Looting GallopingCow will bind him to you.
Looting GallopingCow will bind him to you.
Once we got to that stopping point, I cleaned up to go to Summer’s for the evening. She had a pretty terrible day at the shop, so I stopped by McDonald’s for a couple Happy Meals. I used to do that occasionally if I had a rough day, and it helped me feel better. Then we watched some Jeopardy! on Netflix with Eaddie until bedtime.
Impendingiving Day!
I tried to sleep in, but kept being disturbed by a noisy group chat to the point that I couldn’t go back to sleep. Instead, I got around and had some breakfast and cleaned up a little bit. Summer wanted me to bring her headlight bulb to the shop so Alex could try to install it again, so I took the Grom and tried to help. He was still finishing up with lunch, so I went to get Summer a Whopper before coming back to look at it. He got the headlight assembly out without too much trouble, but I had to run to the high school to get my little soldering iron because he couldn’t find his. Ultimately we did get it working, and hopefully it’s secure and light enough inside the housing that it won’t go anywhere.
On the way back home, I stopped by Walgreens and had to wait a bit to pick up my prescription. They have a standing area slightly away from the counter for privacy, but she might as well have used the PA system for my pharmacist consultation. I’ve not been particularly shy about having them, but standing there while a stranger tells me to apply a cream to my rectum for hemorrhoids did make me feel a little silly.
Finally home, I milled around the house and picked up randomly, stopping at some point to take a shower and play some Oxygen Not Included. I got tired pretty quickly and eventually hit a wall and passed out relatively early.
Gotta publish.
We got up this morning and had some leftover barbecue for brunch, and then Summer left for the gym. We wanted to head to Little Rock early so we could make a day of it, but I ended up feeling a little crummy and we only really had time to stop at Sam’s in Conway. We wandered around there until a good departure time to arrive at the Splash Thanksgiving shindig close to six o’clock. Ben, Sarah, and the kids were all in the kitchen of their new historical house-office finishing up dinner, so we got a tour of the rest of the place. Having an office there seemed unnecessarily expensive, but maybe it’s not as bad as I suspected. Nobody asked my opinion.
Overall it was a good time, and we both got some practice talking to new people. I was really glad I decided to dress way up, even though Summer said not to worry about it. There were people wearing jeans to be sure, but otherwise it was a pretty clean-cut crew, and slacking on formality wouldn’t have done us any favors. We mingled for just a little after dinner, then headed home so Summer could go to sleep for work in the morning. Then I stayed up for the next six hours self-learning optometry so I could purchase cheap eyeglasses with greater confidence, because that’s the kind of shit I do for fun apparently.
F = Fcyl*(SIN(Î))2 where Fcyl is the cylinder power and Î is the angle between the cylinder axis and the new meridian.
I couldn’t sleep in this morning for all the light pouring into the house. Summer had to work, so it was just the girls and me all morning. Eaddie came out and played some Mario Kart and Ultimate Alliance 3 with me for a bit. Eventually I headed home to clean up, then went to pick up some food from Grant and Robert. Evidently Felix helps out there occasionally as well, and then Ray stopped in and chatted with me for a bit while I waited. Grant came around and handed me a big sack of meat that I took to the shop for Summer, along with some rolls and chips from the Neighborhood Market. The ribs were thick and meaty, and some of the best we’d ever had. At first I thought the sauce was a bit overpowered by apple cider vinegar, but it really grew on me as I continued eating.
Once we were stuffed from that, I finally stopped by Walgreens to fill my prescription. Then I headed home to try out Destiny 2 on Stadia. The game ran great, and though I absolutely despised playing it on a controller, I felt like it helped the input latency feel less significant. Overall I was very impressed with how well it ran, and also pretty overwhelmed by the unnecessarily complicated nature of the game. Hopefully Stadia will be great for some racing games though.
