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Drizzly Bear

I slept in a fair amount today and felt better for it. I let myself slowly ease into the day, and I’m not sure I ever really even got it started. I did pick up a few things and poked around some others, but never got up to a whole lot. I tried cleaning my desk a bit, but just barely got it more usable.

It was cold all day long, and wet for most of it. I took a long shower and realized it’s probably time to turn the hot water up a bit if I want to do that again any time soon. I gave my fingernails a much-needed trim, but other than that, I couldn’t find much motivation for anything else.

Strange.

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Run For Your Life

I slept the best that I’ve slept for at least a month last night, and woke up mere seconds before my alarm went off, ready to face the day. I had plenty of time to get to work a couple minutes early and prepared myself a perfect cup of coffee for our meeting. Brody was told to come on down to the shop in spite of his masked status, so I just tried to keep my distance, and wore my mask any time we had to cross paths. Fortunately I was still able to help him over the phone after he left, because that’s what I did most of the day.

A group of us went to Quiznos for lunch, and I think they gave me a sandwich that was larger than they should have for my sandwich and soup combo. The chicken tortilla soup was awesome, but I dropped the last half of it in the floor on accident because we were trying to eat around a table that was simply too small for five of us.

I finally finished up my CPPC meeting minutes draft after staying half an hour late, and then headed home to get another package that had been intercepted by either Bác Vân or Doug. It’s really more annoying than anything, but I guess I’ll appreciate it more if I ever have something irreplaceable stolen.

I don’t think Autumn went to school, and instead was supposed to get a COVID test done because she said she hadn’t been feeling well the last couple of days. Summer got home late, but said Autumn was “ok,” which I thought meant she had a negative test. When I got to their house, I had gotten no more than two spoonfuls of soup into my mouth when Autumn said something about still being sick but not knowing what it was.

After wrestling with her in the bedroom, I knew I had to drop everything to wash up. Autumn is by far the least hygienic of any of the kids, so even when she’s not sick, touching her usually warrants a handwash. She’s embarrassingly disgusting almost all of the time, but this time I was literally afraid for my life. I still remember COVID. Nobody around me seems to be taking it at all seriously, and I just assume I’ll be the one to pay for it.

I ran out the door for home, shaking and crying out of some emotion or another. I had the worst fever of my entire life when I got COVID last year. The pneumonia had me down for weeks afterward, and I still have panic attacks that appear to just be a normal part of my life now. It’s uncontrollable and terrifying, but I deal with it well because of how self aware I am. Maybe that gives off a vibe that I’m not worried about it, but I’m actually always scared.

I shook it off the best I could when I got home. When I finally got settled in, I put on Don’t Look Up to get my mind off of things. As soon as the movie was over, it was straight to the bottle, though.

Maybe this isn’t working.

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That’s a WAP

Thomas was out with pink eye today, so Gary and Zach split the group up to run some more outdoor wireless access points. Since that left Tammy alone downstairs, they told me to stick around, which I was happy to do.

When they got back, Gary, Zach, and I went to McAlister’s for lunch. I thought I had a BOGO soup in a bread bowl, but the coupon was really just for a free bread bowl upgrade. It was way too much bread and not nearly enough soup.

On the way back to the shop, we stopped by my house so I could get a package, but either Bác Vân or Doug had already taken it next door. I retrieved it, but never had a chance to open it because I was sent to the junior high with Josh and Kyle to run two more WAP lines.

The network lines were relatively easy, but it was still frustrating how much standing around there was. It’s like unless there’s a very specific instruction given, there was no ambition to get anything done. We managed to get both lines run with enough time to get to the middle school just before school let out. There, we had to locate a live line that was already in place, and see if it could be made to run outside. We didn’t have the equipment to actually move the drop, but at least the line was hot.

The guys sent about half of everyone home early. I went back to my office to work on my CPPC minutes, but even after staying late I didn’t get it finished. I’d really like to call out the huge increase in pay for at least one administrator. It really wasn’t until that happened that I had to admit that you never truly destroy the “establishment.” You simply replace it.

After work, I went home and started on a few loads of laundry. My work shirts were long overdue, and a couple days of climbing around in the ceiling gave me just the push I needed to get it done.

I’ll do it for half.

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Outernet

I was sleeping really deeply this morning, or perhaps really lightly. In either case, I barely crawled out of bed after seriously contemplating calling in sick. I squeaked into work and had just enough time to get settled and review some of the CPPC meeting notes before I had to walk across the street.

Judy brought donuts, and it was a pretty productive meeting. We voted on some new policies and a modification to the new salary schedule to be implemented this summer. As we wrapped up, I took a couple donuts back to the office for later. It was about lunch time, so after a little bit of poking around, Zach, Gary, and I went to Sam’s.

I tried the Sam’s Special with fried shrimp, which was pretty unimpressive. It wasn’t bad, but it just wasn’t nearly as good as anything else I’ve ever had there. Gary’s gyro looked pretty good though. Zach gave me a couple chicken strips to supplement my baby shrimp, so I was happy.

