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Problems with Gravity

Randy showed up with his new RAV4 today, unexpectedly early after ordering it only a week ago. The guys were outside looking at it when I showed up, but we all went in when I got there. There was a bit of catching up since he and Jim had been gone all week, so things were pretty relaxed. I actually got some work done, rebuilding the Adobe roster sync, and fixing a couple of other things as they came to me.

Jimmy was there in the morning, but Maggie got a call a little while later that he had fallen. She and Randy took off to check on him, and evidently he just passed out for about half a minute. Luckily one of the security folks saw him and they ran out to take care of him, but the doctor said he can’t drive until he has someone check out his heart.

I ended up taking lunch by myself, so I picked up a $4 ghost pepper chicken sandwich from Popeye’s, and some free fries with purchase of cheddar tots from Burger King. I was worried after getting relatively poor service from both places, but all of the food was absolutely spot-on, so I couldn’t be mad. They can ignore my presence all day as long as they hand me a piping hot bag of food.

The afternoon went by kind of slowly after that. I made it to Conway for a quick charge, then got home so I could run the dogs. It was overcast and dark all day, so it got pretty chilly while we were out. The dogs did well though, so they got hot dogs with their dinner and I tried to clean up some leftovers. I got a bit frustrated with how much old food hasn’t been touched, and then I accidentally knocked one of Summer’s coffee mugs off the counter and shattered it. I don’t know why they’re both so bad about keeping that area tidy, but they’re just incapable of organizing anything. It all just goes everywhere. Eaddie’s stuff just goes in the floor, and I’m tired of being the bad guy about ever saying anything.

I spent the rest of the evening unpacking Vine orders since a bunch of them arrived today. The recycle dumpster is already crammed pretty full, and I’ve got a bunch more cardboard to load up. At least some of the novelty is starting to wear off, so my ordering has slowed down a little bit. I still hate when I miss something really good, though.

Retail Therapy Problems

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Double Dog Day

I woke up early again today, and after taking my iron in the morning, felt queasy again. Summer eventually got up and I made us some bacon and eggs to go with the leftover Cheddar Bay Biscuits. She eventually went to the gym and Eaddie went to church. I took the dogs for a long run through the neighborhood, pleased that we’ve been able to keep only one of them on the lead with the other on the e-collar radial fence. They just get tied up too easily, and end up hurting themselves if they’re both tied up, and I hate it.

Eaddie was out for the afternoon as well, to watch a Tech concert. Summer and I bathed, expecting to go out for a birthday dinner, but Dad said they’d rather go another day, so we stayed in. I took the dogs for a second run, and they ran way faster the second time.

When I got back home, I ordered some Domino’s since they still had their $10 pizza deal. They were slammed when I got there, but the pizzas turned out pretty good. Eaddie got home just as we finished eating and had some herself. Then it was down for bed.

Puppy pool weather is back!

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Shock and Paw

I didn’t get to sleep in today after all, because Stilgar kept barking early in the morning. I went out to check on them, and he had their lines tied up all over his legs, and Muad’Dib was wrapped around the post of the tree house. I got them loose and let them run around the yard for a bit until I could get one of their new virtual fence collars working. I eventually put the collar on Muad’Dib, and it seemed to work pretty well.

Summer had to go to work for a little bit, but then came home and made us eggs and corned beef hash for breakfast. Eaddie left to go see Jenny at the swim event, and Summer went to the gym, so I spent a while unboxing Vine stuff, building some cheap furniture, and cleaning out the recycling. The day ended up going by super fast because Summer came home and wanted to take a shower, and Eaddie came home and wanted help loading her bicycle onto the bike rack.

Later in the evening, Summer wanted to make macaroni noodles to go with the leftover spaghetti sauce Eaddie brought home. She also wanted some Brussels sprouts and bacon, so I ran the dogs to the Neighborhood Market for those. After we delivered them to Summer, we went on a long walk to see my parents and then around the basin trail. We were stopped a couple times by some dogs that were off-leash, but they handled it fairly well.

Eli came over for dinner when they were finished riding bikes, and then we played most of Phase 10. I finally took my shower, but by then I was exhausted and ready for bed.

Get your tesseract together!

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Sassy Folks

They discussed some cuts to some pretty high profile people at last night’s board meeting, so the NAACP showed up with an otherwise already packed house. Maggie, Jimmy, and Gary talked about it a little bit while she watched it in the morning, but none of us were really bothered by it. It was a really quiet morning, and an even quieter afternoon because Maggie took a half day. I ended up not taking a lunch and just worked straight through. In the afternoon, Jimmy came and got me and we went to Indian Hills to try and troubleshoot a Chromebook issue for a little third grader. She was super cute and super sassy, so that was pretty fun. We’ll have to fight that issue some more on Monday though.