After a while I got really cold in the house, so I decided to warm things up by doing a little cleaning. I got all the dishes done and cleaned up a bit of space in the kitchen before Summer got here. The girls spent the night with their father since the Splash company Thanksgiving event happens tomorrow evening, and we can have a good day in Little Rock until then. Once she did get here, I showed her a bit of Stadia and how much anxiety I have about how much is going on in that game. We were going to watch Battlestar Galactica: Razor, but ended up watching a few Tesla videos instead until we were both too tired to stay up any longer.
I’m actually only feeding two, but one of them is me!
We met at the shop this morning but didn’t have any projects, so I ended up walking around vo-tech with Ben and some guys that were going to quote a cell dialer for our fire panels. Afterward, I went inside and did a couple little work orders before heading back to the shop for lunch. Allen was the only one at the shop, so he and I left to meet Gary, Zach, and Jason at Brangus for lunch. My beef spud was particularly good today.
After lunch I got a bit of an ocular migraine and had to sit down for a while. Gary came into Zach’s office with me since Zach left for a lockdown drill, and we chatted about what life is like being surrounded by girls. Nearing the end of the day, we started to look at my PowerShell script again, but ultimately left without learning much even after Ben joined in.
I ran home to get my delivered Stadia package inside, then went to Russellville Eye Clinic for my appointment. I had to fill out some new patient paperwork and waited just a little while before they called me back. Then they set me up at a machine with a little farm house inside it, and it wiggled around until it had my approximate prescription. Most of my time in the back was spent giving them information about my past prescriptions, but at one point they brought the insurance lady back to talk to me, and it was my old classmate Brian’s mother Donna that recognized my name and came back to chat briefly.
Overall, my experience at the clinic was wonderful, and everyone I dealt with was super friendly. I guess nobody really went way out of their way to do anything necessarily, and the girl that helped me initially seemed pretty new, but nothing about my visit was deserving of any of the 1-star reviews the place has on Google Maps. Once I complete my contact fitting and get new glasses or whatever, I’ll have to add my own comments.
When I got back home, I set up my Stadia and tried to load up Destiny 2, but encountered an error. Clint said the game servers crashed earlier today, which made me feel better about it not being a Stadia issue, but I still didn’t get a chance to play anything before I had to run to Summer’s to get the girls. Autumn had a date to go bowling, and the rest of the family chaperoned. The boy seemed nice, though awkward and possibly a bit outwardly immature for a 17-year-old. It was a good time though, and a couple girls I knew came up and bowled next to us. Taylor mentioned their annual Halloween party and said she would have to make sure I got the invite next year, and before they left I had to point Alex out to Summer because she didn’t really recognize me as the one who bought their Grom.
The girls went to bed pretty quickly once we got home. I sat down to re-skin my Pixel 2 XL, and got the new screen protector on as well. Then I lost myself in Zenni Optical for a while before heading to sleep.
I had forgotten how beautiful this bare phone is.
When we finally left, I went straight to Walmart to exchange Summer’s defective TV. Everyone I dealt with was excellent, and they had a newer version of the same ONN 50″ 4k TV, so the swap was pretty straightforward. A guy named Dustin insisted on walking me out with the new one, and I guess he’s going to school for some flavor of IT because that’s what we chatted about the whole way.
I went home for a little while and waited for Eaddie to get out of karate, then picked her up and headed to Summer’s for a little dinner. I caught up on the Tesla Cybertruck unveiling, which seemed more awkward than previous product launches from Elon. Then it was off to sleep for the last day before break.
Sometimes you’ve just got to sink a couple days into something to save yourself an hour of time.
I nearly had to amputate my hands from the cold ride in today because I was too stupid to wear my gloves. Otherwise it was a beautiful day to ride. I started at the shop and had Gary help me look at the deployment I was struggling to fix. Then Ben came around and helped prod me through a printer setup because I was tired of all the little one-off solutions left by my predecessors. I went to the high school for a bit, then came back to meet up with Allen, Gary, and Zach at Taco John’s for lunch. That place was super quiet for a lunch hour, but I don’t know what I expected on a day other than Taco Tuesday.
