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Aw, Eli’kes it

I had a pretty quick drive in to work this morning, and stopped at Silver’s Food Court for an instant pumpkin spice latte on the way. I thought I had a meeting at 11, which turned out to be later in the afternoon, so I just spent most of the day tinkering with our new work order system. At first glance, I like it a whole lot more than Incident IQ, and it seems to have most of the features we used from that system. Some of it wasn’t super intuitive, but I think that was because it was designed more for the maintenance crew.

Lunch was pretty middling burgers, so I spent most of the day kind of hungry. The lunch ladies have been using up anything they had left before the last day of summer school, so pickings were pretty slim. I did get a bag of baby carrots to snack on next week after they’re gone, but I guess otherwise I’ll be on Soylents for a while.

My afternoon meeting turned out to be more or less a one-on-three, with two of those only really listening in the background. The guy leading the meeting just chatted with me about my questions, and I really got my answers within a couple of minutes. I don’t know if I was just late to the party, or if all of the meetings have been relatively small. I definitely got the feeling that there weren’t many other tech directors participating.

I left work a little bit later than I expected, since I got Howard to beat their competition. I sent another requisition form, and was on my way home behind several speeders that made the trip short. Evidently Eaddie had her jazz flute performance while I was driving home, but she never told either of us that she was actually performing for an audience. By that time, I assumed it was more of an activity than anything else.

As soon as I got home, I changed clothes and headed to Popeye’s to get dinner for the girls. I had to wait over 15 minutes for my food, which seems to always happen there. I was worried we would be late because Eaddie wanted to get back to Witherspoon by seven, but we chowed down and made it. We still ended up watching all three bands. My parents showed up for the last one for Eaddie, and joined us in the center of the front row.

Summer had told me earlier in the week that Eaddie didn’t have a solo, so I didn’t really think anything of it. For some reason I just believed that maybe Eaddie wanted us to be able to hear her better this time because she wanted a particular song recorded. Everyone got super excited when a group of the flautists came forward, with Eaddie to the right by herself, and a couple more to the left of the conductor. I had been recording the entire performance, so I mostly got Eaddie’s backside on camera, but it was my favorite song of the night in spite of her. We were all beaming with pride for her though, and even Mom got out her phone to record her performance. It was also really cool to see all of the bands get to play music by Katahj Copley, who was there to introduce the pieces he composed.

After the concert, we bought a DVD and then worked our way back around to let Eaddie know we would wait for her in the car. Her friend stopped me to say he was reading the blog every night, which was more love than I’ve gotten from either Summer or Eaddie in a long time. They should take notes.

We waited in the car for a while, but then Eaddie finally came out and we headed home for the night. Summer went to bed, and Eaddie sat with me to look through band camp photos for a while before she went to bed. I stayed up later than I wanted on account of having to get up for an interview in the morning, so hopefully I wake up fresh and sharp.

I’m not trying to leave, but free lunch is free lunch, and twenty grand is twenty grand.

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Rugs, Not Drugs

I woke up about 15 minutes before my alarm and headed home this morning. I was still exhausted, but I just wake up early like that now, without enough time to go back to sleep. I took a bit of a long shower though, and made it to work at what I would consider “just on time.” I tried cleaning up some old emails and tasks, which at one point included going down to the Elementary to collect copier serial numbers.

I had taco soup for lunch from the cafeteria, and spent some time in the afternoon placing stickers, and even went out to Plainview by myself. It was really the first time I went out into the buildings alone, and it was an even mix of people recognizing who I was, and others that had no clue.

Dad met the restoration guys at my house again, and they cut some drywall out and found a termite nest, along with a bunch of wet insulation in the wall under the window. I never recognized any leakage, but I guess that’s what they were going with. I’d almost suspect the outside water faucet. I overheard one of the guys on the security camera while he was talking to someone on the phone, and he kept repeating that I had a Tesla, and said he was pretty sure I was a drug dealer.

When I made it home, I changed and went to my parents’ house to discuss plans for the house. Mom made a great point that insurance may pay to re-carpet the entire area since it was all one solid style that wouldn’t match otherwise. That made enough sense to me that I felt a little better about it.

