Uncategorised

Odd Man Down

Today was a weird day. I started off jumping right into a bug that Jacob discovered with Google Groups, which landed me in a chat and subsequent call with support that lasted through lunch. I ended up just eating leftover donuts and cake that was left in the fridge, which probably wasn’t much healthier than the Wendy’s that everyone else had.

Nearly the entire day, I was the only one around downstairs, so I kept having to answer the phone and help anyone that stopped by or called. I hardly got to anything of my own until I just left and went to Oakland. By then it was already quitting time, but I had to get something accomplished for myself.

Eaddie was sitting outside at Oakland and wanted me to take her, so we went to the high school together for one last thing, and then to my house so I could change. I had to drop off my mail survey at the post office and get gas, and finally we were off to Summer’s for the evening.

Summer warmed up some leftovers, and Eaddie and I ate. Then when Summer went to bed, Eaddie and I watched some more House. It won’t be much longer until we finish up the series and can be on to something new.

What to watch… Holidays are coming!

Uncategorised

Bake ‘n Shows

We slept in a bit after a long day yesterday. Summer got up and baked some cookies, and I eventually made my way home after Summer and Autumn went to the gym. Eaddie stayed behind watching Frozen, since Autumn had put it on while doing chores.

I fiddled around with a few things at home since it wasn’t too cold inside. I cleaned a whole bunch of algae and gross plant matter out of my old shrimp tank, though it’s devoid of any shrimp now after I suffocated them all.

Summer baked bread and Brussels sprouts, and grilled some barbecue chicken for dinner, so I came back up for that. Then Eaddie and I ended the night with a couple episodes of House.

No! He’s like a stray. He’ll eat everything, shed all over the place, and crap on the floor.

Uncategorised

Gold Medal Flower

I got up early and dropped Eaddie off at the high school to go to her big string orchestra for the day, then went home to clean up before our day in Little Rock. My parents met us at Summer’s house, and we all piled into Mom’s car for the drive. Our first stop was MarketPlace Grill in Conway for lunch. We ended up having to wait about 45 minutes for a table. They were only seating about half of their tables, but disappointingly, they were still just packing everyone in super close to one another. One would think that COVID would have them spreading everyone out, but everyone seems to have just moved on from that sort of thing around here.

After we ate, we stopped by Kohl’s to do a little bit of quick shopping before continuing down to Little Rock. When we did finally get closer to showtime, we ran around Little Rock trying to find some flowers to take Eaddie. We stopped at a Kroger in the hood that didn’t have any, then tried to find a nearby florist that appeared to be a bad listing on Google Maps. Finally, we stopped by another grocery store that also didn’t have flowers, but they did have flours. Summer and I picked up a Gold Medal, and then ran back to the car to make it to the concert.

We showed up just in time to get some decent seats before the two bands got started. Eaddie’s junior high band was first, and they seemed very disjointed. I knew that Eaddie was good, and expected her to be in an orchestra of equally-talented people, but that didn’t appear to be the case.

We stuck around for the high school band, and then filed out of the building to decide on what to do next. Mom wanted to hit up a couple Oriental food stores, so we did that first, and then ended up heading back to Conway for dinner after failing to get into The Butcher Shop without waiting an hour or more to be seated.

On the Border was probably the best decision we made all day. The service and food were both pretty great, and Eaddie got her fill of everyone else’s food after having repeatedly told everyone that she wasn’t hungry enough for dinner.

As soon as we finished, we loaded back up and Dad dropped us off at Summer’s house. Eaddie and I stayed up to finish season six of House. We were both exhausted by then, so it was off to bed for the night.

How do you even play a whole note on a drum?

Uncategorised

Peer Pressure

I was a little bit late to work this morning after rehearsing a big speech about standing up to the man and not being a coward. We didn’t have much of a meeting when I got there though, and in fact we were actually told we wouldn’t really be having those meetings moving forward, unless we have something we need to discuss.

I eventually made my way across the street for our called CPPC meeting, and though it ran a little long, it felt like a really good meeting. Before the meeting, I was concerned about the fact that we were still discovering mistakes only a few hours prior. Once we discussed the intent a little more, and addressed my questions and concerns, I was much more satisfied with what we were doing.

We voted to send the draft to the school board, and I made my way back to the shop just before lunch. Almost all of us went to Western Sizzlin to eat, and then it was a pretty quiet afternoon. I didn’t really get out of my office, and I think that actually made the issue with my contacts worse. I’ll be staying out of them the rest of the weekend.

I worked a little late on the meeting minutes, then went to The UPS Store to return an Amazon order. Then I picked Summer up from work so we could go pick up a white dress shirt for Eaddie’s concert tomorrow.

After dropping Summer off at her car, I went home and started some laundry and watched Shang-Chi to see what it looked like in their advertised “IMAX Enhanced” format. I’ll have to go back and skip through it in the widescreen format to compare later. When Eaddie finally got home from her band trip, I took her home and we went to bed.

I abstain.

Uncategorised

Rain on the Parade

I took the Shadow to work this morning in spite of the wet, since it would be clear all day. I didn’t get a whole lot done before lunch, outside of working up an email and sharing my salary comparison worksheet with Judy. Gary took Brody and me to Arby’s for lunch, and when we got back, Judy had actually started looking at my sheet, and we chatted for a while within the document, which was cool. She actually fixed a couple of the issues I found, but still didn’t make the changes I suggested for our department.

It took me a while, but I finally made it to Oakland in the afternoon about an hour before school let out. I found out that Mollie’s been out sick, so I reached out to her later in the evening to see how she was doing.

They let us off of work early to go to the Veterans Day parade. Autumn asked me to go so I could see her walk the American flag at the head of the parade, so I met Summer and Eaddie at the church downtown. We stayed for almost the entire parade, but left just before traffic got stupid.

We went back to my house for just a few minutes before Summer dropped Eaddie off to have dinner with Autumn and their father. Then I met her at Nonna Bella’s for a pizza before she had to go to the superintendent search committee meeting. Christina was evidently working there and served us, which was only a little bit odd considering I knew her from the call center days, and she knew the girls through their father.

Summer took off just before her meeting started, and I headed home for the evening. Mollie finally responded and said she had a hard limit of one visitor per day, so I may go visit her if we can plan it successfully.

All the positive vibes.

Uncategorised

Entombed Raider

I got up and out a little bit early today for no particular reason. I didn’t really get to anything I wanted to do though, because of meetings and an overwhelming need to decipher the latest draft of the proposed salary schedule. I actually spent all day crunching numbers on a combined spreadsheet, and it was a nice bit of self-confirmation that I could do that job, and probably better than those tasked with it.

Not long into the morning, several from central office came over for some training. I’m not sure why they didn’t do it in their own conference room, for for whatever reason they did it outside of my office, so I was made to lock myself in and stay quiet in the dark.

I snuck out for lunch with Gary and Greg, and we went to Taco John’s for the first time in ages. My Boss Burrito was mostly beans and rice, but the Potato Olés were on point, and I even let the girl upsell the nacho cheese.

We had a video call with an Apple guy in the afternoon so Brody could ask some questions, but it really just turned into Gary learning things and then assigning work to Greg and me. I guess that’s the job, so I can’t complain too much.

Eaddie had walked to my house and gone out for a bike ride, so I went home after work and then met her at the high school with the Grom. The helmet communicator worked pretty great, and I coached her through some laps around the parking lot as the sun set. We rode back home and then went to their house with some ribs I needed to grill.

Summer eventually made it home from the gym, and we ate while she had a video call of her own. The girls were still doing laundry for most of the evening, so there wasn’t much for me to do besides put some more work into my spreadsheet with some updated numbers from Judy, and then research home Dolby Atmos configurations. If you can have 11.2.8 at home, I can’t think of a single reason that you shouldn’t have 11.2.8 at home.

But what number do they use for the seat shakers?

Uncategorised

I Don’t See How That’s Helpful

I had to dig out some new contacts this morning, and I ended up using a trial pair I got last year. They went in fine, but I had trouble with them all day, so I don’t know how long I’ll keep wearing them. Fortunately it was slow enough at work that I wasn’t really impeded in any way. I stuck around in my office while Brody called me a bunch. Then the Big Three and Greg had a meeting with Chris about some potential equipment going in to record and transmit video from the busses.

When lunch time came around, six of us went to Linh’s for a surprisingly quick and delicious meal. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon trying to make sense of the new salary schedule drafts that were floating around, because Janie sent out the optimistic one while I had been looking at one that actually hurt our long-term employees.

After work, I went straight home and tried to pick at things a little bit, but didn’t really get anything accomplished. Today was a real struggle with the time change, and early winter is always hard on me anyway. I eventually made a couple hot dogs in some leftover homemade tortillas from La Huerta, with some mustard from Ridgewood Brothers. After a while I made some popcorn to snack on, and finally it was off to bed.

It seems to me that maybe someone should have been watching spending a bit better for all these years.

