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Wipe and Recover

I woke up this morning after a pretty typical amount of sleep, which really wasn’t enough after the long night last night. I didn’t want to burn the whole day though, so I got out of bed and got to work. Aaron was supposed to come by and pick up a couple computers, so I cleaned them up and got them running again. I had to do more hardware juggling than I expected, but it all worked out in the end.

Summer had to work, so I spent the rest of the day trying to clean up a little bit. The carpet still needed another day at minimum to dry, so I spent a little bit of time in the garage, expecting to have to find a place for a treadmill. Aaron ended up not coming over because they spent the day at a pumpkin patch instead. Maybe he got lost in the maize.

When Summer got home, she showered and then we went to Mulan’s for dinner. She crashed as soon as we got back, and then I spent most of the evening trying to spend some rewards money at Kohl’s. Sometimes I forget how ridiculously high some of their stuff is priced, so that even with stacked discounts and reward earnings, I could still get stuff cheaper elsewhere. I’ve got to remember the clearance trick of browsing things by category next time.

Normally $100, but today only, $15.99!

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10 Hours Carpet Remix

I made it out of the house earlier today, but I still thought McDonald’s was going to make me late. The drive-through line was out to the road, so I went inside to order. The girl at the counter seemed new, and had to ask for help a couple times. Then I was surprised when my food came out almost immediately. I ended up getting to work a few minutes early for a change.

We did a little bit of refresher training this morning, and then I was left to myself for most of the day. I didn’t have anything in particular that I really spent any time on. Brody really wanted Venezia’s, so six of us went there for lunch.

It took a while to get our food, and then once we got it, I didn’t much care for what I ordered. I was just trying something new and decided I didn’t love it. Then I made the mistake of telling that to the girl at the register, and she yelled across the room at, presumably, the guy who made it. He proceeded to give me all of the reasons that I was wrong for not liking it. I dropped my leftovers off for Summer, then made it back to work in a torrential downpour. It was a pretty quiet afternoon from then on.

When I got home from work a little after four, I started cleaning the carpet again. Eventually the girls came over to stay the night because Autumn had a late game and Summer didn’t want her driving to their father’s at night. I just kept cleaning the carpet, until nearly three in the morning. I hurt everywhere, and nearly reached peak exhaustion. I think I’m over it for now.

Blisters, of all things.

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DAFT

I woke up nearly an hour and a half before my alarm this morning and was wide awake from that point on. I wasn’t uncomfortable, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t fall back asleep. I thought this would give me plenty of time to get my free McDonald’s breakfast again, but I was wrong. Somehow I was still five minutes late. I made up for it by working through lunch though.

It was a really quiet day at the office, for the most part. I picked at a few things, and finally got my CPPC meeting minutes draft finished and sent off for approval from the rest of the committee. I may have been a little too extra, but I was proud of my jokes, dammit.

I ended the day running to Oakland to change a projector bulb. Then I went to my parents’ house for some more fish soup. Mom wanted to add more elephant ear and dill to the pot, which ended up pulverizing all of the fish that was in the pot. It ended up being not enough fish for all the extras.

Eventually I made it home so I could continue with the Great Carpet Scrub of 2021. I finally got enough transparent water from the first half of the area I’ve been cleaning to feel good about calling it done. Hopefully I can get the last half of it tomorrow, and then let it dry up before moving furniture at the end of the weekend.

That’s the joke.

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Eight Hour Email

I hit up the other McDonald’s for breakfast this morning and got the bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit this time. The biscuit was much better than I remembered them being, but the overwhelming taste of butter was probably what did it. The iced coffee is always good, but was made extra strong with the coffee cubes I added as I drank it down. It also kept me fueled for the rest of the day, since I didn’t take a lunch again.

The biggest thing I focused on all day was the CPPC, and the email along with all the formatting and organization I wanted to create to make it feel much more official than it has in the past, at least since my own involvement. I had some good examples online of what it should look like, so hopefully people are pleased.

