg at Arby’s for a quick and easy lunch. Then I dropped everyone off at the shop before taking Eaddie back home and going back to Oakland to finish up by myself with the correct part.

The afternoon was pretty quiet. Josh and Greg came back to the shop, and then Gary joined us for a bit of a chat. At the end of the day, I went with Greg to the press box at the high school football field. He wanted to test a new fiber run, and we were able to see a light, but it didn’t want to transfer any data. That took us a little past quitting time, so we headed straight home.

Eaddie had ridden her bike to her private flute lesson, and I offered to pick her up in the heat. She originally wanted to ride home, but changed her mind and called me while I was on the phone with Summer, who was on her own way back home from work.

I picked Eaddie up at Maristella’s house, and then we went to Rose Drug to pick up Summer’s medication, followed by my parents’ house so I could pick up a couple 15-inch speakers he picked up from an old magic buddy that passed away. Summer had an awards dinner with Autumn, so Eaddie and I had a date night at Stoby’s. I didn’t know what I wanted to eat, so I had the waitress pick. I don’t think I ever, in my entire life, would have ordered the barbecue chicken quesadilla, but it was super good.

After dinner, we went back to my house for a bit, and Eaddie decided she wanted to stay the night with me. We went to Dairy Queen for a couple Blizzards, and then up to their house so she could bathe and get some clothes. Then we came back to my house for the night and I finished up with a load of laundry before bed.

Favorite Time

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Silly Rabbit

We woke up in the middle of the night to some rustling in the bedroom. I assumed it was a cat, and let Summer investigate. It wasn’t until I heard her say that it was the bunny that I got out of bed. I just knew if we didn’t find it, it would die in the house from starvation, but I also wasn’t willing to stay awake tearing the room apart to find it. I told her to wake Autumn, but we went back to sleep instead.

I made it in to work a hair early, but there wasn’t much going on. Kyle came in and wanted to know what to do about the Chromebooks that wouldn’t update, and Brody called with the same question he’s already asked me, along with nearly every other staff member about. Greg was out running fiber all day for the new jumbotron, so it was mostly me with an intermittent Kyle in the shop. It aggravated me a bit the way he seemed to expect me to just figure out the problem and give him a fix, especially when I explained exactly how he could contact Google support himself.

Gary, Thomas, and I met Brody for Taco Tuesday, where he struggled to finish six softshells. He’s always complaining about what he normally orders, but just tacos are so cheap. It’s hard to pass up on a Tuesday. When we got back to the shop, I tried to go upstairs to collect some Chromebooks off the stage, but ended up on a side quest.

I’ve been asking for over two years to get a tire inflator chuck with a built-in pressure gauge for our air tank. I couldn’t get the tires inflated, so I asked Thomas directly if I could go buy one, and he had Tammy give me the credit card so I could go to Leonard’s. That’s the story of how I found the one item in the world that Leonard’s Hardware doesn’t have. They had something similar, but not the gun style with the clip-on valve stem bit. I ended up going to Harbor Freight, where they had just what I needed for a fraction of the cost and quality.

With my tires at an appropriate 30psi, the ride with the three tech tubs full of 15 Chromebooks was super smooth all the way down to the basement. It was quiet for the rest of the afternoon until Thomas came down and asked Gary and me to help with something relatively urgent tomorrow. I left work a few minutes late, expecting to meet Eaddie to ride the Grom, but she was out on her bicycle.

Once Eaddie made it back, we went to the aquatics center where Dad thought some guys would be paramotoring. Summer and Autumn met us out there as well, but after signing into Dad’s Facebook on my phone, we discovered they actually went flying on Monday, so we missed them.

Summer had let Autumn take Eaddie home since she was feeling pretty rough with her head cold. The girls found the bunny before we got home, which was a relief. Then we all ate, except for Autumn, who I have to assume is filling up on junk food at school before she gets home. Then Autumn wanted to play Phase 10 with us while Eaddie watched TV. From there, it was a relatively early night to bed for everyone.

I half expected to come home to a bowl of Trix in the floor as bait.

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Bring Your Career to Work Day

The junior high started laptop pickup today, and Jacob was a bit worried about that process, so I joined him for a couple English periods worth of students. We started lining laptops around the computer lab, in spite of them still having students in there. It went well enough, with the English teachers having the students wipe down their devices and having the laptops powered on for checking their condition.

It was nearly lunch time when I got back to the shop, so I finished loading up a few things for the afternoon, and then Gary, Greg, Thomas, and I went to Brangus. It had been a while since we had this waitress, but she remembered my beef spud. It was a good lunch.

Shortly after we got back from lunch, I headed to Oakland for their career day. I had a little table set up nest to a hair stylist, where I set up a running computer with the cover opened, as well as a couple disassembled Chromebooks. Fourth and third grade was first, and they just came in and mingled, and asked questions. Then they brought all of kindergarten, first, and second grade in to rotate stations as a whole class. That was absolute chaos. Our stations were bunched too closely together, and the kids kept leaning on the table and pushing us back into the wall. Overall it was a good time though.

