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A Steakhouse by Any Other Name

My voice came back just a little bit today, but it was still a bit of a struggle. By the end of the day I could at the very least speak out loud consistently, but the tickling cough is here. It was actually a pretty slow day, so I spent most of my time messing with Rocket League trying to make sure it would run for the kids in the lab.

Gary, Zach, and I went to Colton’s for lunch because I had a BOGO birthday coupon. Allen was going to meet us there, but somehow drove himself to Brangus and sat at a table for four by himself, and had food ordered before Gary called him to ask where he was. We really do wonder sometimes how he functions at all. I’m betting his service was much faster than ours though, as we couldn’t make it back to work on time. I even boxed some of my food up, and we still couldn’t make it.

After work, I stayed late to help Jullie with a new laptop she thought she messed up. It really didn’t end up being much, so I told her 20 bucks would cover the time to help her get Office installed.

Once home, I spent some time in frustration trying to get a Sam’s Club membership going. I was going to share with my parents, but Julie said she already had a membership for them all. It would have been nice to be a part of that conversation originally, but instead she fussed about dealing with family being a headache she’d rather avoid. I feel like she’s usually the least common denominator there, but whatever. I finally got mine done, and shared with Clint, because he’s a pal.

We should make him drive himself every time just to see what percentage of the time he shows up at the correct place!

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Above the Fold

My voice was still gone today after losing it last night, and it never really got any better all day. I had to run to the high school to pick up something from Dale’s office, and Al caught me in the parking lot to ask for some personal PC care. I offered to come by his place since he’s not far from my parents’ house for a measly 20 bucks, which he giddily accepted. Then he mentioned that the esports article had already hit today’s paper. I ran into Karen as I made my way inside, and she made a comment about me being a celebrity, so I stopped by the library to take a look at the paper there. She let me keep a copy, and I made my way back through Oakland and then to the shop to show everyone.

Jason was finally back to work, at least for a half day. He seemed much softer spoken than before. I didn’t notice the weight loss the way Gary had, but hopefully it helps him kickstart the changes he needs to make in his life anyway.

When I finally got to the junior high, Ronda and Jessica called me down to give me a collage they made of the newspaper clippings. Jessica even designed a gamer cow clipart, complete with a little cow patty. It didn’t stop there, though. After a quick lunch at McAlister’s with Zach, Gary, and Heather, I came back to a shirt with “DIRECTOR COW” on the left breast, and “CYCLONE ESPORTS” on the back. It was really all a bit much right off the bat, but I was excited that they were happy.

I finished up the day by wrapping up a bunch of work orders, and even took Autumn with me to Oakland to do a couple before picking up Noah. From there we met Summer at CiCi’s for dinner. We ran into Karen again while we ate, and eventually I headed home for the evening where I did anything I could to clear my congestion before going to bed early.

I don’t know anybody that’s ever been in the paper and said afterwards, “yeah, I said that!”

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The Interview of a Lifetime

I woke up this morning congested with all kinds of crud, but felt just barely well enough to get home and showered before work. I went to the shop to call Rachel so she could coach me for my interview with Travis at The Courier. We joke about it a lot at work, but it was kind of funny to hear someone actually tell me in an official capacity that my role was to promote the district and myself as the esports coach. Obviously we’re selling something here, but some of our guys give it such negative light because it seems like it’s the same few people parading about as though they have some idea what’s going on, and those are the ones that always seem to get paid the most while the hard-at-work get whatever pickings are left.

I had only just made it to the junior high when Ben said we could meet up with Johnny. I did a quick work order, and then went to meet them. As if it was to be a day of only poor timing, I no sooner shook Johnny’s hand than Ben asked me to drive across campus to pick him up. We eventually got settled in, and Johnny had a lot more to say and lead the conversation than I expected. I actually didn’t even really break out the list of questions I had been curating, particularly after he got to the point where he said classified staff likely wouldn’t be payable in a coaching role. There are loopholes that we may be able to jump through, and different things that may be possible to offset my time out, but it seems like things are going to have to change quite a bit before what actually happens aligns with that which is right.

