Category: Uncategorised

We didn’t have any group work today, or really much work to speak of at all. I decided I was going to walk around Oakland during their field day to see all the different activities. Even before lunch, the halls smelled of sweaty children. It was super gross, but kind of fun to reminisce.

By some miracle, a group of six of us agreed on Cracker Barrel for lunch. Service was really slow, and our waiter was a little spacey from lack of sleep. Overall, I’ve had worse. At least the food was good.

I was between Oakland and the junior high in the afternoon until they cut us out early. Then I went home to an evening of laundry and cleaning house. At the end of the evening, I got to take a break and play a couple rounds of PUBG with Aaron. I’m excited to sleep in tomorrow, but there’s still work to be done.

I could watch these tadpoles all day.

I spent all morning at Oakland. I’m not sure where all my time went, because I didn’t feel like I was just wasting my time, but I didn’t complete a lot of tasks. I did manage to remote into my office computer from my phone so I could log into a switch to change a port configuration, and I didn’t break the entire internet in the process. I guess that’s gotta count for something.

I went to lunch with a surly Zach and Sara. Nobody seems particularly fond of the organization right now. I’ve seen similar things happen with other employers, but I guess just not on this scale.

I spent the afternoon at the junior high, mostly walking across the campus a lot. I did manage to spend some time after work trying to decide on a $150 toothbrush. I even revisited later in the evening, but I never bit the bullet. I’ve gotta stop shopping.

Hi. I’m Michael, and I’m a high-functioning, self-medicated shopaholic.

More of the same at work today. The real fun started when I got home. My CatGenie decided not to scoop any more, so the litter didn’t get dried properly last night. I took the whole thing apart, expecting it to be some sort of mechanical problem or failure, but it ended up being something in the processing unit. The bowl doesn’t always spin the correct direction, and now the scooping motor doesn’t seem to work at all.

I’m so over cats.

This morning was super slow. I didn’t do much of anything until lunch with Heather at Smackin’ Wings & Things. I got 20 modest sized wings for $16.88. Only a quarter of those were drumettes, which wasn’t a big problem for me, but it was an interesting observation. I don’t think I’ll get wings there again, but their Fry-day menu looks interesting.

The afternoon was mostly more of the same nothingness aside from investigating a smashed computer monitor. When I got home, I got to work right away setting up the turtle terrarium. I started with a base of charcoal from the fire, then covered that with leaves to make it a bit more even before topping it with a thin layer of dirt with moss and clover that I scraped up from the back yard. I hope it grows, but I’m not super hopeful. I’ll probably end up releasing the turtles eventually, but this will be fun for at least a little bit.

I also got the canister filter running on the 55-gallon tank and added some duckweed. A lot of it is churning through the water and passing through the filter, but hopefully it finds a place to settle on the surface and actually start growing. Once I feel better about the water quality, I’ll start dropping tadpoles in.

I slept late today after a late night gaming session with Clint. Summer was going to go hit the gym before picking up the girls, but Autumn called for a pickup earlier than expected, so we shifted our time table around a bit. She took the girls home to shower, then came over to pick me up to go to Burger King for the quiz bowl car wash. When we finished lunch, we went to my parents’ house to help uncover the pool and start cleaning things up. The girls helped scoop leaves while Summer vacuumed the pool, and Autumn even helped pressure wash a bit of concrete.

We had to get the girls home to shower again before Nick came to pick them up, and Summer and I watched a few episodes of The Office until they left. Then we went to Shoe Carnival so I could find some new sandals, and T.J.Maxx to look for some shorts for Summer. We didn’t find her any shorts, but I did end up getting some cheapo sandals from T.J.Maxx instead of having to order some from Shoe Carnival. When we finished shopping, we stopped by CiCi’s for dinner, and then came back home.

Summer was super tired and fell asleep, so I played some PUBG with Clint and Aaron before bed. Tomorrow will be more yard work, so hopefully it’ll be cool in the morning.

Is a bottle opener on the bottom of my sandals too fratty?

We wrapped up teacher appreciation day with a morning meeting about how we’re going to buy four classroom sets of iPads to better distract the children from learning. Ryan taught me some stuff about creating operating system deployments. I ate barbecue at the junior high by myself even though everyone was invited and initially said that it sounded good. Then we got to leave an hour early because Amanda got into some insulation.

After work, I came home and warmed up some leftovers. Summer came over for a little while, and then decided to stay while I played PUBG with the guys. Clint finally got to play with me again after a really long time away due to the new job. Hopefully tomorrow is really nice out, because I don’t want to waste it all sitting around inside all day.

What other job do you have to go to for nine straight months out of the year, and all you get is a week long celebration because you did it?

I got all kinds of free food today. I started off with breakfast at Oakland. Biscuits and gravy, cheesy eggs, sausage, bacon, blueberry scone, and some fruit. Then I had to run home to meet a guy from Dependable Air Conditioning. I texted Melissa yesterday, and she said she probably couldn’t get anyone out for a couple days, but then he called me first thing this morning. It took a couple hours, but after cleaning up and replacing the connection to the compressor at the bottom of the unit, along with a capacitor and switch at the top, I’m back in business.

I ended up eating leftover spaghetti and salad from Pasta Grill, along with a small sandwich from wherever those came from. Then when I went to visit with Sara for a bit, she gave me an extra soft taco from Taco Bell. Fat and happy, or seemingly cranky according to Sara, I left for the junior high.

I finished the day with some actual work, and then went to my parents’ for dinner. Mom made some great curry that’ll probably melt potatoes and become soggy tomorrow. I took the leftover chow mein to Summer when she got out of the band concert, and we watched a couple episodes of The Office to wrap up season four. Then it was home for the evening.

The chocolate isn’t really gravy. And what the hell is a scone, anyway?

I had to spend most of this morning at Oakland sitting next to the counselor while she made a phone call about an error with their testing software that didn’t involve me. It gets really frustrating having to oblige these types of requests when it’s obvious there’s no problem on our side, but evidently it’s not obvious to everyone involved. While I was there, I texted Librado to help break into a teacher’s car because she locked herself out. I didn’t even get a chance to go out and talk to him though, because I was stuck on the phone.

Our whole group met up at the junior high where Simmons Bank grilled cheeseburgers for teacher appreciation day. It was really nice of them, but it seemed like a much smaller crowd than last year, and definitely a smaller spread than when Beacon Tire did it. It was a great day to be outside, though.

After work, I went to my parents’ house for some leftover chow mein and actually ate it this time. Then it was home to clean the tadpole bucket, and finally a game of PUBG with Aaron before the servers went down.

Waddle waddle, till the very next day…