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Red is Black

I struggled to find a whole lot of motivation today, and spent a bit too much time aggravated that the little felt letterboard I had in the shop was likely thrown into the garbage for “cluttering the place up.” I don’t understand why we couldn’t have anything decorative in the room. It just feels so sterile back there now, and I kind of hate it.

I left to go to Dwight and install a AA battery, but the one in the microphone just wasn’t installed properly. What made it worse was that you could easily see where the battery needed additional contact to charge. While I was there, I had to ask Karen to decipher the calendar again, because evidently the copy she gave me for the agenda had the names inverted from what Linda was expecting. This was even more confusing, considering that Linda was the source of both copies.

We thought Jeff was going to eat lunch with us, but it ended up being Gary, Zach, Thomas, and me. Gary drove this time, and I sensed that Thomas appreciated the extra leg room. Kevin texted that he saw me, but I didn’t spot him until we left. He and Keith were having lunch together, and it was good to see both of them.

Dad went by my house to meet a guy from Terminix to inspect the termite damage. I had nightmares all night about my walls falling apart from termite damage, but the end result of the inspection was really just to sell what appeared to be a highly overpriced poison treatment plan that will do nothing for the repair of any damage. He didn’t even look in the attic, which seemed particularly important to me since he couldn’t look behind the drywall. The only relief will be how much easier rerunning electrical will be if we have to tear the drywall out.

I had to go back to Dwight again after lunch because their projector in the cafeteria had some sort of problem. I finally got Karen to figure out what was happening, and luckily the end of the VGA cable would be bent and twisted in a way that the colors looked normal again. It’s super tempting to make Kyle re-run that cable on account of how high the ceiling is.

After work, I ran straight to Arvest to withdraw a sack of money. Aaron chatted with me for a bit, and all the girls got super chatty about the car. I think I would enjoy being rich. With a Popeye’s paper bag full of large bills, I picked up Summer from the gym and we went to her bank to deposit it all back into her savings account. Their lobby was closed, so we had to wait forever in the drive-through, but we finally finished, and Summer was super relieved to have her account squared away.

I dropped Summer off and ran to pick up Eaddie late from robotics. Ethan was giving Lindsey a tour of their Ioniq, but I still felt bad for being so late. We continued to my house so I could change, and then went to Walmart for some salad fixings. Eaddie argued for boring lettuce, so I made her get the unprepared romaine hearts instead of the pre-bagged stuff.

Summer and Autumn were sitting out on the porch when we got there, and I fixed dinner by myself. I got pretty frustrated by how late it was, and the fact that I couldn’t use either side of the sink to clean vegetables. I ate, the kids ate, and then Summer finally ate after a shower. Then Summer and I chatted for a bit before she went off to bed.

Be kind; Unwind!

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Abstinence Club

I was a couple minutes late to work, but I walked in with Gary, which lightened the concern. The shop seemed super quiet with Zach out, and everyone else out at their own buildings. It’s super slow everywhere, but I think everyone’s just hiding out in their newly assigned buildings. I had a CPPC meeting in the morning that went without incident. We were still missing two of the administrative members, but at least Justin was there for No Shave November. I convinced one other person to abstain from the calendar vote, since it actually made no difference to any of the classified staff.

On the way out, there was a white Model X parked right in front of the building, blocking the wheelchair ramp and handicapped space. I went to Dwight to drop off a cable, and it was still there when I got back, but I don’t have a clue who was driving it.

Josh met Thomas, Gary, and me at Popeye’s for lunch. They were packed inside, but got the chicken out to us relatively quickly. I actually went with the bone-in chicken since it looked really plump compared to their usual tiny pieces. I’m not sure I got spicy, but it was still good. I wished I had gotten some hot sauce, but they didn’t have any condiments at all out in the dining area and I didn’t feel like going back up to talk to any of the employees, who appeared to be stressed out enough.

After lunch, I tinkered and wrote my meeting minutes, and ran around the campus a bit more. At one point I went back to Dwight again, and stopped at the new Ridgewood Brothers building on the way back. Robert was there with one of their guys, and gave me a quick 30-second tour of the place. He had literally just gotten the news that the fire marshal wouldn’t let them fit four smokers in the smokehouse, which was upsetting after they approved the blueprints. I left them to get back to work, but I wasn’t super productive for most of the afternoon.

