Category: Uncategorised

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Studly

We had a meeting this morning about nothing in particular, after being told that we wouldn’t be having meetings every Friday as we have in the past. Zach was out with a sick kid, so Gary had to divvy the rest of us back up into groups to do the few projects we had. Brody, Gary, and I went to the middle school to hang a TV for the resource officer, but metal studs behind drywall made it a challenge. John ended up coming in to supervise in the already tiny and crowded office, but at least he was sat behind the desk.

We finally got everything up a little bit before lunch, and went back to the shop to wait for everyone else to get back before the Thanksgiving lunch in the cafeteria above us at ground level. The food was surprisingly good, and even the girls joined us this time.

Gary helped me run an audio cable on the Oakland stage after lunch, and then I went back to finish up a few things at the end of the day. Michael gave me a couple leftover pies from a pie party they had, and then chatted at me about cryptocurrencies for a while.

I took Eaddie home when I left, and we finished up our last episode of House before going to La Huerta for dinner. Autumn was at Quiz Bowl camp, and Summer had just gotten back from Little Rock and was working out at the gym, so it was just the two of us. As we pulled in, Eaddie wasn’t satisfied with how busy the parking lot looked, so we went next door to New China instead. She was in a super good mood and we talked a lot as I stuffed myself silly.

When we got back to the house, Summer and I went to Walmart to pick up things for our Friendsgiving the next day. Then she jammed out in the kitchen prepping pudding and broccoli salad while Eaddie and I watched more House until bedtime.

Now, sleeeeeeeeeep.

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Fat Patty’s

I had to take Eaddie to school this morning, but I jumped right into my morning routine and finished up about half an hour early, which meant I spent the rest of the time waiting for her to get ready. Miraculously, I managed to drop her off and get to work right on time. My office had a revolving door for most of the morning, but I got a few things done, and cleaned up some more work orders.

The morning went by pretty quickly, and four of us went to Fat Daddy’s downtown for lunch. I’m always opposed to eating at either Fat Daddy’s just because the food is almost always pretty bad for barbecue, but I tried the burger this time, and it was great. It could have used some vegetables, and my jaw hit the floor when our server told us it took 25 minutes to make, but it was one of like three things there that I can actually recommend. I very nearly went with the chicken strips, but the cost of everything was superficially high.

After lunch was pretty quiet. Shane came by with some cookies from Howard, and I ended the day at Oakland again. Eaddie was outside, so I took her home to watch an episode of House before Autumn showed up to take her to their last night at karate.

I tried booking a room for next week so Summer wouldn’t have to drive Eaddie home from the Harry Styles concert, but somehow the date changed on my reservation and I was given false hope for finding an open room anywhere near the arena. Without being able to walk to the hotel, I figure they might as well just drive home instead. Traffic is infuriating after that place unloads. I guess we’ll see what we decide as the date approaches.

It’s like a musical tug-of-war.

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When the Boss is Away

It was a bit more relaxed today with Thomas out to close on his house. I spent the morning cleaning up various work orders while Zach and Gary tried to go through all the old and stale work orders that everyone had. Summer decided really early that she wanted Mulan’s for lunch, but they were closed due to some staffing issues. Zach and I met her at New China instead, and the food was great.

I spent the end of the day at Oakland again, and then took Eaddie with me to the high school so she could ride the Grom some more. She had a much worse time today, and killed the engine so much that I really thought the battery was going to give out. Fortunately it didn’t, and she made a few fussy laps around the parking lot.

Autumn came out to meet us when she finished with wrestling, and then I sent them to dinner and clean up while I did laundry at home. Summer was spending the night in Little Rock, so they decided to stay the night with me, but Autumn didn’t want to do anything but go into the bedroom by herself. Eaddie and I stayed up watching House, but I gave her some diphenhydramine for her allergies that knocked her out before we finished the second episode.

Notate and move on.

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Blue Screen of Annoyance

I took the R1 to work today and it was actually pretty nice out. Thomas was hosting some more training in the morning, so he just locked me in for a couple hours while I worked on my own stuff. Several of us went to La Huerta for lunch, and as we were finishing up, Grant spotted us and came over to say hello.

