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Space Parade

It took me a little bit to get settled into my office today, but once I did, I spent most of my time on the phone with Kayla. There wasn’t much else going on though, and I enjoyed the work I was doing. When we moved all of the bus drivers to hourly pay rates, the district neglected to plan how payroll would be done. As such, Kayla has been processing reams of paper timesheets for every single person that drives a bus.

I got a quick Google Sheet put together with her, and then Zach pulled me away to lunch with Thomas and Greg at Brangus. I had the half chicken salad and remembered how overpriced it was in comparison to the other lunch options. Then I was right back on the phone with Kayla once we got back.

They let us out an hour early to avoid getting stuck by all the people lining up for the parade. I went by Ridgewood and actually got to lend a hand in cleaning things up a bit for the soft open on Saturday. Then I left to swap cars before going up to Summer’s.

We finished up most of the Thanksgiving leftovers and then made our way to the parade. We were early, but not early enough to avoid parking a block off of the main strip. We opted to stand in the middle of a side street once they blocked it off, and that earned us a view from the front row.

The parade itself was super spaced out, with tons of gaps between several of the floats. The high school band was first, so we got to see Eaddie. Then we waited until Autumn passed with the JROTC, and immediately left. The girls actually finished up shortly after that, but didn’t get home until later.

Summer watched the last bit of Weird with me, and then I started UHF before quitting at the first commercial to get ready for bed.

Space mining!

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Defrosty

I tried not to feel too bad about leaving Tres outside overnight, since it wasn’t particularly gross or rainy out. It was nice being able to warm things up before I actually got outside, too. Not to mention autopilot taking me home while I was still drowsy.

It was a pretty quiet day back to work. Gary, Greg, and Zach were mostly preoccupied replacing something in the server room, so I was left to myself. I didn’t have much to catch up on, but still had several old, stale work orders that I couldn’t really update with anything. I wasn’t upset about easing back into work over a cup of oatmeal though.

When lunch time came around, Zach suggested Quiznos, so I took him and Gary. I had them add some fresh jalapeños to my burnt ends sandwich, and it was awesome. I didn’t expect that much heat. I paired that with a cup of broccoli cheddar soup and skipped the chips and drink, but of course it was still like 12 bucks.

I went to Dwight in the afternoon for a bit, but that ended up being a non-issue. Then I ran home to quickly grab a package from the front door before going back to the office. I had to take care of something upstairs in the SDC room, and one of the kids said my hair looked like Jesus.

The rest of the afternoon was super quiet until quitting time. I ran by Ridgewood to try and grab a picture of the smoke stack going, but they had it off again by the time I got there. Robert seemed all-business, so I didn’t stick around to see anyone else, though I did try to volunteer. Instead, I headed on home to clean out my garage so I could park inside again. Then I put the refrigerator shelves and drawers back together. Somehow we got a small scratch near the top of the left side. Nothing even touched it up there, so I have no idea what happened.

Summer went to the gym when she got back into town, and then I met her at Walmart to pick up stuff for banana pudding. Then we went on home, where Eaddie instantly crashed from exhaustion, and Autumn closed herself off in her room. Summer made pudding, and I did my best to stay warm from my unusual chill.

You’ve gotta spatulate that stuff better.

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Fridged

I didn’t have as much trouble getting up this morning as I thought I would after going to bed so late. The bright sunlight probably had a lot to do with that. The girls all left for the day, so I eventually got up to some leftovers for brunch before heading home. There, I picked up a bit and made a path for my refrigerator later in the evening.

The refrigerator would be delivered to Ben’s house, where Sarah would be with the kids. He offered to let me borrow his truck to get it home, so I just went that route instead of having to deal with a trailer from U-Haul. The delivery timeframe was late enough that I knew I wouldn’t be able to get to Cabot for any meaningful time with Summer, so I just killed some time at home, and then went by Ridgewood.

Grant was there unloading a trailer full of wood. Robert eventually showed up, and then his father stopped by with a whetstone for the boys. We chatted for a bit, and I took him for a ride around town in the Model 3, which he enjoyed. I was glad I got to see him after such a long while.

My last stop before leaving town was McDonald’s for a new Smokey Quarter Pounder BLT with Cheese, which was actually quite delicious. The couple at the table next to me marveled at how good their food was too, but I was pretty sure it was just because someone from upper management was there.

I beat Ben home by just a few minutes, and Sarah came out to chat when she heard me pull up. The kids came out, and Ben and I got straight to loading the refrigerator into his truck. We absolutely could not lift it off of the ground and into the bed, so we ended up just laying it on its front side for the ride.