I had to charge on the way home, so I decided to grab a little burger at Five Guys. Eaddie had her fundraiser spaghetti dinner later in the evening, but I wasn’t sure what time, or whether the food would be any good. While I ate, I noticed a boat and trailer tipped over upside-down in the middle of the roundabout, so I had to take the back roads to the next exit to get home.

Summer was there just briefly, but had to go to the church to help with the dinner. I took the dogs out and walked them to my parents’ house, then to the church to see when she’d be able to eat. Then we took the long way home, passing several people along the way. I changed clothes and drove back to the All Saints’ Episcopal Church where Summer was still chatting with Nick. He left and we sat down to eat, and the spaghetti was actually pretty good.

After dinner, the two of us headed home while Eaddie stayed behind to clean up. Summer went straight to bed, but I started to feel a bit queasy and dizzy. I eventually made it to bed with a solid plan to sleep in late.

More hired; More fired

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Brain Rot Kids

I had a rough start this morning, and it just never got any better. I was late leaving for work, which was compounded by slow traffic the entire way. I nearly got absolutely creamed by a semi when traffic came to a stop due to a wreck that closed the left lane. It was just barely around a curve, and traffic slowed so fast that a semi way behind me couldn’t slow down fast enough even after I turned on my blinkers as an early warning. I watched as he got bigger in my rearview, but thankfully he veered off the road to the left just as I started to the right. Traffic kind of split across both shoulders, but I don’t think any extra damage was done to anyone.

After that, I guess the slowdown that normally happens at the top of the hill when the sun peaks had worked its way back toward Conway. It was slow the entire way in to work, but nobody seemed bothered. I was actually pretty busy with stuff today, and I guess people were bothering Randy as well.

I met Kyle and Maggie at Cactus Jack’s for lunch at his request, and the food was pretty decent, typical Mexican. Jay called for help after I had sent him to central office to work some of Randy’s work orders, so I had to meet him there after lunch. What I thought was going to be a ten minute fix ended up taking the rest of the afternoon trying to fix a high-energy zoomer, and we still didn’t really complete it all.

I left straight from there and headed straight home, again through some stupid traffic, but thankfully at a much faster pace. The dogs were super anxious when I checked on them in the morning after being tied up all night, but Dad took them on a long walk during the day, so they weren’t too bad when I got home. They did knock over and chew up their water dispenser, which infuriated me to the point of dumping it and beating them with it. They cowered under the porch, but I can’t afford to buy them a new water bowl every week.

They came back out and we went for a pretty good walk. They’re definitely not as responsive to me without their prong collars, and the shock collars are too slow to give good feedback when we’re running. I did shock them both a couple of times when they eyed some cats, but otherwise they were fairly well behaved. We stopped to see Dad and then made it home for dinner. After they ate, I let them sit off-leash for a while before they made it out to the fenceline to dig some more. They still had their shock collars, so I zapped them both and tied them up.

The kids came home before Eaddie’s concert while I was assembling Vine stuff. Then I had to meet them and Summer at Witherspoon for a super long concert. I hated that we were there for the first band, and both played way too long, but I also just wasn’t in the mood. I was exhausted and sleep deprived after a night full of light sleep and weird dreams with caricatures. Summer was slow to leave, so I ended up leaving her behind and made it home to wrap up.

TikTok Cancer

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Straight to Jail

The dogs seemed chill this morning, and Summer said they came right out when she called, so we decided to leave them off the runner. Once I got in, I caught up with Kyle for a bit and then took a call from Johnny. Maggie was late, so I was alone for most of the morning.

Not much later, I tried to find the dogs on camera and couldn’t see them, but I heard a lot of barking, so I texted Dad. He said they were gone and spent quite a while hunting for them, finally finding them in his neighbor’s yard again. He got them home and tied them up, checking on them throughout the day.

Things were pretty quiet otherwise, and I ended up just going to Taco Bell for lunch. Afterward I brought a couple of “birthday cake churros” back for Maggie and myself to try, and they were delicious. The afternoon went by pretty quickly again, but I left a little late to make up for being so late yesterday. I stopped to charge most of the way up, then washed my car since Summer was in Conway.

It was getting dark when I got home, but I could tell the dogs were all tangled up. Muad’Dib was bleeding from the lip from something, but it wasn’t the steel cable. We had a pretty good walk, but they were a bit slower again. I don’t know if it’s because it’s warmer, or because they’ve been stressed from all the running, chasing, and being tied up. We visited my parents and got home after dark.

