Back to the grind today. At least it gets me out of the house.

I loaned some money to a friend today. It never even occurs to me that this is a thing you can do. I always just made it work somehow. It can’t all be good fortune for me to be stable enough to do that. Maybe they need to spend more time in school teaching money management and accountability. These people can’t be spending their whole lives living paycheck to paycheck. That just doesn’t seem healthy.

After lunch, I took apart a teacher’s laptop to try and repair the DC jack. It’s amazing how little care is put into designing one of the weakest and most important points in a laptop. Fortunately it was much easier to get to the part than I had expected, and thanks to Amazon Prime, I’ll have the new one in just a couple days.

Mom called after work and had me come over to help her some more with her new phone. It’s not even that different, but she has trouble with the little changes because she doesn’t try to do anything herself. #generationprobs

Then I ate the spaghetti she made, and returned home for #laundryday #cleansocks.

I seem to have lost my motivation this weekend. I can’t find anything to keep my attention for very long. So many things I’d like to accomplish, and it’s impossible to get started on even one of them. I did finally manage to do a water change on my aquarium. Lucky fish.

My parents just got home from the Eureka Springs Cavalcade of Magic, so I went to their house to return their rice pot. Mom started grilling me about phones, so I checked her front door on a whim and found her new LG G6 had been delivered on Friday. It absolutely refused to pull alarms, apps, and settings from her old phone via the LG transfer app, so I just entered them in manually.

Afterward, we all met Julie and her boyfriend Andy at Linh Vietnamese Cuisine for some good old home cooking. I’ve got to remember that I don’t love their bún bò Huế. I don’t hate it, but it’s one of my least favorite things on the menu, so I left a bit dissatisfied, which is in stark contrast with the usual.

To finish the evening, I filed my taxes, but I found an error in how Credit Karma Tax was calculating my HSA contributions. The good news is that I owe $3 instead of $233. The bad news is that I’ve already filed, and will have to amend to get my money back. Yay government.

Grumble, grumble, death, and taxes.

This morning was all spent running new cable through the old high school gym. That’s when I stumbled upon the worst card game ever. We went to Cracker Barrel for lunch, and I picked up a package of BeanBoozled Jelly Belly beans to share with the crew. Only a couple were willing to take up the challenge. I had an unfair ratio of bad flavors, but that seems to follow tradition.

After work, Jesica absolutely insisted that we have an impromptu Moovie Night so she could cook spaghetti. By the time she got off work though, she was too tired to cook, and all she wanted to do was get a drink. So she, Will, and I went to the Old Bank for some good old fashioned alcohol and appetizer nachos. The nachos were surprisingly tasty, though sparsely topped, and the Flyway Bluewing Blueberry Wheat got me where I needed to be without protest.

I guess there’s always tomorrow for the Order of the Phoenix.

Now, please go wet your beak responsibly.

I don’t know if it’s the time change, the weather, or the current political climate in the US, but I’ve been having a lot of difficulty getting to sleep lately. My body will lie there restless while my mind races, which is the exact opposite of my lifeless body and brain-dead mind in the mornings. Something’s gotta give.

At lunch, I ran into Shain, a girl I was seeing for a few months a couple years ago. Or at least, I saw her walk out. She didn’t even look at me, but I got the feeling that she saw me walking in and decided to NOPE out of there. It could have been the fact that they were changing registers around and she was just in a rush, but that’s not the vibe I got. I didn’t feel like we left on bad terms necessarily, but Shain was the kind of girl that would just ghost you any time she felt stressed in a situation rather than communicate in any way, shape, or form. I heard she married recently, so I guess things can’t be going that badly for her. Besides, it’s not like I don’t have list of people I’m terrified to run into myself. Of all people though, I hope she’s doing well.

The machines were frustrating back at work, which made me really miss the people side of it today. I managed to get most everything working, but it just didn’t feel accomplishing.

Turn my head, it’s back to bed with no delay.

On the way to work this morning, I passed a guy on an ill-fitting bicycle that looked like he rode it straight out of a game of Grand Theft Auto, windbreaker and all. I’m talking about one of the older games, not GTA5 Online. I say that because he didn’t have bags of money raining down on him as he rode around giving a piggyback ride to a guy with a green mohawk. You see, that was a joke, because GTA5 Online is broken from all the “hackers” and cheaters. I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waitress.

This evening, in a perfect example of my inability to complete simple tasks without getting distracted, I set out to repair a leaky flapper valve in one of my toilet tanks. After a couple hours, I found I had recovered and cleaned up a lost herb planter from my garage and planted a stalk of celery to grow in my windowsill.

It wasn’t until I returned to find the toilet in a state of disrepair that I realized what I had done. There is no help for me. Save yourself.

Otherwise, today can easily fade away in time, completely forgotten.

Alexa, goodnight.

This is it. We’re doing it. No turning back. All or nothing. We’ll do it live. It’s a thing. Tell a friend.

It’s an ambitious, exciting, and sometimes terrifying feeling getting to be the dumbest person there, but I feel fortunate to be in a place where I can only look up. I may not ever get to the point that I know the inner workings of the universe the way that some of my coworkers grok them, but I like to think I have enough working knowledge and the drive, or at least stubbornness, to eventually figure things out. Today was an exercise in learning about networking, wireless, and secretly a bit of that old devil, subnetting.

I wasn’t alone, though. I made a friend in my travels.

And you know what? After spending nearly the entire day running back and forth, I finally figured it out. Rad.

After work, I spent some time catching up with my friend Jesica, freshly tanned from her spring break. We visited that fancy Walmart Neighborhood Market place for some canned chicken, kimchi, and bananas. She buffaloed them into baked eggrolls. Well, just the chicken. Frankly I’m surprised she didn’t mix the rest in too. White people are weird.

I wore this shirt today: