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Outernet

I was sleeping really deeply this morning, or perhaps really lightly. In either case, I barely crawled out of bed after seriously contemplating calling in sick. I squeaked into work and had just enough time to get settled and review some of the CPPC meeting notes before I had to walk across the street.

Judy brought donuts, and it was a pretty productive meeting. We voted on some new policies and a modification to the new salary schedule to be implemented this summer. As we wrapped up, I took a couple donuts back to the office for later. It was about lunch time, so after a little bit of poking around, Zach, Gary, and I went to Sam’s.

I tried the Sam’s Special with fried shrimp, which was pretty unimpressive. It wasn’t bad, but it just wasn’t nearly as good as anything else I’ve ever had there. Gary’s gyro looked pretty good though. Zach gave me a couple chicken strips to supplement my baby shrimp, so I was happy.

After lunch, Kyle and I went to run cable at Crawford and Oakland, while Greg and Zach drilled holes on the outside of the building to mount a couple wireless access points. That took us the rest of the day, and I was pretty tired afterward. Eaddie was at Oakland, so I took her with me to drop Kyle off, and then we went to my house to change.

When we got to their house, I started to assemble a ham bone soup in the Instant Pot. Summer picked up celery and onion for me, but I had the rest of what I needed here. I mixed a half cup of every kind of bean I could find here, and the soup turned out pretty good. I wish I could have left it to depressurize naturally, because I think the beans would have been fully cooked then, but it wasn’t bad.

Autumn went to some church event, and then came home complaining about not feeling well. She told Summer she wants to get tested, which infuriates me. I almost hope I die from COVID so she’ll feel some kind of remorse for going out and socializing like an idiot.

I don’t really want to die from it, though…

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Kicked Out With Love

I was a hair late into work today, but it was a pretty quiet day anyway. I poked at a few things in my office until some people showed up in the shop for a meeting. Rather than lock myself in, I went to Oakland to catch up on some work orders until lunch time.

When I got back to the shop, Zach said they were going to Linhs. Five of us piled into my car and we had a pretty good lunch. I went light with a bánh mì, but was left hungry for the afternoon.

After lunch, I called SuddenLink and got my bill lowered more easily than I’ve ever done before. The girl didn’t even try to haggle me or sell me anything new. It was incredible. Then I left to get my windshield chip patched at FastGlass. They didn’t need an appointment or anything, but they also didn’t seem to do a very good job on the patch. It was still very visible, and the outside still seemed to have some of that sandy/powdery glass feel to it. Hopefully it holds up.

I ended the day at Oakland to count Chromebook carts. It took me longer than I thought it would because there were still so many people working late. I finished though, and went home to change before picking up some Subway and taking it up to Summer’s for the evening.

I helped Eaddie with a little bit of homework. Autumn stuck to herself for the most part. Summer did work stuff most of the evening, so I played Don’t Starve in the living room until bed.

Donut tempt me!

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Back to Pants

It was freezy this morning, and my ice scraper was insufficient to remove all of the ice from my windshield. I’ll need to get the chip filled sooner than later so it doesn’t crack the whole windshield.

I ran way behind this morning, but still somehow managed to squeeze in the door on time. I got settled with all the new goodies I brought from home, poured myself some coffee that stayed hot all day long thanks to the Ember mug Summer got me, and then spent all day tucked away in my office.

Evidently it flooded during all of the rain last week, and though most of the stuff in my office was safe, I did have one casualty. The esports poster that Jessica and Ronda made of my newspaper article got wet, because the lamination was trimmed too close to the poster board, which wicked water up into the middle of the poster. Hopefully it will dry out without looking gross.

I had to update a bunch more Chromebooks for Oakland, but never delivered them. Zach, Gary, and Thomas came back to fetch me for La Chiquita for lunch, where Greg met us. Then the afternoon was relatively quiet until quitting time. I left and went by the shop to find Summer in the pit. She was stuck there, so I went home for a bit until she got off.

The girls already ate, so I went by Wind Taste to get some lo mein for Summer, then went to their house for the evening. I developed a bit of a headache and spent most of the evening with some earbuds in. Summer went to bed early, and I finished up on the computer. As I was getting ready to go to bed, Eaddie came out and chatted with me for about an hour and a half before I ran her off to shower and go to sleep.

Two is better than one when less is more.

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Errand Boy

I tried not to sleep too late this morning. I got Summer up, and Autumn was already in the living room when we came out. I rolled Eaddie out of bed, and could tell pretty quickly she was going to be in a pretty good mood. Summer wanted to take them to Shoe Carnival because Eaddie was in dire need of new shoes. I left to meet them after they ran home to change, but Shoe Carnival wouldn’t be open for another hour or two.

We ended up at Walmart instead, since I needed to look for a new TV to replace Doug’s. Since the girls all seemed to be pretty easy going, we perused the clearance aisle for a while, and then walked around slowly through the rest of the store. Then out of nowhere, we were discussing how many new laundry baskets we needed to buy, and Eaddie made an offhand comment that absolutely triggered Autumn. She went 0 to 100 faster than I’ve ever seen, and even got in Eaddie’s face. I almost had to choke her out just to calm her down.