By the time I got back to the shop, I was too tired to get into anything really serious. I worked on a new Chromebook that wouldn’t install updates, but never made any progress. When I left work, I picked Eaddie up as she and Zane walked back from Casey’s. We went to my house to change, and then had to shop for a couple things for dinner.

We went to Walmart, assuming they would have everything we needed. They didn’t have any cabbage though, so we had to go across town to 10Box. They had a ton of cabbage there, and then it was straight to Summer’s to prep. She had started a corned beef in the slow cooker, but I had to prep and cook the cabbage, carrots, rice, and potatoes.

A couple of the potatoes had rotted out completely, and the bag was full of maggots. Eaddie helped clean up the kitchen while I prepped the cabbage, and once the sinks were clear, I soaked the potatoes, brushed off the maggots and eggs, and then peeled and cut them for boiling. I pulled the corned beef out, and poured that juice over the potatoes and carrots, along with just enough water to cover it all. Boiling that took the longest.

Summer and Autumn showed up just after that had started to cook, and once the potatoes and carrots were tender enough, I threw the cabbage on top to steam. Dinner turned out awesome, which was good because Eaddie wouldn’t quit talking about how excited she was for corned beef. Autumn of course didn’t eat any, and laid on the couch with the cat and bunny all evening. Eaddie was tired, but stayed up to finish some laundry. School is almost out, and I think we’re all excited.

Yes, that’s exactly what I just finished explaining for the third time. This must be what teaching is like!

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Stormin’ Mad

I was up every hour like clockwork last night, and struggled to force myself awake early this morning so I wouldn’t ruin my night of sleep before work. It wasn’t until I got out of bed and basically chugged an energy drink that I felt human enough to walk upright. Summer went to the gym while I did some laundry, and we planned to meet at my parents’ house to uncover the pool. Then a big thunderstorm whipped through town, and it rained most of the afternoon, so I stayed home and continued doing laundry instead.

My parents popped in for just a second after the rain had settled a bit, since they were there to pick some mint. Summer asked me to drop Eaddie off at the movie theater so she could watch Dr. Strange with her friends, and that was my first look at how bad the storm was. Several branches had broken all down Main Street, and there was debris everywhere. We saw one stoplight that was tilted about 45ยบ, and another that was just blinking red. Eaddie has been making an effort to vocalize her appreciation, and it’s made every single interaction with her a thousand times better. She just comes off as much more polite.

When I got back to their house, Summer had made some stir-fry out of a leftover steak, with some fresh vegetables and a fresh pot of rice. Summer had to make Autumn eat a little bit of it, which was a huge shock to everyone because she’s always sooooooo focused on clean eating and home cooking. Otherwise, she spent the majority of the evening with a tiny baby bunny that the cats dragged in a couple days ago. Summer and I did play a short game of Mario Party with her, and things have been relatively nice at home. It’s still anybody’s guess what’s really going on inside of her head, but she’s a perfectly pleasant human in a vacuum.

Eventually I had to pick Eaddie and Zane up from the movie, dropped him off at his house, and then headed back to spend the evening with the girls. Summer made strawberry shortcakes, and we watched an episode of Middleditch and Schwartz that had everyone rolling. Summer pulled a corned beef out of the freezer for dinner the next day, but I had to clean the slow cooker again because it was filthy. Then I hid my own sponge in the house so nobody would use it to clean food off of the dishes and then leave it rotting in the sink. They’re absolutely filthy animals, every one.

What happens if the contract… is… DIGITAL?

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Peace and Boring

Summer got up and made French toast and bacon for breakfast. Autumn tried to get out of mowing, as we suspected, due to the dew. As bad parents, we made her mow anyway, and she finished the yard for the day. After a little while, Summer had to drop her off at the high school so she could participate in the graduation ceremony. I went home to clean up and started washing some socks.

While I waited, I found a deal at Lowe’s for a Nest Learning Thermostat just like my old one for $199, which was $50 less than the other colors. I was able to stack a $60 instant rebate from Entergy and a $150 Lowe’s gift card that I bought for $135 worth of Discover cash back, and was only out of pocket $1.51. I ordered it for pickup so I could install it later in the evening.

When Summer finished at the gym, showered, and made it to my house, we loaded up and headed to Conway. She had to work for a few hours in the evening, and I thought I’d just hang out again. I got bored quickly and went to Walmart for a little while. I picked up a few snacks and a package of colored Sharpies that was on clearance. When I got back to Splash, I just sat around for most of the evening. I did get my car washed and detailed, but then I had to help try to jump a customer with a dead battery. That was when we noticed coolant pouring out of the bottom of my radiator.

Summer finished up late, and we tried to go to Marketplace for a quick dinner before heading home. They had a 30 minute wait, so we foolishly tried driving further into town to try Texas Roadhouse. They had people lined up out the door, so I hangrily drove back up the road and ended up taking us to Golden Corral. They’ve always got a table open, and there’s no waiting for anything to be cooked.