We wrapped that meeting up with just barely enough time for me to make my way to The Courier, where I met up with Travis, who I hadn’t seen in a decade. He was relatively cold, direct, and straight to the point, but relatively professional given our history. I still don’t quite know his angle on the story after trying to answer the questions he had for me, but I’ll have to trust that he’ll continue the “good relationship” Rachel spoke to me about earlier in the day. When it was all said and done, Joshua took my headshot and walked me out.

From there, I went to a late lunch. Solo, melancholy, free grand slam at Denny’s, as years and years past. I think it was good after a bit of a nerve racking few days. Nobody else from the team even mentioned lunch.

The afternoon flew by pretty quickly, and I found myself rushing to get back to the junior high for esports practice. Kids poured in like never before, and I ended up with one more student than computers. I’m not sure where they went, but at some point it evened out. I don’t know if maybe someone’s parents showed up, or what. I’m not even sure how responsible I am for that at this very volunteer point in time. Gary stopped by for a while and was impressed. Then Joshua showed up to take some pictures. Our conversation went much better than the first time. I think Gary helped, as he is wont to do. The highlight of the entire day was talking to a father of a student, and hearing him say, “no son of mine is going to be a filthy casual!”

Validation to my ears!

That wrapped up my work day, so I went home to do what little housekeeping I could muster, then ran the birthday freebie gauntlet all the way to Summer’s. Three free sandwiches with the purchase of two drinks. Not too shabby.

Esports! Will It Turn Your Teenager into a Mass Murderer? Click here to read more!

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Convenient Recovery

I woke up yesterday morning with a scratch in my throat that only meant one thing. I went down for the whole day with fever and aches. We went to Summer’s before lunch and cleaned up some leftover pork chops, but she brought it to me in bed as I spiraled downhill.

I couldn’t ever really sleep, and didn’t want to, so I never donned my CPAP as she went about her day. She cleaned house and eventually went to an Eagle Scout ceremony for a past student, and to take the girls something. She came back with some egg drop soup from Linh, which along with a healthy handful of black pepper, helped me feel better for a bit. I think I ate too much though, and eventually felt a little sick to the stomach when I finally tried to go to sleep.

She girls eventually made it home and milled around finishing chores before bed while I passed out. At some point, I woke up and fetched Summer from the couch.

This morning, I arose to my hour-early alarm with relative ease. I coughed up a bit of the darkness, and then headed home without too much trouble. I met Ben at 7 to make our way to Arch Ford for the ARKSTE conference. I didn’t feel too bad, and I think the DayQuil helped. The drive did feel like it took a super long time, but it really could have just been me experiencing that drive at the speed limit.

We got there just a couple minutes before they unlocked the doors, then made our way in. I saw some familiar faces from other conferences, and had a little better time putting them to locations. Things kicked off a bit late, which seemed to set the tone for the rest of the day.

My first breakout session was a bust. There was literally nobody there to teach the class. Shane came in, said it was “Powered by Howard,” and then told us to talk amongst ourselves. I left and had a donut, eventually meeting up with Ben for a minute before splitting off to an 8-bit computer session. I was a bit late, but I didn’t seem to miss a whole lot. It was a neat project though, for at least a couple of kids.

Lunch was late. David’s Burgers flipped the date or something, so we were told it would be a few more minutes. We continued through an awards ceremony, and ultimately to our next sessions while food was promised in the vendor area. The session I attended was no more helpful than the others, but did seem useful for the teacher that spoke at my previous one, so at least one of the four of us in the room got something out of it. I eventually made it in to a Minecraft session lead by some hippie from DC that didn’t seem to have much of a clue about anything other than the pH of the water he was drinking. It wasn’t wholly unentertaining though, as we broke into conversation a couple times for the laffs.

Neither Ben nor I won anything at the closing raffle, so we made our way back home with handfuls of leftover burgers. I chatted with Gary for a bit until quitting time, and then went home for a bit. I started to feel pretty bad almost immediately, so I didn’t really get any of the cleaning done that I wanted. Instead, I gathered myself and headed to Summer’s for the evening and crawled into bed.

I started to feel better after laying in bed for a while, but this fever just keeps coming and going. I guess we’ll see what happens tomorrow.

Maybe I’ll die from it all.

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Large Scale Shopping Trips

We got up this morning and headed to Hot Springs to pick up the aquarium stand I bought from PetSmart. There wasn’t an option to do a store transfer, so we just decided to make a day of it. We stopped in Ola for a potty break, and then made it as far as Nimrod Dam before she ran off to the bathroom again.