We let her walk it off, and the rest of us just stared at each other wide-eyed trying to figure out what the hell happened. We continued around the store for a while, then circled back around so I could talk to Autumn alone before checking out. We went to Hardee’s because I thought we were going to eat a late breakfast, but everyone else wanted lunch food. Fortunately I had loads of coupons ready to go.

After lunch, the girls went to Shoe Carnival while I went to Lowe’s to look for some gas line tape. Then I headed to my parents’ house to help Dad replace their water heater. It was super cold outside, but the garage was bearable. It took us a bit to trim the metal exhaust tube, and we ended up running back to Lowe’s for some replacement tubing to go from the wall to the heater, but we got it going again.

I stuck around to eat a bowl of soup, and then took an old TV from there to Bác Vân’s. My parents never used it, and it made more sense to give that one to them, since Walmart didn’t have any TVs at all that had a center stand. I’ll have to go back tomorrow once they have a board wide enough to support the new TV and its corner-mounted stands sitting on top of the old console TV.

I prepped a little bit to get things ready to go back to work, then headed up to Summer’s for the evening. The girls were all in good moods again. Autumn was cleaning her room while Summer did Eaddie’s nails as Eaddie had laundry going. I tinkered a bit, warmed up a bit of food, and eventually everyone made it to bed.

Talk about cramming it all in on the last day!

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Amazing!

I woke up pretty early today after an early new year’s eve. Summer got up and went home to meet up with the girls, who were home a day early from their father’s. Eaddie really wanted to come watch the Andrew Garfield The Amazing Spider-Man movies, so I picked up around the house until they came over with a bucket of chicken for dinner.

Just as we sat down to eat, Doug called from next door with a TV issue that I thought was going to be a de-synced remote again, but this time it seemed the volume on the TV was being constantly turned down. I couldn’t resolve it with a stuck button, so I told them it would just have to be replaced. I’ll have to go pick a new one up for them tomorrow.

I ate, and then we started the first movie. I had forgotten how good the 3D was in those movies, because it was actually properly shot in 3D by someone that actually took advantage of the technology and knew how to use it. We took a dessert break between movies, and then I made some popcorn for the second one. They were both pretty emotional movies that I just adored. I think even with the new MCU version of Spider-Man, Garfield was my favorite of all.

Eaddie and I stayed up a little later watching some YouTube, until she was ready for bed. I had to negotiate some space in the bed for her from Autumn, but they settled in pretty quickly. Summer had long been asleep, so I wrapped things up quietly before bed.

Gotta get back into the swing of things…

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Last Tighten

Julie called me as I was trying to get to bed last night. We’ve been more or less on the same page about Dad’s retirement, but she keeps wanting to talk in circles about her frustrations, and it stresses me out. Maybe this year we finally made some headway with our parents though.

Summer and I got up early this morning and headed straight to the new lube in Maumelle. She had a coffee, but that was it. I wasn’t really hurting for breakfast after yesterday. We put together one of the toolboxes together, and then raced on the next two. It was pretty close considering we were sharing tools, and I felt like I held my own. Matt came through to check on things I guess, but didn’t stay long or really do anything to help.

We made it through all but the last large toolbox, and decided to get some lunch. I was already exhausted and needed a break, so we ended up driving into Little Rock to find a Chinese buffet. I was hoping we might see something different, and maybe if I had gotten some raw food to be grilled, it would have been better. It wasn’t bad, but the food was inconsistently fresh or old, dry, and cold. In any case, I still ate way too much.

After lunch, we went back to Maumelle to finish the last toolbox. The trick was to leave the nuts loose enough that the metal could wiggle and flex enough to get the rest of the bolts through the holes. When we finished, we cleaned up our trash and then headed right back home.

Summer insisted I stop for new windshield wipers, so we went to Superfast for those, then went to my house to bring in a package. We decided to stay there for the night, though she had to run home for some things. While she was gone, I unburied the treadmill so she could run a while when she got back.

I was sore and stiff all night, so I just laid on the couch with Summer after she got out of the shower. I got up a couple times to make her something to drink, but it was still an early night to bed.

Lots of rain makes for a nice, quiet new year’s eve.

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You’ve Got to Build Bypasses!

We got up early this morning and headed to Cabot, stopping just outside of Conway at a Sonic for breakfast on the road. Summer met up with the managers of that new location to deploy tools and set up anything they could. I left them pretty early to go to Walmart across the street.

I wandered around the store just checking things out at first. Then I circled back through to pick up a few things. I found some Fruity Pebble flavored Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, a Zelda Game & Watch, and some slap bracelets. When I left there, I stopped by the Goodwill in the adjacent shopping center, but they had absolutely nothing even remotely interesting to me.

