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Harry Potter and the First MacGuffin

Autumn talked us into watching the first Harry Potter this morning while we ate breakfast. I’m a bit burned out on them by now, and I’ve got too many other things I want to get watched.

We finished the movie and I took them home, then spent a little bit of time messing with Summer’s lawn mower before feeling too sick to continue messing with it. I headed home, got the dishes cleaned up, and started some laundry. Then I spent the rest of the evening playing Gunpoint before heading to bed early.

Welcome to the seedy dark web of black market medical equipment for legitimate use.

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Dinner and a Shower

The girls went home this morning to clean house while I sat around the house with my head cold. Summer brought some potatoes back for me to bake for dinner, and once they were finished, I went to pick them all up and head to my parents’ house. We went for a swim until the charcoal was hot enough to start cooking, and I grilled some steaks, hot dogs, and Polish sausage. I thought that was it, so I jumped back into the pool, but then Mom brought some squash and shrimp out to grill too.

We decided to eat outside, so Mom brought everything out to set the table, and then we had to battle the flies. It would have been much easier to build our plates inside. We mostly finished without incident though, and fortunately everyone had just finished eating by the time we got a little shower of rain. It didn’t rain too long, but everyone was ready to come inside for dessert anyway.

When we got back home, we watched Tag to much delight, then went to bed.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

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Every being in the universe knows right from wrong, Mark.

I’ve been struggling with my head cold all day. I didn’t want to sleep in too late, but I wasn’t much use either way. Summer went home to try and mow, but had trouble with her mower. The most I could do was muster enough energy to take a shower in the late afternoon before going to my parents’ house.

When Summer finally got back with the girls, we all loaded up and went to visit my parents for dinner. Autumn, who turns her nose up at everything, had a couple ribs and some steamed rice while the rest of us had fish soup. I probably should have added some hot peppers to my soup to help with my congestion, but I just wasn’t up for the space tonight.

We stopped by Sonic on the way home for a couple drinks, and they seemed to have forgotten us for about 20 minutes, so I had to walk up into the building to see what was up. There, the kid told me their system had messed up and didn’t show that we had checked in yet, and I guess he didn’t bother to look and see. Back at home, we finished watching Mamma Mia, and then I put on K-PAX and watched it with Eaddie while everyone else went to sleep.

I wanna tell you something Mark, something you do not yet know, that we K-PAXians have been around long enough to have discovered. The universe will expand, then it will collapse back on itself, then will expand again. It will repeat this process forever. What you don’t know is that when the universe expands again, everything will be as it is now. Whatever mistakes you make this time around, you will live through on your next pass. Every mistake you make, you will live through again, and again, forever. So my advice to you is to get it right this time around. Because this time is all you have.

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Hangin Around

I could have had most of the day for work orders. We were supposed to hang one of my touch panels in the afternoon. Instead, I volunteered to help Zach and Jason hang some security cameras at London. They had lost an extension cord somehow, so we first had to run to Lowe’s to buy a new one. At least I got to pick it out this time, and I chose an auto-retracting one that can mount to the wall or ceiling. It ended up being about the same $100 that we would have paid for one with a manual reel anyway. When we finally got to the school, Zach started putting cameras together, and Jason sort of apologized but mostly excused himself for sitting on a bench with a bum knee.

We worked through the first half of lunch and then headed to the junior high for chili dogs. The others finished pretty quickly and were ready to head back to the shop for some reason, so I wrapped up and we went back. Then they sat around the shop until it was time to go to the middle school to hang two of Allen’s TVs for him. Of course he took the day off so he could have a four day weekend.

I was supposed to work on some network configurations with Gary in the afternoon, but he wasn’t up to it, and I ended up just sitting there to run out the clock. Back at home, I felt my head cold slowly get worse through the night. Summer came over and we watched a few more episodes of The Office before I had to take a shot of Nyquil and head to bed.

Well, it looks like there’s going to be a clean-up on aisle five.

