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Middle Expectation

We were down a couple people this morning, so Thomas ended up coming to the middle school along with everyone that was there, and we pulled out three computer labs worth of cable, and two labs worth of computers that hadn’t already been taken. It was an easier job in the ceiling without insulation, but the tiles themselves were made of insulation and got me feeling itchy for the rest of the day.

Brody and I went to Cunningham to get paid for the scrap, and then we all took a late lunch at Wendy’s, where Zach’s kids were evidently already eating with their grandfather. We didn’t stay long, and made it back to the shop where we split up to work on different things. I was left to myself for the afternoon, so my biggest accomplishment was imaging a computer for Amy, and then walking it over to her at central office at the end of the day.

When I left work, I went by Superfast to see Summer because she had to close up there since the usual keyholders weren’t there. I went on home for a little while, and then picked up some Popeye’s on the way up to her house once she was home. We were eating when I got a call from Eric, inviting me to his land tomorrow to release Autumn’s neglected turtle.

It was a quiet night from then on, as Summer wound down in front of the TV. I laid down with her on the couch for a while until we made it to bed for the night.

Cramping my style…

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Idiot Wrangler

I made myself an iced coffee this morning, and then I was sent with Kyle and Brody to strip out the computer lab at Sequoyah. It was a short run to the closet, so pulling the cable out was a relative piece of cake. They were both working with earbuds in, so I went along with it and listened to Weird Al all morning. By the time we finished up, it had sprinkled a bit on the stuff in the truck bed, but it was likely all going to scrap anyway.

We finished unloading the truck in time for lunch, so Kyle drove me over to central office to see what the guys there wanted to eat. Someone suggested Stoby’s, and then we all volunteered Kyle to drive us. Somehow we made it to and from the restaurant without incident. I went light with tuna on a toasted croissant, and then took my chips for later.

We spent the afternoon finishing up termination at central office. It felt at times that we were underprepared, but Zach was happy to make trips back for parts we needed. It certainly could have been done more efficiently, but it wasn’t too embarrassing with all of the admins out at their retreat. As we finished up, I learned that one of the girls over there was married to Jackson, our old family friend from years ago.

I was the last one out of the admin building, and as I was walking into the shop, Kyle was walking back from the truck pen with a shit-eating grin, and said he may or may not have wrecked the truck trying to back it into the pen. I never made it over to look at the damage, but evidently it ran the length of the truck and left a pretty good dent. That frustrated basically everyone there with any goddamn sense. Zach let us go home early, but I think all but two of us actually stayed until Thomas showed back up from the retreat, and then they went to inspect the truck and damaged fence post.

I left and went to my parents’ house to clean up some leftovers for dinner. Mom wasn’t home from work yet, so Dad and I chatted until she showed up. Then we ate and I sat around for a bit before heading home. Summer hit the gym before going home, so I took her some Taco Bell, and we called it an early night.

“At least nobody died,” is not as comforting to hear as you may think.

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Basic White Mexican

Gary had Jacob and me go upstairs to swap out some lab computers this morning. We knocked that out pretty quickly, but then Gary had to leave the two of us to install the Pearson VUE software The instructions were both Dale-level documentation, and printed. I could have probably deciphered them well enough, except that some of the instructions were out of order, or completely wrong. It took us the entire day to get everything running.

We had to give up at lunch time, and Gary and I met Zach, Greg, and his wife at the new La Chiqita, or as the menu said, “L C I L A C H I Q U I T A” in all capital, equally-spaced letters. The restaurant itself was a small, open dining area with relatively tightly-placed tables. The décor could be perfectly described as “basic white bitch,” down to the grassy wall and cursive name in the entryway. Just when it feels like we’ve reached peak Mexican restaurant saturation, another one pops up with the exact same menu. It was novel 20 years ago. Now I’m just annoyed that no other ethnicity appears to even be trying.

I finished up the lab in the afternoon, and then tried to trace down a dead line with Gary at the end of the day. Things got pretty quiet around the office, and I appeared to be the last one out the door right at quitting time. I went home until Mom called me over to finish up some rice soup.

We ate and chatted for a little bit, and then I went back home to meet Summer after she got in from work. She ate my leftover lunch in the floor, then got ready for bed. Eaddie called, citing boredom, but seemed to have a lot going on in the background. As I suspected, Autumn has been terrible, and has continued to steal technology to circumvent her punishment. The lack of action against her is beyond frustrating, and I’m ready to lash out.

Beat it, just beat it.

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Feeling Weird

I hardly slept last night after getting up at least every hour, and once with a charley horse in my left leg. I was surprised that I wasn’t dragging out of bed when I finally got up for work. Zach was going to have me image some computers, but we were mistaken in thinking they had already arrived. Evidently all of the boxes that were in the hallway were just monitors and stands. Instead, I went with Greg to re-wire all of central office for their remodel. Jacob joined us for just a little while, and then Zach showed up near the end, just as we were finishing up a dozen lines pulled across the length of the building before lunch.

