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Excessage

I don’t think I slept great this weekend, because I kept getting up out of bed last night as well. I didn’t want to let myself sleep in too late, but I just felt so tired. I cleaned up the last of the taco meat that Summer had, and then took Eaddie home with me as soon as she was ready.

She was supposed to go ride her bike to her friend’s house to work on some homework together, but she didn’t leave for a couple hours. I picked up a little bit in the other bedroom, then took a shower once she did leave. By the time I got out, Summer and Autumn had gotten what they needed from the grocery store and I met them at my parents’ house.

What was supposed to be some super simple grilled sausages for dinner ended up being pretty frustrating. First, about half of the zucchini I brought over fell right through the grill because Mom cut too much meat out of the middle of them and they slipped right through the grates. Then the new jalapeño cheddar sausages I wanted to try from Sam’s were super greasy and caught the whole grill on fire. Everything else was pretty burned after that. All the while, I had to hear Autumn in the background continue to be generally obtuse and uncooperative.

Summer got in the pool for a little bit on her own, but I was busy sweating over the fire. I didn’t get to swim until after we all ate outside. I think I’m learning that I simply don’t care for eating around round tables. With several exceptions, I tend to also become frustrated by having too much other stuff on the table when we’re eating. The sausages had way too much cheddar inside of them, and the cheese overpowered the rest of the flavor. By the time it was all over, I just wanted to make a lap in the pool to cool off. I just felt increasingly tired and aggravated all day long.

The girls went home to get ready for school. I stuck around for just a little bit before going home myself. I was sleepy enough to just go to bed, so I didn’t even risk staying up any later. I only got out for a couple minutes when Bác Vân called me over to get some egg rolls.

-Cap’n Crankypants

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Big Fun in Little China

I slept in a while today after sleeping pretty heavily last night. Autumn had gone to work and Eaddie was still in bed while Summer watched TV. I eventually got up and choked down some questionably old fish tacos before going home to clean up. Once Autumn got home from work, I headed back to pick the three of them up to go see Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in Conway.

We stopped in at Game Point first to browse around and kill some time before the movie. Eaddie really didn’t want to go in, so we let her sit in the car. Before too long it was time to head across town for the show. The Cinemark was completely out of butter somehow, which I didn’t even think was possible. What followed was the driest movie popcorn I’ve ever had, but somehow still not the worst.

It felt like there was about an hour of mostly commercials and previews before the show, but eventually we got our movie. I thought it was incredible, and I found myself getting a bit weepy during the old style fight scenes with the traditional movie style martial arts. I just thought the whole thing was really beautiful.

After the movie, everyone was in the mood for Chinese, so we went a few doors down to China Town. Autumn ate frustratingly little and then continued a downward spiral of attitude the rest of the night. We hand-picked our playlist for the drive home, I stopped by my house briefly to take my contacts out, and then we took the girls home.

Summer had to yell at Autumn a bit before they both went to bed. Eaddie and I stayed up to watch a couple more episodes of House until she fell asleep in my lap again. Then I finally made it to bed.

Did America make you soft?

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Road Warriors

Summer and Autumn took off early this morning for Bixby, Oklahoma. I didn’t wake up until they had already gotten there after a three hour drive, so I called Summer just in time to wish them luck. Eaddie slept all morning, so most of the day was a bust for me.

When Eaddie did finally wake up in the afternoon, she didn’t want to go anywhere like she planned the night before, so I left and went by the Ridgewood Brothers to deliver some coupons from Superfast. They were already sold out by one o’clock, which was a surprise. Evidently everyone was loading up for the three-day weekend and ordered their food in bulk.

Summer and Autumn were nearly back home by the time I got to my house. I ate some leftovers and cleaned up, and before too long it was time to pick Summer up for our drive to Paron for a wedding. I had some trouble finding an outfit I was happy with, but settled on something mostly new. I couldn’t get comfortable, but I didn’t have a whole lot of choices given the heat and the occasion.

