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I’m the damn paterfamilias!

Summer and Eaddie went to judge an event at the high school this morning. I slept in a while, then got up and fixed some leftovers from last week for Autumn and myself. She mostly sat around watching TV or on her laptop, and I milled around fighting boredom. When Summer and Eaddie got back, they got a few things done before going to pick up their new eyeglasses. I loaded up Oxygen Not Included and played for a little bit before taking a shower.

When they got back, Summer left the girls with me and went to the gym for a while. I continued my game until she returned and eventually started on dinner. After we ate, we turned the lights out and put on O Brother, Where Art Thou? until one by one the girls fell asleep.

We ain’t one-at-a-timin’ here. We’re MASS communicating!

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Tough Pill

Just after I fell asleep, I was woken up by a call from someone looking for pills. It took me a little while to fall asleep after that nonsense, but I managed. I seem to remember having a few weird dreams though.

We didn’t really have any group projects today, but Ben wanted to go over some phone documentation with me so I’d have a clue what’s going on. Nobody else is at all interested, and I’m still trying to sponge up everything I can. Brain to marshmallow fluff, that got me almost to lunch.

Dale, Zach, Jason, and I went to Morelos for lunch. That made two days of Mexican in a row, but it was good. I had the chili verde lunch special, and it was awesome even if I missed having the salad extras they include with fajitas.

I spent the afternoon at Oakland fixing a few things, but mostly socializing before everyone left for Thanksgiving break. Then I wrapped up with about half an hour at the shop with everyone before we left a little early.

Once home, I had a couple beers and watched my Rocket League solo rank drop some more. Seriously, those silvers are pulling off some crazy moves. I feel like things have changed since I last played competitive solo very much. It wasn’t too long before Summer was home and wanted me to pick up some chicken strips for dinner, so I ran by KFC on the way up, and we wrapped up the night with an episode of Stranger Things, followed by a couple odder episodes of The Office.

Huggy time!

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Ensurance Racket

I had to babysit more testing today, but it was more of the same not needing me. I left a little early to go to the shop and sign up for some supplemental insurance. I avoided the $400/year dental plan, but opted in to the Luxottica vision monopoly. I figure for a year’s worth of payments, I can renew my prescription and get some new glasses and contacts, and then cancel again.

Gary, Heather, and I went to Las Palmas for lunch, and then I went back to the junior high to finish up a few things. I didn’t make it to Oakland like I wanted because Summer wanted me to run Autumn home. We stopped to get her some Wendy’s on the way, and I came home and had some leftover ham and stuff.

The rest of the evening was pretty well wasted in the cold, but at least I won’t have to fight the frost in the morning.

What a pianist!

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Moocho Mango

I bummed a lot of favors today. Julie gave me a ride to work this morning since it was so cold out. Once there, I took the work truck to the junior high to babysit the testing. Nobody reached out to me even once, so I just sat in my office for almost all of it. I did manage to squeeze a little bit of work in though.

Summer didn’t finish with her testing stuff until the kids were already a bit into their lunch break, so she was upset about not getting to eat anything. I gave her a Soylent and then ran home to eat some leftovers for lunch, and dropped off some pallets while I was there.

After lunch, I stopped by Oakland for a little bit before going to the shop. The Murano was ready at the shop, so I had Zach give me a ride out there, and then I drove back to the junior high. The bill was quite a bit lower than I expected, which was awesome. I even got some replacement valve stem caps since mine went missing a few years ago.

When I finally left work, I headed home to change before heading to Summer’s to load everyone up to go have dinner with my parents. Mom made some mango soup, warmed up some leftover fried rice, and Dad made some garlic bread. It was all a bit of an odd combination, but everyone but Autumn found something they really liked. I guess she had filled up on hot dogs when she got home from school.

We all retired back at Summer’s for the evening, where I played around on YouTube a bit before bed.

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Workin’ Truck

I took the Murano in to Orr before work this morning for an oil change and brake fluid recall. I missed my time to catch a ride to work with Summer, so I got Zach to come pick me up. Then I took the work truck to the junior high and worked until lunch. Summer and I grabbed a quick Thanksgiving lunch in the cafeteria, and then I met everyone at the shop so our Belkin rep could take us out for Fat Daddy’s.

After lunch, I helped Gary and Zach clean a bunch of stuff out of the server room before heading back to the junior high. I got several things done to be ready for testing tomorrow, so I don’t anticipate much trouble. I am however still aggravated with another reported 25 missing headsets in my computer labs. It’s insane and unnecessary.

Orr called a couple times throughout the day. First was to ask if they could service my in-cabin air filter. I noticed some foam blowing out of my air vents over the summer, so I had them go ahead and do that. Then I got another call to say they had to order a part, and wanted to know if they could keep my car overnight. Since I agreed to that one, and Ben couldn’t let me take the other work truck home for one night, I had to get a ride home from work. Daddy to the rescue. He picked Eaddie and me up at Gardner, dropped her off for karate, then took me to the high school so I could snag Summer’s car while she was at a quiz bowl scrimmage.

I ran home to change before picking her and Autumn up, then dropped them off at Karate and the gym before heading home to do dishes so they could eat here tonight. I guess I spilled some rinsing agent in the dishwasher the last time I filled it up, so I started to get some suds leaking out of the front and had to get the carpet cleaner out to suck it all up. Once it settled down, I went to karate to see if Eaddie wanted to go shopping with me. She didn’t, so I went to the Neighborhood market for some rolls, picked Summer up from the gym, then picked the girls up from karate and headed home.