After we loaded up, I let Ben drive my car and we gave the two youngest a ride around town. Then I took Sarah and Eli for a quick jaunt before coming back to deliver the refrigerator at my house. Dad arrived with perfect timing, and we tore right into it. It would barely fit even without the packaging still on it, and we even had to take my front door off its hinges to get the fridge in. David walked over from next door and offered a dolly, but I didn’t think it would be quite as good as using the straps and harness.

I didn’t get a chance to inspect for any scuffing from bringing it inside, but I’m really hopeful that it turned out fine. At least we removed everything sharp from the doorframe. I had to leave the garage in a mess and get back to Ben as quickly as possible, so I took off as soon as we got the fridge into the house. The whole process took nearly an hour.

I topped off the gas tank and picked up a couple blueberry muffin KIT KATs that I saw in the gas station. Then Ben and I chatted for a surprisingly long time once I got there. When I made my way home for the evening, I decided to go straight to Summer’s to stay with the girls. I knew I didn’t want to stay up late cleaning out the garage again, though I still stayed up late trying to help Eaddie with homework. Autumn was in our bed, so I had to kick her out. Otherwise I made it to bed as close to midnight as I could.

Under Compressor!

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Chill Day, Stressful Night

I woke up early this morning after very little sleep so we could get breakfast before we checked out of the hotel. I anticipated a crowd on account of the concert, but after stressing over Summer not wanting to wake up, we found the steakhouse to be relatively empty. Breakfast was good though, and we had our fill before heading back to the room to get ready for the day.

It took us a little bit to leave, since neither of us had a plan for the day. We ultimately decided to head toward home, and then I suggested stopping right inside Conway so I could go to PetCo. We ended up going through several of the stores in that strip mall, including Sam’s, Michael’s, and Ross. We even found a neat tabletop gaming store, and Summer picked up something to do for Christmas.

After shopping around for a few hours, we went to On the Border for lunch, and my chicken fajitas tasted completely unseasoned. The rest of the food was good though, so I made do with some black pepper. Summer finished her tacos pretty quickly, so they must have been a lot better than what I took home for leftovers.

After we ate, we went to PetCo and I picked up some ghost and “bee” shrimp to take home. Autumn didn’t get Eaddie from flute practice, so we had to make it back in time to get her. I had Summer drop me off at home so I could tend to the shrimp, but I guess Autumn gave Summer the wrong time to get Eaddie. Summer ended up coming to get me, and we went up to the house to unpack. I went back home in the Montego, traded some more water for the shrimp, and then took the Model 3 to get Eaddie and Maristella. We took her home, and then went back to my house to finally put the shrimp into my tiny, old shrimp tank. I’m hoping they enjoy cleaning up the algae that I can’t get under control.

Eaddie and I chatted, and headed on home for the evening. Autumn eventually showed up after karate, and predictably wanted to argue about who does the most chores around the house when Summer asked her to walk the trash down to the curb. Summer decided it was time to unveil my chore tracking spreadsheet, and suddenly Autumn didn’t care about seeing how much anyone did around the house. She just knew that she did more chores while we weren’t around than any of us did. I managed to steer that conversation into less hostile territory, and we’ll try to publicly track chores for a while to see if that helps.

Other than that, I spent most of the evening stressing out about my refrigerator delivery. I never got a call to schedule, but eventually Julie got a text with a two hour window. I touched base with Ben to remind him, and everything else was on the up-and-up. He offered to let me take his truck and a furniture dolly, so that mitigated my stressing over needing the Murano to tow a trailer while Summer needed a way to get to Cabot for the day.

The girls all made it to bed reasonably early, but evidently Eaddie was still up when I did a late-night model reset. She came out for a bit for some help getting reconnected, and then I did my best to get to bed before two in the morning.

Too distracting. This is my brain all of the time.

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Eaglets

Summer got up and went to the gym this morning while I got around and had a turkey sandwich. I thought she would be gone longer, so I was surprised when she got back so early and was ready to go. We headed to Little Rock and went straight to Tokyo House for lunch. I wasn’t super hungry, and felt overstuffed after we ate. From there, we went shopping to walk it off. We started at Target, and then continued to Park Plaza Mall. We managed to kill enough time at both of those, without actually spending a dime, so we could head to the hotel for check-in.

There was a decent line of old people queued at the front desk, and you could tell it was going to be a big concert. I was really happy with my choice to book a room rather than drive home. We headed to the Simmons Bank arena a little before six, thinking that’s when the doors would open. They didn’t actually open until 6:30, but we had tickets to the Vibe Room, which bypassed the huge line at the front gate.

Once they opened the doors, we filed in as I fumbled for digital tickets. The Vibe Room itself was a bit disappointing. It was super dark, and there weren’t really a whole lot of snacks. They had some pretty good spinach artichoke dip and some decent boneless “wings” with three typical sauces. The popcorn they boxed up was a bit stale, and there were no free drinks at all. Summer spent nearly 20 bucks per margarita, which I just couldn’t wrap my head around. I spotted Steve and Lelan across the bar and eventually made my way over to say hi to them.

