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Battlestar Bingetactica

Summer got up this morning and made a trip to town for breakfast food. She came back and made some awesome sausage, bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits. Then she started the kids on chores and we basically just binge watched the rest of season 3 of Battlestar Galactica.

We made it through the first few episodes of the last season before everyone had to settle in for bed. It stormed quite a bit in the afternoon and early evening, so we never left the house to ride the Grom like she originally planned. It was nice to have a down day after yesterday though.

No reason to get excited.

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Conquer the Buffet

I had to set my work alarm this morning to get Summer to Little Rock for her Conquer the Gauntlet race. Her group started at 10, but she had to get registered first and wanted to be there around 9. It was a pretty quick and uneventful drive, and we stopped at a gas station so I could get snacks on the way. She would be racing with Dylan, and I assumed Hannah and I would be doing something else, but when we pulled in she made me pay the $10 for spectator parking.

She got registered and we met the others. They brought their dog Jovi to hang out as well, who was a big hit with everyone around.

Once Summer and Dylan got started, the three of us waited around and tried to decipher the map and find the best places to catch them at the obstacles. The first stop was a little bit of a wait right near the start, where they had to cross a pool of water using inclined monkey bars. Then we found another spot where we thought we could catch two obstacles, but we ended up only getting to really see one. We had to wait for over an hour for them to get there, and we seriously thought we had missed them somehow. They finally came trudging along just as we were contemplating heading back to the finish line.

When they finally did finish, Dylan and Hannah left for other things while Summer and I hunted down some food. My snacks were awful and I hadn’t felt well all morning, so I wasn’t up to being very adventurous. Summer decided on Tokyo House for their buffet, and we made our way across greater Little Rock.

Everything was great there, and somehow I managed to overstuff myself far more than I’ve done in a long time. I was absolutely miserable the rest of the day and into the evening. We came straight home without any other shopping stops as I had intended, and Summer got cleaned up from her race. Eventually I had to take Noah to work, and then I went home to nap a while until Summer was ready for me to take her to her 20 year class reunion at Old Bank.

After dropping her off, I headed home and napped on and off a while longer until she was ready to come home. I think her reunion was probably both harder and better for her than mine was, but all in all I think we’ve both decided reunions are for the birds.

May be time to finally pay for some of that web hosting now…

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Have fun doing the dumb things without me!

This morning actually felt like fall weather. The air was cool on the ride to work, and it was quickly downhill from there. We all got a super slow start, but Jason was quick to tell us we had a bunch of undesirable work to do without his help. I can’t stand his attitude on the best of days, and lately it’s just been super shitty. Even Ben was out there in the graveyard with us. It wasn’t even particularly awful work to be done, so I don’t get his vocalization to the rest of us. We had a relatively good time out there.

Allen and I went across the street for Fry Day at Smackin’ Wings again. This time we sat right behind Gary and Heather since they beat us there without inviting us. They had beef queso nachos or fries on special today, and they looked super nasty when we got them. I got the fries, but wished I had gotten the chips like Allen. They needed a whole lot of something else to make them better. When we left, the guy that delivered the food to our table came up and said they comped our food because it took too long to serve us. In reality it was actually faster than our last visit, only taking half an hour from the time we sat down. Even Gary and Heather waited longer than we did, but they ddin’t get their food for free.

I spent the afternoon wrestling with my athletics iPad Pro some more, which evidently they purchased for the sole purchase of underwater video for the swim team. I don’t fucking understand this place at all. The high school was on a pep rally schedule, and Allen was in a helping mood, so he and Brice met me there to run a short cable and climb a ladder up to the cafeteria projector. I was happy to accomplish that much, but annoyed to hear Brice say he was all caught up on his work orders while I’m still drowning in 1:1 devices that have to be shipped off.

After work, I met the girls at my parents’ house to help cover the pool. I really wanted to swim again, but it’s been cooling off fast lately. I hate how little use the pool gets after the very first part of the summer. Eaddie wanted to work out with Summer, so I took Autumn home with me. We watched a little bit of The Office until she was ready to go to the homecoming game. I dropped her off and then came home to fight with some Google stuff on my phone. When she was ready to leave, I picked her up and we waited for Noah to finish at work. We picked him up, got his bag from his house, then went up to Summer’s for the evening.