After lunch, Kyle and I went to run cable at Crawford and Oakland, while Greg and Zach drilled holes on the outside of the building to mount a couple wireless access points. That took us the rest of the day, and I was pretty tired afterward. Eaddie was at Oakland, so I took her with me to drop Kyle off, and then we went to my house to change.

When we got to their house, I started to assemble a ham bone soup in the Instant Pot. Summer picked up celery and onion for me, but I had the rest of what I needed here. I mixed a half cup of every kind of bean I could find here, and the soup turned out pretty good. I wish I could have left it to depressurize naturally, because I think the beans would have been fully cooked then, but it wasn’t bad.

Autumn went to some church event, and then came home complaining about not feeling well. She told Summer she wants to get tested, which infuriates me. I almost hope I die from COVID so she’ll feel some kind of remorse for going out and socializing like an idiot.

I don’t really want to die from it, though…

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Kicked Out With Love

I was a hair late into work today, but it was a pretty quiet day anyway. I poked at a few things in my office until some people showed up in the shop for a meeting. Rather than lock myself in, I went to Oakland to catch up on some work orders until lunch time.

When I got back to the shop, Zach said they were going to Linhs. Five of us piled into my car and we had a pretty good lunch. I went light with a bánh mì, but was left hungry for the afternoon.

After lunch, I called SuddenLink and got my bill lowered more easily than I’ve ever done before. The girl didn’t even try to haggle me or sell me anything new. It was incredible. Then I left to get my windshield chip patched at FastGlass. They didn’t need an appointment or anything, but they also didn’t seem to do a very good job on the patch. It was still very visible, and the outside still seemed to have some of that sandy/powdery glass feel to it. Hopefully it holds up.

I ended the day at Oakland to count Chromebook carts. It took me longer than I thought it would because there were still so many people working late. I finished though, and went home to change before picking up some Subway and taking it up to Summer’s for the evening.

I helped Eaddie with a little bit of homework. Autumn stuck to herself for the most part. Summer did work stuff most of the evening, so I played Don’t Starve in the living room until bed.

Donut tempt me!

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Back to Pants

It was freezy this morning, and my ice scraper was insufficient to remove all of the ice from my windshield. I’ll need to get the chip filled sooner than later so it doesn’t crack the whole windshield.

I ran way behind this morning, but still somehow managed to squeeze in the door on time. I got settled with all the new goodies I brought from home, poured myself some coffee that stayed hot all day long thanks to the Ember mug Summer got me, and then spent all day tucked away in my office.

Evidently it flooded during all of the rain last week, and though most of the stuff in my office was safe, I did have one casualty. The esports poster that Jessica and Ronda made of my newspaper article got wet, because the lamination was trimmed too close to the poster board, which wicked water up into the middle of the poster. Hopefully it will dry out without looking gross.

I had to update a bunch more Chromebooks for Oakland, but never delivered them. Zach, Gary, and Thomas came back to fetch me for La Chiquita for lunch, where Greg met us. Then the afternoon was relatively quiet until quitting time. I left and went by the shop to find Summer in the pit. She was stuck there, so I went home for a bit until she got off.

The girls already ate, so I went by Wind Taste to get some lo mein for Summer, then went to their house for the evening. I developed a bit of a headache and spent most of the evening with some earbuds in. Summer went to bed early, and I finished up on the computer. As I was getting ready to go to bed, Eaddie came out and chatted with me for about an hour and a half before I ran her off to shower and go to sleep.

Two is better than one when less is more.

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Errand Boy

I tried not to sleep too late this morning. I got Summer up, and Autumn was already in the living room when we came out. I rolled Eaddie out of bed, and could tell pretty quickly she was going to be in a pretty good mood. Summer wanted to take them to Shoe Carnival because Eaddie was in dire need of new shoes. I left to meet them after they ran home to change, but Shoe Carnival wouldn’t be open for another hour or two.

We ended up at Walmart instead, since I needed to look for a new TV to replace Doug’s. Since the girls all seemed to be pretty easy going, we perused the clearance aisle for a while, and then walked around slowly through the rest of the store. Then out of nowhere, we were discussing how many new laundry baskets we needed to buy, and Eaddie made an offhand comment that absolutely triggered Autumn. She went 0 to 100 faster than I’ve ever seen, and even got in Eaddie’s face. I almost had to choke her out just to calm her down.

We let her walk it off, and the rest of us just stared at each other wide-eyed trying to figure out what the hell happened. We continued around the store for a while, then circled back around so I could talk to Autumn alone before checking out. We went to Hardee’s because I thought we were going to eat a late breakfast, but everyone else wanted lunch food. Fortunately I had loads of coupons ready to go.

After lunch, the girls went to Shoe Carnival while I went to Lowe’s to look for some gas line tape. Then I headed to my parents’ house to help Dad replace their water heater. It was super cold outside, but the garage was bearable. It took us a bit to trim the metal exhaust tube, and we ended up running back to Lowe’s for some replacement tubing to go from the wall to the heater, but we got it going again.

I stuck around to eat a bowl of soup, and then took an old TV from there to Bác Vân’s. My parents never used it, and it made more sense to give that one to them, since Walmart didn’t have any TVs at all that had a center stand. I’ll have to go back tomorrow once they have a board wide enough to support the new TV and its corner-mounted stands sitting on top of the old console TV.

