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Asshole Pickups

I had a terrible time crawling out of bed this morning. I must have been in an incredibly deep sleep, because it took me nearly an hour to wake up. It was bad enough that I wonder if snoozing for a few more minutes might have helped. I made it to work, but Kim wasn’t there the entire morning. She showed up for duty and then was around in the afternoon, but she didn’t really have anything to say about where she was, other than looking for one of the boys’ lost backpack all over town.

It took me a little while to get focused, but eventually I hammered out a couple of software deployments. I should be able to try imaging one of the new computer lab machines by tomorrow morning. At least it’s quieter in the side room when the air handler above our office starts shaking and buffeting the air pressure against our heads.

It only took a couple miles to find my first asshole on the way home from work. Some guy in a big, red pickup ran up behind me at the end of our two-lane stretch of road and passed about eight of us, including a full logging truck, on a double-yellow on a blind curve/hill with oncoming traffic. It I had better signal out in the county, I would have called 911 to report it, but I didn’t trust my call would be comprehensible.

I fed the fish and grabbed a handful of stuff before going to the wash to see Summer. They were busy, so I just washed my car and went home to wait for her. On the way home, I saw another truck cut off two people downtown. Then he took a turn in front of oncoming traffic as the second light turned green. I’d have given anything to be a stealth cop today.

Once Summer got home, we went to my parents’ house for some bánh tôm chiên khoai lang, which is just a more difficult way to say and spell, “fried shrimp cake with sweet potato.” Eaddie came over to eat as well, once she was done with some band concert event.

We weren’t home for ten minutes after eating before Summer had to go back to work to help clean the lube. She said someone called in, and I just couldn’t comprehend why someone in her position would feel like she had to go in to cover it.

Little DNS, little code, little vCard

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First Post!

The basement flooded again overnight, but I didn’t have time to get out to drain it. I forgot my coffee creamer again, so that was also a bust. I spent much of the morning reading about Act 754, and what it meant for my own record keeping. I pushed the request for the app back on the teacher that requested it, and surprisingly she got a response from the vendor right away. No other district had an agreement yet, so I got to be the first.

Later, we finally deployed the one computer I’ve managed to image, and closed four duplicated work orders in the process. We also tried to tone out a lost line, but didn’t have any luck with that. For some reason, whoever ran the lines in the agri building duplicated a couple lines in two different rooms, and we could trace it back to the switch closet, but couldn’t narrow it down to a particular port or cable.

I left a little late after going back out to the agri building to check on Jennifer and Blake, but he was gone and she had already given up since the vendor shipped her upgrade to the wrong state. It was either that, or they just gave her the wrong tracking number.

The drive home started out stupid with FOUR drivers hogging the passing lane, but I eventually got a chance to blow by them at the end of the strip. I made it home to feed the fish and grab a couple things, and then went to the new house. Eaddie was at a band fund raiser at Freddy’s, and Summer was finishing up some stuff for work. The two of us went to my parents’ house for some egg rolls after Dad offered.

The remainder of the night went by pretty quickly. Eaddie got home and went to her room to do homework, and I did my best to get to sleep earlier.

Finished!

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Floody Bools

I still don’t know where I got the notion that we didn’t have school today, but sure enough, things were back in action. I spent most of the morning worried about scheduling the return of my car, but Summer ultimately said she likely wouldn’t be able to take a day off during the week. I carried on working while it stormed with a little bit of thunder, and a whole lot of the air unit rattling on the roof. It got so bad that it started creating a buffeting pressure shift in the air, which made our heads hurt.

I took the last steak bagel to work for lunch, since I wasn’t at all excited about “cheesy pull-aparts” as a meal. I don’t think Kim did anything at all, and I mostly fought a weird sync issue in GCDS all day. By quitting time, I wasn’t in any mood to accomplish anything else, so I headed home.

The rain had mostly stopped while I went to the old house to feed the fish and pick up a few things. Then I stopped at Superfast to see Summer, where she cleaned the office in her diesel-soaked clothes. Eaddie was gone when I got home, so I cleaned up some leftovers. Then I started some laundry when Summer got home. We eventually settled down to watch some Modern Family, but then I had to drain the basement when it was time for bed.

It’s upsetting how much water gets into the basement, and how quickly it gets there. It wasn’t full yesterday, and after one solid day of rain, we had a few inches. The large animal trap also had rat poop under it, and no bait, so somebody got in and back out again without tripping the trap. I was pretty sure the bait was still there when I caught the last rat, so either the same one is back, or we have more.