It was our fault. We wanted instant gratification, and soon the screens felt like home.

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iPooed

I really felt like I sunk the entire day into a stupid iPad Pro that we couldn’t enroll in our device management system. Even Ben sat down with me for a while and tried to help, but it just didn’t work. Eventually I just had to get up and take a break, so Allen came over and took us to Subway for lunch. I got more and more aggravated all afternoon as I kept finding myself surrounded by people not working.

After work, I rode home and took the car in for an oil change. Summer was beat from a pretty rough day herself and wanted me to get dinner for her. It started to downpour, so I hung out at the shop until it settled down as they closed up. I ran home to change shoes for the evening and called in an order to Spices, then went to pick it up along with the girls from karate. Back at her house, I finished up some leftover tacos with Eaddie before catching an episode of Battlestar and then going to bed.

I did my fair share of homework when I was younger. I don’t need to be doing yours too.

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Rice Nazi

Waking up was just awful this morning. It was so bad that I sacrificed most of my routine and went back to sleep for another 30 minutes. Most of my morning was pretty sluggish after that, but I kept at it.

Allen and I went to Wind Taste for lunch since we got coupons yesterday. It took them over half an hour to get our food out to us, and they told us they were out of eggrolls after the fact, but that we could “tell her next time and we would get free eggrolls on our next visit.” Moments later I heard her turn around and ask a customer standing at the counter, “you need something?!” I’m fairly used to dealing with people that don’t speak English natively, and have trouble with the nuances of tone and phrasing. This bitch just doesn’t try. When we finally got up to pay, she took one look at my coupon, scolded me for trying to use an expired one, and then charged me full price. When we got to the car, I took Allen’s coupon in and threw it on the counter and told her once more that these coupons had just been delivered the day before. She shifted tone, fussed that the advertisers were wasting her money, and apologized. I didn’t get any money back, or the eggrolls that I had already bought, but I suppose that was the best I could have hoped to get from her.

The afternoon was mostly more of the same, except with interns in my office. I had to call the sign company about our broken display because evidently it had become a “hot button item” with the superintendent. Hilariously and almost predictably, they told me the company that made it was going out of business, and that rolling a truck to work on it would be a complete waste of money. I guess the poor children will have to go without for a bit longer. My initial thought was to wonder whether having a monochrome sign by the road benefited as many children as having an esports team would have. The cynicism cut deeply today.

After work, I brought the Grom home and took the R1 out for a wash. It had rolled right over 16,000 miles coming back home this weekend, so it’s time for another service from the worst dealership I’ve ever known. I guess I could forego the stealership and take it to a third party instead. Hubbard has always been good to me with tires. I miss the hell out of Valley Powersports though.

After washing the bike I picked up some cheap mozzarella sticks at Sonic, traded vehicles and went to Walmart for some salad, then went to Summer’s for some leftover pizza. Then we jumped right into a couple episodes of Battlestar Galactica until bed.

A kick in the butt is worth a thousand words.

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Receipt Hunting

I took the Grom in to work today since the R1 was still buggy from the weekend ride. The only thing I really remember about this morning was that I kept pretty busy until lunch. Allen wanted Wendy’s, so I met him, Zach, and Gary there. Then I spent a little time at the shop before going back to the high school. I had the interns finish up with the laptop repairs, and worked on some weird laptop sleep issues myself.

After school, I ran back by the shop to pick up an HDMI cable I had forgotten earlier, then went back to the high school to replace an in-ceiling cable that had been broken. The new cable wasn’t quite long enough to get where I needed to go, but I really needed to extend it through a passthrough keystone anyway so the cable going into the laptop would be smaller and less of a ridiculous diameter. The run took me way longer than I expected for as short as it was, but I got it done.

Mom had just enough leftover shrimp noodle soup for me to finish, so I headed across town right after work, then made it back home before dark. I was feeling pretty exhausted, so I stayed in for the evening and just hunted for service records for the R1. I hate that I didn’t have a better method for keeping up with that stuff before, and I’m still not completely satisfied with aCar/Fuelly, but it’s the best app I’ve found. I guess if I really cared enough, I’d write my own. I just miss my palm prē so much.