I worked up a little headache from the heat in that building and working in the insulation, so I decided to take a half sick day to go home and clean up a bit. Eventually I made it up to Summer’s, and we headed to Conway first to eat. We shared a sandwich at Firehouse, then went to Splash so she could check on a vehicle that managed to leave without enough oil. Once she had cleared that there was no major damage, we continued on our journey.

We made one more stop at Best Buy to look at appliances before heading to Little Rock. Without any real plan, we went to McCain Mall and wandered around the sad skeleton of the 80s. Then we wound up at Red Lobster for dinner before our show. We were in and out of there pretty fast, so we decided to stop by the nearby Splash for another carwash before driving across town to The Robinson Center.

Traffic was a bit nuts, and it took us a while to get into the parking garage. The light never gave us a green arrow to turn, and the guy at the head of the line wasn’t making any effort to jump the light, so I ended up circling the block to come back the other direction. It still took us a while, but we eventually made it and happened to park right next to Daniel and a bunch of his crew. We made our way inside and up to the top level where we could find our box seats. It was a little awkward staring down at that angle, but having actual movable chairs was far superior to being seated in the narrow theater seats with that crowd. We could see the average girth made for some super awkward seating below.

The show was absolutely incredible, and we even liked Emo Philips in the opening act. I was worried that his wandering falsetto would be annoying, but the jokes were great. Once the band took to the stage, we learned that Jim West, the guitarist, was having to play from backstage due to a positive COVID test. It was cool that he was still well enough to participate, and the show didn’t really suffer for it.

I was surprised how many songs I actually did know, but there were a few that were totally unfamiliar. I was surprised they had so much lighting, since I assumed it would mostly be acoustic or really low-key stuff. It played like a rock concert, but the band did several different genre twists on a bunch of the songs. At the end, they wandered around obviously on stage and then came back for an encore that was a mashup of a whole bunch of songs, and it was awesome.

Being a relatively smaller crowd, we were able to get our merch after the show, and then pull out of the parking garage in a relatively reasonable amount of time. We made it home before midnight, and it was off to bed as quickly as we could get there.

Boy, what a joker. What a funny, funny guy!

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No Gold Stars Here

Summer had to work today, and though I was snug in my bed, I tried not to sleep in too long. I got up and around, and was hungry enough to get out for breakfast. I decided to treat myself with some Hardee’s, since I hadn’t had their breakfast in a while. I got a couple biscuits and gravy, and a chicken biscuit. When I got home, I was super disappointed to learn the gravy didn’t have any sausage in it at all. The biscuits and chicken both tasted different than I remembered as well. All I could do is hope these were all flukes and not recipe changes, but it certainly felt like a different world.

Afterward, I ended up outside chatting with Doug for a bit before coming back in to pick around the house. I spent some time cleaning the shower and tinkering with different things around the house. I wished I could have found a particular project or corner to really focus on, but I just found myself overwhelmed.

Eventually Summer made it home, and we went to my parents’ house for chow mein. I had been hungry for a while, and I was still left feeling hungry, but good after all the veggies. We made it back home before long, and headed to bed early.

Starting to feel a little… weird.

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That’s How We Roll

We got up this morning and went out back to continue burning brush. The coals were still hot under all the ash, but everything was still too wet to really catch, so I had to get the leaf blower out to really get things cooking. We made a really good dent in the pile of branches, but there’s still a lot of green to cut through, and it’s just too wet to really do easily.

Mom was making beef spring rolls for lunch, so after a quick shower, we headed over there. Dad called Julie over as well, so she joined us to eat for the first time in months after wanting to be left alone. It didn’t take terribly long before Summer had to excuse herself, and went to the gym to decompress. Then she came back to pick me up later.

When we left, we went straight up to her house so she could start some laundry. I hung out for a little while, but then decided to head home when she said her laundry was going to take a while after the kids left a load in the machine before leaving on vacation.

I ended up stopping by Walmart to just briefly run through the clearance section. There, I casually chatted with another lady that I vaguely recognized as a teacher from somewhere. Her husband came around, and reminded me of myself with the goofy, yet analytical things he would say to her about the deals she was finding. It would have reminded me more of Summer and myself if she would ever be the one to shop like that.

I made it home, but had another anxiety attack as I stared down into a bag of chips. It was the second one of the day, after having one coming out of the shower. I couldn’t figure out any triggers, but the way I got really flush and dizzy made me think it was something oxygen-related. Summer ended up coming over for the night, just as I was trying to chat with Google support about my Nest Hub that wouldn’t boot. Once that was out of the way, it was off to bed.

Circle the drain.

