Category: Uncategorised

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Go With the Flow

We met at the shop this morning for some quick training over Impero and how we process the student data that all originates from a stick figure lady in the front office. Then Allen, predictably, asked how to do something that I learned in my first year, and proceeded to be taught how to do things by two of the newer guys.

After the meeting, I took Gary to the high school to pick up some boxes for his move across town. Evidently he was renting from Mark, who sold the house to our old classmate Hank, and was moving to a house just a couple doors down from Grant. The whole thing made our town feel very small.

By then it was lunch time, so we met Allen and Greg at Linh. It appeared to be all new staff, and they weren’t very good at it. The restaurant looked nice with the renovation though. Our old family friends Karen and Kristen came in, but didn’t recognize me, so I just passed on by to go back to work.

I burned quite a bit of the afternoon trying to clear out the aerator in the girls’ bathroom downstairs. The thing was completely full of large grains of sand, and the smallest pieces had cemented in the tiniest holes, keeping the water at a horrible trickle. It took a while, but Melinda found a needle that we used to poke the holes out, and now they have actual running water again.

I eventually made it to the high school to work on a long overdue work order in the music office. I sort of thought it was working, but it happened to come across my radar just a day or two ago. An email from Dewayne got me on the ball though, and I discovered that Wight didn’t configure the printer the same way they always do. It sure would be nice if we were notified about stuff like that so we could make it work on the front end.

After work, I came home and got some eggrolls from Bác Vân. Mom and Dad were there, and shortly thereafter, Uncle Giao, Aunt Teresa, Erica, and her kids showed up. We stood outside catching up for what felt like hours until Summer showed up. Everyone eventually split, and we went inside for the evening.

We watched a couple episodes of Cobra Kai before settling in to bed. Monday happens to be bulk item pickup day, which really helps to bring this whole second era of my life to a close. I’ve been using the hand me down furniture I got from my parents, which they bought shortly after we moved into their house when I was a small child. To say that it was well past its useful life would be an understatement. I don’t even care if I replace it any time soon. It’s just got to go.

Out with the old. It’s time for something new.

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Split My Life into Pieces

I woke up pretty rested, having held Split Lip in my hands most of the night. He didn’t leave the way he normally would after I fell asleep, at least until hours into the night when he wanted to go outside. When I finally got up to go to work, I scooped him up and carried him off to the vet. I actually felt a little bit hopeful that he seemed to eat a bit of canned food before bed last night.

When we got to the vet, I parked next to Robyn, who was there dropping off a cat as well. They were super busy running in and out with animals, so we chatted while we waited. Just after she left, I heard the spew of diarrhea in the carrier, so I pulled it out of the car and threw some napkins in to try and cover it up the best I could. It didn’t keep Split’s tail from getting in it though. It was actually kind of normal colored and had some solid in it, which made me even more hopeful. I thought maybe he had just powered through some mouth pain so he could eat last night.

I carried on to work feeling a little better about the ordeal, so I stopped and grabbed a slice of breakfast pizza on the way. From there, things slowly started going downhill.

Sandy emailed me to say Dover couldn’t meet my salary request, so they went with another candidate. I would have liked a raise, even if it was only an opportunity to say no to a couple thousand dollars for a lateral step to their pay scale. I wasn’t heartbroken about it though, and in fact had at least a little bit of relief in sticking with what I know.

I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out why imaging the student laptops was suddenly destroying my task sequence flash media. Ben called a couple times and we chatted about Impero some more. Overall, not much was really accomplished.

Dr. Pearson called about split sometime in the middle of the day, and let me know that she couldn’t find anything in his mouth that would cause the grinding sound we were hearing. Without any real answers as to why he wouldn’t eat, her best guess was that he was wasting away from some kind of cancer, and that it was best to let him go. He was already sedated for the examination, so it was a pretty easy decision with the expected fallout throughout the rest of the evening.

I stopped by to get my pet carrier, then picked up a shirt that Ben got me for toughing it out while everyone else was quarantined. The girls didn’t have karate, so I stopped to see Summer briefly before making it home. When I got there, I realized they had not cleaned the cat carrier at the vet, so I hosed it down a bit and left it out to dry.

Autumn made dinner, so I eventually made my way across town. Summer spent nearly the whole evening on a video call with the automotive guys at the ATCC. Autumn’s hamburger meat with rice reminded me of eating leftover taco meat over steamed rice as a child. Then we played a round of Mario Kart before Summer went to sleep and I headed back home.

It really feels like the end of an era. I’ve never truly been here, home, alone. I had my childhood at home. Then I moved out with Angie and we got Kitty, turned Big Kitty, turned Momma. Little Kitty quickly outgrew Big Kitty, but size didn’t matter when he became Daddy. They had five distinct little kittens while we were away in Hawaii just over 15 years ago – Split Lip, Grey, Chewie, Momma’s Clone, and a fifth that we managed to give away before having to come up with a way to describe it against the others.

