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PD, so TV

We started this morning with a long meeting since the kids were out and nobody had anything pressing to tend to. Thomas decided he would buy lunch so we could order takeout and eat back at the shop, and someone else suggested Taco Villa. I called the order in a little early, and it all worked out perfectly.

Sometime in the afternoon, I went to Crawford to meet up with Kyle, who was trying to fix a classroom microphone issue. It ended up being a physically broken microphone, so we’d have to wait for one to be ordered. The rest of the afternoon went by very quietly until Thomas sent us home about half an hour early.

I went home, but didn’t have a whole lot of extra motivation there either. Eventually Summer made it home and summoned me up the hill. She was already in bed. Autumn was at work, and Eaddie laid on the couch watching TV all night. I wasn’t particularly tired, but being there made me bored and restless, so I went to bed.

Better not mess with my movie-going experience, or they’ll catch more than hands.

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That’s Mister Karen to You

I went to Oakland first thing again this morning because they were screening kids for GT. Oddly, they did the screening in the worst, most disruptive corner possible, but I suppose they did what they set out to do. It all felt a little silly to me. Dana had the only kids that needed my help, so my time there was short.

Back at the office, most everyone else was out doing their own thing. It must be quiet everywhere, because I didn’t get any calls from anyone. Gary showed me a fix for something I had been working on, and I deployed that.

After some thought last night, I decided to call Lowe’s to try and return our new refrigerator. There are just too many poor design decisions that I couldn’t make peace with, so I didn’t want to be stuck with it for the next decade. The first girl I talked to seemed pretty receptive and told me she would have the store contact me to arrange for a pickup. Then the assistant store manager called to let me know he had no power to override the 48-hour return window. I attempted to escalate, and almost immediately got a call back from the store manager, who told me the same but in many more words. I called the corporate number back and escalated there, which lead to me talking to an older lady that indicated it shouldn’t be a problem for the store to override the policy. I guess we’ll give them 24 hours to make it right before I really go Karen.

Otherwise there wasn’t a whole lot of anything going on. Nobody left for lunch, so I just had a Soylent between a couple of apples and a bag of chips, and powered on through the day. Autumn wanted me to pick Eaddie up after tennis practice, so I hung out at the high school watching them for a bit. Summer made it back to town a little earlier, so I made dinner plans with her at Brown’s to use my birthday coupon.

After eating way too much, I came home and almost immediately laid down in bed and very nearly started to nap. I felt better for it, but then had recurring cramps in my calves and shins. Since they happened all at once, there wasn’t any direction I could turn or bend my legs to stretch them out, so I just writhed in pain until it went away every time. Hopefully that’s not a look into my future sleep tonight.

Life should be Gooder.

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Strange Design

I went to Oakland first thing again this morning to take care of a couple things. Luckily it didn’t really start raining until after I got to the shop, so I missed the torrential downpour until lunch time. It was quiet downstairs because Gary was locked away doing some training in his office.

Greg, Gary, and I met Zach at La Chiquita for lunch, and witnessed some pretty spectacular lightning strikes along the ride. The rain calmed down a bit by the time we got there, and fortunately the storm never got super bad right over us. We made it back to work without incident, but the rest of the afternoon was a challenge in staying awake.

When I finally left for home, Eaddie texted and wanted a ride, so I picked her up at Oakland. We went to my house and started the third season of Stranger Things. After one episode, we went to Burger King so she could get a chicken sandwich, because when I think of chicken, I think of Burger King. My Big Bacon King was too much. We watched one more episode before Summer got back home and picked Eaddie up.

I spent the rest of the night cleaning up my old refrigerator. The right half of it looks pretty nice now, but my arm was too tired to continue with the other half. I also did a little exploring on the new fridge, and discovered the reason for the warm water out of the dispenser. For some reason, the water line travels outside of the refrigerator nearly the entire way. It goes up and into the fridge for the water filter, then comes back out and down to another hole where it goes back into the refrigerator for a cold water reservoir line. After that, it comes back out of the fridge again so it can be routed under and around to the door. This must have made perfect sense to someone who didn’t have to deal with a refrigerator that was powered on, otherwise they would have noticed the heat from the compressor warming the water back up before it gets to your cup.

