Sorta Sitting

Summer got up this morning for a hair appointment that kept her out all day, so I was left alone in a house full of teenage girls. They make that sound way more exciting in the short films I watch, but in reality it was me playing video games in bed all day, waiting for Summer to get back. On the bright side, Stadia has been pretty great, even handling buffering issues pretty well when all the girls started streaming other things across the network. Latency isn’t much of an issue in a turn-based game like Into the Breach, but it was still pretty impressive.

That pretty well burned the whole day, so when Summer returned and then left to take the girls home, I went home to shower. Then she came over and we went to Mulan’s for dinner to show off her fancy new hairdo. When we got back home, it was pretty much straight to bed again.

My only regret was that I didn’t have more of that lychee/longan/rambutan flavored jello.

Dirty Gifting

I got up a bit earlier this morning so I could get to work for a Fat Daddy’s lunch and a game of Dirty Santa. Melinda somehow coerced the entire crew to participate, so of course we had a fair amount of disparity in the quality of gifts. I started out strong, was the victim of an untimely theft, scored what was probably the best gift in the lot, was victimized again, and ultimately left with a stuffed puppy in a Santa hat with a chocolate snowman.

School let out an hour early, so I didn’t really get any work done. I ended up going by Casey’s for a free pack of cookies, and then was asked to deliver Autumn to therapy just before making it home. Eaddie had to stay and clean house so their friends could come over to stay the night, so I dropped Autumn off with Summer and went on home for a few hours.

When the girls all eventually made it home, I came up and had some pizza with them. Then it was going to be a relatively early night, but Julie called with a deal that had me up racking my brain. At the end of it all, I just had to bite the bullet. I’ll figure out the details later.

No amount of over-preparation ever seems to help anyway.

Merry Crampsmas

I felt a bit worse this morning and into the day, but I made it in for the afternoon. I didn’t stick around the shop for as long, and spent most of my time at the junior high. Eaddie found me after school and said she hadn’t eaten anything because she couldn’t get her Invisalign out. After some convincing, she took half of my apple and mostly sucked on it for half an hour, because her teeth were hurting so much. On the way home, I got her some Wendy’s chili to eat since it would be less solid.

When we got to their house, the girls got ready for karate while I started prepping another ham bone soup. This time it would be split pea. I dropped them off and got back to the house just as Noah pulled in. I got the Instant Pot going, and dinner was finished just as Summer got home from work with the girls. The soup was pretty good, though the green thickness of it didn’t look too great. A sprinkle of mozzarella and a thick slice of French bread helped a lot.

Summer had to do some stuff for work, and Julie finished printing a shirt for me, so I left to pick it up from her house. She had a lot to say, so I was there for quite a while. Just before I left, we got to laughing so hard that my entire torso cramped from every angle, so she loaded me up with electrolytes. I eventually made it back home for the evening, and wrapped a Dirty Santa gift for work tomorrow.

I really hope someone put away the soup.

Threeniversary

This morning started pretty rough, comparatively. I’ve got to get back into the groove of actually doing anything every day, and since nobody managed to secure any millions of dollars while I was badly ill, going to work is one of those things. I’m not sure if the grilled onions, bacon, egg, and cheese on a leftover Popeye’s biscuit was the culprit, but it was delicious nonetheless.

I made it to work well before the recyclers, and unloaded some old scrap electronics. Then I headed to the junior high by myself to work on more laptops. I actually didn’t really fix any laptops, but I did manage to build an updated image for them that includes some software that was missing before.

Eaddie met up with me after school, but her father picked her up just before my quitting time, so they could go out to eat. Since he had the girls, I left work to catch Summer, and we went to Sumo for dinner. It was relatively quiet, but the food was better than I’ve had there in a long time, and came out super quickly. Then we each went home so I could check on the house before I caught up with everyone at her house.

Noah had just started Spenser Confidential, so I sat down and watched that with them. Eaddie was in trouble for most of the night for losing her brand new Invisalign, but then Noah found them sitting – transparently – on the bathroom counter. It’s no wonder no one made it rich within the last month. After the movie, it was off to bed to do it all over again.

Like a clown fish and an anemone!

The Slow Crawl Back to Humanity

It’s been just over a month since I came down with The COVID, and it’s been difficult to motivate myself to do much of anything after being sick for so long. I lost almost 25 pounds, which I’m pretty sure was mostly muscle, so it’s been a real treat forcing myself to be vertical again.