Daddy and Clone disappeared after I put a bunch of them outside to keep the males from breeding and spraying everywhere. Chewie stuck around the neighborhood, but quickly came down with a dickborn disease, and I had to put him down suddenly when the vet said he had developed jaundice. For a long time, it was just Momma, Grey, and Split. Then Momma blew up like a balloon and I put her down suddenly after a completely worthless trip to the vet at Town and Country. Years later, Grey got the same thing, and Dr. Tanner easily identified and fixed the issue, giving us a little over two more years.

I had been over the whole idea of having cats, and largely pets in general, for a long time. That whole second era of my life had dragged on enough, and I felt like I was never really able to pick up the pieces and move on. Maybe I used the cats as an excuse for being an awful human, but I wanted the chance to find out for sure. I had been ready to move on for a long time, and I guess he was finally ready too.

I’m gonna miss you, buddy. We’ve sure been through some shit together.

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Self Service

I woke up feeling pretty well rested this morning, but it still didn’t give me a whole lot of motivation for the day. I tried working outside at a picnic table for a little while, but it got a little bit too warm and humid for that. I ended up spending most of the day trying to figure out why the student laptops were only imaging intermittently with the flash media. None of it made any sense, so of course I didn’t get anywhere with it.

I picked up Summer for a late lunch at Cici’s. They had single-use tongs available for the pizza so you could serve yourself. The salad wasn’t arranged the same, but to be honest, it seemed to work better to just have them serve you anyway. I felt like the tongs, though washable, ended up being more wasteful than anything else. The pizza on the bar was all super dry and gross looking, too. My custom spinach alfredo with all the extra toppings was pretty good though.

After work, Autumn wanted me to pick up a friend of hers from the Explorers program, then take him, her, and Eaddie to La Huerta for a fundraiser meeting. Summer was sent home with back pain, so I went back to spend a little time with her while I waited for the kids. Then I dropped them all back off at their homes.

Before going home myself, I stopped by Casey’s for a freebie, then gave the car a good wash. I hadn’t done that in quite a while, and after our weekend in Little Rock, it sorely needed it. When I got home, I got the cat to eat a little bit of a new can of cat food. I’ve got an appointment to get him back in to the vet tomorrow to see if it’s a dental issue. If it’s not an easy fix, then it’s time to say, “goodbye.”

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Option: Flee

I stopped at the practice facility first thing this morning and had a crab rave with their four TVs and projector. I didn’t even realize you could cast to more than one Airtame at once until today. The video was awful, but the audio was worse pumping through those in-ceiling speakers.

The rest of my day was a bit scattered. I had to meet a Dover kid at the Career Center because she couldn’t type a password correctly. I did a bit more running around the building as well, and worked right through lunch again.

After work, I came home and had a chicken salad for dinner. I was really sleepy, and my right hand had been sore all day, so I didn’t get up to much else. I played a very little bit of Overwatch, tried playing with the cat, and eventually made it to bed super early.

Leave it to the school board to ruin my 2021 plans as well.

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The Help

I woke up so tired again this morning, so it was nice that Greg showed up at my office this morning to help out. I sent him on a couple errands while I worked on some more software deployments. I really lost track of time, because lunch time came and went, and I barely noticed.

After work, I stopped by the shop for Autumn’s gift bag for helping over the summer, then went to get her for an Explorers meeting. Once I dropped her off, I stopped to see Summer for a bit on the way home. The girls would end up coming over for the evening, but it would be late, so I stopped for a cheap Bacon Big Mac deal.

When they got there, they made salads out of the rotisserie chicken we bought yesterday, and we watched an episode of Glee. It felt like every bone in my body hurt, so it was off to bed as soon as I could get there.

Don’t panic.

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Good Vibrations

I got up this morning and made bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches. It all slowed down quite a bit from there after my tummy got the rumblies. We wanted to get some more cleaning up done around the house, but we ended up just mentally rearranging furniture instead. I do think it helped to visualize an end result though, since we’ll have so much furniture to manage.

Julie called in the afternoon and wanted to chat about our vacation. I think our usual flow of conversation escalation made Summer a little wide-eyed, but it was nothing new for us.

Eventually we went to the Neighborhood Market for something healthy to whip up for dinner. On the way out of the parking lot, Mom and Dad were pulling in and invited us over for curry. We continued on to get the girls from their grandparents’ house, then went on to my parents’ since I wasn’t in the mood to argue with the universe’s obvious plans for us.

We didn’t have to wait very long for my parents to get back, but we dug out Dizzy Dizzy Dinosaur and started a game anyway. When they did get home, dinner was actually ready to dish out, so we didn’t waste any time eating. Afterward, we finished our game where the reluctant-to-play Eaddie ended up winning the game.

I dropped the girls off at home at the end of the evening, then headed back home to go to sleep with the cat. He curled right up next to me, so I didn’t have the heart to put him outside again.

Might as well get the carpet cleaner ready…

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Saturdate

I went to sleep super late last night after staying up with the cat to let him eat as much as he was willing. My alarm was set for just about six hours later, and I climbed out of bed to get ready for our day date in Little Rock.