From that moment on, I went to bed dreaming of trying to perform a return outside the measly 48-hour window at Lowe’s. Maybe someone will pity us for being put out for two additional weeks and scheduling our spring break vacation and one additional weekend around what we thought were going to be deliveries.

Everyone knows backlights are superior. Idiots.

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Panel Envy

I started at Oakland first thing this morning so I could set their printers back up after kindergarten registration night. Paul had already moved them, so my job was easy. While I was there, my first new kindergarten hallway projector went out. It won’t be long before the rest go out, and I’m not excited about hanging the oversized touch panels in their place.

I continued on to the shop to work until lunch time. We met Dale for Taco Tuesday about half an hour early, which didn’t make a huge difference in our day. It was good catching up again, and we even saw Brice come in just as we were about to leave.

Josh volunteered to help me hang the touch panel in the afternoon, so Greg helped me load the truck up before he showed up. We had a little less trouble overall than I expected, even though the install didn’t go quite as I had planned. We ended up having to go back to the shop for some parts because the old wiring had to be pulled out. Fortunately Josh was able to use the old lines to pull the new ones, and we hung the obnoxiously heavy, oversized touch panel while the kids were out of the room.

When I got back, Gary called and asked for some help at Central Office, so I walked across the street with some parts, and then ended up having to climb up into the ceiling to do some work that he couldn’t accomplish with his broken arm. Fortunately that went alright, and the rest of the day was cake.

I went by Superfast after work to see Summer and fill up on coolant. Then we came back to my house to chat for a bit about her promotion at work. She’ll be traveling more, but I still think she needs to make a bigger play for bigger pay. After she left, I finished moving stuff out of the old refrigerator, and tomorrow I’ll be able to clean it up properly for the move to her house.

And then Sam sung.

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Two Cool for School

Just as I was about to walk out the door this morning, I got a call from the Lowe’s delivery Hispanics saying they would be at my house in 30 to 45 minutes. It took them a little longer than that, but it gave me plenty of time to clear a path since Summer didn’t show up until they were waddling the thing through the front door. The whole process went through without incident, though they wouldn’t hook up my water line for me, so I just had to leave my unstoppable, dripping line hanging over a bucket until I could look at it after work. Summer went back to work, and I quickly wiped down the inside surfaces before going to work myself.

It was quiet downstairs, but Jacob came into my office as soon as I got there and needed help stopping his junior high kids from downloading Roblox from the Microsoft Store. I got that figured out, but accidentally broke the calculator and other Windows apps in the process.

I kind of worked through lunch, though most everyone ate there anyway, which made me feel a little guilty for not actually taking time off for showing up late. I brought the leftover breakfast sandwich and snacked on apples throughout the afternoon. I figure I still had days worth of comp time that I never cashed in anyway, so it’ll all come out in the wash.

I had to go by Oakland a couple of times, but otherwise it really was quiet. I ended the day there, and took Eaddie home with me at quitting time. She didn’t stay long though, because she wanted to go to a dinner gathering with the tennis team. Summer picked her up and left me to finish setting up the new refrigerator. Dad came to the rescue with some parts to help me hook up the water line, since I couldn’t get it to quit leaking.

Doug came knocking on the door a little while later and wanted me to come next door to work on Bác Vân’s sewing machine. I had concerns about how much time it would take, and I wasn’t wrong. In the end, I got the new gear in place, but couldn’t get the timing right so the needle would pick up the bobbin on the downswing. I might be able to figure it out with some research time, but she seemed to be in enough of a rush to get a professional on the task.

I ended the night moving some food around, and got the freezer and the door of the refrigerator loaded up. The main body of the refrigerator is mostly full of junk, so that will take some sorting tomorrow. For now, I just hope it keeps everything properly frozen. Then as soon as it stops raining this week, we’ll get the old fridge up to Summer’s house.

Here’s hoping for heavy sleep.

