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Once more, with feeling.

I may have fussed a bit this morning about always being on Team Lift. Jason broke down and said I could trade with noodle-armed Amanda if I wanted, but I didn’t want to do that to her. That shouldn’t have been my call to make. I ended up having to break away to fix something at the junior high anyway, so I had to catch up to the guys at the high school after that was done. We ended up hanging one TV twice because Dale wanted it higher after the fact. We only managed two inches higher, but every bit helped.

After hanging those TVs, we took a break for lunch. I started thinking it, and then Dale said it out loud – Western Sizzlin. We were on the same wavelength, so it was a done deal.

When we got back from lunch, and after a bit of arguing about Jason’s incorrect direction for the naming of Allen’s 90 new laptops, we touched every one of them again to correct them. I ended up hitting a wall, and nobody else was anxious to do any work as usual, so we rode it out until 3:00 and headed home.

I got home and was assaulted by anxiety-inducing emails and tried to mellow out with a couple beers. Such a wasted evening. I was tired anyway.

She’s done worse for only two inches.

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Do you even lift, bro?

We split into uneven groups at work today. I, as usual, was on the heavy-lifting crew with Dale and Ryan. We spent all morning removing SMART boards and projectors from the middle school. We ended up taking down one we weren’t supposed to, but that’s just another day in the hood. While we were there, I ran into – or rather was trailed by – an old classmate, Mark. He stopped me to say hello and let me know he had just moved to the district. It was quite the blast from the past.

My foot had been bothering me quite a bit, so when we took a break for lunch and everyone went out, I decided to stay in and have some leftover pizza from yesterday. After lunch, the three of us went to the junior high to do more of the same. The difference there was that I knew my building and stopped us from doing the three extra rooms that weren’t supposed to be done. We even had some extra time to hang one TV because we didn’t have to wait for painters. Once we got back to the shop, I got to hear Jason complain about how heavy the one sever battery was that they lifted. I was quick to let him know that we lifted every single one of them when we unloaded them from the truck, moved the pallets to the correct building, and then unloaded everything into the server room by hand.

I left work and went to Summer’s as she got some things packed for the evening. I picked Eaddie up at karate and was recognized by an old acquaintance, Kyle, that was an instructor there. He was missing all the hair I knew him by, though. From there, we went to my parents’ house to swim for a while. Summer met us there and swam until it was time to eat. Mom made bún bò Huế, which I guess isn’t really atypical for their anniversary. It is summertime, after all, and there’s mint to be eaten. I wrecked Eaddie’s face in some foosball before we headed back home for bed.

It’s a tough job, but the chairs aren’t just going to sit in themselves.

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Hung

We spent all day hanging 70-inch televisions at the high school. Jason and Allen lead the way drilling holes into walls and mounting the brackets while Dale, Ryan, and I followed up to actually hang the TV and hook up everything else. It went pretty smoothly until we got to the rooms with drywall, and now we’ll have to get some plywood in order to mount them more securely.

Our sales rep from Howard bought lunch, buying basically enough for everyone to have a little more than half of a pizza. It was a good lunch, and I think everyone felt like they had been worked hard enough that it was a well-deserved break. I think we ended up hanging about 20 TVs today, and most everyone kept working most of the day, so I’d call it a success.

Once Summer finished up at work and got a quick workout in, we went to my parents’ for some leftovers for dinner. By the time we finished, we were both so tired that we headed home to bed.

I’ve got bats in the belfry.

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Nobody toucha my spaghet!

I got to spend all day at work on my own, and it was nice to only have to motivate one person to work for once. I spent most of the day at Oakland, but made some time for the junior high as well. The start of school casts an ominous shadow over what summer work has yet to be completed.

Gary, Zach, Sara, and I went to Morelo’s for lunch. Summer was at work right across the street, so I took her some on our way back to the shop.

After work, Summer came over and we went to my parents’ house for dinner. We stopped at Atwood’s first to see if they had any deals on kayaks, and then went to Kroger for a loaf of French bread. I’ve missed the garlic bread my parents made when I was a kid because they started buying premade frozen garlic bread slices. Mom watered her garden while I made the garlic bread, and then we ate when Dad got home. My bread didn’t come out as well as I remember it from the past, but I’m not really sure why. I think maybe the oven wasn’t hot enough at first.