I headed back home, looping around to try and see any tree damage on Brody’s new, old house. There wasn’t anything broken that I could see from the road. I made it home to swap vehicles, and headed up to Summer’s for the evening. There, I scrubbed through camera footage to find clips of the restoration guys taking pictures of my motorcycles, the Tesla Wall Connector, and even telling another guy to come take a look at the hoarder house, but to carry a fan in so it wouldn’t look suspicious. I did not at all feel good about them being in my home, but it’s blue collar work. All I could do was hope they were only looky-loos.

Seriously, they start at less than $35,000 if you get the tax credit.

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Carpets to Match

I tried going to Taco Bell for a free Breakfast Crunchwrap this morning, but learned as I pulled in that they don’t actually open until eight. Resigned being late, I stopped at McDonald’s for a coffee on the way, and was pleased with how much I liked the caramel. I wasn’t actually that late, and nobody would have noticed anyway. I spent most of the day in my office alone again. The first couple hours were burned talking to Google Admin support. Todd came through for the first time in forever and chatted for a bit, and I had a couple students return four Chromebooks, but otherwise there wasn’t a whole lot going on. I did at least get lunch today.

Near the end of the day, I tracked down a bunch of copy machines, and even went out to the agri building where the outside doors appeared to have been left unlocked by mistake. As I finished up and printed some asset tags, I saw Dad had gone to the house and met with some guys from a restoration service. I thought they’d just be there to look things over, but then I got a picture of a half-empty room with the carpet ripped out.

I headed home at the end of the day, long after everyone else had gone, both from the school and from my home. I had to clean everything out of the other corner of the room, which was the harder part. Summer got back into town and mentioned going home to cry about her day at work, which was frustrating because I had mentioned having to move things at home in order to fix the gaping holes in my roof, ceiling, and bedroom wall.

She turned around and came over, where we shuffled things around the best we could. We took a break for dinner and got Taco John’s to eat at her house where I still had some hot sauce from Taco Villa. Then it was back to my house to finish pulling everything out of the room and two closets. We left things that weren’t touching the floor, so hopefully they have enough room to work. I was really surprised to see that they had ripped carpet out of the hallway. They should have been able to complete the job in just the one room.

Exhausted, frustrated, and still mildly infuriated, we loaded up the twin mattress and box spring to take to the dumpster at Superfast. I drove with the Murano’s hatch open, and we appeared to make it without any damage. Nearly everything has been moved out of one room of the house, and a path has been made to that side of the house. It’s a good of a time as any to get some remodeling done, if I can find anyone to do the work.

I’m really sorry work was hard today, but I have a hole in my roof, and strangers are ripping out my carpet.

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Vacation Vacation

I struggled to get moving this morning, and ended up skipping the shower since I had taken one late in the evening after sucking as much water as I could out of the carpet. I picked up a couple biscuits at Burger King, which seems to be a really hopping place in Dardanelle, and after getting to work and eating one, I could tell why. It was the fluffiest, flakiest, most buttery biscuit I’d ever had from a fast food joint since Hardee’s. It was even still hot after the 30 minute drive to the school. The black coffee was good too. It didn’t even need any add-ins.

I spent the entire day to myself, and was only interrupted briefly a couple of times. I felt completely lost for most of the day, and frustrated by my lack of support from either someone in the department or in an administrative role. I’d probably feel a lot better if I at least participated in one staff meeting.

I missed lunch by a few minutes, so I just continued snacking on whatever I had brought. I thought I was leaving a little bit early at the end of the day, but I was still the last one out after starting a little early. I drove home and checked in on my spare room that smelled musty and was still pretty damp. The water had gotten under the wall and into the bathroom, but I didn’t really notice yesterday. I vacuumed up what I could, so at least there’s not a bunch of gross stuff sitting on the carpet. We’re not sure if insurance will cover anything at all, because I remembered my parents saying something about only having coverage for a fire. After all the electrical issues I’ve had, that really seemed the most likely, but in the end it was another element that got the best of us.

When my parents got home from shopping, Mom called to offer soup for dinner. I stopped by Julie’s to drop off the Air and Space Museum keychain I got her, and then continued to my parents’ house. We all ate together, and then I went out back with them for a little bit while they watered plants. They said eggs were on sale at Kroger, so I stopped to get a couple 18-packs on the way home.

