Instant Frustration

I got up this morning and watched as the whole day burned away. I did motivate myself enough briefly to clean up after the cats and do a partial water change in the aquarium, but otherwise we just laid around all day long. Summer picked up some Wendy’s for lunch on her way back from the gym. Then I started the old family classic Blazing Saddles half jokingly while she was in the shower, but we actually managed to finish it.

After the girls left with their father for the night, I tried making some chicken as my first meal in the Instant Pot Ultra. I didn’t realize the rice would cook so quickly and keep the water from boiling and building up pressure, so what I thought was going to be a 10-minute meal ended up being a multiple-hour shit show that ended with me transferring the entire thing to a couple of glass dishes to bake in the oven. Luckly the food wasn’t completely ruined and we could eat it for a super late dinner, but by that point I was so tired, hungry, cranky, and frustrated that I was just exhausted from dealing with it in the first place. Even cooking that meal the traditional way only takes about 45 minutes.

Can’t you see that that man is a nih?

Phoning in the Productivity

We didn’t have a meeting today, so I spent a large part of the day doing the telephone shuffle. I got two done at Oakland before lunch and got to snack on a goodie table the teachers made for the classified staff. Then Jason and Allen wanted to go to Arby’s for lunch, so I picked them up to go there. Afterward I spent the afternoon at the junior high replacing a couple other phones and cleaning up a few other stray work orders that had come in throughout the day.

After work, I headed home to wait for Josh to come over with a laptop he wanted me to diagnose. It was actually a pretty nice one that his aunt or cousin had, but didn’t want to pay to repair, so they gave it to him. It seemed to only to need a hard drive, but it required an M.2 format that neither of us had to test, so I booted it to a flash drive and then performed on board diagnostics, then ordered the best deal on an SSD that I could find.

From there we headed to CiCi’s for dinner. The girls beat us there and were just leaving as we were walking in. Summer went to work out while Josh and I ate, and then I picked the girls up on the way back home. Summer met us there, and we watched The Martian until bed.

I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.

Putting in the Hours

I took the bike in to work today because it was supposed to be nice. I never really got to spend any time on it though. I started at Oakland to close out what work I had there, then spent the rest of the day at the junior high.

I was on enough of a roll that I just worked straight through lunch on my Soylent, and even ended up working a little over an hour late on top of that. I got a ton of stuff done, and I was pretty happy with moving all of that stuff around.

When I left, I had to run home to grab a helmet before picking Eaddie up at karate. She was super excited to ride, but it had already started to cool off a lot, so we just went back to my house and watched Arrow over some of the best popcorn I’ve ever made.

Eventually we made it back to their house for the evening and I was able to load Overwatch for a quick game before bed. Our regularly scheduled meeting has been cancelled for tomorrow morning, so I should be able to clean up a bunch more of my work at last.

Sinus attack!

Now Serving Number Two

I didn’t spend much time at the junior high today because I had my wellness exam first thing. I didn’t wait terribly long to get in, but I had to fill out new patient paperwork even though I’ve basically seen the same doctor my entire life. Then I ended up having to wait a while for the nurse practitioner to get to my room. After that elongated conversation about wearing seat belts and hospice care, I had to wait probably another 45 minutes to have another nurse take my blood. I never thought I’d actually say that I preferred my old doctor.

After that was finally over, I headed home to meet FedEx for a delivery. Then Ben said everyone was going to Popeye’s for Ryan’s last day, so I picked a load of people up at the shop and went to lunch. When we got back, I helped Gary and Zach set up some giant new UPS batteries in the server room which took until school was out. I didn’t want to fight traffic, so I hung out in the shop until I could get in to Oakland and finished up a bunch of work orders there.

When I finally left work, I went home for several hours, paid some bills, played some Overwatch, and eventually headed up to Summer’s for the evening.

Wind it down.

Shush!

I found myself getting frustrated a lot today. I had trouble getting traction on anything I would start, and I kept getting pulled away to do something else any time I’d start. I tried watching the Google hardware announcement live stream, but kept getting interrupted by people, or even by loud students in the hall outside my door. I missed my FedEx shipment again, though at least this time he left a door tag. I had to work on a stupid printer that I can’t really repair. I even skipped lunch because I just kept trying to get work done.

I ended up staying late after work because I thought I had to label some laptops that a coach didn’t label properly, but after fussing around town trying to find the labels I needed, he walked in and was about to write on the laptops in permanent marker. I had to explain again that they were a lease that had to be returned, and gave him half of the printed labels I made to place on the laptops himself.

When I finally left work, I stopped by my parents’ house to give my dad a flash drive, and had some ribs for dinner. I was starving, but it ended up giving me heartburn. It started to storm pretty badly, so I drove home past multiple tornado sirens. I spent a little time there, then headed to Summer’s for the evening where we debated on the Pixel 3 for a while.