The afternoon went by pretty quickly as well. I spent the last part of the day at Oakland, aside from having to rush back to the shop for an impromptu replacement laptop, and then went home until Mom had dinner ready. Summer wanted to go with me for bánh xèo, so I picked her up from work and we went to eat.

I called Bryan on the way back to talk about work stuff, and then we just kept talking about phone and other work stuff as I followed Summer home. Everyone went to bed pretty quickly, but Eaddie and I watched an episode of House to finish the night.

A princess tiara would be perfect.

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Odd Man Down

Today was a weird day. I started off jumping right into a bug that Jacob discovered with Google Groups, which landed me in a chat and subsequent call with support that lasted through lunch. I ended up just eating leftover donuts and cake that was left in the fridge, which probably wasn’t much healthier than the Wendy’s that everyone else had.

Nearly the entire day, I was the only one around downstairs, so I kept having to answer the phone and help anyone that stopped by or called. I hardly got to anything of my own until I just left and went to Oakland. By then it was already quitting time, but I had to get something accomplished for myself.

Eaddie was sitting outside at Oakland and wanted me to take her, so we went to the high school together for one last thing, and then to my house so I could change. I had to drop off my mail survey at the post office and get gas, and finally we were off to Summer’s for the evening.

Summer warmed up some leftovers, and Eaddie and I ate. Then when Summer went to bed, Eaddie and I watched some more House. It won’t be much longer until we finish up the series and can be on to something new.

What to watch… Holidays are coming!

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Bake ‘n Shows

We slept in a bit after a long day yesterday. Summer got up and baked some cookies, and I eventually made my way home after Summer and Autumn went to the gym. Eaddie stayed behind watching Frozen, since Autumn had put it on while doing chores.

I fiddled around with a few things at home since it wasn’t too cold inside. I cleaned a whole bunch of algae and gross plant matter out of my old shrimp tank, though it’s devoid of any shrimp now after I suffocated them all.

Summer baked bread and Brussels sprouts, and grilled some barbecue chicken for dinner, so I came back up for that. Then Eaddie and I ended the night with a couple episodes of House.

No! He’s like a stray. He’ll eat everything, shed all over the place, and crap on the floor.

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Gold Medal Flower

I got up early and dropped Eaddie off at the high school to go to her big string orchestra for the day, then went home to clean up before our day in Little Rock. My parents met us at Summer’s house, and we all piled into Mom’s car for the drive. Our first stop was MarketPlace Grill in Conway for lunch. We ended up having to wait about 45 minutes for a table. They were only seating about half of their tables, but disappointingly, they were still just packing everyone in super close to one another. One would think that COVID would have them spreading everyone out, but everyone seems to have just moved on from that sort of thing around here.

After we ate, we stopped by Kohl’s to do a little bit of quick shopping before continuing down to Little Rock. When we did finally get closer to showtime, we ran around Little Rock trying to find some flowers to take Eaddie. We stopped at a Kroger in the hood that didn’t have any, then tried to find a nearby florist that appeared to be a bad listing on Google Maps. Finally, we stopped by another grocery store that also didn’t have flowers, but they did have flours. Summer and I picked up a Gold Medal, and then ran back to the car to make it to the concert.

We showed up just in time to get some decent seats before the two bands got started. Eaddie’s junior high band was first, and they seemed very disjointed. I knew that Eaddie was good, and expected her to be in an orchestra of equally-talented people, but that didn’t appear to be the case.

We stuck around for the high school band, and then filed out of the building to decide on what to do next. Mom wanted to hit up a couple Oriental food stores, so we did that first, and then ended up heading back to Conway for dinner after failing to get into The Butcher Shop without waiting an hour or more to be seated.

On the Border was probably the best decision we made all day. The service and food were both pretty great, and Eaddie got her fill of everyone else’s food after having repeatedly told everyone that she wasn’t hungry enough for dinner.

As soon as we finished, we loaded back up and Dad dropped us off at Summer’s house. Eaddie and I stayed up to finish season six of House. We were both exhausted by then, so it was off to bed for the night.

How do you even play a whole note on a drum?