Why is there so much groundwater on a hill?

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OUTAGAS

We all slept in this morning after I initially woke up just before five as Eaddie jokingly suggested as a departure time. We loaded up quickly, and Summer and I went in for some breakfast while Eaddie sat in the car. Then we met Dad at McDonald’s to pick up some steak, egg, and cheese bagels for Julie and Kevin. The kid at the register kept wanting to tell me too much information about his struggle finding the right picture on his employee register, or how he’d eat his Quarter Pounders with leftover gravy from the morning’s breakfast. Eaddie wanted to try one of the bagels, so we split one before we left.

Dad followed us while we kept getting stuck behind slow traffic, but eventually we passed most of it and got ahead of him. We stopped for a restroom break in Ozark, but didn’t need to charge. Eaddie had rehearsal at Tech after we got home. I unpacked and then left on the Onewheel to see Mom, and then ride the bagels over to Julie across town. She suggested I could go find Kevin at the airport, but I ended up a couple blocks over at my friend Kevin’s place.

Kevin hopped on the board and rode a little bit, but then wanted Matthi to try it out. That kid wasn’t afraid of anything, and immediately jumped on with reckless abandon. He got pretty good at it too, and then brought out a RipStik and a classic two-wheeled hoverboard to show me. Kevin and I ended up chatting for quite a while before I left and circled through the old house to feed the fish.

I didn’t quite make it back home before my battery died. I would have made it if I hadn’t circled through the Ridgewood Brothers’ parking lot, and nobody was there anyway. I had to walk most of the way up Honeysuckle, and the Onewheel got heavy fast. I got to the top of the hill and was able to ride it for a few more feet, but then had to walk it from the end of the street back to the house. It was the hardest workout I’ve had with the thing, but it was worth it.

I eventually had a shower after getting all sweaty carrying the Onewheel. Eaddie ate with Eli, so Summer and I had some leftover corned beef. She spent most of the evening like the rest of the weekend, not feeling great. I thought for sure I had seen something about not having school on Monday, but I don’t know where I hallucinated that, because there’s even a lunch menu. I’ll have to take another day off to take the Model 3 back to Tulsa, which makes me a bit sad, but I think it’ll all be worth it in the end.

I could ride you, but I’d have to charge.

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This Is Just a Tribute

Summer and I got up early for breakfast, which was a lot of “fresh” berries, yogurt, bagels, and some frozen bacon, egg, and cheese bagel bite things. There was also some kind of hashbrown-looking fried meat patty that wasn’t terrible. Eaddie didn’t come down, but we brought some food back to the room for her.

Once we were all ready, I rode the Onewheel back down to the car, and the girls decided to just walk on down as well. We took the car downtown to look for a place to park, but it was busy enough that there weren’t a lot of options. We ended up circling around and going up the mountain a bit, through a part of town I don’t think I’d ever been. We found Grotto Spring, and then drove up around the post office. The girls got out a couple of times while I babysat the car, and then we ended up heading back to the convention center to pick up my dad.

We went to the Pizza Hut Classic, which was a minor blast from the past with their old tablecloths, light fixtures, and posters. It seemed unremarkable to everyone else there, and they still didn’t have a buffet. We had some pizza and then went back for the matinee magic show. The girls enjoyed that, and then we headed back downtown to walk around.

We couldn’t find parking again, so we went back to the top of the hill to charge, and bought trolly tickets to ride to the opposite end of the strip. We leisurely walked down the hill, and Eaddie picked up a couple trinkets. We made it back down to the lower station just in time to get back to the hotel and then meet Dad for dinner.

Dad always likes to go to the Bavarian Inn Czech-German restaurant, and we’d missed it for a year or two. I think the girls liked their food alright. Mine wasn’t bad, but I didn’t realize it was what I had the last time. It gave me a little bit of a stomach ache though. Afterward, we took Dad back to his room, and we went to ours to kill some time before the evening show.

The evening show was entirely a tribute show from Ring 75 to Bill. I was a little worried about some of the laypeople, but the show eventually produced some entertaining tricks with less back story for the inside jokes. The girls enjoyed it, which is my barometer for the quality of the show, since I’ve been behind the curtain for so long.