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Tired Again

I’ve spent every morning this week waking up so tired that I don’t know why anyone would ever want to be retired. At least I felt like I got a lot accomplished at work. I’m still getting a lot of work orders coming in, and I still have projects ahead of me that I need to finish sooner than later, but I feel like I’m learning things at a faster pace.

I spent the morning at Oakland before Ronda and I went to Long John Silver’s for lunch with my BoGo coupon, then I spent the afternoon at the junior high. Tomorrow may be kind of rough with projects, depending on who all decides not to show up. I’ll never understand the mindset of the people on my team when they say they can take an extra day off to make it a longer weekend. That’s literally always the case.

After work, I went to my parents’ house and met up with my newly retired father. It’s probably not even possible for me to retire from a job after 43 years now. I guess I could from the school, but I’d like to make enough money to do more than eat by then. Summer and Eaddie came over and had curry with us when they got out of their respective athletic activities. Finally it was back home for an earlier bedtime.

I should have taken tomorrow off so I could have a four day weekend…

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Moment of Focus

I stopped by Oakland to wrap up a couple things before heading to the junior high to get the chicken biscuit that Summer got me. Once there, I spent a little time running around, then found myself intensely focused on some System Center stuff. I started digging around in Ryan’s OS deployment task sequence to see how it ticked, and I was actually having fun.

During one of my trips out of my office and across the building, one of the SpEd kids had gotten loose and was tearing down the halls with all kinds of people chasing after him. I wasn’t sure what my place in all of this was, which only got worse when I turned a corner and found him running straight toward me. I nearly tackled him, but Joe got to him first with his tallman legs.

When I finally got out for a late lunch, I went to Wendy’s for a dollar Double Stack with a free order of Baconator fries. I’m killin it with cheap lunches lately. I just took it with me to the shop and continued working on things there until the end of the day.

It started to storm really hard right before quitting time, so I hung out a bit late finishing some stuff, then went to Summer’s for dinner. She made some slow cooker ribs, and we tried watching something educational instead of the Vine compilations the kids kept wanting to watch. I’m sure my parents thought I was rotting my brain doing the things I did as a kid, but these days I feel like the memes have reached critical mass, and kids are just completely ignorant. It’s always the same 5-second videos over and over again, and they’ve nothing to learn from it.

Back home, I finished sorting socks and worked on a computer for a while longer before heading to bed. These mornings are killing me.

What have you done?

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Fifty Dollars an Hour

I’ve been having so much trouble getting out of bed all week. I really think it’s just the time of the year, the temperature, and the daylight hours, because I always get this way coming out of summer.

Allen and I were supposed to meet at Long John Silver’s for lunch, but he ended up ditching me because he couldn’t communicate effectively. I decided to try McDonald’s for another dollar burger, but then Ronda messaged me and said she had a soft taco left over for me. I went ahead and got the Big Mac, then went to the junior high to eat everything.

I wanted to get back to Oakland for a bit, but I got busy fighting with their sign computer at the shop until quitting time. From there, I went straight home to get the gas lawn mower to make an exchange at Walmart. For some reason I thought it might be best to park by the garden center, but I ended up having to walk all the way back to the service desk. It took another couple trips across the store and some explaining to a manager, but he ultimately agreed to give me an additional $50 discount to the already low negotiated price bringing my total to $200 for both mowers. It wasn’t an awful way to spend an hour, but now that I’ve mastered the art of negotiation, I want to see if McDonald’s will sell me a Big Mac for 75 cents.

Just as I got packed up and climbed into the car, Julie said she was on her way to Pasta Grill for Dad’s birthday dinner. I pulled up just as my parents did, and Julie came along a bit after we were seated. We were sat right by a large table full of some Asurion folks, and Ben waved to me as we left. Most of the rest of them can go to the hot place. The jambalaya pasta was amazing.

When I got back home, I started a load of laundry and then headed to Summer’s with my leftovers. I couldn’t stay long though, because folding socks is another thing my smart house won’t do.

That cow is staring right at me!

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Today’s Theme: Internal Conflict

I haven’t felt even close to 100% all day, and there’s always some thing or another gnawing at my brain. I had quite a bit of trouble getting out of bed this morning, but finally made my way to Oakland to play catch-up from the end of last week.

When I got back to the Gardner building, I wandered upstairs to check out the maintenance guys’ progress on gutting the auditorium seating. They were tearing everything out to haul to the scrap yard. I had, and still have strong urges to salvage a couple rows of seating to build a proper home theater. They told me to take all I wanted, but in the end I told Wesley I wouldn’t take any because I have too many higher priority projects that I’m already having trouble starting.

It would have been a pretty amazing opportunity to restore some of those seats, and they were infinitely customizable. I could have built a multi-level seating area and had a real home theater with as many seats as I could physically fit. In the end, I had to make the tough choice not to get any because I wasn’t sure that aligned with the best possible endgame – not to mention simply not having any more physical storage for something like that. Still, it felt like such a shame to let it go to scrap metal.

Insides in knots from my decision to pass up on the seating, I went to Taco John’s to redeem a reward for a combo meal. At least lunch was free today. Then I spent the afternoon at the junior high picking at random work orders to close.

After work, I went to Walmart to try Ronda’s suggestion of haggling with a manager for the electric lawn mowers. I was again conflicted, asking myself why I was there to buy a lawn mower at all. I hadn’t even mowed my lawn in years, but depending on where you look, they were originally $478, $358, or $250. The local store had them for $199.99, and with only two left, I had some dire need to have them both for under $200. They called a CSM out to help, and she said she could only do $300 for the pair. I started to text Summer for feedback, and she came down to $275, then just as quickly to $250 for both, which I accepted. I guess this was my motivation to start mowing.

From there, I went to Summer’s for some leftovers before heading home for the night. That was when I realized that the manager had actually scanned two of the gas powered mowers on my receipt, and had the maintenance guy load one of each into my car. It was an easy mistake to make with the way they were stacked on the shelf, so I guess I’ll have to go back tomorrow to correct it. It’ll be interesting to see if I can talk them into giving me a refund on top of the exchange to get my price below $200 like I wanted.

Josh, Aaron, and Justine were online when I sat down at the computer, so I played a couple really quick rounds of PUBG with them before heading to bed. With any luck, I won’t keep myself up by thinking about all those theater seats going to waste.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

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Bargain Hunters

I tried not to sleep all day today, but we still didn’t get out of the house until the afternoon. We went to Walmart for a bit of grocery shopping, but hung around long enough to do some perusing through any clearance we could find. I very nearly picked up an electric lawn mower, but I’m glad I didn’t, because I think I may be able to haggle it down to an even lower price anyway.

We grabbed some deli food on the way out, then went back to Summer’s to put things away and eat. Dad made kolaches, so we went by there for just a little while before heading back home to receive the girls.

Autumn brought home three goldfish and a bowl after Summer told her she couldn’t have a fish in her room, so we put them in with the turtle instead of going to the pet store for more feeder fish. Then they got to the chores they skipped out on before they left the night before. Just after they both went to bed, Apollo ate all the fish. Somehow I feel like the lesson was lost somewhere.

#nomeansno

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Mow Money, Mow Problems

Summer wanted to sleep in pretty late today after staying up late watching Avengers last night. We finally rolled out of bed just before noon because I was hungry, but I didn’t really have any good food around. She wasn’t hungry, so I just warmed up some frozen, grilled hot dogs. They were awful, but I never got sick. I think they were just freezer burned.

We eventually got out of the house to get the girls, then went to her house to start mowing. I tried to help a bit, but the battery for her string trimmer didn’t last very long. At one point I went to get her some more gas, and I had forgotten how to pump gas at a pump without a built-in credit card processor. I took a couple short turns of a couple laps of mowing so she could take a little break, but otherwise I was mostly useless.

Nick picked up the girls for the evening, so Summer and I went to Mulan’s for dinner, then came back to my house for the night. She was so beat from mowing that she passed out pretty much right away. Hopefully I can get some stuff accomplished tomorrow before another week of work.

I miss behaving.