We watched the ending of Scooby-Doo while we ate the leftovers, and then the girls headed home for bed. I decided I’d rather ride the bike to work in the cold than lose an hour of sleep. Then Julie called to talk about black Friday deals, and we ended up talking for over an hour before bed. She said she was working nights for the outage and offered to take me in to work in the morning after she gets off, which worked out perfectly for me because I don’t fit into any of my leather any more.

Look, I’m a man of substance. Dorky chicks like you turn me on, too.

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Get Lost

This morning was kind of slow because Dell sent a tech out to replace a power supply for me. I didn’t want to leave the shop if he was about to give me back my machine, so I stuck around. It didn’t fix the issue though, and in the end he thought there was a problem with the CPU or motherboard, so I didn’t even get to return the computer. I read up a bit on Lanschool – just enough to remind myself that I hate things, and then went to Quiznos with Zach and Sara.

I spent the afternoon at the junior high, mostly tracking down missing peripherals in one of the labs. It’s super annoying that teachers just let the kids do whatever they want, and I’m really only support for the equipment they do have, not the equipment they don’t have. They should never have missing equipment. It’s ridiculous.

Nearing the end of the day, I finally ran an HDMI cable for Matt and hooked his docking station to his TV. I couldn’t test it without his laptop, so hopefully it works right. Then the girls and I waited for Summer to get home from her trip so we could go eat at my parents’ house. We had to run by my house for some batteries first, and then we made it for bún bò Huế. Autumn had some leftover chicken alfredo, and Mom ate some seaweed.

I had forgotten again about my Murano service tomorrow morning. I never did hear from anyone after I scheduled it online, so I’m going to be upset if they don’t get me in. I didn’t want to leave my car in the freezing rain overnight because it would slow me down even more in the morning, so I dropped the girls off at home and then came home myself to clean up and go to sleep.

Can we just donate our tiny bonus to the PAC instead?

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Minigiving

Summer hit the gym first thing this morning while I got up and ready. I picked up some La Huerta to go for lunch and we ate that before making mashed potatoes for my Thanksgiving with friends in the evening. Summer did most of the work but didn’t even get to come enjoy it with us.

The day went by super fast until I had dropped everyone off. First it was Summer at the high school where she and Hannah would head to Rogers for their PD. Then I dropped the squabbling girls off with their grandparents. John and Melissa lived just a few blocks away from there, so I joined them super early. John and I made a quick run to Kroger for some extra things, and then Veronica and her crew showed up. Travis didn’t show up, mostly expectedly. We had high hopes though.

It was really nice to catch up with everyone. After the fact, I wished I had made more of an effort to offer my phone up for pictures, but we all look younger in blurry photographs anyway. It’s crazy how time flies.

I stuck around to chat for a little while after Veronica’s family left, and was ultimately sent home with a ton of leftovers for the rest of the week. It was a really good time.

*Decade-running gags*

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What imperative does a grey box have to interact with another grey box?

Summer got up and took Autumn to an eye appointment this morning. I slept in a little while, then got up and moved her new TV cabinet into place and hooked everything up. Her TV didn’t fit in the cabinet, so it had to sit way up high on top of it. She made breakfast when she got back, but had to go help her mother because her car wouldn’t start.

After she got back and ate, I headed home to clean up and waited for her to come over. I played a little more Rocket League and had a shower. Once the girls’ father picked them up, she came over and we went out to New China for dinner. When we got back home, we watched an episode of Black Mirror, followed by Ex Machina. Both were pretty trippy, but I’m not sure they had quite the suspense we were looking for.

Actually that’s someone else’s quote.

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Miranda, the Hacker

The veterans day assembly was this morning, so we didn’t have a meeting. I wonder when the rest of us will get an assembly for getting real jobs out of high school. Without any other group projects planned, I spent my time imaging a laptop for Sheri so I could set up a docking station for her before lunch.

Kevin called me before I got out of the shop and said they thought Matt’s account had been compromised. I told him to just reset his password, and we could investigate afterward. Not even five minutes had passed before they called Heather for help. After almost no research, I found out that Matt had used a Google Form last year for computer lab issues, and though he stopped pushing it on the staff, someone else had bookmarked it and used it. This created an email from him to Miranda that she responded to, making him think someone had emailed her from his account. Somehow he felt it more likely that he was hacked than for someone to use his form again.

Crisis averted, I headed to Oakland to set up the docking station, and then met back at the shop to take a load of people to Buffalo Wild Wings. Afterward, I went back to Oakland and finished some work orders. Before I left, Sheri told me she needed help finding her circle. I had no idea what she meant until she pointed at the Start button on her old Windows 7 laptop. I got her pointed in the right direction, and taught her some two-finger gestures to use, then headed back to the shop for the end of the day.

We got to leave work 30 minutes early for the parade I wasn’t going to, so I went home and played several losing rounds of Rocket League before going to Summer’s for the evening. I grabbed some light Taco Bell on the way, and then went to bed relatively early.

Freeto Breeto

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Network of Cards

It’s a little terrifying watching Jason and Brice mess with SCCM. I’m kind of just sitting back and hoping for the best. Hearing them talk about it doesn’t inspire the same kind of confidence I get from Gary, but I guess that’s just a whole different level.

I spent most of the day at the junior high getting things done. I took a slightly early lunch with Summer since she had the afternoon off for some training. While we were at Wendy’s, Matt called her griping her out for not doing something that she definitely did. She fussed over it, and how she had covered her bases with Joe, so loudly that the lady behind us came up and said she didn’t know who Joe was, but even she was aggravated at him.

I spent the rest of the school day at the junior high before ending my day at Oakland. I finished up a few things a bit late, then went home to change before heading to Summer’s. Nick was going to pick the girls up from karate to bring them home, so I stopped by Little Caesar’s to grab a pizza for Summer and myself. We polished that off, then binged The Office until bedtime.

Only one season remains.