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Housing by the Foot

Summer made sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits for breakfast this morning. I talked to Alisha sporadically throughout the day about the Sherwood house. Summer wanted to take Eaddie out on a hike, but I had to do some laundry, so they went to Haw Creek Falls while I went home. Summer’s car was still low on charge from our trip to Rogers, so I took it to my house to top it off.

Eaddie felt pretty cruddy when they got back, so we gave her a bunch of sinus medicine and she took a short nap. It didn’t take long for her to feel better, and we went to my parents’ house for spring rolls. Julie and Kevin were already there and watching TV. I tried to help out a little bit, but there wasn’t a lot left to do.

We had to split up into two tables, but dinner was good. Afterward, I showed Eaddie the World Book Encyclopedia I had growing up. Then Dad brought out a few slides to share. We hung out for a little while before heading back to the house.

Autumn tried calling late in the evening because she found out Rick died, but after the conversation with Beth last night and the subsequent unfriending she did on Facebook, nobody had much sympathy. She ended up hanging up on me, and then Eaddie came out to chat with me for about an hour before I went to bed.

Those tears are reptilian.

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Oo-De-lally, Oo-De-lally

Even after getting to bed near three in the morning, I was wide awake before nine. I’m dead all week, and then fine all weekend. I got up and sent a text to Alisha to try and schedule a time to look at the house on Sherwood. They added some pictures of the kitchen, and we were interested enough to have a closer look.

I had a burger for brunch and then went home to clean up before. Then I went back for the girls before meeting my dad and Alisha at the house. Dad went to the house next door at first, which happened to be Kevin’s and his parents’ old house. Alisha’s kids were there running all around the place, but they weren’t too bad. We really liked the quirky layout of the house. The garage was a little small, and the whole lot itself was pretty tiny, but that just meant there was less to mow.

Everything was pretty soggy after the heavy rains, but even before that, the shop out back had a pretty extensive water leak. The ceiling and the floor were both really bad, and particularly squishy in a few places. They had it set up like a little apartment though, and if it were a little larger with a powered garage door, it would have been exactly what I wanted for the motorcycles. Dad also spotted some rotting wood on the fascia and soffit, but it may have been from before the roof was replaced.

We went by my parents’ house for a few minutes after we finished at the house, and then we continued back to Summer’s to start cooking some ribs. I started my smoker tube and got the ribs seasoned to slow smoke, and then Summer left for the gym. Eaddie hung out with me in the dining room after Vicky dropped off some snacks for her. I baked potatoes for dinner, and then we ate a little while after Summer got home.

Sometime after Summer went to bed, Aunt Beth started texting about Autumn, saying they were trying to get her into college, and scolding her for dropping her health insurance because they would have to pay for it. Summer got incredibly frustrated but wouldn’t respond, so I ended up doing it for her. Not one person in that family knows a damn thing about being a parent, and it shows in every single one of the kids they collected. The entire thing is a hot, dysfunctional mess, and we don’t want anything to do with it.

Golly, what a day!

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Even When it Looks Like Rain

Today was the day for my interview at ANO. I was almost too relaxed getting around this morning, but ultimately I showed up exactly when I wanted, with enough time to be prepared, but without having to wait around in the lobby for too long. It was a bit rainy again, but nothing torrential. It was a pretty typical, scripted, and dry panel interview. I honestly didn’t feel super confident in my answers, but it was such a departure from my typical working environments. I did get at least a couple laughs, and the whole thing was over in about half an hour.

I stopped by to chat with Dad for a bit on the way home, since Summer had her car charging at my house anyway. Then I met her at the house so she could take it back home for our trip to Rogers. I collected a few things and met her there so I could make myself a leftover hamburger for lunch.

Eaddie’s friend Eli came over and we all played a little Switch until Summer finished at her therapy appointment. Then we pretty quickly headed up north for dinner before the show. Eaddie seemed to really want Olive Garden, so I took us there hoping I could find something enjoyable to eat. I had forgotten how small their menu is, and I was super disappointed to be eating there. I ended up just getting soup and salad, knowing that service would be slow and that I probably wouldn’t feel very satisfied by the mostly liquid diet. I guess the bread filled me up so at least I didn’t feel hungry. The chicken gnocchi soup was good, but just didn’t have enough stuff in it. The flavor was good, but it was all just liquid that was quick to slurp down.