I did everything I could to avoid a crash, including sip on some black coffee until quitting time. When I finally left work, I drove to the Arvest across town to see Aaron. He didn’t notice that I had gotten out of a new car, but clocked out for the day to come see it once he realized what it was. I let him drive it to Spices to pick up his food, and he had the best reaction so far. When we got back to the bank, he said he would check on getting my cash to me in the morning. I stopped by my parents’ house on the way home and talked to Dad about the termite inspection I’ll be getting tomorrow. After that, my imagination left me stressing pretty hard about how much damage they’re likely to find tomorrow.

I went home to try and clean up a bit to make the walls a bit more accessible. While I messed around with that, I started a load of laundry to clean up the bedroom, since I hadn’t slept there in weeks. I kept getting super frustrated with things, and ended up staying in the rest of the night just to decompress.

…and now I just sit in silence.

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Submatoes

I made it to work a few minutes early today, and briefly got to meet our newest team member, Jeff. He and Jacob hung out there for a bit in the morning as Jacob did a little bit of introductory training. It was neat to see someone trying to provide a little bit of structure to the team. I ended up going to Dwight for a little bit before lunch, and everyone seemed very excited to see me.

Thomas took the usual four of us to Taco Tuesday, where they were still out of lettuce due to “supply chain issues.” Shredding is hard, I suppose. I guess the lettuce also brings the temperature of the tacos way down too, because for the first time ever, I got scalding hot tacos. After lunch, Gary helped me run a single network line at Support Services. That took a solid couple of hours, and we ran into some trouble with his end of the termination. It was nice to get that out of my queue though.

The rest of the afternoon was relatively quiet after working up that sweat. Summer called after school let out to tell me that Eaddie had lost her phone. We saw it leave the high school, but then it was powered off just at the intersection of 19th Street. I went to the high school when I left work, to get her from robotics. I talked to Ethan for a bit while I was there, and he talked me into volunteering for a tournament next weekend. Then we went outside to chat about my car. He said they had been going through new cars every few months just because they were selling them for more than they were paying to order new ones.

From there, we went to my house so I could change, and then I took Eaddie home to practice her flute. I had a little bit of chicken and dumplings, but there wasn’t really enough to go around. Summer came home after her workout, and she, Eaddie, and I went to La Huerta. I thought I’d eat super light, but left super stuffed somehow. I even traded Eaddie for a much smaller taco.

Eaddie kept playing her flute when we got home. Autumn went to karate, but was home by the time we got back. Everyone was pretty tired, so it was quickly off to bed.

This is the opposite of good customer service.

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Upper Elementary, My Dear

We met at the shop for projects this morning, since teachers had a professional development day. I was sent with Josh the Wanderer and Travis the New to the intermediate school, so we could swap out docking stations for teachers that were still hanging on to old Lenovo Thinkpads from the high school. It was long and tedious work, but was broken up with some leftover breakfast in the teachers’ workroom.

Josh kept getting sidetracked while Travis and I split up and deployed docks all morning. We had a touch panel install as well, but it ended up being a faulty panel that had to be replaced again. While we were in the building, Josh found another projector out as well, so that had to be swapped in the afternoon.

I loaded Thomas, Zach, and Gary into the Model 3 for lunch at Arby’s, and it noticeably hampered my launch acceleration. I think it remains that Tammy has been the most excited about the new car. I was still full from breakfast, so I just got some Loaded Diablo Fries, which were barely hot at all. Zach and Gary had the Diablo sandwiches, but reported the same.

The afternoon dragged as well, and we didn’t get to leave early as we had hoped last week. I felt hot, sweaty, and gross all day, so I was excited to go home. I started a load of laundry while Summer headed home from Conway. Eaddie was still with her friends and would be out trick-or-treating all evening.

As it got late, I went to my parents’ house to hang out with them until Eaddie was done. They had a few kids come through while I was there, and apparently I had missed Eaddie and her friends by a little bit. She wasn’t ready to go home until an hour after we all expected, and I wasn’t thrilled to be out so late. I picked her up a little before 10 and we took Autopilot home down Skyline. It made it all the way to the end of the mountain and then bailed on the sharp 90ยบ curve at the end. We swapped vehicles, and then it was home for bed.

Who’s driving this thing, anyway?