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Slow Burn

Summer got up for the Superhero 5k this morning while I laid around with the cat. Eventually I got up and fried some eggs to go with the last of the leftover Indian rice. Just as I started to walk out, Summer arrived home, so I came back in to let her pack up, and then we went to my house.

We didn’t waste any time diving right into the back yard. I wanted to cut down the overgrowth and start burning the large piles of brush in the back corner where I’m wanting to build a workshop. It looked dry on top, but everything underneath was completely wet, so it took forever to get anything really started. Then it was a slow process of pulling more and more brush out to burn down slowly.

The heat and smoke didn’t take long to sap me, but I held out as long as I could before coming back inside to clean up. Summer and I both took showers, and then she had been craving Chinese, so we went to New China for a super early dinner.

After we ate, we went by my parents’ house to visit for just a little bit. They were out back cleaning up around the pool. Then we came back home to rest since Summer still had a headache. I put on The Adam Project, which I thought was great. Then we watched Ricky Gervais: SuperNature before Summer was ready to crash.

60% Water

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Improper Sendoff

I took the Grom to work today, as fast as I could. We met for a short meeting, and then almost all of us went to Oakland to remove the computer lab. At first it was Brody and me, but soon we were joined by Kyle and Zach. We loaded the computers and peripherals into the truck, and then pulled most of the network lines out of the ceiling. Jacob eventually showed up for the last part, and he and I finished up as the others unloaded the truck.

That pretty well got us to lunch, and I was excited to hear Kyle suggest Ridgewood Brothers. Jacob joined us again, as he’s started to have lunch with us occasionally. It was a relatively short line, though still slow. I chatted with Grant a little, and then Robert gave me some extra ribs with my order. We came back to the shop to eat, and that was pretty much it for the day. Central Office let everyone go at 2:30, so we just hung out in the shop the rest of the afternoon.

When I got home, Summer said the girls were leaving with their father, so I eventually made it up to their house to see them off. I thought I might retain Autumn, but in the end, Nick didn’t even come to the house. He just pulled up and honked for them, and they left.

Summer and I finished up the leftover ribs from lunch, and then she watched TV as I burned the rest of an absolutely beautiful day doing nothing. I finished up some Bird Dog in frustration, and then it was off to bed early, but not before Summer.

We’re burning daylight. I’d rather be sailing.

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Watching Paint Dry

We had a meeting this morning to learn about our new ticketing system, but after a couple hours, I realized that I didn’t even have access to most of the things that were demoed to us. Thomas is annoyingly restrictive of permissions. By the time the conference call was over, I had synced my mental clock with the lady’s Eastern timeclock, and thought it was lunch time.

An hour later, five of us went to La Chiquita. They talked about a new one, but I wasn’t even aware they were building one. Evidently I’ve been passing it on the way to and from Summer’s, but still had no idea it existed. The service wasn’t great, but the food was alright. It felt a little like they had just sent half of their staff to the new place, so the original place was slow to do anything.

The afternoon was mostly quiet. I spent most of it to myself, changing settings on hotspots for Thomas to take to the admin retreat that’s on a farm in the middle of nowhere with no technology.

After work, I went home to switch for the Shadow and then rode up north to Sandy’s to help set up their printer. We never reset the computer she got from her brother, and I had a hunch it was having trouble just with everything that was already loaded on the computer. It took a couple hours, but we had a great conversation, and it was really nice to visit.

On the way home, I stopped by to see Summer. She was having a really hard time with getting Autumn to mow, but I think that was mostly frustration with the mower itself. They’ve always just left everything out in the open to get rained on, and their gas always goes bad. She finally dumped her fuel can out onto the lawn and went to get some fresh, and Autumn was able to finish up as I left.

At home, I just tried to finish up for the evening as quickly as possible. My Google Nest Hub in the kitchen appeared to lock up, but I didn’t have time to contact support. Between it and Google Fi not giving me the bill credit for the SIM that I activated last week, I’m not having a great time with Google.

Dust ’em.

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If It Fits, It Ships

I got to kind of take the lead again today with the lease return, and we ended up getting the whole thing out the door much earlier than anyone else expected. I like to think I had a big part in driving that, especially near the end. It took us three trips to The UPS Store today, but I even managed to assemble a packing slip with a 1:1 match for serial number replacements.

Ryan was in town to visit, and Thomas, Gary, Greg, and I went to Brangus for lunch with him. I filled up on peanuts and then only ate half of my potato, so I took the rest home for dinner. The afternoon was pretty quiet, though my office got pretty popular for a little while.

I also got my contract for next year, but it was wrong again. They had me on the Tech 1 pay scale, so I sent it back for review. I wrapped up for the day and headed home for the evening. I didn’t feel super, and was pretty tired after the day at work. I poked around the house and cleaned up a little bit, and then it was off to bed on time.

Trip down Memory Road