The afternoon went by pretty quickly as I ran around the building closing work orders. I got a call from someone at corporate Walmart letting me know to expect a call from the local store to set up an exchange of our bad ONN television, which was far more than I expected. I’ll have to meet with a manager there tomorrow, and they seem keen to do anything to make it right. I didn’t even intend to ruffle any feathers, but it’s nice they’re going out of their way.
After we shut that place down, I headed to Summer’s to get her TV so I could run it straight to Walmart after work. I tried to swing by and catch Zach, the manager, tonight so I wouldn’t have to risk the rain tomorrow, but that was a bust. Finally I headed home to bed.
Burnt out ends of smoky days…
It was a little warmer this morning, and I should have taken the bike. We finally started testing, and I immediately got called down to the opposite end of the campus for a non-issue that was resolved before I got there. I had a bagel for breakfast and couldn’t find a toaster anywhere. Asking around didn’t turn up a lot of suggestions, and ultimately Lee seemed to really want to go for a walk down to home ec, so we busted right into a full classroom and I bashfully asked to borrow theirs. Then I spent a bit of the morning catching up on some things that needed catching. Being an excellent multitasker, I was able to make a few calls while I was working so I could verify my benefits for next year, get back into my old retirement 401(k), and even get bounced around to a third and fourth customer service contact for Summer’s failing ONN TV that I got from Walmart.
I wanted to go to Ruby Tuesday for another $5 salad, and I should have just gone by myself, but Brice, Allen, and Jason all wanted to go to Long John Silver’s for a $5 meal coupon they sent out today. I was nervous when we encountered a sign on the front door asking customers to call a number to report if the restaurant was not open during its posted business hours. The guy inside even seemed a bit sketchier than usual, but we all made it out in the end with free drinks and an extra side of fries for Allen.
Jason wanted to come work with me at the high school in the afternoon, so after milling around the shop for a bit, we headed up to my office. I had him hunt down some Adobe stuff for Macs while I poked at another issue I was having. Then we took the trip across the campus to install Daniel’s software and set up Tina’s new computer. Jason had to leave just as school let out, and I kept tripping over myself trying to reconfigure the switch that Tina’s computer was plugged into, but at the end of the day Gary was able to save the day. I stuck around late trying to figure out why my test software deployment kept failing, and finally gave up so I could make it up to Summer’s for dinner.
She had stayed home sick today, and made spaghetti mac(?) since she didn’t have proper spaghetti noodles. It turned out really yummy though, and then we watched an episode of Parks and Rec with Eaddie before I headed home for the night.
Don’t you know what happened to the little boy who cried, “wolf!”
I slept really well last night, and all I wanted to do was stay in bed. It was a little chilly out, but it warmed up nicely. My morning went by pretty quickly as I caught up on things at the high school. Then Allen and I went to Pizza Hut for lunch. I saw Robert and Grant there and learned that they’ve both gone full time with their BBQ business, so I feel doubly obligated to visit them sometime soon.
After lunch, I spent a bit of time at the shop getting a computer ready, then headed back to the high school for the day. I ended up staying a little late because some student data wouldn’t migrate for me, and I eventually just had to give up and go home. Once there, I cleaned up a very little bit and milled around the house for a bit until bed.
Plenty of memories down Ridgewood…
Summer felt a bit off this morning and took a slow ride downhill all day. We got up and munched on a bit of breakfast and then she laid back down for a while. Eventually she tried to get the kids up to take care of some chores and Autumn seemed to be in some sort of mood that earned a stearn parenting moment. I wasted most of my time playing Oxygen Not Included or Lumino City. Summer had a nice pork chop dinner planned and eventually got up to execute that. I put on the National Geographic documentary Science Fair so the kids would have something perhaps a little less mind numbing to watch, and it seemed to grab their attention pretty well, but I wish it had been a little more educational.
When I finally made it home for the evening, I got started on some laundry and cleaned up house a bit. I even managed to frame a poster I’ve been meaning to hang for a few years, but I’ll have to find my way to the wall in order to actually hang it.
Parenting is way easier when you’ve never been one before.