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Scheduled for 2022

I got up this morning and got the okay to make breakfast, so I got the grill out and started heating up the griddle. I’ve been wanting to cook breakfast on it for so long just to try cooking on a flat-top to see how I would like it. The cast iron was a new adventure too, but I thought it turned out pretty well. I had some garlic and herb French bread in the freezer that I threw onto the top rack to heat up while I cooked a bunch of bacon. The bacon cooked a bit slower than I expected, but I think bacon always does. I’m so used to just cooking an entire package in a pot now that I forget what it’s like cooking a single layer. After that was done, I could set it on the grill grate to drain, and then fry up some eggs.

Summer enjoyed her sandwich, but Eaddie took one bite of hers and complained that the bread was too hard, and then said she was leaving to go out to eat with her father. He showed up moments later to pick her up, so I just sat in a computer chair with my ghetto fan box as a table, and ate by myself after Summer ate in bed.

We laid around for a while, and I kept trying to drift back to sleep, but couldn’t without my CPAP. I finally got up with a pretty bad headache when it was time for Summer to leave for her employee’s baby shower. I got around to clean up a bit, and missed a delivery confirmation call from Lowe’s while I was in the shower. We’ll finally get our new refrigerator tomorrow.

Summer and Eaddie came back over in the evening so we could go to my parents’ house for Mom’s birthday. I loaded up my old Denon receiver to set up for them since they haven’t been able to use the speakers I brought them after their receiver blew a component. On the drive over, I got another call from Lowe’s. This time it was an automated call confirming my delivery was scheduled for between 10AM and 2PM on Monday, April 11th, 2022. At this point I was just glad it wasn’t going to be 2023.

When we got to my parents’ house, we chatted for a while about housing. I explained my plan to build a workshop to house everything while we renovate, and finally got some traction. For some reason, Mom still thinks it’ll be cheaper to buy land and build somewhere, but that just sounds like too much for me. I would literally spend the rest of my entire life trying to plan out the perfect layout, and would never build anything. I can handle a simple workshop. What I can’t handle is my need to over-design and wire a custom home with too many custom rooms with a fully climate-controlled data closet, solar, house batteries, home theater wiring, storage, and anything else I think up along the way.

Autumn got off work a little late, and we had her pick up some Pizza Hut on the way over. We ate, and then she took Eaddie home. Summer was stuck with me while I set up the home theater receiver again. The power and input controls never work like I want them to, but I think I got it set up well enough for Mom to figure out. We headed back to my house after that, and Summer helped me move some stuff before she left. Then I did some last minute cleaning before the big delivery day.

Taxes, taxes, taxes. Taxes are next.

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Get Busy; Stay Busy

Summer got up early this morning to go to Cabot for their grand opening, but then arrived back home a few minutes later with Wendy’s breakfast instead. I was glad to have her home for the weekend, though I didn’t see her much. She took Eaddie out to practice driving and play tennis while I went home to clean house.

I was super hyped up about cleaning up the kitchen, and felt really good about the progress I made. There’s still so much to do, but with something of a vision in mind, I felt like it might actually be possible to turn this into something great.

Summer eventually came back over after taking Eaddie and Zane to the park to play tennis, and we went to Walmart to shop for a baby shower gift. I scored some really heavy-duty ice scrapers on clearance for like a third of the markdown price on their stickers. Afterward, Summer dropped me back off at home while she went to play with the kids.

When they finished, they came and got me for dinner. We went to New China, where the kids ran into some friends and left our table. After we ate, we came back to my house and I made a small fire. I was a little disappointed that the kids only roasted like four marshmallows and then went back inside. Autumn stopped by to give Summer the medication she forgot at home, but then was quick to leave.

Eventually Summer ran Zane home and came back, straight to TV in bed. I was pretty tired after a relatively busy day, so I finished up what I could and went to sleep.

Rude.

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Winter 4.0

I made it in to work early again today, and it was COLD! The wind never really let up, so it felt like winter was coming again. We had a longish, quiet meeting over donuts before people wandered off. I had to do some rearranging with my CPPC minutes because Janie waited until after I sent the final draft to remind me about the update we got for employees that were hired in with a step cap.

