Category: Uncategorised

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Don’t Quote Me on That

It rained all day long today, but that just kept it from feeling too frigid. Mike and I cleaned up the office some more, then met Greg and Ben at Las Palmas for lunch. Afterward, we started our “training” so we could do HP self maintainer claims.

After work, I had to get home and continue cleaning before my parents came over with the guys from Father and Sons Construction & Remodeling Co. to look at the bathrooms. I felt pretty happy with where I got, and then had a moment to breathe before they got here because they were running behind.

We went from needing six walls hung and tiled, to having both bathrooms completely stripped and remodeled, paint everywhere, new cabinets with sinks and fixtures, and new windows all around the house. It felt very much like a sales pitch at first, and I quickly became very agitated. Finally looking at some of their previous work, I feel more confident that I could do the majority of the work and then just hire someone for plumbing and laying tile when I’m ready.

They were here for about an hour and a half before everyone left. Then I waited around for Summer to come over, since the girls were staying the night with their friends. She picked up some food from Spices and we ate, then went to bed.

All this talking is driving me crazy.

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Widening the Path

Mike and I were sent to the high school all day again today, with an added task of mounting a touch panel that was already prestaged. I feel so much less overwhelmed having someone there to help me sort through all the student devices. For the first time in forever, I feel regularly whelmed.

Nobody went out for lunch, so I just stopped by Burger King to grab a quick bite before going back to the high school. It was another short afternoon, and then I went home until Eaddie asked me to take them to Strikers Bowling Alley for some kind of multi-date. Summer met us there, and after some back and forth on whether or not we would bowl, we ended up leaving the kids for some dinner at Stoby’s.

When I got back home, I had to do some major excavating to clean a path to the bathrooms. Dad was able to schedule a quote with someone for the bathroom remodels, and though I can see progress in all the cleaning I’ve done this year, it would still look like a hoarded mess to a complete stranger.

Yes, this is better.

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A Murderer Most Foul

I didn’t sleep great last night for the constant barrage of dreams. I had one in particular that had my heart racing as I attempted to avert a murderer. At the last moment, Summer moved her arm around me, which of course occurred in real time in my dream, so I snatched her hand away from me in a death grip to save my own life.

We both eventually made it in to work, alive. I was super tired, but fortunately wasn’t assigned anything particularly physically demanding. Mike and I just went to the high school and tried to sort out the student device returns to get a couple in order to file claims, and then get a count of what parts we thought we might need.

Ben called at one point, and seemed really excited when I answered the phone as Joe’s Crab Shack, so we settled on Sam’s for lunch. Mike actually went with us, so we juad had to stop by the shop to pick up Ben. I went with the crawfish po’ boy this time, looking for something a little more reasonable in price and volume. It was excellent, though if I’m honest, I wasn’t paying close enough attention and could have easily been served shrimp instead.

After lunch we got to leave early, so we just wrapped up a bit more sorting before heading out. I stopped by Superfast to see Summer just briefly, then went home until it was time to take Autumn to her Explorers group meeting.

Once I dropped her off, I went to Lowe’s and walked the store aisle by aisle looking for those stupid discounted power cables again. I walked every inch of that place and couldn’t find them, so either they’re up in storage somewhere, or their inventory really is just 12 off. Feeling a little defeated, I ended up sitting in my car messing with my Pixel Buds for a while before heading home and eventually to bed.

That was when the Grinch discovered that the true cost of Christmas was 15 points off his credit score.

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The Highs and Lowe’s of Deal Hunting

We got up this morning and treated ourselves to breakfast at Denny’s before Summer left for the gym and errands. I had trouble getting out of bed in the first place, and after breakfast and two cups of coffee it wasn’t any better. Eventually I did get up and do a little bit of cleaning and rearranging in the house. Chairs once again fit around the dining room table, that has apparently existed underneath everything else all this time.

I got showered and finished getting ready just as Summer got back, and we went to Lowe’s to pick up an online order I placed, and to hunt for a clearanced extension cable somewhere in the store. Everything and everyone indicated they had 12 in stock somewhere, but after occupying several minutes of the kindest employee’s time, and subsequently wandering nearly every aisle one by one, we still could not find any of them.

Having worked up an appetite, we went to Colton’s for a fried onion and steaks. We happened to be seated by Greg and his whole family, but I didn’t notice for a while. He indicated that work tomorrow would be a complete toss-up. I’m really not looking forward to it after how exhausted I’ve been, but maybe it’s exactly what I need.

She’s just my special lady friend that lives in my house.