So much has happened in that time. In the first couple days of COVID, I tried and failed to become a ramen chef. We hired a new guy that started taking care of my work orders at the high school. My family packed and delivered an entire Thanksgiving dinner feast. The school board approved a really hefty Christmas bonus for everyone, so Allen actually retired, like for real. The McRib came back. Noah finally got his driver’s license, then basically had to move in with Summer when his stepmother got COVID. The kids set up the Christmas tree and baked gingerbread to make a gingerbread house. We had our department Christmas party on karaoke night, where Ben belted out a hot take of Hit Me with Your Best Shot, and Melinda introduced Summer to her friend, Jose Cuervo. The superintendent tried to leave for Conway, but didn’t get the job. Then he caught The COVID and took a 30 day leave of absence just as I tried to return to work with half days. Neither of the assistant superintendents got to fill in for him though. That privilege was given to another random assistant principal of a school.

Of course the girls got the virus too, but luckily their symptoms weren’t nearly as bad. Summer lost taste and smell, and still hasn’t fully regained either. The kids hardly felt a thing. I never lost taste aside from one questionable bowl of macaroni and cheese. I spent my blurry two and a half weeks basically bedridden, with nightly fever spikes over 104°F, and a high score of 105.6°F. I had chills and hot flashes that I legitimately thought would end me. The triage nurse nearly sent me in for a transfusion because I was so low on blood. Worst of all, I had a complete decimation of willpower that kept me from doing anything at all for over two weeks. Then I got bilateral pneumonia that carried my fever on well past the expected 10 day COVID timeline. I would probably still be laying in the floor of the shower with cold water raining down on me if Summer hadn’t eventually brought me home and taken the best care of me.

It’s been a wild ride that I don’t at all recommend, but there is some comfort in finally having “the dadgum antibodies for that crap, man.” Looking at the recovery times for pneumonia, I’m guessing I’ll have this cough for a few more months, but it’s a good time of year at work to be able to get some rest.

I’m getting better! I don’t want to go on the cart. I feel fine!

The Sickening… IT’S HAPPENING!

Days are running together a bit. I haven’t really done anything but lay around in bed since Tuesday night. I’ve watched some TV when I’m able to get comfortable on the couch. The Algorithm decided it’s sappy romance week.

I went to the Triage Center on Thursday to get tested. I called it right by going when I did, because there was nobody in line ahead of me. I expected a nasal swab, but they got my tonsils instead. Nobody said anything about my Wuhan Wild Wings shirt, but now that I think about it, I bet that’s why those two Indian guys that came in after me kept staring. I’m also pretty sure the girl that swabbed me was Chinese.

Afterward, I waited in Summer’s parking lot for near hours to see if I could talk to her for a moment through my sunroof. She was backed up the whole time, and stuck in the pit, so that didn’t work out great. I ended up just grabbing some contactless Zaxby’s on the way home.

I wasn’t really sleepy, but I hurt too much to do anything else, so I curled up under the blankets and put on some music. It did the trick, because I woke up hours later with the sun. I got up feeling the best I had since Tuesday, and went outside to clean up the turn signal switch on the Shadow. Then it was back inside to bed and TV.

I’ve become a true Master Chef, with creations such as Ramen à la Céleri et Cheddar Brätwurst. Summer saved my life for a late lunch/dinner with a double pretzel burger from Wendy’s, but it was sadly pretty cold.

As if this all wasn’t enough, Google has forced me to switch from Hangouts for SMS to their Messages app, and it’s just godawful. If you could believe it, it actually loads more consistently badly than Hangouts ever did. It’s been chewing through my phone battery a couple times a day, and I honestly don’t even know if it’ll ever stop.

I got a call in the evening with positive COVID-19 results, so I’m in quarantine for at least seven more days, assuming three of those are without fever. We didn’t think to have Summer and the girls tested at the same time so that we could at least quarantine together. It’ll be until at least next Tuesday evening before we’ll know if that’s possible. In the meantime, with the clinic closed, all we can really hope is that none of them have it.

NEW HIGH SCORE: 102.9

Bieber Fever

I slept pretty well last night, but still felt pretty crummy, so I was glad I took the morning off. I started the day thinking I could go back in the afternoon, but after getting around and taking a shower, I just felt worse and took the rest of the day off as well.