Uncategorised

Looky Looky Who Plays Hooky

I knew I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep in time last night to be productive at work today, so I took a sick day to recover from the trip. The girls were already at school by the time I woke up. Summer had to go to work for a bit, so I ate some leftovers and then went home for a while.

It was cold in the house, and I had a hard time getting motivated to do anything. I mostly just sat around until I headed back up to Summer’s for the evening. She grilled pork chops and made mashed potatoes and asparagus for dinner. The girls had to do some chores when they got home from school. Otherwise it was a quiet, early night.

It’s super affective!

Uncategorised

Köttbullar

We slept in a little this morning without losing much time, thanks to daylight saving time coming to an end. We went downstairs and loaded up on breakfast, and then cleaned up and packed for the return home. We still had a full day planned though, so it was a slow drive across the city to find an Ikea.

I’ve wanted to go to an Ikea for ages, and we never had a chance to stop the last time I saw one in person in St. Louis. There were two to pick from in the Dallas area, so we went to the one up north. Summer thought I was kidding about meatballs, and the look on her face when she saw the sign at the entrance was worth the drive all by itself.

Having never been, we were really impressed with the showrooms as we wandered through the maze. Some of them looked really incredible, and I could really see us building something entirely out of what they had available. As we finished our way through the upstairs showrooms, we entered into the restaurant where even there, you could get a push cart for your trays full of food. Summer got the regular Swedish meatballs, and I tried the salmon meatballs so we could share. Everything was pretty good, and it was a neat break from shopping.

After all of that, we really had to rush through the downstairs area in order to make our movie on time. I wish we could have spent a bit more time there, because there were actually a couple things we wanted to buy, but we ended up grabbing a couple bottles of fruit juice with mulling spices that totally wasn’t real wine, and running out the door.

The drive back to the AMC wasn’t too bad, but parking was a chore. We finally found a parking garage and briskly walked to the theater just in time to get settled in before the show. The theater was incredible, with countless Dolby speakers on practically every surface. As the previews came on, they barely scratched the surface of the experience. The seat shakers felt natural, and brought an additional layer of depth that I loved. I just wished the movie had lent itself more to that kind of theater.

I enjoyed Eternals, though I understood that it wasn’t exactly a blockbuster style action film in the traditional way. I couldn’t see it being rated poorly though. There were some things that probably could have been done better, but overall it had a nice pace for how long it was. It wasn’t like Dune that felt super slow the entire time, and then ended just as things got good.

Once out of the movie, we made the drive home. The GPS took us on our alternate route this time, heading north through Oklahoma. It was a slightly shorter drive by distance, but also shorter in time with the lack of traffic leaving the city. We stopped once for gas and food at a Moe’s inside of a Pilot, where we got surprisingly good service worthy of a tip.

Eaddie was still awake when we got home, but took a shower and went to bed as Summer crashed. I still had my own routine to go through, but then it was off to sleep as well.

Literally hundreds of speakers.

Uncategorised

Muddy Buddies

We went downstairs for breakfast first thing this morning, then came back up to the room to get ready for Summer’s Tough Mudder race. Traffic was relatively fine, but it was still a long drive across a boring, asphalt city. Once there, it was just a sea of cars parked in a hilly field. It took a bit of time to get through the processing, but she made it in time for the last wave in her hour start time. Once she got started, I went back to the car and waited for about three hours.

I brought all kinds of things to keep myself busy, but I just ended up playing on my phone the entire time. I could see a couple of obstacles from where I was parked, and I could hear a bunch of sheep across a pond. The weather was perfect for just hanging out there, so it wasn’t too bad. As the two and a half hour mark approached, I made my way back up to the event and waited at the finish line.

Summer had made a friend along the way, and they helped coach each other along to the end. She had to run pretty immediately though, so I waited for Summer to clean up and then we made our way back to the hotel. Traffic was pretty awful on the way back, and I added some time to the drive making a wrong turn. Constant construction made it worse. I fully decided that I would be okay if Thanos successfully snapped away half of all life in the universe. There are just too many people.

I waited for Summer to clean up, and we had just enough time for her to relax a bit before making our way across the city again for a late dinner at Medieval Times. Summer absolutely loved it. I enjoyed it for a while, but eventually I got tired of watching sadly drooly horses prance around in circles. I thought the knights would play off of the heckling a bit more, but the crowd was pretty loud and it made it difficult to communicate even with our serf.

Our knight was the first one down during every round, which made it all the more disappointing. The food was pretty good though, and Summer really enjoyed the whole experience. As the show came to a close, we took the short-but-long way back to the hotel and went straight to bed.

Rough knight?