After the show, I took the girls back to the room, and I ended up going back to the “afterparty” at the suite to let Larry drive the Model 3 around the parking lot. It wasn’t an ideal area, but nowhere in Eureka is. The trip home in the morning will be a different story.

Might as well have been an Unbirthday weekend.

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Body Bonk

Summer woke us up with omelet burritos for breakfast this morning. Then we got ready for our trip to Eureka Springs. We didn’t have any real time table to meet, so we left in the afternoon and fed the fish at the old house, and then aired up tires at Superfast before we left town.

We stopped in Ozark to charge, but we really didn’t need to. We made it with plenty of charge left, and the Osage Creek Lodge was right across the street from the free public charger. It was a slow charger, but I figured I could park there overnight and ride the Onewheel up the block to get back to the room.

I knew there was a dispensary on site, but I didn’t really expect the hotel lobby to smell so much like marijuana. Fortunately the rooms were all smoke-free, and they seemed to be kept up well. Once we got unloaded, we drove up the road to find Dad at the Best Western. We took him for a ride downtown, though we didn’t stop anywhere. He didn’t have long before the first evening show.

We went back to the hotel to research things to do, and I got the Onewheel out to ride around the parking lot. There were some speed bumps I wanted to try and jump, which went fairly well. My foot placement shifted a little, but it wasn’t unmanageable. Unfortunately I jumped a little too high on a smaller bump in the pavement, and I fell pretty hard in front of the girls. I got some pretty gnarly bruises on my hands and left arm, but no major breaks in the skin. The worst damage was some light scratching on the camera bar on my phone. The camera lenses themselves were fine, but I was still upset at the damage.

We eventually made it back to the conference center for the show, and then the four of us went back downtown to eat at The Spring on Main. They were open late, but only a couple other tables were there the entire time we were there. Mitch called me briefly before we got our food, but I’d have to catch up with him later. The food didn’t come out super fast, but it was super good. We paid way too much for slices of breaded avocado, but the burgers were fairly reasonable for being upscale.

After we ate, we dropped Dad back off at the hotel and then I took the girls back to our room. I drove back over to the public charger and got the car charging, and then rode the Onewheel back to the hotel for the night. The girls showered, and then we watched the end of Iron Man 2 and then the first part of Fantastic Beasts before bed.

Grip Affected

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How Now Brown’s Cow

Summer went to work for a bit this morning, and I did my best not to sleep all day after not making it to bed until three. After she got back, we went to Brown’s for a late lunch, and had some great catfish at a surprisingly reasonable lunch price. She had a headache for most of the day, so we didn’t do anything else for the rest of the day, but sit in front of the TV.

Eaddie went out at one point to buy a new paint-by-number, but otherwise we all just lounged all day. I caught up on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show episodes, and then Eaddie and I watched about three more episodes of Better Call Saul while she painted, and then everyone went to bed.

How cudly.

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Just Take a Lunch Break

Eaddie got up this morning to go hiking with some friends. Summer and I got around a little slower than that, and made our way to her bank to figure out if there was any damage done by the scammer. We ended up leaving her account in a limited state, and we’ll just have to watch it for a week or so. Afterwards she started complaining of hunger, but she also didn’t split the leftover pizza with me like I offered back at home, so I took her to Walmart instead.

I returned the garbage disposal cover we bought because it was too large, and then I kind of dawdled across the entire store with her to see if I could work up an appetite. We left with just a couple things and went to the old house to load up anything we could fit into her car.

Just after I fed the fish and started to get things moving, Dad called with a weak voice and wanted me to come help after he had apparently passed out from doing some yard work. I told him to call 911, and we raced across town as quickly as we could through traffic. We beat the ambulance by a mile, and by then he was laying in the living room floor with his feet propped up on the couch.

Summer went out back to put out the fire Dad had been tending, and the paramedics leisurely arrived without any observable urgency. There were three of them, and Summer recognized one of them as a former student. Dad stubbornly crawled toward the stretcher they had in the doorway, and they carted him off as Terry walked over from next door.

We had enough time to run home for a garage door opener and still got to the hospital before they had him in the system. Julie showed up shortly after we did, and then Mom arrived shortly after that. Once they had him in the system, Mom and Julie went back to see him. Then Julie came out and traded spots with me for a moment. Tesla called while I was back there, and didn’t seem to understand my inability to formally request leave to return my car, but tentatively set up an appointment to return Tres on the Tuesday after break. Then Summer and I left to get Eaddie and go out for dinner.