We made our way to our seats with plenty of time to go, and settled in for a three hour trip down rock and roll history. The arena was packed, but we got to our seats relatively painlessly. Some asshat across the arena brought a super bright flashlight and was messing with it before the show, but fortunately quit when the show started. Joe Walsh joined the band, along with Vince Gill, which I think excited Summer more than the Eagles. It was an awesome production with great use of tech, but I think for my money I would have rather watched a video just to see and hear the whole thing better.

After the show, we walked back to the hotel. Summer crashed pretty quickly, and I stayed up too late after a week of letting my sleep schedule slide. Breakfast tomorrow ought to kick me back into earlier days though.

I got a peaceful, easy feeling, and I know you won’t let me down.

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Breasts

Autumn slept in this morning and didn’t shower like she promised, before going to get Eaddie and heading to Clarksville. This shocked nobody, and I was a little upset there wasn’t more screaming involved. It was a nice day without the kids though. I made ham sandwiches for breakfast, and Summer worked on the jigsaw puzzle for most of the day.

Eventually we got out of the house in the rain, and went to Walmart to look for turkeys on sale. They still had whole turkey breasts for a buck a pound, so we picked up five for me to practice smoking. They had enormous Butterball turkeys for 75 cents per pound, but I didn’t really want a turkey that large. We wandered through the rest of the store before making our way out, where I managed to wade through some pretty deep water in the parking lot.

We made another stop at Sally Beauty so Summer could pick up some tools for nail art, and then I got a McRib on the way back to the house. Once there, Summer took off to go to the gym and then I killed more time working on the jigsaw puzzle.

Eventually I made it home to start some laundry and shower. It took me a while to get everything sorted before the Eagles concert, but hopefully I got everything. I finally made my way back up to Summer around midnight, and it was off to bed.

Lot about birds, lately.

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Laundreaddie

Summer went back to work today. I eventually got up and toasted a very small ham sandwich for breakfast. Autumn left pretty early to go work at Tom E Tiger. Even Eaddie got up without me having to pull her out of bed. She kept wanting to know if I was leaving, and finally discussed me taking her to Maristella’s after she finished doing laundry. What she thought would only take her until about three o’clock turned into nearly six.

In that time, my greatest accomplishments were placing a curbside pickup order from Home Depot so Eaddie would have some better organization of her tiny plastic beads, and completing this year’s Cards Against Humanity Black Friday game. It was a series of captchas that I was fairly proud of solving, but I got stuck on an obvious one that kept me from getting paid to have them ship me a new storage box. I was still happy with my 43% discount though.

Summer got home just as Eaddie was finishing up, so we loaded up one of the tables and the chairs we borrowed from my parents, and I dropped Eaddie off along the way. I still hadn’t cleaned up the smoker, so I didn’t stay with my parents long. The cleanup was relatively easy, and I even prepped it for next time. Having gloves makes a big difference as well.

After a shower, I headed back up to Summer’s for the evening. She was watching Grease 2 while putting together the jigsaw puzzle, and then put on a Jo Koy special afterward. Autumn got home late, and Summer made her come sit in the living room with us rather than hide in her room. As soon as the special was over, everyone was off to bed.

Read: Laundry Dae

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The Host that Smokes

Summer spent all morning getting ready for everyone to come over for Thanksgiving dinner. We struggled to get Autumn to help as usual, and we’re just counting the days until we show her, imperically, that she’s not pulling her weight around the house. In fact, she’s completely delusional, as is often the case.

Summer really wanted to get a table and chairs set up early, so I took out some trash and dumped it at Dwight on the way, and brought back a big and little table, as well as chairs. Then I quickly made the butter and seasoning concoction that I would be injecting into the bird. I made it about a block down the road before I realized I forgot to actually take the turkey with me, so I had to turn back.

The smoker started reliably well, but I kind of forgot how foolproof it was and unnecessarily started it twice. It got up to temperature much more quickly than I prepped the bird. I wished I had done all of that at Summer’s where I had more room to work. I was in and out of gloves to get the grill set up, and then had trouble getting the drip pan in under the grates. I just needed to think my process through better before starting. My syringe clogged during my very first attempt to inject the first breast, but I was eventually able to clean that out and made it work.

The turkey seemed to be rising in temperature pretty steadily, but it was pretty clear it wasn’t going to be done by 4 when we told everyone we would be eating. I eventually had to crank the heat up from the already-high 295 all the way up to about 350 to finish it off, because I wasn’t sure of the accuracy of the temperature probe, and I didn’t think to use my wireless Meater probe alongside the one integrated into the smoker. Ultimately I lost the apparently cool part that I was measuring, and every other part I probed tested over 160.