Before I could get through my morning cleanup routine, Mark wanted to have a remote session to answer a few questions. What I thought was going to be a 15 minute call turned into just over an hour. I was worried we weren’t going to have time to get lunch before the matinee, but it actually worked out perfectly.

I picked Summer up and we went to Yesterday’s in Morrilton for lunch. I figured it was pretty good food from somewhere we never go, and it would put us outside of Little Rock far enough that we’d be hungry for some popcorn in the theater. My catfish and Summer’s salmon were both pretty great, and she recognized our server as a student from the junior high, which was novel enough.

We got to the Pramenade with just enough time to drive the strip, park, and enjoy just a couple minutes of blue skies before going into the nearly empty IMAX. I need to remember the seating layout better, because the online seating chart didn’t make it clear to me where my favorite seats were. Since the place was basically a ghost town, we hopped on down to our usual seats, which were really too close for comfort, but gave us a handrail to put up our feet.

Tenet was great, though a little over-loud. Some of the dialog was difficult to understand just due to the volume alone. Summer was on edge for most of it, but we enjoyed its usual Nolan-level of mind bendiness. Re-reading the plot later helped put some pieces together for me, of course.

After the movie, we went by Sam’s just to do a little shopping before we headed home. We stopped in Conway for some Rita’s Italian ice and had a nice little chat at one of the outdoor tables. When we got back home, we stopped at her house for a change of clothes, then came to my house for the evening.

What’s happened happened, which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world. It’s not an excuse to do nothing.

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Cannot Stop the Battery

I got really angry with the cat this morning for giving me fits about his medicine. It was the last day for the antibacterial, and I was just completely over dealing with him. I was nearly ready to strangle him to death.

When I got to work, I had to gather up 10 more devices to ship back for the old lease. Josh stopped in again to pick up some papers he left the other day. Otherwise I wasn’t super productive. I left around lunch time with my small chicken box of laptops, and caught up with Ben at the shop.

He wanted to go to lunch and I was craving a burger, so we went to CJ’s and chatted a while. Then we went by The UPS Store to try and ship my laptops. We hadn’t considered the regulations on shipping batteries, and were turned away for having too many in the box. I ended up back at the high school, where I stuffed two laptops into each of five depot kits that were really designed for a single laptop in each. Hopefully they don’t say anything about that, because I’m tired of packing things.

After work, I went straight home to check on the cat and give him his antidepressants. He actually ate a little bit of food through the evening, but he kept making this weird grinding sound with either his mouth or throat. I guess I’ll have to bring that video to the vet next time.

Summer ended up staying home with the kids because the girls are incapable of keeping their rooms tidy. They waste so much time “cleaning” their rooms that I don’t know how they make time for anything else.

Cannot kill the bat-ter-y!

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Please Listen Carefully as Our Menu Options Have Not Changed

Summer took Noah to school this morning before I got out of the house. I had to struggle with the cat some more to get his medicine down, but we’ve only got one more day of that. Then it’s down to just the antidepressants.

My day at work was a little scattered, a little frustrating, and a little successful. I had more work to do in SCCM, but had to take a break to run down to the arena for a couple things. One of those things was to re-record their phone IVR message. Johnny was great at recording it, and the playback sounded fine, but when I got all the way back to my office, I realized it had reverted back to the old message. I did this a couple more times until we realized it was the WAV file that it wouldn’t, or couldn’t overwrite. I had done it before, but Ben had run into the issue before and just incremented the file name. Josh joked(?) that our solution was likely documented somewhere in the official Avaya manual.

I ended up working through lunch, and then stayed late, so after work I went straight to my parents’ for some leftover spaghetti. Summer had a late work meeting and then a softball game in Conway, so I went by the shop to see her for a little bit first. Then it was home for the evening. I even had a little success getting the cat to nibble on some kibble.

We just need enough to make a poopie that won’t sink into the carpet.

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Plan It

I picked up a free breakfast burrito from Taco John’s on the way to work this morning, and they loaded me up with Potato Olés. I didn’t even finish either of them, so I’ll have breakfast ready for me tomorrow.

I spent almost all day working on an engineering deployment package because I couldn’t get the detection method to work. Summer wanted to go out to Stoby’s for lunch, so when Noah got out of class, we met her there. Later in the afternoon, I finally figured out why my deployment wasn’t working, and got it pushed out.

Summer took Split some different dry food to see if he would take to it, and we thought he was. When I got home, I realized he had just pushed the bowl around and spilled a bunch of it all over the ground. It really seemed like he was eating for a bit though.

I started cleaning the carpet again when Summer came over for the evening. Then Julie called and wanted to talk about our Disney trip, which aggravated me because I prefer to communicate in writing. The kids eventually showed up with some leftover fajitas, but they had spilled them all over Eaddie’s clothes, so I had to start a load of laundry for them.

My body feels relatively ragged, and I’m a different kind of exhausted than I’ve ever felt before. I need a break before I break.

We’ll be in touch.