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Not Playing

I got up this morning and dug out all the leftovers I could find to make breakfast. I started by caramelizing some onions and serrano peppers, and defrosting some ham. Once I got all of that diced up and into the pan, I added all the eggs we had, along with some tomatoes and cheese. Once that was scrambled up together, I loaded up some whole wheat pita bread that we had in the freezer. I thought it turned out really well, and the girls seemed to like it.

The girls wanted to go to the high school play again in the afternoon, so I went home to clean up. I ended up springing a leak and couldn’t stop the bleeding for several hours, so I just stayed home and did a couple loads of laundry. Once I had things under control, I headed back up to Summer’s for dinner.

She made chicken and dumplings for me, but forgot the green onions, so I turned around and ran through Walmart first. They were actually out of green onions, so I picked up some chives and cilantro instead. Those, along with some more fresh onion and serrano peppers made for a really good dinner, though I’m not sure anyone else enjoyed it as much as I did.

I laid on the couch with Summer for a bit while she wound down. Autumn took Eaddie to her friend’s house for the night, and then came back wanting to play Monopoly. Summer just wanted to relax though, so it ended up being a really quiet, early night.

Frustered

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Re-Pumpkined

The girls went to Tech for the band’s Member for a Day event. It ended up raining when they were supposed to go out onto the field, so Eaddie ended up wishing she had gone to orchestra tryouts instead. I took Tres out in the rain and picked up Summer after her workout, and we went to Taco John’s for lunch. Eaddie didn’t want to go to the game in the rain, so we picked her up and let Autumn stay on her own. Summer really wanted to go to TJ Maxx for a yoga mat , and then Eaddie wanted to go to Hobby Lobby for a new paint-by-number.

Once I dropped the girls back off at the Murano, I went home and traded for the Montego before going up to their house. Once Autumn got home, Summer had to talk to her about her failing English grade. The kid is just lazy and unfocused, and needs to be micromanaged. I was a lot like that growing up, so I get it.

I ordered a pizza, and once Summer got out of the shower, we went to my parents’ house to carve the last couple of pumpkins. Autumn did hers in a rush and then hopped right back onto her computer, allegedly to do homework. Judging by how much she was smiling, I would say she probably had other things going on. Dad and I finished ours with the new tool kit I got from Amazon, and it made things a lot easier. Julie stopped by for a bit after Mom bragged about my car to her on the phone, but we didn’t drive it there.

I was the last one to finish, and once I did, we headed back to the house for the evening. I pretty much hit a brick wall once we got there, and I laid in bed for a bit. Then I got back up to finish my evening chores before going to bed.

Needs mud flaps.

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Poison Gas. Invisible.

We had a pretty long meeting this morning, and I got to go over SCCM and Active Directory with Travis. After that, Gary had me set up a couple little switches for use in the bus yard, but we waited until after lunch to actually deploy them. He had a short meeting right at lunch time, so we waited for him to finish around noon. Then Zach and Greg drove separately to Freddy’s so they could get some stuff from Walmart afterward.

When Gary and I got back to the shop, we loaded everything up and went out to the bus shop to deploy a new distribution switch. We ran into a little bit of trouble there, so Gary had to jump back in to fix the configuration before we could go out to the smaller switches at the towers. Zach dropped Greg off a little while later so we could troubleshoot the fiber run. Greg re-terminated a couple lines until we got what we thought would be a passable signal.

That just about got us to quitting time. I spent a little time up front with the ladies before leaving for the weekend. Instead of going home, I decided to swing by AT&T to show off my car to Kevin. I let him drive us around the block, and he was absolutely blown away with a grin from ear to ear. Then I went inside to chat with him, Hope, and Nicole for a while until Summer got back into town.

Summer drove past me as I was leaving, and we met at my house to park Tres. She wanted steak, so we went to Western Sizzlin for the weekend steak and shrimp on the bar. I thought I did pretty well of not overstuffing myself, but then I had one plate too many. We went to her house and watched Blast from the Past until the girls got home from a play. Then it was off to bed early.

That’s a pretty wide range of reactions.

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All Weather Days

I guess it was cold enough this morning that regenerative braking wasn’t working like I expected. I may have also gotten an update that made the car use real brakes to simulate it. In either case, stopping was a little jarring first thing in the morning.

Otherwise it was another day of almost no motivation. Gary was back, but he and Zach disappeared as soon as I got there. It wasn’t long before Tammy ran around the shop asking where they went, and it seemed like just about everyone was sick of her being in their business. I know she meant well, but like them, I don’t understand why she thinks any of it matters. I guess she’s just bored.

