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Today’s Theme: Internal Conflict

I haven’t felt even close to 100% all day, and there’s always some thing or another gnawing at my brain. I had quite a bit of trouble getting out of bed this morning, but finally made my way to Oakland to play catch-up from the end of last week.

When I got back to the Gardner building, I wandered upstairs to check out the maintenance guys’ progress on gutting the auditorium seating. They were tearing everything out to haul to the scrap yard. I had, and still have strong urges to salvage a couple rows of seating to build a proper home theater. They told me to take all I wanted, but in the end I told Wesley I wouldn’t take any because I have too many higher priority projects that I’m already having trouble starting.

It would have been a pretty amazing opportunity to restore some of those seats, and they were infinitely customizable. I could have built a multi-level seating area and had a real home theater with as many seats as I could physically fit. In the end, I had to make the tough choice not to get any because I wasn’t sure that aligned with the best possible endgame – not to mention simply not having any more physical storage for something like that. Still, it felt like such a shame to let it go to scrap metal.

Insides in knots from my decision to pass up on the seating, I went to Taco John’s to redeem a reward for a combo meal. At least lunch was free today. Then I spent the afternoon at the junior high picking at random work orders to close.

After work, I went to Walmart to try Ronda’s suggestion of haggling with a manager for the electric lawn mowers. I was again conflicted, asking myself why I was there to buy a lawn mower at all. I hadn’t even mowed my lawn in years, but depending on where you look, they were originally $478, $358, or $250. The local store had them for $199.99, and with only two left, I had some dire need to have them both for under $200. They called a CSM out to help, and she said she could only do $300 for the pair. I started to text Summer for feedback, and she came down to $275, then just as quickly to $250 for both, which I accepted. I guess this was my motivation to start mowing.

From there, I went to Summer’s for some leftovers before heading home for the night. That was when I realized that the manager had actually scanned two of the gas powered mowers on my receipt, and had the maintenance guy load one of each into my car. It was an easy mistake to make with the way they were stacked on the shelf, so I guess I’ll have to go back tomorrow to correct it. It’ll be interesting to see if I can talk them into giving me a refund on top of the exchange to get my price below $200 like I wanted.

Josh, Aaron, and Justine were online when I sat down at the computer, so I played a couple really quick rounds of PUBG with them before heading to bed. With any luck, I won’t keep myself up by thinking about all those theater seats going to waste.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

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Bargain Hunters

I tried not to sleep all day today, but we still didn’t get out of the house until the afternoon. We went to Walmart for a bit of grocery shopping, but hung around long enough to do some perusing through any clearance we could find. I very nearly picked up an electric lawn mower, but I’m glad I didn’t, because I think I may be able to haggle it down to an even lower price anyway.

We grabbed some deli food on the way out, then went back to Summer’s to put things away and eat. Dad made kolaches, so we went by there for just a little while before heading back home to receive the girls.

Autumn brought home three goldfish and a bowl after Summer told her she couldn’t have a fish in her room, so we put them in with the turtle instead of going to the pet store for more feeder fish. Then they got to the chores they skipped out on before they left the night before. Just after they both went to bed, Apollo ate all the fish. Somehow I feel like the lesson was lost somewhere.

#nomeansno

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Mow Money, Mow Problems

Summer wanted to sleep in pretty late today after staying up late watching Avengers last night. We finally rolled out of bed just before noon because I was hungry, but I didn’t really have any good food around. She wasn’t hungry, so I just warmed up some frozen, grilled hot dogs. They were awful, but I never got sick. I think they were just freezer burned.

We eventually got out of the house to get the girls, then went to her house to start mowing. I tried to help a bit, but the battery for her string trimmer didn’t last very long. At one point I went to get her some more gas, and I had forgotten how to pump gas at a pump without a built-in credit card processor. I took a couple short turns of a couple laps of mowing so she could take a little break, but otherwise I was mostly useless.

Nick picked up the girls for the evening, so Summer and I went to Mulan’s for dinner, then came back to my house for the night. She was so beat from mowing that she passed out pretty much right away. Hopefully I can get some stuff accomplished tomorrow before another week of work.

I miss behaving.

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Infinity Cords

It took me five and a half hours to do what should have taken 20 minutes, and I have a lack of documentation to thank for it. I expected to be pulled for project work today, but nobody said a word to me. Instead, I spent all morning and some of the afternoon tending to an “emergency” issue with the intercom bells at the junior high being slightly offset from the red clocks in the halls. It should have been easy to find the switch port that had been locked due to a tripped port security setting, but instead of reading a label, I had to follow the line all the way from the intercom to the switch closet.

We took a brief break for lunch at Fat Daddy’s in London, but everyone was eager to get back to work for some reason. I just got stuck sitting on all of my work orders. I even thought for a brief moment I’d get to leave on time, but no such luck.

After being stopped in the hallway for another 30 minute job, I went to Summer’s and waited for her to get home. I warmed her up a leftover hamburger, then we came back to my house to watch Infinity Wars in glorious 3D. We even caught the end of Ragnarok to bring us up to speed with the refugee ship.

#thanosdidnothingwrong

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Ah! Cornydogs!