After eating way too much, we headed back home, got gas, and then made it to Lowe’s just before they closed to pick up my replacement Nest thermostat. When we got to my house, I was able to install it pretty quickly, and my air conditioner started pumping some nice, cold air. Exhausted from being uncomfortably warm all day, I was ready for bed.

Calorie Bombs

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Cartagain Weather II: The Heat is On

It was hot and humid today. Everything made me sweat. I mostly missed out on our morning meeting, since I was having to investigate untruths from Autumn as she realized she was permanently locked out of her Facebook and personal email accounts, and trying to use school as an excuse to get back into them. We arranged to have her laptop returned, and for a moment thought she had skipped school and taken off in the middle of the day. We were able to track her down to a different room though, and all was fine.

eSCO came by pretty early and picked up a little over 20 old laptop carts, and we helped to haul them out the hard way, because they didn’t feel comfortable backing up to the dock. Then I had to scan a bunch of laptops that were brought back to the shop by another group. All the while, Dad was babysitting my house until someone from Rood finally showed up to look at my air conditioner.

I left for lunch early so I could relieve my dad, and my air unit was fixed with a replacement contactor, which is evidently the name of a legitimate part. Richard, the tech, said I would need a new thermostat though, because my Nest was showing an error every time we hooked it back up, in spite of no detectable wiring issue. On the way back to the shop, I just picked up a surprisingly good Big Dill pickle burger and a Red Bull slush from Sonic.

The afternoon was relatively quiet, but I went back and forth helping here and there with different things. I never got sucked into any real projects, which was a nice break from everything else I had been juggling mentally. At the end of the day, Tammy appeared to be having a hard time up front, so I just awkwardly left to run home and change.

Nick was coming to talk to Autumn and take Eaddie with him for the weekend, so I wanted to be there. I beat them all to the house, and had just enough time to finish up some nacho cheese cups that were leftover in the fridge from various visits to Taco John’s. When the girls got home, Eaddie wanted help with an English project because she had to turn in her library book before she finished the project. Then we coaxed Autumn into mowing. Nick showed up with some leftover barbecue for Summer and me, and then sat down with Autumn so we could all talk.

The conversation went about how it always does, but Nick ended it by actually shaking my hand and doing the half back-pat bro-hug thing. It felt really good to feel like I had some validation from him after all this time. With Eaddie gone, Autumn mowed while Summer and I ate. By the time she came back in, we were all exhausted enough to pass out super early.

Fun isn’t something one considers when blocking the internet, but this does put a smile on my face.

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Red Hands

I finally got a bike out this morning, and rode the Shadow to work. It was an incredibly slow day, and I had to creatively fill my time. Tammy and Kelsea went to the high school to help with laptop pickup, which was an odd choice. I had to make fun of Tammy, because the boss really did send her to the library, which has been one of her greatest fears.

I convinced Zach to take Gary and me to Sam’s for lunch, and I spent and ate way too much. I was disappointed that they weren’t as generous as usual with the servings, especially since I didn’t get out the door under $30. Zach and Gary both mentioned that it was expensive, but I guess I had just forgotten how expensive it really was.

The afternoon was more of the same. I did have to run across town to pick up Summer’s new Invisalign trays from the orthodontist, since she wouldn’t make it back to town in time. At the end of the day, I had to run home to get the Murano so I could take Eaddie home before her band awards. That was about the time that things really went downhill.

We’ve been watching Autumn’s computer usage since our encounter with DHS, and she continued to make really bad choices all afternoon, the day after we had another heart-to-heart with her. Eaddie and I thought we’d try to catch her at Denny’s with some friends while she was supposed to be practicing for color guard after school. We never encountered her, but while we were there, I triggered an email alert that let her know that something wasn’t quite right. Summer met us when she got into town from work and ate a couple pancake puppies until it was time to get Eaddie to the band awards, and then met me at my house to see how badly I had compromised our operation.

Autumn had locked her account down, but I was able to recover it. We made the decision to take ownership of her accounts and lock her out of them, and then also disabled the internet on her school laptop outside of school hours. With the cat irreversibly out of the bag, we went to the Center to watch the tail end of the awards ceremony, and collected the girls to go home. Autumn continued to try and play it off, but we had already made up our minds.

When we got to the house, Eaddie and I went to the other room so Summer could properly search Autumn for her vape. Then we had another long conversation that basically just summed up how disappointed we were in her choices. She didn’t have a whole lot to say as usual, and exhibited the same kind of behavior we see every time, except now we have no way to monitor her response to her friends. The next step will have to be reaching out to them with her, so she can correct her course. This whole thing is eye-rollingly dull at this point, and we just want it to be over. I’m thinking boot camp in a few weeks.

We’re expecting a bit of a headwind for most of our flight, so sit back, try to relax, and we’ll get you to your final destination as quickly as we can.