I only passed through to trade cars, getting mine back onto the charger, and taking Summer’s back to her house for the night. She was already in bed in a quiet house. I watered my own plants, screamed at my phone for having an unpredictable battery life, and briefly checked in on Gary. This week is another busy one.

It smells worse today.

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Told Me So

The steady tone of the storm sirens confused me this morning. I didn’t even identify it as an alarm, and tried to go back to sleep. It wasn’t until I felt Summer moving around that I realized it was a weather alert. She said a tornado was confirmed in Knoxville, but all we heard was thunder and heavy rain. Eaddie woke up and crawled into bed with us, and I held onto her for an hour or so while she chatted nervously about the weather. Once it all calmed down, she went back to her room and we were all able to get back to sleep.

When I finally woke up for the morning, I started making some biscuits and bacon for breakfast. Summer came in and made eggs and corned beef hash, and the three of us sat down to eat together before we had to take Eaddie to band camp. She had been super excited about it for a while, so I wanted to go with Summer to drop her off.

There was debris everywhere, and we could see several branches down all the way to Tech. Trash can lids littered the campus, and lots of things were just knocked over. Eaddie hit the ground running as she encountered a bunch of friends that were excited to see her. Summer took me back to the house, and I left for home.

As soon as I got to my house, I peered around back to see if there was any damage. Then I saw some limbs down in the front yard. That was when I spotted a huge branch sticking straight up out of my roof like a lawn dart. I went inside to investigate, and it had gone down through the roof and into the wall of the front bedroom. It looked like it very easily could have gone into the bathroom, but it didn’t. Water was steadily dripping down onto Eaddie’s bed, and of course the paperwork I had scattered everywhere waiting to be put away was completely soaked.

I texted Dad for some help with a chainsaw, and had Summer come over as soon as she could. I started moving things out of the bedroom, and then Dad and Summer went up onto the roof to cut the branch up and remove it from the roof. As soon as it was removed, the water stopped actively dripping into the house. Luckily it didn’t rain again during the day, but we didn’t get to watch The Flash in IMAX like I had planned. I spent the entire day with my carpet cleaner, and sucked about five gallons of water out of the carpet instead.

The highlight of the day was hearing that Eaddie had made first band, first chair at camp. As my water extraction project slowed down, I took a shower and headed toward Summer’s for the evening. I picked up some Zaxby’s for dinner, where I ran into Allen and Charlotte. We chatted for a bit, and then I continued up to Summer to share our dinner. She was already in bed, and returned to it as soon as she finished eating. I ached absolutely everywhere, and tried my best to get to bed early.

Stupid me-tree.

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ReCharge

I didn’t have much luck sleeping in today. Summer went to work and I laid around for a little longer, but couldn’t really sleep. I got up and made myself a leftover burger for brunch, and then woke Eaddie up when I finally decided to go home and unpack my things. She had a private lesson in the afternoon, so I didn’t spend much time there. I got showered and then headed back to get her.

I just waited in the car while Eaddie had her lesson, and then I took her back home where I tinkered with the emulators on my Steam Deck some more. I got E.V.O.:Search for Eden working and played it for a while. Mom made bún bò Huế for dinner, so Eaddie and I went over there to eat.

The soup wasn’t quite ready when we got there, so Eaddie sat down and thumbed through a bunch of old sheet music they had. Dad had gone out of town for a wedding, but made it back home for dinner. While Mom was getting everyone’s food ready, Dad accidentally dropped a fresh jar of watermelon pickles they had made, and it shattered all over the kitchen floor. They got a little cut up from the glass, but it wasn’t too bad. Somewhere along the way, I picked up a small, but luckily smooth piece of glass between my toes. They got that cleaned up and we ate.

Summer got home from work and didn’t have her house keys, so Eaddie and I left as soon as we finished eating. We stopped by PDQ to see if Noah was working, and retrieved her key from him. Then we continued to their house for the evening. Eaddie had spent most of the day getting ready for band camp. Summer ate and then pretty quickly went to bed. I played my game a while longer, but tried not to stay up too late.