I managed to keep busy with a relatively slow pace today. Nothing too urgent came up, so I even took some time to help Allen with a few of his work orders.

Mollie gave me a French braid, then I met Summer at Sonic for 50-cent corn dog day. It was an early lunch, and I was worried it would make the afternoon drag on forever, but it wasn’t too bad. I had my own things to do, but I took the opportunity to steal a couple of easy things from Allen’s queue to boost my close count. I was more annoyed to find things that we had already done together weeks ago that were still open in his queue.

After work, I went home and had to call Suddenlink because they tried sneaking in a $15 increase on my bill without any kind of warning. It only took me about an hour on the phone, but I couldn’t get a straight answer as to why my bill went up 27% overnight. I ended the call without completely avoiding a price increase, but was promised only a $5 increase for double the speeds. At this point I don’t even need the speed, but I have nowhere else to go for service here.

He seems like a fungi.

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Goose Blah Blah

I had forgotten how horrible traffic gets around Tech. I managed to make it to work roughly on time, but it made me appreciate how easily I normally get there. I decided to hook the failing sign computer back up, and to the contrary to how it’s behaved since I’ve started messing with it, it loaded the presentation fine. I spent all morning at Oakland before meeting Dale and Ryan at Popeye’s for lunch, then took some biscuits to the girls in the office afterward.

I spent some time at the shop chatting with Gary, and set up the little Zen waterfall to give him some peace. Eventually I made my way to the junior high and wrapped up a few things there. For being such a low-key day, I felt pretty accomplished.

After work, I headed home to clean up and feed the turtles before heading to Summer’s for the evening. We had leftovers and watched Iliza Shlesinger’s new special, Elder Millennial on Netflix.

#hashtags

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Closet of Learning

It was a pretty relaxing day at work now that everything is in full swing. I had new work coming in, but it was easy enough to keep up with that and close out a few old work orders at the same time. I felt like I had more of a plan today than before.

I took a late lunch at McDonald’s and actually got to witness someone walk in and use the ordering kiosk. He almost completed the whole process, but then instead of paying there, he printed a receipt and went to a cashier to pay out. I wanted to ask why, but was just left confused instead. 

After lunch, I spent some time at the shop waiting for a Dell tech to show up and repair a computer under warranty for us. I don’t know why they didn’t just send the part like they usually do. Ryan hosed me down with some a fireman’s hose worth of hardware knowledge while I waited, but the tech never showed.

I finished the day at the junior high, and spent some time in the core closet gaining more knowledge through experience than I have most other days. It was nice to actually be successful after all that Googling.

Summer made some pulled pork for dinner, but they got home too late to do much else, so we called it a night.

Boats bode boating boding..

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Unguided

I’ve already started to wander a little aimlessly at the junior high. I have so many work orders that are waiting for something that I feel overwhelmed and bored all at the same time. I’ve just got to dig in, I suppose. I didn’t even take a lunch again because my half Soylent lasted through most of lunch. Then Ronda walked in with an uneaten soft taco for me. I feel like such a mooch, but at least I didn’t dig it out of the trash.

I helped Ryan and Dale hang a touch panel at the high school in the afternoon, which ended up lasting until quitting time. Then I just went straight home, ate some cheese dip, and killed the entire night. And my bank account.

This feeling of stuck has me spending unwisely.

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On Frugality

I tried not to sleep in too late today, and got up to clean the kitchen before Summer got up to cook breakfast. She made little ham, egg, and cheese pucks that tasted really good, but I think made better sense for a weekly meal prep. It’s super convenient to grab and go during the work week, but on a lazy weekend, for not much more work and an easier dish to clean, I’d rather have custom individually fried or scrambled eggs in a pan.

The girls wanted to watch the last bit of Split from the point Eaddie fell asleep, so we did that through breakfast/lunch until they wanted to go pick Noah up for his 16th birthday. I had fleeting moments of frustration with how wasteful the girls can be, or how they’re unnecessarily messy, or how they can’t seem to correctly put a single fucking lid back on any goddamn thing. It was nice to start and end with a clean kitchen though, so I guess I have their messiness to thank for that. This lid thing is seriously going to awaken the beast pretty soon, though.

After I got my shower, Noah’s pick for a birthday dinner was CiCi’s, so they all came back to pick me up. To contrast how money/waste conscious I am, I had us split into two groups to pay so we could double up on coupons. Everyone got their fill, and then I ran the circuit of dropping everyone off at home for the evening.

This is going to require everyone’s buy-in.

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Split

While Summer woke up early this morning to go to her 5K event at the high school, Eaddie and I slept in until nearly noon. When she got back, I got up and had a shower. She and Eaddie went to pick Autumn up, then I met up with them at their house for a late lunch.

The girls were going to spend most of the evening with their father, so Summer and I met up with Ronda and Steven at Fat Daddy’s for dinner and drinks. After that, Summer and I went to Davis Pet Store to pick up some feeder goldfish and mealworms for the turtles. Back at home, I had lost internet due to an outage in the area.

When the girls got back from the tailgate event at the high school, we watched Split. Those that weren’t too terrified fell asleep on the couch. Summer, though trembling from broken nerves, said she thought it was a good movie. I’m just excited for a different kind of hero movie.

The broken are the more evolved.