I didn’t get anything accomplished at all. I remember laying on the couch and watching TV for most of the evening. I did get up and make some ramen for lunch/dinner, and cut my thumb a bit while cutting the hard green beans I harvested from the high school’s garden. The beans were good in the soup, apart from a super tough edge that ran down the sides of every one of them. Thus concluded my life’s lesson in stringing beans. Also, I’m pretty sure that lettuce I took was really mustard greens.

Why does the lettuce burn in my mouth?

I Was Shorai Did It Right!

Today was supposed to be a bit rainy, but the rain never came. I drove to work anyway, since I had to pick up my life vests I had loaned to the theater. Daniel had to come help me work on Chrissy’s Mac, and three out of my four Adobe packages worked after manually shutting a bunch of apps down. Any sane person would think a restart would clear that, but no, not in Apple’s world.

The morning went by a little slowly, but I made it through to lunch. Jeff from Belkin called and confirmed what I already knew – that my brand new WeMo light switch had a firmware problem and needed to be replaced. I wanted to try installing my other one too, just to see if it had the same problem, but that would have to wait for after work.

I went by the shop after lunch and gave Ben the Internet Yellow Pages book I found in the garage, and then helped him haul a smashed Newline touch panel into a dumpster out by the bus barn. I’m not looking forward to walking the SMART E75 models down there, but I think that’s happening this week.

The afternoon was slow as well, as I walked across campus again, then spent a little time outside working at the picnic tables. When I got home from work, I started right away on replacing my WeMo switch, and discovered that it was working as intended, so I only have the one that needs to be replaced. My MotoMummy package came in as well, and they hooked me up with my requested drawing and a stack of decals, so I spent the rest of the evening replacing the battery in the Shadow. I finished with just enough time to ride over and surprise Summer and Eaddie after karate. I gave Eaddie a ride home, then made it back to my house in the cold evening air.

My phlegmy cough had me pretty ragged last night, but I figured that’s all it was. I slept pretty horribly and felt absolutely exhausted when I got home from work. It wasn’t until later in the evening that I started to feel a little feverish, so it was an early night to bed, hopefully without the COVID.

100.7, The Edge!

Tall Stairs

We had a few short showers today, but it was dry enough to take the bike to work. I started out in the band area and had to carry a huge ladder down the hall so I could reset the power on an Airtame that refused to connect to the network.

The rest of the day was pretty quiet all to myself. Summer had a lunch break scheduled, so she picked me up and we went to Bocadillos. An old student of hers was our server, and he seemed super excitable, but a little forgetful. Otherwise it was pretty great, but I ate too much.

There wasn’t much more going on in the afternoon, so I had a bit of trouble focusing on anything. I had half of an energy drink just to keep myself going for the rest of the day. A third guy from Belkin called to troubleshoot my WeMo, but unlike the first two, this guy only works business hours, so I’ll have to try again tomorrow on my lunch break.

After work, I went home to change and start washing dishes before picking up the girls and bringing them down. Summer beat us home for the evening, and after she had a shower and picked at some leftover ham, we watched an episode of Cobra Kai and then went to bed.

I’m a phlegmingo.

Lotería!

Summer got up this morning and made some delicious eggs scrambled with a variety of peppers and onions for breakfast. Then she picked up Autumn from her Explorers camp trip before we went to Walmart to pick up what we needed for her work Friendsgiving dinner.

When we got back, she started on her broccoli salad, and then I got the ham started in the oven and took a shower while they went to get Eaddie from her friend’s house. Everything finished up right on time, and one of Summer’s employees dropped off her foster kid to hang out with the girls while we all attended the party.

We had a really good time. Everyone put together a really great dinner party with lots of good food. Summer got to announce her two promotions at the shop, and made a heartwarming speech that had everyone’s hushed attention. Then we gambled quarters in a game of Lotería, which was a lot like Bingo with tarot cards.

We were the first to go, partly so the rest of the crew could enjoy themselves and partly so we could get back to the kids. Everyone settled in for the evening and I headed home just to make my morning a bit easier after getting all gussied up today. My blood pressure seems to be high in the evenings after being low throughout most of the day. The clinic cancelled my last appointment and declined my medication refill though, so that’ll have to be a discussion once I get a little closer to the bottom of the bottle.

Just keep cleaning. Just keep cleaning. Just keep cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. What do we do? We clean, clean!