Just before it finished, I glazed it with some of the leftover butter and seasoning from the injection, and mixed in some honey and bourbon. The skin was super crispy, and I think the glaze softened it up a little bit, but it could have also been the covered ride back over to Summer’s.

Mom, Dad, Bác Vân, and Doug were all there with the girls. Julie was somehow last after I told her not to rush on account of the turkey. Fortunately we didn’t have to wait any longer than it took me to carve the turkey, and we all dug in.

All of the food was great. Summer made a bunch of sides and a ham, and the turkey was at least done, and I thought it presented well. I thought it was a little bit salty, could have used some more smoke, and ended up not being as moist as I expected. I assumed that was all because of my cook time and temperature, so next time I’ll take much more care to start earlier. Hopefully we can pick up some more turkey on clearance in the coming days.

After we ate, Julie wanted to play a game, so the girls brought out Phase 10. She had to teach Mom how to play, and the game wasn’t entirely without drama, but I think most everyone had a good time while Dad, Bác Vân, and Doug watched from the couch. We played through more phases than I expected, and then everyone filed out relatively quickly. Summer was proud of how quickly everything broke down and cleaned up, and then she was off to bed while the girls started on another jigsaw puzzle before bed.

Less heat; more smoke!

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Spatched

Summer went to work this morning, and I eventually got out of bed and made some rice for the leftover corned beef. Autumn slept on the couch because she got everything out of her storage unit, but didn’t have her room cleaned up with a place for everything. She sat around watching Criminal Minds all morning, and then ate some plain white rice without any of the actual leftovers. I tried to get Eaddie out of bed, but she didn’t want to get up. Neither of them wanted to clean house like I asked.

I eventually left to meet Summer at Superfast so we could get her patched tire back on. I was there with her for a little while after the guys helped swap the tires, since she was ready to leave work a bit early and I thought she might do something with me. She ended up going to the gym, so I went to my parents’ house to prep the turkey.

I’d never actually handled a raw turkey before, but this was actually much cleaner than I expected. I’ve always felt that chickens were super gross and slimy, but the turkey wasn’t slimy at all. It trimmed up nicely, and the random clearanced shears I picked up at Walmart a while back did a great job cutting the spine out. I decided to spatchcock the turkey for my first attempt at smoking one, since it promised a more even cook with the added benefit of speeding up the whole process. I couldn’t have been more pleased with how the prep went.

Mom warmed up some shrimp soup while I was there, so we ate a bit before I headed home. I was supposed to drop the spine and other assorted entrails off at Julie’s house so she could make gravy out of it, but she took forever to respond to my text messages, and said she had left the house to go shopping. I killed a bunch of time cleaning up at home, re-covering the fire pit out back, showering, and getting things generally organized to smoke the turkey. Finally she just had me leave the bag of turkey bits in my mailbox so she could pick it up on the way home.

I had to stop by Lowe’s for an injector, and I decided to throw out my leftover marinade, so I’ll be making my own from scratch in the morning. Just as I left Lowe’s, Summer reminded me to bring my bread maker, so I had to circle back home to get it. When I got to her house, Autumn was still at her boyfriend’s house. Eaddie was working on homework, and Summer was making fruit salad, key lime pie, and deviled eggs. She finished up with a loaf of bread that we thought was a bit overdone. Autumn got back home a little early, and after a little wind-down time, everyone was off to bed.

There’s simply no respect.

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Phone Games

I had plenty of time to get up and around this morning before prying Eaddie out of bed so I could take her home. She said she had a bunch of school work to do, but wasn’t really in a rush to do any of it after verbally stressing about it last night. When I did finally get her home, she spent all day in her room while I just sat around the house.

Autumn arrived shortly after we did, and said she passed whatever screening they did for her to join the military. After that, I guess she went to her room and fell asleep. Eventually Summer called to say she was on her way home, so I took Tres home to charge before meeting her at Walmart.

Mom and Dad pulled up next door as I was leaving, so I handed off some stuff to him before leaving. Then I braved the last-minute Thanksgiving crowd at Walmart to find Summer. The traffic along the way, and the bustling crowd of people just reminded me how much I hate holidays, because they give us an excuse not to have family gatherings more often throughout the year. I’d much rather split this stuff up randomly than save it all for one time of year, with concentrated stupidness all around.

Autumn helped us unload when we got home, and Summer made brownies while the girls ate some leftover pizza. I continued to pick at a bit of stuff, but was still mostly useless. All I had done all day was complete upkeep tasks in Puzzle Tales, ExoMiner, and Phase 10. I only recently started playing games on my phone again, and it’s already eating away at my life. I’ll have to re-prioritize quality over quantity entertainment.

Idle me this, idle me that.