Rumors circulate among the cucumbers.

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Exhausted, Smelly Teenagers

I didn’t sleep great last night on account of the awkwardness of sharing a hotel room with awkward teens. Eaddie didn’t help either, since she immediately crashed on the couch in the opposite room. I woke up well before my alarm and took a shower. Then when Summer got out of bed, we went downstairs for a pretty good breakfast.

I couldn’t convince a single other person to take a shower, which was kind of my main reason for stopping to get a hotel in the first place. If I hadn’t started to get super dizzy the night before, I might have tried to drive straight through. In any case, we loaded everyone up and headed toward Memphis after a quick stop at a Supercharger just outside of Nashville.

Eaddie had been talking about how she wanted to visit an Ikea, so we went there for lunch. Summer was a little cranky, and the girls mostly wandered around looking at the showrooms by themselves. This was the first Ikea I’d seen that didn’t exist on multiple floors, but it was still a maze to get back to the restaurant. Everyone except Eaddie had a big plate of meatballs. Eaddie ate old, dried out salmon. We spent way more money feeding and taking care of the other kids than I expected, but I wasn’t sure if Summer had a plan for that.

It started to storm really hard while we were eating, so we waited that out before going across town to the same Supercharger we started at on our trip toward D.C. The charge didn’t take very long, so everyone just sat in the car, and then Summer drove us to Brinkley for another charge.

By that time, I had been drinking enough that I was having to stop relatively urgently to find a restroom while we charged. This time, I found myself in the back of a grocery store. Luckily it didn’t take long for us to get enough juice to make the last leg of the trip. We got back to town and stopped at Superfast so Summer could get the Murano home. They left me with the other two, so I took them home before making it up to Summer’s.

It was a pretty quick and quiet night for everyone after that. I watered the plants and stayed up late updating my résumé and dawdling for a while. Hopefully I can sleep in tomorrow to catch up.

Pay closer attention and be more cognizant.

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C U L 8 R D C

I wanted to sleep in this morning, but Summer really wanted to get to the dorm to pick up the girls’ stuff at 7:30. We got everything loaded up and we made it there a little later than that, but still with plenty of time. The girls decided they wanted to go to a “parade” of all the participants, but not the awards ceremony, so we picked up a couple of them and dropped them off at the arena. Then Summer and I went upstairs and actually had to find them in the bleachers anyway. The groups were all separated out, but then were called down to the floor where they swirled around in a chaotic mix of way too many teenagers.

After that, we went back to the dorm to check them out, and we were on our way. Traffic was terrible, but luckily our first stop wasn’t very far away. We topped off while we ate at a place called Oriental Café. The food was decent, and the lady that served us was super nice. I actually didn’t love my General Tso because it was too sour and not hot enough, but at least it seemed fresh. The car kept charging past our set charge point, so we went down a couple doors of the shopping center and the girls got ice cream and cookies before we left.

Our next stop was a charger behind a hotel where we encountered several others charging as well. Then we were on to another charger that appeared to be kind of alone with nothing much around. Across the interstate was a Buc-ee’s that I wanted to visit, but it wasn’t until after we finished charging that we realized there was another set of Superchargers in the same parking lot. I started getting super dizzy and my head felt like I was drunk, but we went inside and it was astounding. Especially for being so late, it was very much alive inside. We picked up a few things, I cleaned the windshield, the girls ate popsicles, and Summer drove us to our stop at a Comfort Inn.

I was pretty disappointed to learn that the charger was networked at roughly the same price as a supercharger. For the cost of the hotel, it could have easily been free. I plugged in and just left it not charging out of spite. The girls had already gone up to the room, so I came up and tried to quietly finish up and get to bed as quickly as I could.

This is why I wanted to power through.

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Air and Space Between

I got up early to meet the girls this morning, but didn’t wake Summer up in time to get us both across town. We ended up just meeting the girls at the Museum of American History. I found an exchange that would get us a little closer to the museum, hoping that we could intercept them, but we missed our first train and then exited the station in a rainstorm.