I prepped a little bit to get things ready to go back to work, then headed up to Summer’s for the evening. The girls were all in good moods again. Autumn was cleaning her room while Summer did Eaddie’s nails as Eaddie had laundry going. I tinkered a bit, warmed up a bit of food, and eventually everyone made it to bed.

Talk about cramming it all in on the last day!

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Amazing!

I woke up pretty early today after an early new year’s eve. Summer got up and went home to meet up with the girls, who were home a day early from their father’s. Eaddie really wanted to come watch the Andrew Garfield The Amazing Spider-Man movies, so I picked up around the house until they came over with a bucket of chicken for dinner.

Just as we sat down to eat, Doug called from next door with a TV issue that I thought was going to be a de-synced remote again, but this time it seemed the volume on the TV was being constantly turned down. I couldn’t resolve it with a stuck button, so I told them it would just have to be replaced. I’ll have to go pick a new one up for them tomorrow.

I ate, and then we started the first movie. I had forgotten how good the 3D was in those movies, because it was actually properly shot in 3D by someone that actually took advantage of the technology and knew how to use it. We took a dessert break between movies, and then I made some popcorn for the second one. They were both pretty emotional movies that I just adored. I think even with the new MCU version of Spider-Man, Garfield was my favorite of all.

Eaddie and I stayed up a little later watching some YouTube, until she was ready for bed. I had to negotiate some space in the bed for her from Autumn, but they settled in pretty quickly. Summer had long been asleep, so I wrapped things up quietly before bed.

Gotta get back into the swing of things…

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Last Tighten

Julie called me as I was trying to get to bed last night. We’ve been more or less on the same page about Dad’s retirement, but she keeps wanting to talk in circles about her frustrations, and it stresses me out. Maybe this year we finally made some headway with our parents though.

Summer and I got up early this morning and headed straight to the new lube in Maumelle. She had a coffee, but that was it. I wasn’t really hurting for breakfast after yesterday. We put together one of the toolboxes together, and then raced on the next two. It was pretty close considering we were sharing tools, and I felt like I held my own. Matt came through to check on things I guess, but didn’t stay long or really do anything to help.

We made it through all but the last large toolbox, and decided to get some lunch. I was already exhausted and needed a break, so we ended up driving into Little Rock to find a Chinese buffet. I was hoping we might see something different, and maybe if I had gotten some raw food to be grilled, it would have been better. It wasn’t bad, but the food was inconsistently fresh or old, dry, and cold. In any case, I still ate way too much.

After lunch, we went back to Maumelle to finish the last toolbox. The trick was to leave the nuts loose enough that the metal could wiggle and flex enough to get the rest of the bolts through the holes. When we finished, we cleaned up our trash and then headed right back home.

Summer insisted I stop for new windshield wipers, so we went to Superfast for those, then went to my house to bring in a package. We decided to stay there for the night, though she had to run home for some things. While she was gone, I unburied the treadmill so she could run a while when she got back.

I was sore and stiff all night, so I just laid on the couch with Summer after she got out of the shower. I got up a couple times to make her something to drink, but it was still an early night to bed.

Lots of rain makes for a nice, quiet new year’s eve.

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You’ve Got to Build Bypasses!

We got up early this morning and headed to Cabot, stopping just outside of Conway at a Sonic for breakfast on the road. Summer met up with the managers of that new location to deploy tools and set up anything they could. I left them pretty early to go to Walmart across the street.

I wandered around the store just checking things out at first. Then I circled back through to pick up a few things. I found some Fruity Pebble flavored Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, a Zelda Game & Watch, and some slap bracelets. When I left there, I stopped by the Goodwill in the adjacent shopping center, but they had absolutely nothing even remotely interesting to me.

Back at the shop, it appeared to be an extremely slow day, and not at all a full day of work worthy of the drive out there. It was lunch time, so we tried to go to Chef Candace, but the doors were locked. We ended up going across the street to Deer Creek Fire & Stone. Our server said it was her first day, but appeared old enough that I didn’t really believe she had never waited a table before. Service was slow, but the food was alright. I was most disappointed that she said the pot pies, which were on the lunch specials menu, “weren’t ready yet.”

After we ate, we went back to the shop and put together a few more things. I helped hang a couple charging banks in the back room, and then helped assemble the desk for the office. When we finished, we headed toward Bryant to pick up my order from Target, but went through the car wash in Benton first.

We walked all around Target, picking up some Christmas clearance before going back to the front to pick up my order. They actually had two of the Tron: Legacy vinyls, and I got both. Then we headed to Little Rock for dinner. Traffic was heavy, but not unmanageable. We were welcomed home at the Star of India, and had an incredible meal. The food came out quickly, but otherwise the service was very slow. A couple of boys circled around the place like buzzards and made sure my water was never more than an inch below the brim. We really could have just split what I ordered, but instead we just left with a bunch of leftovers.

It was straight to bed once we made it home. The girls were still in Clarksville, and Summer was sore from her day. Evidently she’s got to work in Maumelle tomorrow.

You no touch plate!