Dad and Summer got on a Ray Stevens kick as we finished dinner. Then I snapped a picture of the moon on the way out.

At this rate, there won’t be any left!

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Dumpster Diver

We got three pallets of monitors in just before lunch today. I was told I would have three labs worth, but I only got two because other people wanted brand new monitors instead of the agreed-upon hand-me-downs. I get it. I understand why. I was just a little aggravated because I asked, got a count of how many I needed, and still had plenty of decent ones to go around for the handful that were needed elsewhere. That’s why we have plans. But that’s not how we do things here. Here, we make plans specifically so we can not follow them.

Allen and I went to Long John Silver’s for lunch, and it was super good. The girl charged us both a dollar too much, so after her manager took our receipts, she brought us a couple crispy dollar bills. I wasn’t going to fuss over sales tax, but don’t think I didn’t notice.

After lunch, we went to actually deploy the monitors, then brought the old ones back to the graveyard for storage. I had meant to keep a bunch in my office, but that didn’t happen either. I guess I’ll just have to transport them back again myself. Any more, I hate taking a team with me anywhere. Especially if it’s more than two other people. It’s much easier to direct one person without getting a bunch of grief over it.

Earlier in the day, I had seen a couple girls from upstairs bring a plastic shelf down. I thought they were putting it in the back of someone’s car, but they actually ended up throwing it away. It was still in the dumpster at quitting time, so I started digging it out. Dale stopped to help out of curiosity, and because most of the vertical pieces had made their way to the bottom. I had fished all but one of them out when I accidentally caught my glasses with my thumb and flung them into the middle of the dumpster. I was super lucky that they landed on some cardboard and slid down to the bottom and didn’t actually break or get super gross, but at that point I had to give up reaching in with cardboard sticks and climb all the way in. I got two ladders, set one up inside and another outside, then climbed on in. I retrieved my glasses, then found the final piece to the shelf. It went together splendidly in my garage, but I think I’ll be moving it inside just because it’s pretty clean and would make for better liquor storage than what I’m doing now.

I went to my parents’ house for some eggplant soup for dinner, then went to visit with the girls for a little while. Eaddie was playing LIMBO when I got there, and it was nice to see it hadn’t been completely forgotten by everyone. We watched a couple episodes of The Office before I had to head home and meet up with Clint to play some Overwatch. I did great. It was the rest of the team’s fault that we lost our second match. Ultrawide is interesting, but I sorely need a new graphics card.

You have been Monitored.

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Nut’n Nut’n

It was so nice being able to sleep the whole night through. I still haven’t been out anywhere to see the storm damage from the other night, but I keep seeing pictures of tree limbs down. Apparently the giant tree at the city park lost a major one.

We didn’t do anything today. Even Summer was feeling lazy. We watched a couple episodes of The Office between eating some leftovers, but it wasn’t a crazy amount of television either. We just sat around, all day long.

She eventually left to receive the girls at her house, and I spent the rest of the evening cleaning up. I may actually be making some headway in the garage, which will be nice.

Why has time accelerated so?

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Ghastly Gasping

We got hit with a pretty bad storm last night that knocked out power for half the town for the better part of the day. I was fortunately only without power for a couple hours compared to some others, but it still wrecked my sleeping for the night. I tried sleeping everywhere from the bed, to my computer chair, to the recliner. I had the most luck in the latter, but even that was very sparing as I found myself waking up gasping for air just as soon as I’d get a little deeper into sleep. When the power finally came back on around 4:30, I went back to sleep in the bed and dreamed that I met Elon Musk and proposed an idea that he liked well enough to offer to send me to Mars. Summer wasn’t too happy about it, but I didn’t get to go anyway because I had to pee too badly. His loss.

When we finally got up, Summer and Eaddie left and I ate some leftovers for breakfast. I didn’t do a whole lot else on my own because I was still pretty run down from the mixed night of sleeping. Josh wanted to go out tonight since we missed last night, so once Summer got back from working out, we met him at the Dardanelle Club for dinner and drinks. Our waitress seemed like maybe she was having an off day, but we made the most out of what we had.

After dinner, Summer and I came back home and watched some TV while I did a load of laundry. Here’s hoping to no more surprises tonight.