Eaddie was home, and Summer arrived a little later. I video called Randy briefly to see what hijinks he and Jim had gotten up to at the Howard conference, and then I had a ton of Vine stuff to go through. I ended up warming up the rest of the mush for Eaddie and myself while Summer got ready for bed. Then they spent some time catching up while I finished my stuff and got ready for bed.

Don’t forget to refill the cameras!

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Chain Gang

Summer was worried about the dogs getting out, even after hammering all of her stakes into the ground, so she tried tying them up this morning. She didn’t talk to me about it first, so it wasn’t surprising at all to find that she had made nearly every mistake I could imagine. I’ve been beyond frustrated with her wasteful, poorly thought-out tactics. Stilgar immediately chewed through the brand new rope leash I made for them, and was loose in the yard. Dad had to go over and try to fix it, but by the time I got home, they were so wrapped up in the brush pile that they couldn’t move.

There was a wreck around the 430 interchange, so I was nearly an hour late to work. I wasn’t surprised to see some woman on the side of the road in full pajamas, top and bottom. Then I was left to sit and stew all day at work until lunch time when Summer was done with her meeting in Little Rock and wanted to go to Red Lobster with me. Just prior to that, I had to deal with a staff member who failed to see numerous red flags on a poorly designed phishing email, and proceeded to input her username and password into a Google Form.

The afternoon went by reasonably quickly after that. I Supercharged quite a bit since I knew Summer would be needing a lot of juice when she got home as well. I was still up late to swap cars, so I was glad I charged as much as I did.

I made it home just after her, and had to shoo her away from the dogs so I could actually see how badly they were tangled up and make the appropriate adjustments before she contaminated the crime scene. I ended up running my long steel cable from the deck to the tree like I had explained to her multiple times, and then found two shorter steel cables to attach them to the long runner. There’s still ample opportunity for them to get tied up, but I think less so than today. Besides, her cheap wooden stakes should have kept them in anyway, according to her thought process.

We had a door hanger from the animal shelter that basically called out the city leash law and said they were accused of “killing neighborhood cats.” We left it at that, hoping the new runner would fix the issue, and then went on a run. They behaved pretty well, but it was odd without their prong collars. The shock collar works great now that I have them mounted on the fronts of their necks. Dad buzzed us with the FPV drone while we were on Promenade, and we stopped to see him before making it home.

I had a bunch of stuff from Vine to catch up on, and Summer had been sitting in the dark watching TV since I started working on the dogs, so she was out of my way. I hurried, and went to bed as soon as I could switch chargers on the cars.

Fools Errands

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Electrotherapy

The dogs were asleep on the porch when I got up, but as soon as I got to work, Summer texted that they were gone. I texted Dad, and they both went out looking. Dad was able to recover them and Summer used a sledgehammer to bury some wooden stakes along the fenceline, but it was too late. Dad texted that his neighbor found a dead cat, and later said she reported them to animal control. I was pretty uptight about it at work all day, but there was nothing I could do from there. I worked on what I could, and dreaded what work had to be done when I got home.

Charles called our Dell vendor to complain about having to deal with customer service when repairing laptops, and got us free lunch out of the deal. Whole Hog tasted like free lunch, too. I had the brisket sandwich, potato salad, and beans, and it was a pretty miserable looking plate. The sandwich was about 60% bun, 20% brisket, and 20% slaw. It didn’t taste bad, but it wasn’t good, and it was cold to boot. The serving size was a small ice cream scoop of potatoes, and the most shallow single-layer of baked beans on a divided plate that you could imagine.

The afternoon went by fairly quickly, and Randy and Jim would be out for the rest of the week to go to the Howard conference in Alabama. I headed toward home, Supercharged, and walked in to Summer ruining what leftovers we had from Noah’s dinner. She ruined a huge pot of rice trying to fry it with the squash and zucchini. What resulted was basically a gummy rice dough with completely indiscernible vegetables, and thankfully no steak. I would have walked out if she ruined those T-bones on top of everything else.

We had an argument, and I feel pretty confident she learned nothing again. I went out to make sure the dogs would be secure after her shoddy patchwork and found a different place where they had started to dig. We ate, and then had to run to the high school for a pretty crappy band concert that ran about an hour behind.

The mentally deficient couple behind us in the second row talked loudly during the concert band’s portion, and I turned around to glare at them. They were mostly quiet for Eaddie’s symphonic band, until the point where the guy tapped a link on his phone, or otherwise somehow unmuted whatever video he was watching. After the day I’d had, it took every fiber of my shaking body not to turn around and knock him out in front of the whole auditorium.