It was a beautiful drive for the most part, through the hills and some small mountains. We made it to the Cold Springs Events Center about half an hour early, but there were plenty of others already there. It was a neat looking venue, and they kept the wedding gracefully short. For the reception, we found a table with at least one other person Summer knew from work. At that same table was a woman that reminded me of my sister every time she opened her mouth. Then another guy at the table that I think someone said was her brother said something, and it was like I could hear myself.

The food was some of the best I’ve had at a wedding reception. We filled up, hung out for a couple quick pictures, and then made our way out. It was a dark drive back home at higher speed since I wasn’t trying to drive slowly to avoid getting there too early. We stopped by my house so I could change, then came up to Summer’s where she crashed almost immediately. Even Eaddie went to bed early, leaving me alone in the dark again.

Well no, it sounds awful when you put it like that.

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Good News Everyone!

We actually had a bit of a team meeting this morning, which was nice to break up how busy it’s been. I picked at a few different things to close out some old work orders, but didn’t make it to Oakland like I really had kind of intended. Most of the others went around to other buildings to clean out the tech offices that had accumulated a bunch of old crap. When they got back, everyone else came out to help unload the truck and trailer.

By then it was lunch time and someone made the call to go to Sam’s. Almost everyone went, and Thomas ended up buying. To make things even better, Brody only ate about half of his food before giving me the rest to take home, so I have plenty of fish for the weekend.

The afternoon went by pretty quietly as well. Thomas came and sat in my office for a few minutes after work to chat, and Judy emailed to say she had good news. We’ll have a meeting with her next week to see what that means. All in all, I think it was a pretty good work week.

I went by the shop to see Summer on the way home. Autumn was there too, but left when I did to go get gas. I went home to change and thought I was going to pick up Eaddie, but Summer ended up getting her after work. I came up to their house for the evening, but Summer didn’t get her mashed potatoes and coleslaw from KFC, so I drove her back to get them.

Everyone just kind of picked at the food before going off to do their own things. Summer crashed early in preparation for her long drive and obstacle run at Conquer the Gauntlet tomorrow. Eaddie and I stayed up until about midnight watching House until she fell asleep in my lap. With nothing else to do, I finally made it to bed myself.

Three day weekends are best when surrounded by four day weeks.

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Filed Under Completed

I made it in to work several minutes early today and just kind of eased into things. I knew I wanted to actually take action with a lot of work, but I still had a bit of trouble finding where to really chip into it all. I poked around a few different things at first, then went to Oakland to tend to Aimee and her fussy preschool cohorts. The girl that quit evidently stripped a bunch of stuff out when she left, and even took the USB cable for the touch panel.

I ended up leaving for lunch about 15 minutes late and met Gary and Zach at Arby’s. I tried their new Prime Rib Cheesesteak, which was loaded up a bit more than I expected, but was overly chewy and gooey. I actually found myself wishing it had less cheese on it. Summer had me drop some food off for her on the way back to work, and I continued to dig into the Print Nightmare exploit patch that we had to work around in order to resolve print issues for everyone.

Ultimately I fixed that issue and closed a whole bunch of work orders, so I felt pretty good by the end of the day. I left a little bit late and went to my parents’ house to deliver a patio table cover that I ordered for them. I ate a little turkey roll for dinner just to keep things really light, and then helped Dad move the oven out and into the trunk of his car so he could return it.

From there, I headed home to clean up a bit. The laundry room and kitchen had gotten a bit out of control, so I took care of that and then filed a bunch of paperwork. I even took the time to finally make folder labels with a proper label printer, so everything looks really nice now.

File the rest of that under “To Be Filed.”

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Bring Your Ex-Employee to Work Day

I went home to clean up, then picked Summer and Autumn up to head to Little Rock for another appointment at Children’s. We were early, so we picked Ben up at his office and ate at Cotham’s again. The three of us couldn’t resist the burger, but Ben had the chicken fried steak this time. I also ordered onion rings for an appetizer. All of the food came out super fast, and though the fries weren’t as good as last time, the burger was again incredible. I’ve made up my mind. I must own a flat-top grill.

