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Tip Squad

Summer got up a little early today to pick up Autumn. They brought breakfast back, and the girls all watched Criminal Minds while I started cleaning up the kitchen. Eventually they had to go home to get ready to visit with their father, and I continued cleaning and started some laundry.

When Summer finally came back in the evening, I ordered dinner from the food truck Spices via Bite Squad using a discount code I had. The service was pretty polished, and the fees showed it. Each restaurant had a fee that seemed to be based on how far away it was, but then they also suggested a percentage-based tip of 18% of your order total. I remember being happy about $2 tips back when I delivered pizza for a living, so the $6 tip they suggested during my ordering process really rubbed me wrong after being charged a $2.99 “booking fee.” Comments online seem to indicate that drivers only actually get 50% of the tip if you put it on your card too, which is downright evil. It was cool being able to track the whole process though, and I guess under $10 to have food delivered from a non-delivery restaurant isn’t grossly unfair to the customer.

The delivery guy passed my house and tried to deliver our food two doors away, but I yelled down the street to get his attention, then gave him a $5 cash tip since I opted out of the default 18% on my card. Overall the Bite Squad experience was good, but had a poor value, so I couldn’t recommend it without a promotional discount, or being too drunk to get out and buy your own food. Summer really enjoyed her noodles from Spices though. My rice and skewered meat dish wasn’t very good and seemed way overpriced for the amount of meat it had, but it did the job.

After we ate, we ran to her house to pick up my car and some things for her, then stopped to rummage through Kmart on the way back to my house for the night. I picked up a corkscrew for future conference shenanigans.

They’re off to find the hero of the day!

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The Crimes of Grindelteen

Autumn woke us up a little early this morning saying she needed to go home to shower and change. Summer wasn’t too happy about it after how she had already been acting last night, so she packed the girls up and headed home. I showered and headed to pick them up to go to the movies. We dropped Autumn off with her grandparents first as punishment, then went to Wendy’s for lunch.

We got to the theater plenty early, but it was unnecessary. The three of us nearly doubled the number of people in the auditorium. I was aggravated at how dim the picture was, and dark scenes were nearly indiscernible. I’m convinced that crappy theaters are responsible for killing 3D. The movie itself was alright, but seemed unnecessarily confusing at times. Whimsical flashes of fantastic magical creatures were interrupted by boring and convoluted conversations about the plot that was happening in the background. It all seemed mostly uninteresting in the end.

After the movie, we went to the Neighborhood Market to pick up a few things for Thanksgiving, then dropped them off at Summer’s. While we were there, we unpacked the things we got at Kmart the day before. Mom made chow mein, so after we finished putting everything together and away, we went to my parents’ house for dinner. I called Julie to try and plan Thanksgiving, and I think we’re relatively prepared.

When we finished there, we came back to my house to finish season one of Stranger Things before bed.

Should things at some point go terribly wrong, it’s good to have a place to go, you know, for a cup of tea.

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Harry Potter and the Prequel about a Book

The girls beat us out of bed this morning. Summer started on breakfast, and I grew my colony on Oxygen Not Included. After we ate and Summer got some chores done, she and Autumn went to the gym while I went home to shower.

I played a little Rocket League while I was waiting for them to get done, and then I went back to their house to help bring dinner back to my place before we all went to pick at Kmart’s Big-Karcass. We spent about three hours wandering aisle to aisle, picking up a few things. We didn’t get to cover the whole store, but I got hungry and gave up for the night.

We came back to my house and started heating up the chicken, broccoli, and rice casserole that Summer made, then ate while we watched Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Autumn barely touched it, citing a lack of hunger. Compounded with prior bickering about wanting to change the plans we’ve had for the past two days, she was left out of dessert, and likely won’t be going to the movies with the rest of us tomorrow.

Well, my philosophy is that worrying means you suffer twice.

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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*