Somewhere along the way I’ve lost sight of the minimalism I wanted.

Kazoo Taps

I closed out a bunch of work orders today. I could have probably been more efficient with it, but I felt good about what I closed. I still need to stop procrastinating though.

Summer wanted something hot for lunch instead of her salad, so we went to the cafeteria together and she got a salad. I got mostly chili and nacho meat sauce on top of some salad stuff. It was pretty good, but I ate too much.

I had to end back up at the junior high to pick Autumn up after school, but I made her wait in my office while I moved a huge A/V rack out of the cafeteria by myself. I almost dropped it and died once, but fortunately I made it back to my office without incident. Then she conned me into taking her to McDonald’s for some french fries for a snack before she had to go to quiz bowl. Summer picked her up, and I spent the rest of the evening bouncing around the house.

Jessica’s fish finally died and was stiff as a board by the time I found him, so I played Taps on my kazoo while I flushed him down the toilet. I’m just glad it’s finally over, because he really did look like he was having an awful time, and I just couldn’t get his condition to improve.

This drain leads to the big ocean in the sky.

We Are Venom

We slept in for quite awhile today because I kept waking up with a headache all night. I think it was my neck, but I still couldn’t be sure. Eventually I got an ice pack and stuck it in my pillowcase and finished the night on it.

Summer and Eaddie went home to clean up, then came back to get me to go to Conway to see Venom. We ate at the China Town buffet right in the strip mall, and then barely made it to the show on time, but I had gotten perfect seats when I pre-ordered our tickets. It was an entertaining movie. Eaddie loved it. Definitely not as good as any of the MCU movies, but still better than Venom’s last appearance with Spider-Man. I hope they follow through with another movie with Carnage.

When we got back into town, I dropped Summer off at home so she could get Autumn, and Eaddie and I went back to my house so I could get what I needed for work the next day. Then Summer and I watched a couple episodes of The Office before bed. She had a bad enough headache that she took some special migraine medication, and hopefully we’ll both be back to 100% in the morning.

Going down the street, like a turd in the wind.

No, G like Zebra.

We woke up surprisingly early today for not having any early arrangements. The girls went home to clean up while I did the same here, and then I picked them up to go to La Huerta for a smallish lunch. We ended up splitting some fajitas three ways because Autumn can’t eat any food with more than two ingredients. I still ended up eating too much somehow.

The weather was nice and Eaddie wanted to go to the park for a bit before meeting up with my family, so we went to my house to get a frisbee, and I also dug out my old Foxtail to throw around. We ended up at Oakland since it was just on the way to my parents’ house anyway, and played until my parents texted that Uncle Giao had just showed up. They brought both kids along, and they ended up playing with the girls a little while we were there.

Eaddie and I had to run across town to get some guacamole that we didn’t end up eating, and we picked up Bác Vân to bring her along as well. We ate and visited for a little bit, but I got super tired and lethargic. Summer took Autumn to her parents’ house to stay the night, and eventually we headed back home for the evening. Eaddie really wanted to start the old Superman movie, but we didn’t get very far. I haven’t seen those movies in years though, so it’ll be nice to revisit.

Here’s to a long night’s sleep.

This is Hallowhat?

Team day was easy this Friday. I spent all morning updating Chromebooks with Amanda, which was mostly us sitting and watching progress bars. We went to Western Sizzlin for lunch where I had a relatively bad country fried steak, then spent the afternoon hunting down a network line at the middle school because Allen terminated the wrong one and left the correct one in the ceiling in a different room. We got to leave work 45 minutes early though because there was a homecoming parade after school. I headed home and started parsing through a mixed bag of files on my media server because qBittorrent is terrible and doesn’t seem to be made to seed things long term.

Summer came over after the girls went out to eat with their father, and we ended up going to Wendy’s for a quick dinner. We ran into Josue there, who had been out messing around on the Birds with some friends. When we finished there, we headed back to my house to receive the girls, and we started watching The Nightmare Before Christmas. I had never seen it, but everyone was too tired to really enjoy it properly, so I switched over to Black Panther for a little while before everyone started falling asleep. I stayed up and played a few rounds of Overwatch with the guys before heading to bed myself.

Wakanda movie is this?

Office Folk

I’ve spent more time with the junior high office in the past week than the rest of my time there put together, and it’s nice to get to know them a bit better. I closed some more old work orders and made some decent progress on some others. Once I get the CTE audit out of the way, I’ll be able to wrap up the rest of what I’ve got pretty easily.

Zach wanted to go out to lunch today and was quick to suggest Brangus, so I actually took a lunch on time today. After work, I came straight home to do some laundry and clean up a bit before playing a couple rounds of Overwatch with Keno. Tomorrow should be an interesting group day, but I hope I have some time to wrap up more of my CTE stuff.

I think we should fail it on purpose just so they have to produce some actual guidelines!