Like the crack of the whip, I snap attack!

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Heated Rampage

This week really flew by. Half of the crew was out today, so the remaining five of us kept busy with the few things we could do. First thing in the morning, we prestaged 10 of the non-touch TVs at the high school for mounting once the wall mounts come in. I was ready for two more truck loads, but nobody else wanted to do it, so we killed the rest of the morning waiting for a FedEx freight shipment. It finally got there right before lunch, so we unloaded it before heading to Subway for a quick lunch.

I spent most of the afternoon taking care of a few things at Oakland, and then it was home to change into something cooler to deal with the 114º weather. My Yakima FullTilt bike rack came in, so I unboxed it and mounted it to the Murano to check the fitment. It was super heavy, but seemed really sturdy and came pre-assembled. I’m pretty happy with it. The Murano looks ready for so many adventures.

The girls came over as soon as they could, and we took Bác Vân to meet the rest of my family at Western Sizzlin for a birthday dinner for her and my sister. It was a bit chaotic with so many people, but overall I think it went pretty well. Once we parted, we dropped Autumn off at her grandparents’ house for the evening, and the rest of us went back home to watch Rampage. It was pretty silly, yet entertaining. The 3D was excellent again, and I really felt like they’ve started getting that right recently.

I can’t stay awake.

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No Power to Breathe

We lost power in the middle of the night last night, and I couldn’t breathe for the few hours while it was out. I tried going to sleep without my CPAP, but I just tossed and turned and couldn’t pass out at all. Eventually the lights all came on and I was back in business, but I was ragged by the time I had to get up to go to work. I don’t know what happened, but it just affected a small area down my street.

Once at work, we hooked up the trailer to deliver a bunch of Chromebook carts. I feel like I have way more devices than students, and it just feels ridiculous. It would make more sense if they actually used them properly, but most of the time they end up used as babysitting devices.

Allen and I went to Taco Villa for lunch, and then Amanda went with us to run some security wires in the high school arena. I got even more frustrated with Jason while trying to figure out exactly what we needed to do. We loaded up two trucks to go over there, and then as soon as we got there, Jason said he was going to show me what needed to be done because he had to leave us. I don’t know why I let myself be surprised at all by that. The rest of the afternoon ended up being me slave-driving the other two, because neither of them wanted to do anything. We would have finished the entire job in plenty of time if they had stopped dicking around in the bleachers, but instead we made it back to the shop a few minutes late. On the way there, we saw three fire trucks outside the Blue Chip Ice Co, which seemed super ironic.

After a quick trip home to change, I went to pick up Eaddie and talked her into going swimming for a while since she had been sitting in the house watching The Flash all day long. She resisted the whole way there, but we had fun once she got in the pool. Summer came over after her workout and picked her up to run home and get some things before coming over.

I went home and set up my new monitor before they got there. It just barely fit, with the back leg of the mount barely secured on the back edge of the desk. I could mount it on an arm, but that’s a project for another day. It’d probably be preferable to switch desks anyway. We didn’t get to start Rampage like we wanted because they got here so late, so instead we watched an episode of New Girl with some cake and ice cream, then called it a night.

What happened to pride in one’s work?

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Mush!

I had to drag Allen and Amanda along to do some work all day today. It was an easy task of blowing out computers and projectors on my campuses, but neither of them wanted to do anything. They both periodically ended up on their phones or sitting, and I had to drag them from room to room. Even pulling cable usually goes better with these two, but this was just too much for them.

We took a break for lunch at Firehouse, and I stopped by to give Summer some medicine at the shop. Then it was back to more dusting. We split up for most of that, so I’m absolutely positive they didn’t do it correctly while they were out of my eyesight. It’s things like this that make me want to just do it all by myself.

After work, I waited for the girls for a while until they were ready to go to the pet store. We had to pick up some more mealworms for the turtles. The floating ramp we found for Autumn’s red-ear was way too expensive for my taste, so we’ll have to come up with something from home. It shouldn’t be too bad, but it will take a little bit of work.

Once everyone got here, we watched Tomb Raider, which was stellar. The 3D was spot-on, and the surprises and suspense had Summer wringing most of the blood out of my hands. I really hate that I missed it in theaters.

Shoulda bought two for when the first goes out.