We made it home and it was another mad dash to get to bed. The dogs may get chained up in the morning if they dig any more overnight. The only other real progress I made was when I learned how to properly attach their shock collars around the front or side of their necks instead of the back. I tested them out and got Stilgar pretty good when he started barking at one point. It’ll be good to take them on a run sometime how that the shock can actually be felt. I also made a double-ended slip collar to leave with Dad so we won’t keep having to run back and forth for tools.

More like Won’t Listen-Al-Gaib and Not Stillthere.

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Loose

I didn’t sleep very long again today, so I guess I’m just waking up with the sun now. I took my meds and fed the dogs, and I guess I should have been paying better attention to the barking. The neighbor’s dogs were yapping, and mine got out again. I immediately took off looking for them and brought them back home in relatively short order. They just ripped the board and screws straight out of the fence.

Eaddie went to church, came home, and then left again to go rehearse with her band group. Summer went to the gym. I cleaned up a little bit, but mostly spun my wheels for much of the day. I did decide to take the dogs to Walgreens so I could pick up my prescription, but the pharmacy was closed when we got there.

We continued over to the basin, then to my parents’ house. They were trying to pick out paint for their kitchen and dining area. Dad said the pharmacy was probably just closed for lunch, so we decided to ride all the way back, and successfully got my medicine that time. All total, we rode over seven miles.

Summer and I both finished the leftover pizza, separately throughout the day. She spent all afternoon cleaning, dusting, and vacuuming. I tinkered with some things around the house, and installed a couple of things in my car.

I took my car across town to the quarter wash, then stopped at the Neighborhood Market to get Summer some coffee creamer. They had grapes on clearance, so I got a bunch of those too. When I got home, I put together the little stirling engine I got from Vine that goes on your coffee mug. I started on some boiling water, then realized the dogs had gotten out again.

By then it was pitch black outside, so I grabbed my flashlight and leash and took off through the neighborhood looking for them. I encountered Dad walking down Ridgewood looking for them as well, but there were dogs barking everywhere. I finally found Muad’Dib, but Stilgar didn’t come out. I got him on the leash and we ran a large block back to where we started, and then Stilgar came running. Just as quickly as he had emerged from the dark, he disappeared back into it. It took some coaxing, but he eventually came back and we made it home.

The stirling engine was still going when we made it back. I opened up some fencing that I got from Vine, and hammered one of them into the ground where the dogs had dug out the last time. I couldn’t believe they moved the large landscaping block as far as they did, and I wondered if one of the neighbor’s dogs had pushed their way into our yard.

Eaddie got back from Fort Smith late and caught up with Summer, and I wrapped up my own routine before trying to make it to bed on time.

Reunorganize

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Low Steaks

I actually woke up pretty early this morning in spite of wanting to sleep in a little bit. Eaddie left super early for a robotics tournament, and Summer and I had to get the house cleaned up and go grocery shopping so we could feed Noah and his friend Michael. I got started early, but I think my iron made me queasy again. I waited a couple hours before I ate something, and that helped marginally. Summer went to the gym when she finally got up, and we eventually made it out of the house together.

We went to Kroger first, and it seemed like everything was higher and less good than the Neighborhood Market. I definitely didn’t care for any of the steaks I saw there, but we picked up some fruit and frozen shrimp. I think even the shrimp was cheaper at the Neighborhood Market, but the steaks were for sure, and they looked like better cuts of meat, too.

As soon as we got back home, I got to work cleaning the grill so it wouldn’t catch on fire like it has the past few times I’ve tried to cook on it. It wasn’t that difficult, but I hate getting that black grease all over the place. Summer prepped zucchini, squash, asparagus, and made mashed potatoes. I smoked two T-bones and six strip steaks to temperature before pulling them off to rest before searing. My grill died at one point, and I thought it was the outlet, but it still did it even after I plugged it into the outlet inside. It may have been an issue with the temperature sensor, because I reseated that and it eventually got things reset.

I grilled the veggies and shrimp, then threw the steaks back on to sear both sides, and the four of us sat down to eat. I got pretty upset when Summer made a comment about hoping the boys weren’t slowing down, because it prompted both of them to each eat another whole steak to the point of complaining about having to blow up our bathroom. At that point, I was done having company, or housemates.

I gave the dogs a bunch of scraps and fed them dinner, but we didn’t get to take a walk. I’ll have to make it up to them tomorrow, and it’ll probably be a really long one for all three of us. Summer and the boys sat down in the living room and watched brain-rot YouTube compilations while she tried to paint her nails and I cleaned up the kitchen. Then Eaddie got home just minutes after the boys left, and told us about her day. After that, I didn’t waste any time wrapping up for bed.

Collector Gadget