Zach came into my office and chatted with me for a while, and we ended up leaving work pretty late because of it. I went straight to my parents’ house and ate fish soup with Mom, and then headed home to work on the carpets some more. I finally got some partially transparent water out of the carpet, so the end can’t be far. Some of the carpet still felt very slightly less-than-soft, and that may just be the extra soap more than anything else. I think I’ve been going way too heavy, at least at first, causing the first few rounds to foam out a bunch. Some straight water should help finish most of it off, but I’m going in strips now, and just sticking with the same spot until I get clear water.

Comic Sans, but only ironically.

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Three Meals a Day

I got up a little bit early this morning so I could go by McDonald’s for a free “Thank You” meal for working in education. Even being out of the house early, the line at the drive-through was slow enough to make me a few minutes late to work. The morning was otherwise pretty quiet as I worked on a couple different projects.

Suzanne came by the shop a little bit before lunch just so she could see my office, and then we went to Linh’s to eat. It was nice catching up a little more since this was really only the second time we’ve talked in several years. After that, I spent the rest of the school day at Oakland taking care of some work there.

Just as school let out, I went to the high school to talk to Ethan and one of his kids that was wanting to compile some C++ code but couldn’t run the executables due to our security restrictions. We discussed some workarounds and basically settled on having a couple unrestricted computers for his overachieving students to use.

As I left work for the day, I realized that Summer was at the high school as well for a marching competition. I went on home to clean up, and then met her at Chili’s for a date night while the girls were both at the competition.

When I got back home, I got right to cleaning carpets again. The water still isn’t coming up clear, but it wasn’t crispy either. Hopefully I can be done for a while after today, but if it’s still bad, I have some ideas for tomorrow’s cleaning session.

Heck, it took 30 years to make it. It’s not coming out overnight.

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Oxiplosive

It stormed a bit last night, but I missed all of the rain today. I made it to work abnormally early, and it was super quiet all day long. Thomas came into my office to ask about the CPPC meeting, and confirmed that the changes likely wouldn’t be made to the classified salary schedule. He suggested we ask pointedly how much money we can afford, so that we can work backwards from there.

Lunch time came and went. I lost track of time and noticed people walking out too late, so I just skipped lunch and continued working. Brody wanted some help hanging a touch panel after school, so we did that to finish up the day.

After work, I stopped by Summer’s shop to see her briefly before continuing home. I decided to work on the carpet some more, since it still felt crispy all over where I had cleaned it last week. The pump sprayer I got from Harbor Freight ended up splitting. I think I filled it up too much with water that was too hot, so the pressure from pumping air into it just ruined the plastic. I thought I had let all of the pressure out when I put it on the sink, but halfway through my first pass at cleaning the carpet, I heard a crash in the kitchen and ran in to discover Oxiclean had exploded all over the kitchen. I guess as far as things you’d want to explode in the kitchen, cleaning solution is right up near the top.

The water kept coming up black the entire time I was working, so I may end up doing it again tomorrow. I’d rather focus on the one strip now than have to move furniture around repeatedly in the future. The one neat side effect of all this is that my toilet bowl has never been whiter.

That’s fast.

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What’s Cookin’

Summer got up and made breakfast this morning. I got super stiff last night in bed, which I felt the numerous times I got up in the middle of the night. It really made it hard to move around for a while, but I never got up to much of anything anyway. We did finally play UNO Flip, which was a great twist on the classic game. Then we watched The Princess Bride while Eaddie did something else.

Eventually dinner time came around and Summer wanted to cook up some stir fry with the leftovers we had. She dug out some frozen veggies and cut some extras up, and then I threw in the leftover steak and sausage, filling up the wok nearly to the top, once the rice and everything else was in it.

Eaddie really approved of dinner, and then Summer made some pumpkin bread for dessert. We made Eaddie play a game of UNO Flip with us, and then everyone filtered off to bed.

I just want you to feel you’re doing well. I hate for people to die embarrassed.

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Two by Four

Summer and Eaddie ran a 5k this morning while Autumn and I slept. I didn’t really sleep in much, but I laid awake with a cat laying across my neck until the other two got back home. Then I sat around for a little while before going home to do some work.