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La-La-La-La La Boda

Summer ran a bunch of errands this morning while I tried not sleeping in. It didn’t work in my favor, but at least I was up and ready in time to leave for Dalia and Mario’s wedding. They had a pretty big gathering at the Catholic church, and of course Summer wanted to sit right up front so she could see everyone. Early on, I thought it might take twice as long because it seemed like they were going to do everything in Spanish and English. Luckily(?), they did almost all of it only in Spanish, so we were left taking cues from everyone else for all the standing and sitting, but in the normal amount of time that a ceremony would last.

After the wedding, we went straight to my parents’ house for some leftovers since neither of us had eaten. Then we came back to the house to change and rest a little before going back out for the reception.

The reception was a big, loud event with way more action than I was prepared to witness. We ended up sat at a long table to ourselves, and they brought us some drinks and a couple plates of food. They had their first dance, then took turns dancing with people that would pin money to the couples’ clothes. After that, for a while it seemed like couples were just taking turns dancing together on an otherwise empty dance floor.

The highlight for me was when a crowd of girls took off running in a line, holding hands, all around the tables, between the bride and groom, and just all over the room. Then a hoard of guys got together, with probably twice as many guys as girls, and did the same thing, only seriously mobbing Mario and trying to knock him off of the chair he was standing on. Fortunately there was a small group of people doing their best to keep him upright, and though I’m not sure he stayed on the chair through it all, he at least never touched the ground.

We left shortly after that, since the rest of the party would carry on into the wee hours of the night. We chatted for a bit, enjoying the quiet, then slipped off to sleep.

Wait, so only the priest gets the wine?!?

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Christmas Bills

With Christmas presents handled the night before, I got up today to all three girls wandering and cleaning house in preparation for some time away. Summer was in the kitchen making her contributions for dinner with the family, and the girls were cleaning up so they could spend some time with their father.

Evidently the turkey was a little slower to cook than expected, so we had plenty of time to get everything done and ready to go by the early afternoon. We headed on to my parents’ house and waited for the main course to arrive. I spent most of my time fighting with the wireless to get a new Chromecast with Google TV to work for them so Mom wouldn’t have to keep using her phone as an unreliable remote. It was more frustrating than dealing with my defective Belkin WeMo light switch a month or two ago.

Julie eventually showed up with the turkey, and Bác Vân and Doug braved the Coronavirus to come see everyone. It was a good time, but I think too much effort was made to keep the conversations with feelings to a minimum. There’s no reason everyone should be walking on eggshells after this long together.

After we ate, Summer dropped the girls off and Julie tried to start Soul. I had to interrupt so we could get food packed and get out of there before too late. As soon as we got back home, I remembered that Amanda asked me to check in on her cats, so I ran back across town to do that before coming home. It’s been a super spendy season, so I had to spendy a bit of time moving the ol’ numbers around, but I think the pandemic has actually cut my living expenses so that I already had more than enough saved up to cover all these amazing deals I keep finding.

Now if only going to work actually paid more than not going, I’d feel a lot better about this.

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Wrap It Up

I slept in pretty late today and woke up with a little bit of anxiety about it. I kept feeling like I had missed something important, but we didn’t have anything going on until the evening. Summer was at work, and the girls were up watching TV. I motivated myself just enough to win a game of Into the Breach before heading home.

I had to get presents wrapped and take a shower before coming back for dinner and gifting with the kids. I’d done better work in the past, but I got pretty good by the last gift. When I got back up to the house, Noah was already there but nobody was hungry. I ate a little, and then we opened presents. It was still a very different process than when I was growing up, but I can’t say I have a preference for either way.

Noah left shortly after gifting and eventually getting some food. Then Summer went to bed and I finished the last season of Jessica Jones with Eaddie. I’m not sure what’s next, but I’m kind of glad that chapter is over after all this time.

Now I can practice before going back to the grind.

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On Time Management

Summer worked again today, which left me on kid duty. We had a fair amount of stuff to get done, but I only knew about a tenth of it before I went home to shower. Sara and Zach invited us over for cards in the evening, so we had to get dinner made so Summer could eat as soon as she got home.

I got a call from someone about my extended leave from work due to COVID while I was in the shower. Summer wanted me to pick up lunch for her, so I couldn’t call back until later. I also had to call the eye clinic to order my contacts so they could put them on this year’s insurance. That was a quick call, and then I grabbed some Burger King for Summer.

As soon as I left there, I had to get Autumn and take her to therapy. On the way out, I got stuck for about 15 minutes by a train before I could get home to make my other call. As soon as that was done, I ran to Walmart to get everything for tonight’s dinner and Christmas.

Of course Walmart was a freaking zoo, and I was stressing pretty hard physically just to get out of there. I kept coughing all over the place, which got me lots of looks from the increasing number of maskless people wandering the aisles. As soon as I could get out, I picked up Autumn and we headed home to cook as quickly as we could.