Back at the shop, it appeared to be an extremely slow day, and not at all a full day of work worthy of the drive out there. It was lunch time, so we tried to go to Chef Candace, but the doors were locked. We ended up going across the street to Deer Creek Fire & Stone. Our server said it was her first day, but appeared old enough that I didn’t really believe she had never waited a table before. Service was slow, but the food was alright. I was most disappointed that she said the pot pies, which were on the lunch specials menu, “weren’t ready yet.”

After we ate, we went back to the shop and put together a few more things. I helped hang a couple charging banks in the back room, and then helped assemble the desk for the office. When we finished, we headed toward Bryant to pick up my order from Target, but went through the car wash in Benton first.

We walked all around Target, picking up some Christmas clearance before going back to the front to pick up my order. They actually had two of the Tron: Legacy vinyls, and I got both. Then we headed to Little Rock for dinner. Traffic was heavy, but not unmanageable. We were welcomed home at the Star of India, and had an incredible meal. The food came out quickly, but otherwise the service was very slow. A couple of boys circled around the place like buzzards and made sure my water was never more than an inch below the brim. We really could have just split what I ordered, but instead we just left with a bunch of leftovers.

It was straight to bed once we made it home. The girls were still in Clarksville, and Summer was sore from her day. Evidently she’s got to work in Maumelle tomorrow.

You no touch plate!

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Fill the Box

I woke up shortly after Summer left for work this morning. I felt hungry, so I thawed out a bagel, then started poking around the house to see what I could store in my new garage cabinet. Autumn eventually came to take Eaddie home, to get her mandated locker at school, and then out for an evening with her friends.

About mid afternoon, I went to my parents’ house to chat for a while. We scheduled a day to talk to their financial advisor about his retirement, and hopefully that will be the last of that, but I’m not so sure. As Summer finished up at work and went to the gym, I made my way up to her house for the evening.

The kids showed up after Eaddie’s night out with friends, but then left for their father’s once Eaddie packed some things. Then it was an early night to bed.

Rolls on rolls on rolls.

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Vacation in Spirit

I went to bed super early last night, and then woke up early this morning after many hours of sleep. I found a charge on my Discover card from Disney, but didn’t go with the rest of my family a couple weeks ago. After some digging, we discovered that Dad had somehow been signed into my account and charged a couple things to my card. I was just glad I didn’t have to cancel my card and get a new number.

Summer had to do some shopping for work, so she came to get me and we went to Walmart, Harbor Freight, AutoZone, and then Sumo for lunch. Afterward, she dropped me off at my house so I could do some things there.

It was nice outside, so I took the opportunity to clean out a corner of the garage and put together the last part of my new metal cabinet. It was a bit of a struggle to get everything to align properly, and I’m still not super happy with the door, but it works. Now I just have to figure out what to store in it.

After a quick shower, Summer finished at work and took me back to her house. Eaddie had been deep cleaning her room all day, which she had needed to start for a while. I stayed there and played some Don’t Starve while Summer went to the gym.

For dinner, I took Eaddie to pick up Summer at the gym, and went to my parents’ house for egg roll salads. Mom seemed to function pretty well as long as I could get her to whatever corner of the kitchen had what she needed. We ate, told Dad jokes, and then I took Summer back to her car and met her at my house.

Eaddie and I had been wanting to watch Hawkeye for a while, so we finally started it. I felt like it started super slow, and didn’t have a very interesting plot or memorable soundtrack. I was also pretty disappointed with the surround sound in general, and I had some strange artifacting in the picture. I couldn’t tell if it was from Disney+ or possibly something with my Chromecast.

Once we finished the first two episodes, Summer went to bed and I started the first episode of What If…?. Eaddie didn’t stick around for much of it, but I was at least appeased with the level of action and the pacing of the episode. By then, I was pretty tired, so I finished up my chores and went to bed.

Have some Upper 10. It’s more than 7 Up!

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Phone It In

Summer had some trouble getting up early this morning. I slept in for a while, and then played some more Don’t Starve until I got around to a shower. Eaddie didn’t want to get out of bed, so I left and took Summer to Morelos for lunch.

Earlier in the day, Bryan had asked if I knew anyone with an older Pixel or Samsung phone that might qualify for a trade-in. Johnny bit the bullet and was going to have Bryan drive all the way to Fort Smith from Conway to swap for his Galaxy S20 FE. Aaron joined the conversation late, but had an S10 that also qualified and was older, so I drove up to his house to get it, then met Bryan at AT&T.

Kevin had already gotten everything done, and they were waiting on me for the trade-in process. Then Bryan wanted to try and transfer all of his old content to his new iPhone. Rather than take up time in the store, we went back to my house to tinker with it. We chatted for a while, and eventually he headed home.

Aaron eventually came over and picked up the Pixel 6 so he could swap with Johnny later. Then I finally got rid of an old, broken chair and drove up to Summer’s for the evening. I warmed up some leftovers and ate a bit. Eaddie really wanted to watch Hawkeye, but I didn’t want to watch it there, so everyone went to bed.

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