I took Gary and Zach to Slim Chickens for lunch and was disappointed in my sandwich size and portion of chips. At least the lemonade was good, and I got a free shake for doing their survey and voicing the same complaints as always. Then I took Greg with me to Dwight to look at their sound system again.

My all-weather floor mats arrived in the afternoon, so I went home right after work and vacuumed my floors before installing them. I prefer the look of the clean carpet, but the rubber mats will keep rainwater and such out of the fabric. About the time I finished with that, I had to get Eaddie from robotics because Autumn had gotten permission to go to the game to allegedly help with concessions.

Summer arrived home shortly after we did and made a quick bagged stir fry meal. I was still hungry and kept snacking on other things. Eaddie got her homework done, and Autumn made it home late, after the game. I did well not to stay up too late myself. Fortunately we’ve found another weekend right around the corner, but I think I’m about ready for Thanksgiving.

Why, oh why didn’t I buy back in at .05?

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The Good Witch

Tammy decided she would take a ride to get donuts this morning, and she continued to be the person in the office that is the most excited about my car. The rest of the day was super quiet. I went to Oakland for a bit to try and figure out how to make Incident IQ better. I showed Mollie some tricks in the system, and she said she would try to come up with some suggestions.

Back at the shop, I gave Melissa a ride around the block. Then lunch time came around, and Zach and I were the only two around to go. We ended up at Morellos, and a bus drove by with about three kids hanging out the back windows, screaming about the Tesla. I think the red was a good choice.

The afternoon dragged on, even after Melinda showed up in a red cape with a giant basket full of candy. She sat in the back and talked with Zach and me for a while, and then finally took her pumpkin and Jesus mugs with her. On the way out, Tammy brought up my new toy again, so I had to take Melinda around the block as well.

When quitting time finally arrived, everyone was ready to get out of there. I went home and immediately started some laundry. While that was going, I tinkered with the car some more to try and figure out Wi-Fi. Some of the features just aren’t very intuitive, but they’re easy to remember once you realize how to access them.

Once laundry was done, I headed up to Summer’s for the evening. I had to argue with Eaddie for a moment about some math homework, but in the end I was right as usual. Then it was quickly off to bed.

Why waste lucrative drugs on candy? That just doesn’t make sense.

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It Accels at That

Tres didn’t quite make it to my charge limit overnight, but had plenty for the day. When I got to the office, the parking lot was mostly empty. I could tell that Kelsea and Kyle were there, and I eventually found Travis in the shop, but otherwise it was a ghost town. Tammy walked in several minutes late and immediately came back to ask me if I bought a new car, and then insisted that I was fooling her.

Zach eventually showed up with Greg, apparently after picking him up at the Toyota dealership. They didn’t say much, but I eventually convinced Zach to go to London with me to investigate a gym sound system. We went to Dwight on the way back into town, and then got to the shop just in time for lunch.

Zach took Greg and me to Taco John’s, where we saw Allen waiting in the parking lot. We spotted Wesley inside, who was finishing up his own lunch, but came to visit with us while we ate. It was a pretty quick lunch, but nobody was in a big rush to get back. We dropped Greg back off at the dealership first, and then I ended up going to the high school with Kelsea to reset a door controller. She just wanted to ride in the car, but we ended up walking around the high school a bit to chat with folks.

Kyle came back to the shop at the end of the day and just sat on my couch to talk about how little he had to do for the day. It appeared to me that he only had nothing to do because I was still closing out his old work orders from the beginning of October.

When quitting time came around, I went to my parents’ house to see if Dad wanted to go for a drive. He took us around Skyline and back home, getting to experience full Sport Mode acceleration. Mom got home from work just as we pulled back into the driveway, and decided to try it out herself. She didn’t drive nearly as far, but somehow we convinced her to floor it briefly as well. I think they were impressed, and I know that I was.

Summer asked me to pick up Eaddie after her robotics practice, and she seemed pretty immediately moody. We had to meet her grandparents at Walmart because she forgot her flute and other accessories in her car when they took her to the orthodontist. After that, we took the car home to charge, I changed, and we headed up to their house for the evening.

The girls were in their rooms all evening. Summer showed up after the gym, and we picked at leftovers. Then I tried to get to bed before it got too late.

I just want the music to work reliably!