When we got through most of the mountains, we stopped at The Shack for lunch. I let myself get a little rushed when placing my order, so we both just got small burgers, and then we had some sweet potato fries and onion rings. It was all pretty good, but unremarkable. The homemade lemonade was amazing though, likely because of how much sugar it had.

Once into Hot Springs, we went straight to PetSmart and wandered around for a while before driving across the parking lot to go to Bed Bath & Beyond. I don’t even know how many hours we spent in there. I passed up some clearanced clear ice molds in favor of splurging a bit more on some larger round ones. We did pick up a FitBit smart scale though, which turned out to be a bit cheaper than I expected. It didn’t take much thought to decide to return to the store to pick up the last three on the shelf. As I was checking out, the cashier mentioned hearing us talk about them and said she thought about getting one for herself. I left her one to stick under the counter, and we were on our way.

It was time to eat again, and it took us a while to settle on something. We ended up at Osaka Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi Bar, where I had trouble finding anything that looked good on the menu. I didn’t realize it when I declined the option to sit at the grill, but evidently they had different menus depending on where you sat. It turned out okay though, because Summer really liked her teriyaki combination, and I had the katsu don, which was really tasty and cost about half that of what I would have ordered from the hibachi.

After we ate, we stopped by the sexiest store in town to see what all the fuss was about. It was really just another one of those places where retail pricing is still ridiculous, and I was super surprised at the variety and quantity of people that passed through while we were there. I guess it’s just marketing and convenience, and hopefully not a generous return policy.

We stopped by the spring water fountain and filled our box full of bottles on the way out of town. I took a perceived shortcut on the way out just to see what it was like, but the lack of lighting made it a worse choice overall. We did just barely make out a yard full of toilets though. As we made it out to Hot Springs Village, we stopped at Walmart for another bathroom break and perused a bit for some cookies, beer, picture frames, and any clearance stuff we found interesting. Then it was over the mountain and through the fog to get back home.

Alexa? Lights! Camera? Action!

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Persistent, innit?

We started this morning at the shop without too much news. I had testing, so I was out all day for that. Evidently the alternative was to do all the work running cables and hanging touch panels for Brice. I don’t know why anyone fights it, because he’s going to be our boss eventually anyway. I got another email from Travis about esports and continued to try and put together some kind of response for him. Even after I calmed myself down, it shocked me to hear from him again so soon. I guess nothing really would have prepared me better.

Dale and Allen called Pizza Hut for lunch, but after waiting for about five minutes for anyone to show up, I decided to meet Zach, Ben, and Amanda at La Plaza. What a mistake. It took them 40 minutes to get our food to us, and every single one of us got something wrong with our food. Then it took them several more minutes to check us out with barely an apology.

I finished up testing, then spent some time at the shop before heading home. I fed Grey some more wet food and sat in the floor with her for a while. Then Travis emailed me again at home. It was easier to respond in a personal way rather than through his Courier address, and we exchanged a few emails basically trying to ignore the history. He added me to Steam, we traded phone numbers, and then I headed to Summer’s.

I stopped by Oakland on the way because I forgot to get the squash and okra that Tammy brought me out of the lounge freezer. Summer warmed up some leftover pork chops and baked beans with potato salad. We ate, and I laid with her on the couch for quite a while before we came back to my house for the evening.

And so as you hear these words telling you now of my state

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Of My Own Making

Four days in, I was pretty tired of sitting in the office at Oakland. It only made it worse to get an email about stale tickets from the junior high. I had such a bad attitude about it that I brought my Switch to kill some time. Sheri grumbled at me a bit, but then left me to it. I ended up putting it down to help someone cut out some laminated note cards. I really peaked then.

Travis emailed me from the paper. I kind of figured it would happen, and had been trying to think of a way to bring it up first. I guess it’s just as well that it’s done now. My stomach was in too many knots to respond today since my anxiety went through the roof. I nearly shut down completely for a while, but forced myself out to lunch with Allen and Brice.

I continued sitting around after lunch until I could leave and go to the junior high. I tried to catch up on work orders there before heading home for the evening. I did a small water change in the aquariums because for some reason the heater was warming everything up to around 90 degrees. Then the best I could do was crack a couple beers and start exploring in Breath of the Wild with Grey by my side. I did manage to kill a giant. I still felt guilty though, because he was just sleeping in the shade. He only came after me because I woke him up when I got too close.

