Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
I spent the whole, uneventful morning at Oakland for testing. Lunch was at Arby’s with some of the boys, then the afternoon was spent with the junior high.
When I got home, I baked some potatoes to take to Summer’s for dinner. She made chili again. Then it was back home for a round of second-place PUBG with the team before bed.
Bloody hell…
Today was for getting shit done. The work order system notifications broke again, so I had some catching up to do. Then, like a man after my own heart, Allen suggested KFC for lunch. He must have sensed my cravings last night. Then after lunch, I got a little frisky with Avaya and a switch. They were like PuTTY in my hands.
After work, I came home and played some PUBG with Josh until the servers went down. From there, I filled up on gas and went to my parents’ house for some corned beef. I was still full, but much like Jello, there’s always room for corned beef.
I finished the evening with some more PUBG with Clint and Aaron.
But they are weak. Weak! Weak things are food!
Evidently my plush mattress topper wasn’t as dry as my dryer thought it was. After I went through the trouble of setting it back up on my bed and re-sheeting everything, I realized how damp it was all over. Too tired to go on, I just turned up the radiator and the ceiling fan to dry it out overnight the best I could while I slept on top of it. I moved around a lot at first, but by the time I woke up, it seemed mostly dry. I left the fan on when I left for work so it could finish the job.
I spent most of the morning setting up a Chromebook cart at Oakland. I left for lunch a bit early so I could take my car in for an oil change, and Brandie picked me up from there so we could get lunch together before she leaves for the Philippines. We went to La Huerta, and she grilled me about the surprise family. It had started pouring down rain right as we left, and I went to pick up my car and head back to work. They said I had an open recall – something about draining all of the fluid in my brakes, but it would take another couple of hours. I opted to reschedule.
The afternoon was enrolling a stack of new Chromebooks for the junior high library. I ended up taking them to the library after work just so I wouldn’t have to tomorrow. It continued to rain, and I continued to get soaked with the loading and unloading of everything. At the very least, I finally resolved a separate printing issue I’d been working on since before break.
After work, I came home and munched on what little food I could find and tried to stay awake until bedtime proper.
I feel led to give a gift as an EASTER SOUL-WINNING SEED!
Today was moderately busy for being the first day back. First thing in the morning, I had a switch blow up in my face. The PoE circuit blew, throwing sparks out the front of the switch as smoke billowed out. Fortunately, Gary had a spare that he was able to put into place before lunch.
Most brought lunch, so I ended up at Arby’s for some buffalo chicken tenders. They weren’t bad. I still don’t know how I feel about their switch to Coca-Cola products.
I got a good amount of stuff done in the afternoon as well. Then after work, I went to my parents’ house thinking I had to clean up leftovers. I ended up sitting outside for about an hour and a half waiting for anyone to get home. I tried getting the stray three-legged cat to come over to me, but the best I could do was to get it to eat the food while I stared at it.
After dinner, I went to Summer’s to try and wash my plush mattress topper in her oversized HE washing machine. I don’t know if it was my fault for loading it incorrectly, or a fault of the design, but the top of the laundry load would not have gotten wet at all if the water had not been filled from the top. I had to push the whole thing under water to submerge it in the first place, and then it spent an hour and a half swirling the thing around in circles while the water soaked the bottom half. When it finally finished the load, it spent over five minutes in a spin cycle to drain the water that didn’t even touch half of the load. It was absolutely infuriating.
I didn’t want to stay too late, and I hadn’t decided whether to try and take the stupid thing to the coin laundry in the morning, so I headed home and ultimately threw it in the dryer just to finish something. I didn’t realize how much of a difference the topper made until I didn’t have it any more. I guess if I can’t get satisfied with the wash job, I’ll just buy a new one, because fuck savings when I can sleep better tonight instead.
It’s like giving it to your cat and letting it lick it clean.
We slept in until lunch time today, then went to Arby’s with a powerful hunger. Summer went home afterward, and I started to clean house. I spent over eight hours fighting a stain, and I’m thinking I should just learn to let things go.
Sorry, Leesa.
We got up this morning and took everyone back to Summer’s house. I stayed for just a little bit after she left for the gym, but then went home to take care of some housework myself. It was really nice outside, so I took advantage and vacuumed out every inch of the car. Mom stopped by on her way home from work to visit with Bác Vân and to get a Coco Rico.