It was really nice outside when I got there, so I decided to hang the rest of the bicycles in the garage. I got one done pretty quickly, but the next two had me sweating as the outside temperature continued to rise. Bác Vân stopped in to chat for a little bit as I finished up. Then I went inside to shower.

Eventually I met Summer and Autumn at Walmart to pick up some dinner. We picked up a bunch of stuff from clearance, then got steaks for dinner. I went back in to get a bunch more Kool-Aid because it was only 15 cents, and then I met the girls back at their house.

Summer prepped stuff for salads and mashed potatoes inside while I grilled some New York strips and hot dogs. The steaks actually cooked to a nice doneness, but they were still tough for some reason. Autumn’s cheeks were still swollen pretty badly from having her wisdom teeth out, so she just ate hot dogs and mashed peas on a plate without any buns.

After we ate, Autumn went to bed and the rest of us watched an episode of House. Then Summer went to bed and Eaddie and I watched one more episode before bed.

I’m forgetting something.

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Productivity Counter

I was supposed to do some training this morning to show Jacob, the one newest tech, how to image a computer. I kind of assumed he had already done so before, but evidently he hadn’t. Instead of keeping it super simple, I treated it like I was giving real SCCM training, and gave a quick overview of a task sequence, which I think was good practice.

The rest of the day was the total opposite of productivity. I managed to always be doing something, while somehow never accomplishing anything. I should get some kind of award for being able to do that.

I thought most of us were going to lunch together, but then Thomas disappeared with Zach and Greg. The usual four rest of us decided to go to Ridgewood Brothers, and wouldn’t you know we ended up in line behind the others. I keep letting those things bother me, and I guess I shouldn’t, but it’s just a huge shift from how things used to be. It’s causing pointless aggravation with more than just me.

While we were in line, Robert came out to tell me that Karen had their baby last night, and that he delivered him himself. Evidently their midwife was several minutes out when the moment arrived, so he just did it himself after having “caught” them in the past.

Everyone took their food back to the shop to eat, since it took us about 40 minutes to get through the unusually busy line. I tried their new pickles, but didn’t really love them. It’s the first thing they’ve had that I really didn’t care for, which was a surprise.

The afternoon was slow and quiet. I never made it out of the building, in spite of my plans to do so. My second day of Microsoft Azure training came and went, and I didn’t listen to a bit of it. Eventually I just left work and went home.

Summer took the day off to take Autumn in to have her wisdom teeth removed, so the girls were all home after school. I sat around the house for most of the evening until later, when I went to join them. Autumn was already asleep on the couch. Summer was already sleep in bed. Eaddie was awake as usual, so I went and sat with her for a while. She went from doing Duolingo to talking on the phone while I played the Switch, and then my phone.

Eventually even Eaddie wanted to go to sleep, since Summer signed the both of them up for a 5k in the morning. I played easy, yet satisfying phone games for a while longer, and eventually made it to bed.

‘Cause I’m a dic… I’m addicted to you!

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BOUO

I had trouble getting to sleep last night, and at some point tangled myself up in my CPAP hose, then pulled my CPAP off the nightstand and into the floor. Fortunately nothing broke and I made it through the rest of the night, but it made for a slow start to my morning.

I just hung out in my office all morning, as it was pretty quiet downstairs. Around 11, I started a Microsoft Azure virtual training course, but left it running while we went to lunch. Summer met Gary, Zach, Greg, and me at Wendy’s for a no-frills, quick lunch. Then it was back to the shop for what ended up being the rest of the day.

At one point I thought I would go by the high school to work on some software for Ethan, but I never made it. Instead, I had to wait for some software to finish downloading, and then I got sidetracked troubleshooting a wireless keyboard that evidently was paired to a different receiver, and I just didn’t notice for several minutes.

After work, I went straight home and finished up the strip of carpet I had been scrubbing. The last stretch pulled out a bunch of really dark water, but it looked better and I was tired of it by then. I really needed to start the drying process so I could move the furniture back and out of the way.

I ended the night trying to peel a sticker off of a fuzzy, oversized, tennis ball, because television props are cooler without unnecessary branding.

That ball saves lives!