We made it to the amphitheater in a decent amount of time, but a little later than I really wanted. That put us pretty far back in the line, so we tried sending the kids to find a seat while Summer and I waited in line for some shirts. I guess they came back because Eaddie wasn’t confident she had found a good spot, and Eli and I waited in line while the girls went back to the lawn. When we finally made it to them, they were sat on the very front edge of the lawn, right behind a barred handrail where people would be constantly walking in front of us. There was nowhere good to stand, and nothing to lean against, and it was hot and humid, which made sitting cramped together on a blanket even more uncomfortable.

Loverboy didn’t play at all “due to weather,” and Mick Jones wasn’t even there with Foreigner. They put on a decent show, but I was uncomfortable, irritably hot, and annoyed by our position and the constant flow of asses in front of us. The show ended up getting rained out after people started leaving in droves. Then we were just stuck in the parking garage for an eternity while Summer griped that I wasn’t inching forward enough. It poured rain for most of the trip home, so we had to stop in Lowell to charge. We thought we might have to stop again in Ozark, but we made it home with 11% after dropping Eli off at his house.

The girls went straight to bed, but I bounced around for a little bit with an upset stomach. I felt exhausted and my eyes were fatigued from wearing contacts, but I didn’t get to bed until late.

And we can weather the storm.

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GAMblin’ Man

I was sleeping super hard when my alarm went off this morning, and I couldn’t help but sit in the car for a few minutes when I got home. The past several days have just gotten worse, and I can never seem to catch up on sleep over the weekend. It started pouring down rain just as I left the house, and the drive to Ola was pretty rough. I got caught behind a couple different people going overcautiously slow, but managed to make it to work right on time.

I worked on GAM some more and finally tweaked it enough to get it working. Kim showed up after a while, and then I finally worked out the command I needed to run to move a bunch of devices around. I thought we’d go to Plainview to pull some carts out of the grossness, but we never made it. It was hot and humid outside, so neither of us were feeling particularly ambitious. Instead, we spent the last part of the day unboxing and enrolling a few of the brand new Chromebooks, even though we had several from an old order that had never been used at all.

As people eventually vanished, I headed home. I saw a crop duster fly super low over some houses in Dardanelle, which was neat. Then I almost ran over a turtle in my garage when I got home. Dad saw a couple yesterday when the guy from the restoration place came back to stage some fake photos. One of the turtles disappeared, but the other apparently ended up inside my garage overnight and all day. I brought it inside for some water and then released it back into the back yard before heading up to Summer’s.

The girls were just relaxing at home when I got there. Summer had just finished cooking dinner, so we all sat down to eat. Then we eventually watched some Modern Family before everyone went to bed.

Big bucks, big bucks, no Whammies, STOP!

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GAM and Cheese

I left a little early today and stopped at Burger King for breakfast. This time I played my order online and picked up at the counter, and it worked out way better. I ran into Tom, who was chatting with a couple other guys. He asked about the new job and about Gary. It wasn’t long before I was out of there and on my way. The rest of the drive was relatively slow behind some folks just taking a leisurely drive in the morning.

Nicky came in with an even bigger stack of paper with things needing asset tags, but I didn’t even touch them. I spent most of the entire day trying to figure out Google Apps Manager. It looked like we had several installations of it somewhere, but I couldn’t find credentials for it and I ended up just reinstalling it on my own. This time I’ll have to document it for the next guy.

A few people came in throughout the day, but it wasn’t too distracting. I mostly had my head in some music and just kept busy. The drive home was hot and boring, and then I headed up to Summer’s and finished up the fish tacos. After Summer ate some leftover spaghetti, the three of us watched a few episodes of Modern Family. Then it was off to bed for everyone.

Subprime Day

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Pain in the Asset

I made it to work pretty early this morning, so I stopped at KWIK Stop to see what they had in the way of coffee. It was a big, open, and mostly empty store, but I found a cappuccino machine that had quite a few choices. I went with Almond Joy, and then grabbed a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit, and headed to work. The coffee was amazing and the biscuit wasn’t bad, but the bacon and egg were both super thin for such a big biscuit.

It wasn’t long before Nicky showed up with a huge printed packet of assets that needed new tags. I spent several hours just printing them off for her. I wasn’t really sure exactly how much time was spent because other people kept coming in throughout the morning, but I got it done.

There was a pretty good rain shower in the middle of the day that kind of cooled things down a bit. Someone had the door propped open on the dock all day long, which was a bit annoying to see all of that cold air blow right out. I didn’t want to close it for fear of annoying someone though. I just stayed in my office and kept busy for several droning hours. It got progressively difficult as the afternoon dragged on. I even took a walk to the elementary to try and get some pep, but that just made me more tired, and evidently I had already tagged the printer down there anyway.