Summer’s friend Jenna asked her out to Front Street Grill for dinner and drinks in the evening, so I agreed to tag along. We had a bit of time to kill, so as soon as Summer got here we left to wash the car on the way. Once we got settled in, Summer got some pretty good pasta and I got a pretty bad fillet. The band had quite a bit of trouble integrating with the bar’s sound system and ended up wheeling in their own. We were sat front and center, so once they got to playing we had to move outside to avoid permanent damage to our hearing.
It was really nice out, but the girls got cold and we had to move back inside. We sat at a table in the back, but it was still way too loud for me. It only got worse when the band took a break and the DJ cranked his cancer mixtape to 11, so we left shortly thereafter.
I’m really not much for fun.
Autumn suggested Rolando’s for dinner, so we ate out on the upstairs patio in the back. It was a really neat, secluded seating area with a little bit of a view of the buildings that towered in the distance, and it kept things quiet away from the busy roadway. Ironically enough, she seemed to enjoy the food the least, but that’s how picky eaters do. Everyone else loved it.
On the trip home, Noah managed to smash Autumn’s phone case and got glitter and whatever fluid it was suspended in all over the back seat of the Murano. The glitter was a mix of some larger pieces, but mostly consisted of the finest little specks of gold. It proved futile to clean up at the gas station where I stopped, so we made it the rest of the way home and I tried blowing most of it out with compressed air. Two tanks of air in, I managed to get most of it out, but the only way to really fix it was to burn the car to ash and bury the remains. The weirdest part was that Noah claimed to have absolutely no recollection of what happened after having fallen asleep on the way home.
I did what I could, then got everyone settled in to watch Inside Out before bed. Hopefully it was a fair birthday for Summer.
Pixar 2015: What if feelings had feelings?!?
After we ate, we climbed the mountain to look for quartz. There was a brief moment of motherly panic when we lost Eaddie and Noah, so Summer took off to try and catch up to them while Autumn headed back, and I circled back to a different part of the trail. While I was out in the middle of nowhere by myself, I must have found a spot of cellular service, because Jesica managed to get a call in to me. I tried texting Summer immediately after, but I never could find signal again until we got into town.
Courtyard by Marriott didn’t have any rooms available, so we ended up at Comfort Suites. The room was pretty decent, but I had constant trouble authenticating with their WiFi all night. We had dinner at Hibachi Sushi Buffet, which was surprisingly both busy and super delicious. Afterward, we ignored every mothers’ orders and went for a swim at the hotel. The water burned, but it was a fair time. Eaddie and Noah stayed while the rest of us went back to the room to get ready for bed.
Quick! There’s no way they’ll beat us back to the car!
Summer went to work at Superfast for a few hours today, so I took her some Arby’s for lunch. They made a sudden switch to Coca-Cola products, which was kind of neat, though I miss the Tropicana fruit punch. We took a few minutes and ate on a bench outside the shop, then I headed home and struggled to stay awake the rest of the day.
We planned to meet up at my parents’ house for dinner, so I made some coffee to wake myself up and headed over there in the evening. She had all three kids with her this time, so my parents got the full experience. We had chow mein and some egg rolls, then afterward my dad performed his magic show that he’s been practicing for the Eureka convention this weekend.
After everyone loaded up and left there, I went to fill up on gas before tomorrow, then played a few blitz rounds of Fortnite with Clint and Jack. It didn’t go well, but I learned some additional mechanics that would have been super nice to learn from a tutorial mission.
Why plan ahead when improvising is so much more exciting?
I spent most of the morning feeling like I was stressed out over nothing. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been putting some things off, but I decided to do my taxes since it couldn’t hurt. I was thinking I had done something wrong last year, but now I’m not sure it was the same wrong I had been thinking it was.
Mom texted about dinner and Summer dropped the girls off at her mother’s, so we went over there and had leftover smoked turkey and pork. I had them look at my taxes too, and I ultimately decided that if we’re going to keep income taxes as a thing, then we should just audit everyone every year so nobody has to actually file anything. If everything’s done for you the correct way, then nobody has to worry about it. Jobs created. Boom. Economy fixed.
After dinner, Summer and I came back to my house and watched The Hitman’s Bodyguard, which I thought was excellent in spite of its 40% on Rotten Tomatoes. Then it was a couple episodes of The Office before bed.
#unblessed