We finished up a bit early, but we went ahead and dropped the girls off at the hospital so they could get in for the appointment. Then Ben showed me the way back to his parking garage. We walked up a couple flights of stairs, through a breezeway, and above the news studio, which was really neat. I vaguely remember going there, or somewhere similar on a field trip as a child. When we got back to his office, we sat for a little bit before he had me help fish a cable through some conduit in the wall. It was already run through the ceiling, but had to be dropped and terminated, which is kind of my favorite part anyway.

For the next couple hours, we sat in his office and just worked on our own things. I had my work laptop and picked through some email and a couple work orders. We talked about some of the scripts he had running in the past, and the reasons we had for doing certain things the way we did. His predecessor Kendal came in periodically from across the hall as they worked on something, frequently making comments about some “mothership” that I found amusing.

The girls eventually finished up and I picked them up to head toward home. We didn’t play around any more in Little Rock, opting instead to head through to Conway to shop at Sam’s. We walked nearly the entire store before heading out. There was some kind of wreck that had traffic completely stopped on the interstate going the other direction. That was stuck for hours as we drove across town to get a car wash.

Summer went inside to chat for a few minutes, and then we continued home. We had to pick up Eaddie from her friend’s house, and from then everyone settled in surprisingly slowly. I ate some leftover lasagna while Summer had the last half of her burger from lunch. Time just seemed to move a little differently.

Like an annoying little sibling???

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You’ve Gotta Fight for Your Right

I’ve been so worked up for most of this month over my employment contract, and it finally worked itself up into a head today. Maybe I was just feeling a dark cloud over my own head today, or maybe something really was up, but I’ve just felt really off for the past couple days. I spent the first couple quiet hours in my office before going to Oakland to try and fix some things. Then I made it back to the shop around lunch time and chatted with Kyle outside for a bit.

I ended up not doing anything, and just finished up the last quarter of my Soylent instead. I started working on an email to Judy to see if she could chat with me about my contract, and she actually had some free time to schedule with me. I went across the street and expressed my feelings, concerns, and did my best to make sure she understood I wasn’t trying to rock the boat, but that I felt like I had earned the contract I signed. She did a good job of playing it pretty neutral, but asked some good questions and took enough notes to make me feel like she really did want to help me personally if she could.

After my meeting, I went back to the shop for the rest of the day. Kyle and Greg came into my office for some help, which pretty well burned up any usable time I had left. I wrapped up what I could as everyone filtered out, and then stopped by to chat with Thomas on my own way out. He appreciated that I wanted to keep him in the loop, and I could tell we really agreed on a lot of the things we’ve seen, so hopefully this all works out well in the end.

I went straight to SuperFast to catch up with Summer, and then had to leave to return the canopy that I couldn’t get back to the Ridgewood Brothers yesterday. Then I went to my parents’ house for some surprisingly tough corned beef for dinner. After we ate, Dad and I tried taking his old oven out to swap it with the new one. We had gotten most everything in place to slide in before I had to pick Eaddie up from karate.

Once I had Eaddie, we stopped by her grandparents’ house so she could pick up some things she didn’t take into karate. Then we went back to my parents’ house to finish installing the new oven. Unfortunately once we had it placed, we realized how much space was left around the outside of it. We really needed to buy a size or two up from what Julie got, so we pulled everything back out and stuck the old one back in as quickly as we could.

I had to get Eaddie home so she could do homework, but first I wanted to get my laptop from work, then go home to change. Summer helped her with the homework while I tried yelling at Autumn to keep her from falling asleep. Evidently the hospital wants her a bit sleep deprived so she’ll be super relaxed or even doze off during her EEG tomorrow. I stayed up later than I wanted, but just kept feeling like I was forgetting something all night long.

I don’t know why they can’t write better descriptions for jean sizing. Maybe I’ll just start wearing jeggings instead.