Autumn wanted to make ratatouille out of some squash and zucchini they got from their friends’ mother. Instead of looking up a recipe that would also use the fresh tomatoes they got, she had me buy a can of tomato paste. She also completely missed the fact that she was supposed to do something with the chicken breasts we thawed out several days ago, so suddenly that was my problem.

Things escalated when she wanted to cut all of the vegetables with a steak knife instead of one of the half dozen chef knives she’s brought home this year. It took her forever to slice anything, and I made an entire chicken casserole and had it in the oven, AND pan fried some leftover chicken that wouldn’t fit in the casserole, all before she even finished slicing her vegetables. I kept giving her instructions that she continued to ignore until I blew up at her and she stormed off to her room.

Once I had all the food at least cooking, we made our apologies. I got some gas while we waited for the food to cook, and then we actually had a really delicious, modified ratatouille with mozzarella instead of mascarpone for dinner. Unfortunately the casserole was too big to have cooked all the way through before we had to go, but it will make a great dinner tomorrow when all the kids are here to open presents.

We got up to Zach and Sara’s place quite a bit later than we wanted, and played a couple games of Unstable Unicorns with them and Gary. Their girls just wandered around harassing the cats most of the night. I know Summer was tired, but Autumn and I at least had a great time, and Eaddie got to eat a bunch of little hot dogs.

As soon as we made it back home, the usual suspects shuffled off to bed. I stayed up until the casserole was cool enough to put in the fridge, and Eaddie came out to watch an episode of Jessica Jones with me. As soon as it was over, it was finally bedtime.

Presentation only matters when time allows, and it turns out you can eat the eggplant skin.

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Food Zombies

We got up early this morning to take Summer to work at the Conway location. Autumn wanted to tag along for some shopping as well. I had to run home to clean up, then pick up my trial contacts, and finally picked up the girls for a drive to Conway. We dropped Summer off, then went to Target for a slow walk around the store.

We picked up a couple very small things, but nothing of much consequence. Autumn got pretty hungry, so we left there and went to Golden Corral for lunch. The buffet was pretty disappointing, with several duplicated dishes and only hamburgers made with rolls instead of buns from the grill. I still filled up, but I left super unsatisfied.

From there, we went back to Kohl’s to try and find some clearance. Autumn actually did a good job thumbing through the racks and picked up a pair of pants. Still, I didn’t find a whole lot that interested me, so we eventually moved on to Best Buy. We were both feeling super exhausted after a big lunch, and just wanted to nap. Best Buy was really just a time killer for an hour before we could fetch Summer from work.

On the way, I grabbed an iced coffee from McDonald’s that really helped to pep me up. When we got to Summer, she was in the pit training their manager. She wanted to do another oil change with her down there, so she had me pull around and get mine done a bit prematurely. I couldn’t complain, and the oil was still black anyway.

When they finished up, the three of us ran to Sam’s to pick up a few things. I tried to do a bit more deal scouting, but came up dry. We headed home as the sun came down, stopping once in Morrilton for some a-a-a-a-a-a-alcohol. Autumn wanted to make tacos for dinner, so we let her run into Walmart for a couple missing ingredients once we got back into town.

The tacos were simple but tasty enough. Everyone turned in super early after we finished eating. I was exhausted, but had a bunch of email to catch up on before going to bed myself.

This is starting to feel like work.

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Solstice Outing

Summer went back to work today, so I offered Autumn to take her and Eaddie out so they could do some Christmas shopping while I cleaned up at home. I dropped them off at PetSmart, then went home to shower. They finished up about the same time I did, probably because Eaddie was tired of shopping the minute they made it into the first store. I picked them up and we got some Zaxby’s for lunch.

Summer left work early, so we met her at the city park and ate outside. It was a little bit windy and cool, but otherwise a super nice day out. Librado texted and was trying to hunt me down, so they caught up with us there. He made me a surprise record cutout of my sunset cow logo, which was awesome. Traci came over and yapped with the girls a while too.

When we finally left, Summer went to the gym and I took the girls back to my house so Eaddie could ride her bike and I could check out my Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones. They sounded pretty clean, but it’s too early to tell if they were worth the price. I’ll have to compare them next to the super cheap headphones I picked up for Dad a while back.

Autumn napped until Eaddie got back, and then we headed back to their house for the evening. We just barely beat Summer back, and then we watched some TV while Autumn wrapped presents. When we finished that, we started a game of Phase 10 before Summer and Autumn headed to bed. Then Eaddie and I watched a couple more episodes of Jessica Jones before going to sleep.

No, not “all of the planets” aligned. No, it is not the Bethlehem star. It’s just the cosmos, being itself.
Also, Earth only seems flat because of your perspective and how close you are to it.
Also, what the hell are they teaching you in school???