We went up to La Huerta, and Summer and I split some fajitas after some confusion. I don’t know if they just stopped doing the Especial La Huerta for two, but we seem to have that problem every time we order that now. I guess we should review the menu. Otherwise the food was okay, and then I took the girls home before taking the Onewheel over to my parents’ house to check on things.

While I was there, Julie called and asked me to pick up some clothes for Dad to wear out of the hospital. Dad was alert enough to let me in remotely, and I rode home to get my car to go to the hospital. Julie left to get some sleep before work, and then Mom left after a little while, and then I took Dad home.

The girls were in bed by the time I made it home, and somehow I lost a couple hours somewhere along the line. I really thought I’d make it to bed before midnight, but it just didn’t happen.

Flush

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Steam Bath

Summer said she saw the rat on top of her car when she left for the dentist this morning. I thought I felt it watching me as I opened the door to feed it last night, and I was surprised it didn’t escape earlier. Without knowing where it went, I left the garage door open for a couple hours with the hopes it would leave on its own.

I had some cereal, but then the girls got hungry and I ordered some pizzas from Domino’s for an early lunch. Summer left for work in the early afternoon, and Eaddie left to hang out with Eli, so I decided to take a hot bubble bath after being cold all night. I played Don’t Touch Anything on the Steam Deck and got half a dozen or so of the different endings.

I eventually got around to leaving the house, and took the Onewheel for a long ride to the Neighborhood Market to drop off recycling, and then to the old house to feed the fish. I plugged in to charge a bit while I aired up the R1 tires and took it for a ride to the carwash. The front brake lever was super squishy, so I’ll need to bleed that line before I take it out for any lengthy rides. I’m super late for an oil change anyway, so I might as well tear it down and do that myself too.

While I was at the wash, Summer said she got a call from the bank that her account had been compromised. The more she talked about it, the more it sounded like a scam call, which upset her even more. I took the bike back home and rode the Onewheel back to my parents’ house before sunset, and Mom made me a bánh xèo for dinner.

After I ate, I rode on back to the Neighborhood Market and got behind a smokey truck that seemed intent on leaving me in clouds of black soot. I picked up a bag of oranges and dropped it off back at home, and then made a couple more loops around the neighborhood before parking it for the night.

Eaddie was out late, and Summer kept dawdling at work, so I had to call both of them home. When Summer got home, I had her reset a bunch of passwords to try and mitigate any other account shenanigans, and tomorrow we’ll visit the bank.

Just throw your phone away.

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Three Wheelin’

I got up relatively early this morning, but almost immediately gave up and went back to sleep for a couple more hours. The second time I woke up, Eaddie had gotten up and taken a shower. I had some cereal for breakfast and then took a shower myself before texting to request a tow for the old Pathfinder. I asked Eaddie if she wanted to go out on her bike while I rode the Onewheel, and to my delight, she was agreeable.

I aired up her tires, and we took off down the road toward Splash. I had the 16-mile achievement in the back of my mind, but it would take some lollygagging and probably a bit of charging to make it. We got as far as the city park before we stopped for a little break. Eaddie tried riding the Onewheel a time or two, and then we continued to Walgreens. I picked up an online order of some clearanced toothpaste, and then we continued all the way to Splash.

Summer was too busy to entertain us, so we circled around to get some food at Freddy’s until I got a text that David was on his way to pick up the Pathfinder. We went back and got Summer’s car, and met the tow truck at the old house, and then followed him to Orr Nissan. Tim got my information set up for service, and then we went back to drop off the Model Y.

Summer was ready to leave work, but didn’t want to have to do anything with us, so Eaddie and I rode back down the road and ended up stopping at La Huerta for dinner. The food was great, and we had a pretty good time. Afterward, we went back to Freddy’s for dessert before starting back home.

The ride home was pretty long and tiring, and by the end of it, I still needed four more miles to get my achievement. We rested for a little bit, and then Eaddie decided to ride with me to the marina, where Dad had his cameras set up to try and capture a comet. It was super windy and cold, but she got on the Onewheel some more and managed to ride around reasonably well while grasping my arm for dear life. As she got colder, she sat in the car while I rode out my final four miles.

By the time I came back around, Dad had given up on the comet. We headed home and I made us some hot chocolate, and we watched a couple episodes of Better Call Saul. It’s been on our watch list for long enough, and the show started off pretty good, so I think we’re in for an adventure.

I feel so cool!