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Another Long Week

This morning already started out pretty rough, and I don’t expect things to get better for a while. I suppose it could be worse, and at least I enjoy what I do, and it provides above-average flexibility. Things stayed pretty quiet most of the morning, with everyone still struggling to keep their work order counts from growing any further. As with the past couple weeks, this morning went by really fast. For the first time in a while, nobody was interested in going out to eat, so I just went to SuperFast a little late to have a couple hot dogs with Summer during their Paint the Town Green and Gold celebration.

After we ate, I stopped by my house for a few minutes before continuing to Oakland. I wasn’t really there to close mass tickets, but instead spent some time troubleshooting a widespread print issue we’ve seen. I didn’t really get any results, unfortunately, so I’ll likely still be working on it some more tomorrow. I fussed a little about how much I’m doing, and Gary kind of snapped back that they could put someone else in my position, but there really isn’t anyone to place there that won’t need months of training just to be a little bit helpful. I think he sometimes forgets that he makes $11 grand more than what they want to pay me, and $8,000 more than what they “accidentally” signed my contract for this year.

Still, I was the last one to leave the office for the day. I did what I could, and at least for the time being, it’ll all still be there for me tomorrow. I went home to change, then went to the shop to pick up the canopy Summer borrowed from the Brothers, Ridgewood. The gate was locked when I arrived to return it, so I continued on to my parents’ house to pick at some leftovers for dinner.

I received a refurbished Dyson fan today, and though it’s far from the worst condition that I’ve ever seen in a refurb, it wasn’t at all good. Paint was rubbed off in several places, and the thing was filthy with the exception of a new filter. There was heavy dust and black, oily smudges all over the thing. I fired an email off to the manufacturer, and hopefully they’ll do something about it, otherwise it may just be returned.

As with most things here, the more you dig, the angrier you’ll be.

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Hate Heat

I woke up pretty early this morning and waited around until Eaddie was ready to go ride her bike. Then I brought her home with me so she could ride, but she ended up sitting in her room here for a couple hours before she left. I cleaned up and then had to run by SuperFast where Summer and her team were decorating for Paint the Town Green and Gold.

They wanted to paint a mural of a football field on their window, so I set up a projector and some paper towel that was thin enough for them to see the projected image on the other side. Eaddie and her friend Aaron rode their bikes there and helped a little bit before going on their way. I eventually left to try and help Dad with his pool pump issue, but he had given up for the moment.

Even being inside Summer’s shop, the heat sapped me and I felt gross again. I cooled down at home until Eaddie made it back home, and then we went back by the shop to see Summer’s progress. They were almost done, so Eaddie and I went on to my parents’ house for spring rolls. Summer met us there once she was finished, and we had dinner.

I hung around for a little while before coming home to wind down. I played tug-of-war with one of the girls that was trying to play music on her Google Home/Nest speaker at their house. It absolutely infuriates me that the stupid speakers are supposed to be able to identify who is talking to them, but there is no way for me to control who has access to my YouTube Music account. It shouldn’t let any of them play from my account, and it’s ruining my suggestions and causing a headache any time we happen to be listening to music at the same time.

It just makes me incredibly cranky.

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Everything Day

We got up this morning and the purse/wallet collection I bought Summer was delivered, so I surprised her with that. Autumn was up and wanted CJ’s for lunch because evidently none of them had ever had it. Eaddie wasn’t interested, but I met Summer and Autumn there. It was more disappointing than usual, with small patties and soggy fries.

I rode back home feeling super muggy, and eventually got cleaned up enough to go shopping with Summer. I picked her up and we went to Walmart to pick up some things for her Paint the Town Green and Gold for Tech next week. Then we went back to get Eaddie so we could deliver her to the bowling alley for a double date.

Autumn had to work in the evening, so Summer and I just went to my parents’ house for beef spring rolls while we waited for Eaddie to finish up. We took a peak at the pool pump that had seized up, then took a bolt with us to find an extracting socket that would fit. Eaddie finished up and we all went up to their house for the evening.

Summer had some laundry to get going, then went to bed while Eaddie and I watched some House. Being school season, Eaddie gets tired really early, so we only got a couple episodes in before she started dragging. I finished up my routine and tried not to get to sleep too late.

Shoulda gotten the rain suit…