Well look at that. Time for another ridiculously overpriced service from the worst dealership I’ve ever encountered in my life.

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Retire S’more

Today didn’t start with an overabundance of direction, but somehow I found my way pretty quickly. I got a bunch of stuff closed out, and moving around a bunch made the day go by a lot faster. It also helped that I left for an early break for Becky’s retirement shindig. I had to get some gas first, but then I ran to Walmart and grabbed a huge bag of knockoff Golden Grahams, two bags of mini marshmallows, and four bags of chocolate chips. I thought I was being clever making s’mores trail mix, but a quick search on the internet showed I was far from the first person to come up with that idea. I did think about adding a twist with pretzel sticks sprinkled with liquid smoke, but I didn’t have the time to experiment with that properly.

I brought a couple laptops with me so I could get some work done, and just sat in the lounge with Becky for quite a while. It was nice to visit with everyone again while wishing her well, and we just had a rotation of people coming in to eat lunch with us. Brice came by a couple times, but I’m not sure where he had holed himself up to work. I didn’t get to spend as much time just socializing as I would’ve liked, but it was a great change of scenery working outside of my office for a while.

After lunch I went and got the interns from the library and let them dig into some of the computers I’ve had sitting in my office. Nathan seemed openly knowledgeable and excited to show that he could do things, while Spencer just quietly got to work and started fixing laptops. I was really happy with how well they jumped right into it with such limited direction, and throughout the afternoon I got a better idea of how to utilize them better.

When I finally left work, I ran by Oakland to get my bowl before going home to change. Then I went by the shop to get the girls so Summer could go to the gym, and we went to my parents’ house to clean up some leftovers. We got back to Summer’s just a little before she did, I tinkered a bit, and then we went to bed with some Battlestar. Eaddie came in and watched just a few minutes with us too, which was nice because she’s usually reluctant to hang around for very long.

Space sure does have the best glassware.

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Gromroll, Please!

I slept pretty well last night after a couple Aleve to dull the aches of the day. Summer left to get the girls home and start some cleaning before lunch. Mom had leftover beef spring rolls ready for lunch when they got up. Summer and Eaddie wanted to ride their bikes, so I drove Autumn and met them there. Autumn was more or less a lame duck, but Eaddie at least pretended to watch Dad work on their telescope a bit.

After a little while, we all headed home so Summer could get some time on the Grom after several weeks without. I wouldn’t let Autumn stay at the house, so I gave her the choice of riding with me or riding her own bike. She reluctantly climbed onto the Grom with me, and we made our way to the park. Summer and Eaddie beat us there on their bikes from my parents’ house, but the parking lot was cluttered with cars for a ballgame, so we rode up to the highschool instead. Summer jumped on and did really well today, weaving through the concrete parking bumpers and other obstacles. She even left the parking lot and drove around the little streets around the campus.

They all had to get home to finish their chores before school and work tomorrow, so we all rode back to my house and they headed home. I milled around and did some cleaning myself after having a Full Throttle to wake myself up. I took care of the pets, started some laundry, and got things ready for work in the morning.

Try to remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh, so mellow.

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Under the Limit

I got up this morning and headed home to get ready for Bikes, Blues, and BBQ. The bike was washed, but I still had to clean and lube the chain as soon as I got home, and then it was a quick shower and scramble around the house to find all the little things I wanted to bring. We met Allen at his house, then followed him to the ATM and then to pick up Charlotte. We took the interstate all the way to Ozark, and I’m surprised we didn’t lose them for good right then and there.

The gas station was packed with bikes, but somehow they spotted us once they got there. Charlotte made it all the way there without eye protection, so Allen made her pick up some sunglasses and we sat down for a quick lunch. I thought we’d just pick something out of the hot case, but Allen and I both ended up ordering for table service. Summer and I shared a ribeye and eggs, and he had a chili dog while Charlotte ate a hamburger from the case.

We hit the road as soon as we finished eating, and I should have talked to Allen first about his speed. It took me all day long to convince him that his speedometer was reading way too high, and that he was just barely crawling along. I took it super slow, but we just kept losing them and having to stop and wait. I figure he averaged in the low 40s, and even being passed by an SUV wasn’t enough of a hint for him. It made my ride pretty miserable, but he just refused to try and keep up, which hasn’t ever really been like him in the past.