There were a few exhibits I liked, particularly about electricity and engineering, and then travel. I could have passed on most of the rest of it. I had been pretty frustrated for a large part of the morning, so I wandered off by myself with ever-aching legs and feet for a while. We eventually met back up with everyone to have lunch in the cafeteria. The girls had sack lunches for the first time, and Summer and I had some cafeteria food for $17 per pound. I was disappointed when I realized that Summer had accidentally thrown away my cup lid when she took my tray at the end of our meal, but she went back and dug through the trash to find it.

From there, we walked back to the Air and Space Museum, which was much more my speed. About half of it was under construction, but I enjoyed that visit the most. We even took in a couple planetarium shows. We ended up closing the place down, and then walked back to the Metro for the trip back to College Park.

Summer and I left the girls to find their way back to the dorm again, while we headed to the hotel. I was a little hungry, so we tried going to Ikea for some meatballs. They were all out at the mini deli downstairs, so I made Summer walk with me through the rest of the store. There was a full restaurant upstairs, but they had closed an hour early for some maintenance. We ended up picking up some Potbelly from the little shopping center next door, and took it back to the hotel to eat.

I tried to get to bed early since Summer wasn’t going to let me sleep in as I had hoped. We’ll start our journey tomorrow with a low level of sleep, so it may be very optimistic to hope that we’ll make it halfway home.

Now everyone’s tired and cranky. I just had a head start.

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End of the Line

We slept in today, and then got out for lunch at a place down the road called Taqueria Habanero. The tacos seemed pretty expensive, but I sort of miscalculated the price when I suggested we share a platter of 15 assorted tacos. They didn’t go to waste, though. It was annoying that they basically brought us a salsa bowl full of chips, but more would cost extra. The green and red sauces they brought out were amazing though. We had steak, shrimp, and al pastor tacos, which were all incredible as well. We ended up saving one of each for Eaddie, though she wouldn’t have time to eat them until much later.

After we ate, we went to the university and struggled to find any valid parking. After driving around the campus a couple times, we finally settled on a lot that was actually right next to another bus stop, which worked out great for us. We actually got on the bus before it got to the stop where the girls were waiting.

We hopped onto the Metro and rode down to Chinatown so we could tour Ford’s Theater. That took quite a while just because of how much information they packed into such a small space with so many visitors. It was neat to see the theater itself, but evidently it was all a reconstruction anyway.

After that, we walked back to the National Portrait Gallery. I don’t think it was first on anybody’s list, but the girls wanted to go. It wasn’t my thing, so Summer and I mostly sped through a bit of it and then sat down until everyone else was ready to go.

When we got back to the Metro, it was right in the middle of rush hour and the first train we saw was absolutely packed. We walked to the end of the platform and waited for the next one, which was virtually empty. As we drew close to our stop, I wanted to see if I could ride around whatever loop they had at the end. The girls all decided they would go with me, but then instead of waiting on the train, everyone got off at the last stop, insisting that someone would make us get off. There wasn’t an employee anywhere to be found, so I was really frustrated that the whole point of the experiment was ruined. Then they were annoyed at me for something they volunteered to do.

We took the bus back to the car, and then Summer and I went to the most convenient Chinese buffet I could find, literally called China Buffet. It was a small, unassuming building with fair reviews. It seemed old when we walked in, and then they had us pay when we entered. I had to ask a kid that didn’t seem to speak any English whether drinks were included, and learned that we had to serve ourselves. This would have been absolutely fine if there hadn’t been a hand-written sign on the wall on the way out that asked us to “please tip the waitresses.” We literally spoke to no one. No one brought us anything. Someone periodically bussed empty plates, but not with any sense of urgency. Utensils and napkins were all on the food bar. I think I left four bucks. The food was alright.

When we got back to the hotel, we were lucky enough to be able to charge. Then we made it to the room, where the engineers had brought us an extension cord and surge protector for the things on our TV wall. Summer was excited to be able to watch television. I bounced around a bit between distractions and trying to plan our trip home. I scheduled a third interview at the mill for next week, which made me wonder if there was any competition at all, or if I had it in the bag. I’d kind of hate to leave Two Rivers, but I don’t know how I could turn down nearly twice the pay, especially if the school doesn’t transfer the vacation days like I expected.

That’s what “homesick” means, kid.