Otherwise it was pretty quiet until lunch time. Kyle went with us for the first time in a little while. Thomas left before lunch and said he had a doctor’s appointment, but then we ran into him with two of his sons at Brangus. He ended up paying for all of our meals on their way out, which was a big surprise. It is nice that he’s so generous so often, but I hope he doesn’t feel obligated.

The afternoon was quiet too. I went to Oakland at the end of the day to take care of a pesky vacation auto responder. Mollie was actually there in person to work, so everyone in the office was super excited. I didn’t stick around too long to chat because school was about to let out and I needed to disappear for that.

Everyone eventually filtered out at the end of the day, but Tammy was left behind waiting for time to meet up with some friends. I stayed to keep her company for a bit, and then went to my parents’ house to visit with them. Eaddie had an all-region band event that kept her late, so I had some spaghetti with my parents until time to pick her up.

On the way home, we stopped at Sonic for a couple shakes. Then we finished the second season of Stranger Things. Summer stopped in at the end of her day, but Eaddie said she wanted to stay the night with me. After the last episode, she changed her mind though, and we went up to their house for the night.

What else?

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Virtually Unbusy

At last, I made it to work a bit early. I probably slept for about nine hours last night, but still awoke begrudgingly to my alarm. Greg drew the short straw and got the lion’s share of the Brody calls all day, which left me to do a bit of cleanup on some old tasks I had been neglecting.

I convinced Gary, Zach, and Greg to let me drive them to La Huerta instead of La Chiquita for lunch, which was a treat for me. Greg complained about still being hungry after his meal, and Gary didn’t even take a swing when I tried to flirt with the cashier, who had her opposite arm in a sling, on his behalf. Otherwise I thought it was a super fast and tasty lunch.

When we got back, Gary wanted to show Greg and me his process for upgrading VMware on four of our physical servers. That took the rest of the afternoon until eventually Zach and Thomas came to the back and we had a relaxing sendoff for the day.

Just after I got home, Summer asked me to get Eaddie from tennis practice at the high school. Her phone was allegedly delivered, but after trying five neighbors, she was unable to locate a package and came over to my house empty handed. Eaddie had to work a band event, so Summer took her to that while I chatted with Fi support to report the missing package.

I spent the rest of the night cleaning up in the kitchen, and then looking around on Zillow for anything new. I thought about it some more today, and felt like maybe building a workshop/garage out back would be a better first step so I could have somewhere to offload some things before doing the rest of the renovation. With Summer’s loans nearly paid off and both of us fighting for better pay, more of this feels within reach than ever.

It won’t cost much. Just your voice.

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Market Price

I was out of step again this morning, and a few minutes late into work. I felt like I was on track, so I guess it’s just that time of year when I need to roll my alarm back a bit. I had a CPPC meeting pretty early, so I didn’t get up to a whole lot before that. I also didn’t have a whole lot planned for the meeting, so it was a relatively short one.

Without any donuts at the meeting, it was a struggle to make it to lunch. I forgot to bring any apples to snack on, and everyone else brought food, so I just went home and ate the last hamburger from the other night. On the way back, I stopped by Oakland for a little while. Then I was at the shop for the rest of the afternoon to work on my meeting minutes.

Immediately after work, Summer and Eaddie came by to pick me up, and we went to look at a house. Alisha and another lady met us there, and my parents showed up shortly thereafter. Parts of it were really cute, and other parts were really old. It ticked a lot of boxes for us, but ultimately the high price and a fear of the cost of upkeep were predictably too much for us to be serious about it. It looked like it might have been Judy’s parents or grandparents that lived there though, because there were pictures of her family on every single flat surface in the place.

Summer dropped me back off at my car and I headed home. After looking at a new place, I found a familiar comfort pulling back into my own driveway where I’ve lived for nearly two decades. It’s not perfect, but I think I can make it better. I finished up the corned beef for dinner, but my head continued to feel a little bit worse, hour by hour, as the night carried on. I was up late last night, so I figure I’m due for an early bedtime.

You’re not listening.