We made one stop for gas just as we got out of the woods, and then made our way to Dickson Street. The place was packed just as it always is, but I managed to snag a parking spot right on the corner of where we’ve always parked before. Allen and Charlotte finally caught up to us, and we made our way down to the food tents. I got my refillable cup for way cheaper this year because they offered a single day cup for $10 instead of the normal $25 or more for the whole weekend. Then we wandered around collecting a little swag wherever we could.

The train pulled in after not very long, and we decided it would be fun to take a ride to Baum Stadium instead of driving. The train left every half hour, and even though it was a short ride, I thought it was worth the $10 round trip tickets just to experience the old train cars.

Baum was typical as well, but this year RumbleOn came out swinging with a wind tunnel money booth. Summer and I both got a turn in exchange for our motorcycle VINs, and we really scored big time. They had some funny money thrown in along with the singles, but we could use it to buy prizes from their booth. I caught $12 in real money plus like another $25 in the fake stuff. Summer did pretty close to the same, and they rounded us up a couple times just to give us more stuff. We walked away with 22 singles, two shirts, and two insulated cups, as well as a couple souvenir poker chips made for the rallies.

We hit all the tents there, then took the train back to Dickson where we got dinner. I had the best alligator I’ve had yet, which was battered like catfish. We all basically lost the Cherokee Casino wheel spin because we all won $10 in free plays, when all we really wanted was some hand sanitizer or lip balm. We wandered around a little more, but were pretty exhausted by that time, so we headed on home.

Allen still refused to keep up, so we just left them and made the trip home as quickly as possible. I thought it had started to sprinkle just as we got into town, but it was really just a massive cloud of bugs hanging out over a bridge by the lake. It was super gross, so we had to shower before we could do much else. When Allen got home, he called and said he dropped his bike as we were leaving Fayetteville, but luckily nothing was damaged. Overall, aside from an incredibly slow ride, it was a great success.

Next year we’re riding the Grom so they can keep up.

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♬ I Told the Butt Doctor I Had a Bloody Poo ♬

♪ It’s been leaking blood from me just like it was a geyser! ♪

I forgot my badge and keys at home this morning. I also forgot to take my meds after deciding to take them a little later in the morning rather than before I left for work. None of that seemed to matter much though. I went with Amanda, Heather, and Gary to hang a TV above James’s piano. I had an above average time drilling into the brick at first, but I could tell the bit wore out pretty quickly. We were supposed to rehang another one I had hung last year because they wanted it higher, but the class was occupied and we didn’t make it before lunch. We ended up killing some time in Heather’s freezing office, chatting with Kevin a while until lunch.

Allen and I decided to walk next door for FryDay, where we sat across the room from Heather and Gary since they didn’t invite us. We both got the three meat fries special of the day, which was beef, chicken, and shrimp over fries with garlic butter and “taco sauce” which was more of a taco-seasoned cream sauce. It was all good, but left me a bit gurgley from all the butter. I took a half sick day to go to the gastroenterologist for my meet and greet.

I went home first to change, then went to my appointment and filled out a bunch of new patient paperwork. It was probably the least painful that I’ve ever experienced that process, and the girls at the front desk were just great. I thought Dr. White was a relative hoot, though he definitely controlled the conversation. I was most impressed with how quickly I was in and out of there, and I wished I could have that experience ever again in healthcare.

After that conversation and subsequent scheduling of a proper pooperscope, I went home and got the Grom to see Summer at the shop. They weren’t super busy, so I got to tell her all about my doctor visit before going home. I relaxed for just a little bit before taking my bike out for a bath. Then I met Allen at his place for a quick polish on the bikes. With that done, I had just enough time to get gas with him, and then head on home to prepare for the evening.

Travis was hosting a Star Wars Monopoly night, so I went to get Summer and we met him and John for game night. I was either the first one out or the winner, depending on who you ask. A great time was had by all, and Summer got to bring home an oddly monochrome JAWS sink stopper. By the time we wrapped things up there, it was time to get home and into bed for the early ride in the morning.

♫ He said that, “Poo-py, oooh ah ah! Ting tang, walla walla bing bang!” ♫