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Peer Pressure

I was a little bit late to work this morning after rehearsing a big speech about standing up to the man and not being a coward. We didn’t have much of a meeting when I got there though, and in fact we were actually told we wouldn’t really be having those meetings moving forward, unless we have something we need to discuss.

I eventually made my way across the street for our called CPPC meeting, and though it ran a little long, it felt like a really good meeting. Before the meeting, I was concerned about the fact that we were still discovering mistakes only a few hours prior. Once we discussed the intent a little more, and addressed my questions and concerns, I was much more satisfied with what we were doing.

We voted to send the draft to the school board, and I made my way back to the shop just before lunch. Almost all of us went to Western Sizzlin to eat, and then it was a pretty quiet afternoon. I didn’t really get out of my office, and I think that actually made the issue with my contacts worse. I’ll be staying out of them the rest of the weekend.

I worked a little late on the meeting minutes, then went to The UPS Store to return an Amazon order. Then I picked Summer up from work so we could go pick up a white dress shirt for Eaddie’s concert tomorrow.

After dropping Summer off at her car, I went home and started some laundry and watched Shang-Chi to see what it looked like in their advertised “IMAX Enhanced” format. I’ll have to go back and skip through it in the widescreen format to compare later. When Eaddie finally got home from her band trip, I took her home and we went to bed.

I abstain.

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Rain on the Parade

I took the Shadow to work this morning in spite of the wet, since it would be clear all day. I didn’t get a whole lot done before lunch, outside of working up an email and sharing my salary comparison worksheet with Judy. Gary took Brody and me to Arby’s for lunch, and when we got back, Judy had actually started looking at my sheet, and we chatted for a while within the document, which was cool. She actually fixed a couple of the issues I found, but still didn’t make the changes I suggested for our department.

It took me a while, but I finally made it to Oakland in the afternoon about an hour before school let out. I found out that Mollie’s been out sick, so I reached out to her later in the evening to see how she was doing.

They let us off of work early to go to the Veterans Day parade. Autumn asked me to go so I could see her walk the American flag at the head of the parade, so I met Summer and Eaddie at the church downtown. We stayed for almost the entire parade, but left just before traffic got stupid.

We went back to my house for just a few minutes before Summer dropped Eaddie off to have dinner with Autumn and their father. Then I met her at Nonna Bella’s for a pizza before she had to go to the superintendent search committee meeting. Christina was evidently working there and served us, which was only a little bit odd considering I knew her from the call center days, and she knew the girls through their father.

Summer took off just before her meeting started, and I headed home for the evening. Mollie finally responded and said she had a hard limit of one visitor per day, so I may go visit her if we can plan it successfully.

All the positive vibes.

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Entombed Raider

I got up and out a little bit early today for no particular reason. I didn’t really get to anything I wanted to do though, because of meetings and an overwhelming need to decipher the latest draft of the proposed salary schedule. I actually spent all day crunching numbers on a combined spreadsheet, and it was a nice bit of self-confirmation that I could do that job, and probably better than those tasked with it.

Not long into the morning, several from central office came over for some training. I’m not sure why they didn’t do it in their own conference room, for for whatever reason they did it outside of my office, so I was made to lock myself in and stay quiet in the dark.

I snuck out for lunch with Gary and Greg, and we went to Taco John’s for the first time in ages. My Boss Burrito was mostly beans and rice, but the Potato Olés were on point, and I even let the girl upsell the nacho cheese.

We had a video call with an Apple guy in the afternoon so Brody could ask some questions, but it really just turned into Gary learning things and then assigning work to Greg and me. I guess that’s the job, so I can’t complain too much.

Eaddie had walked to my house and gone out for a bike ride, so I went home after work and then met her at the high school with the Grom. The helmet communicator worked pretty great, and I coached her through some laps around the parking lot as the sun set. We rode back home and then went to their house with some ribs I needed to grill.

Summer eventually made it home from the gym, and we ate while she had a video call of her own. The girls were still doing laundry for most of the evening, so there wasn’t much for me to do besides put some more work into my spreadsheet with some updated numbers from Judy, and then research home Dolby Atmos configurations. If you can have 11.2.8 at home, I can’t think of a single reason that you shouldn’t have 11.2.8 at home.

But what number do they use for the seat shakers?