Bury it under the chicken.

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Time to Waste

Somehow I managed to stay pretty busy today while Oakland was testing. Bryan emailed me earlier this morning before I even had my shower, and then called me while I was sitting in the office. He was having trouble signing into his school email on his Samsung email app, and I guess he didn’t feel like asking Amanda. When I failed to resolve it over the phone, he called Gary who came up with another working solution. Then I spent a good portion of the morning messing around with a stack of atomic wall clocks that I was told didn’t work. As far as I could tell, they all kept time. It’s possible they just weren’t syncing with the WWVB time signal but would keep time if manually set. In any case, I made a wall of them by the window and got jokes or comments about it from every soul that made it through the office today.

I met Dale, Allen, and Brice for lunch at Subway. I had a BOGO code that I used to order online, which saved me the headache I saw everyone else go through while in line. Having two 6-inch subs also meant I got to choose two different types, so I ate the tuna there and took the BMT home for later. It ought to warm up nicely in the oven.

After lunch, I spent a little bit of time at the shop before heading back to Oakland. I brought entertainment, but I didn’t even get to break it out, much to my own surprise. When they finally finished testing, I headed to the junior high to take care of some older work orders.

When I got home from work, I cleaned up a bit at home and got Grey to eat a little bit of a new can of food. I guess she just doesn’t like leftovers. Then I ran by Walmart to pick up some lettuce for dinner. Summer grilled burgers and baked some sweet potato fries that all turned out really well. Then I pushed her to make her own photo book before we all headed to bed.

I’ve got toooo much time on my hands!

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Freesports

I was locked up at Oakland again today with a menial data entry task to keep me busy. The day actually went by pretty quickly, but it definitely wore on me. I enjoyed the break at Taco John’s with Dale and Allen. I talked myself into trying their quesadilla tacos for $too.much, and though they were good, they still felt like they should have been nearly half that price.

I finished up testing in the early afternoon, then got to pull the fire alarm on my way out. I stopped by the shop for just a few minutes, and then headed to the junior high to meet up for esports. I had nearly as many there as I did last Saturday, which was both good and bad considering there is still only one of me running the show, and I’m not having to put any effort into drawing people in. It will be nice to get some true answers on funding and AAA regulations, so hopefully Johnny gets back to me on having a meeting. At least Matt came by to see us this time.

I had to pick up the slack on a few work orders before I left since I haven’t really done any work at the junior high since the middle of last week. I’ve also gotten some criticism for my office lately, so I need to make time to clean that up as well. I simply don’t have enough hours in the day.

Summer went to Autumn’s band concert, but as late as I got home and as hungry as I was, I just stayed in and tried to take care of as much as I could there. Grey still didn’t seem to want to eat, and I assume she’s not eating dry food while I’m away. She’s not acting like she’s on her last legs, but she’s not acting well either. She won’t even perk up for gravy at this point.

The last of the evening was spent parsing through every photo I’ve taken since Summer and I went to the football game. There was no way I could pare it down to just 20 photos, but the end result of twice that many pages really seemed priceless anyway. I’ll always have the digital copies, but now my coffee table will have them too.

If Fi only had a heart!

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Testees

I really hardly did anything today, but it still seemed to go by pretty fast. Oakland started a week long session of all-day ELPA testing, and I’m being made to sit through the whole thing. I had just a couple of things come up there that I could work on, but the rest of the time I was burning through my phone battery. I was down under 40% battery well before school even let out.

I met Dale and Allen at Arby’s for lunch, but that was pretty uneventful. It was kind of nice to chat with Dale for a minute after Allen left though. On the way back, I stopped by the house to pick up my new Rocket League stickers from Sticker Mule.

I spent a little bit of time at the shop chatting with Ben before heading home to clean up. I had to stop by Walmart for some bacon on the way up to Summer’s for dinner, where she grilled pork chops and fried some potatoes and Brussels sprouts. After dinner, we watched an episode of Parks and Rec with the girls before they went to bed. Then I spent the rest of the evening contemplating esports and the Arkansas Activities Association. I never anticipated so much bureaucracy.