I made it home a little early and took my car in for a wash. It needed it in a bad way, and the bugs still didn’t really come off very well. I’ll have to see if Summer will hook me up with some time in her special wash in Conway sometime. She had left her car to charge, but then didn’t come to get it after going to the gym, so I had to play Musical Teslas. She and Eaddie went to get stuff for a spaghetti dinner, and she had it going by the time I got to the house.

We ate, and then everyone disappeared. Summer had been feeling off all day, and it didn’t help that she got a message that her most recent ex died of a heart attack. She broke the news to Eaddie, who was initially caught up in the silent suspense before Summer could blurt out what happened, but then seemed to handle it alright. I felt bad, because it still feels like this year is just one thing after another.

I did a little better winding down a little early, so hopefully I’ll wake up feeling rejuvenated instead of startled by the alarm.

S-g-h-e-t-t-i

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I’m a Tipi! I’m a Wigwam! I’m a Tipi!

I had quite a bit of trouble falling asleep last night as I tossed and turned, and it felt like I kept getting ant bites, but we haven’t had any bugs. Once I did finally fall asleep, it was only a couple of hours before I woke up feeling wide awake again, but fortunately I was able to fall right back to sleep.

Work was really quiet as I rehearsed my conversation with the superintendent. I brought leftover donuts and a kolache for lunch, but then fought gnats until all the food was gone. Toby came to my office and basically said that Harry was on his back to get stuff moved out of my office, so I doubly had to find time to talk to him. I had a FedEx truck show up without a lift gate and had to unload a pallet of Chromebooks by hand. I basically saved my conversation until the last couple hours of work.

I went into the front office and was a little worried that he might not be there. Everyone else was long gone, and the locks had been changed to keep everyone else out. Harry heard my footsteps and slowly turned around to see me in his doorway, and he seemed a little spooked. I assumed he might be expecting the conversation about my office, but instead I started by talking about my expectations versus reality regarding my position. I shared my thoughts about what it would take to keep someone in that position, and he kind of just did the finance dance and tried to explain budgeting. I was no stranger to the concept, so the conversation ran a bit longer than it really needed to. My hope was to put him at a little bit of ease, but also to make my concerns into his concerns in order to stimulate some results.

As I started to leave, I finally brought up the office situation and expressed our need for a place to work and also store inventory. He seemed to be caught between work and his wife, and I wasn’t intimidated by either. We ended up walking through her office where she was still working, and then through mine.

I finally got home late, and went to my parents’ house to help clean up some leftovers. They still had so much random food from even before having family over, so I finished what I could. Then Dad got out a new telescope to briefly look at Venus, which basically looked like a micro-crescent moon with no resolution. High resolution photos from space telescopes have spoiled me.

Eaddie and Summer were in bed when I got to their house. Eaddie got a new fan because her old one kept tripping the breaker. The new one has way brighter lights, so I think she’s happy. Summer fell asleep pretty quickly, leaving me to finish my nightly chores before bed.

Relax man, you’re two tents!

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Raincheck

I was supposed to meet up with Gary today, but he wasn’t feeling up to getting out in the rain on crutches, so Summer and I went out to get some donuts instead. We should have planned it better, because we ended up paying individual donut prices instead of ordering by the dozen or half dozen. The donuts and the jalapeño kolache were good, but it was just a few, short hours later that we went to Walmart to get some stuff to grill burgers for an early dinner.

I baked a couple potatoes and air-fried some sweet potato fries for Eaddie, and we had a good dinner. I always fussed about using propane to grill, but when I’m not feeding a huge crew, it really is convenient to fire it up for just a few minutes.

Everyone was feeling pretty lazy, and I felt pretty snoozy for most of the afternoon, so we called it an early night. There was still some daylight, but I figured I needed my beauty rest for a conversation with the superintendent in the morning.

Cheaper by the dozen.

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Family Matters

I cleaned up some more leftovers by making omelets for breakfast. Then we had Eaddie drive us to Gifts on Parkway so she could get her ears pierced in a second place. I went home afterward to clean up, and while I was outside, a Hispanic lady and her son stopped in front of the house and then backed up to pull into Bác Vân’s driveway. I went over to see who it was, and had to break the unfortunate news to her. She had her son get out to translate, but she knew her name and seemed to know how to speak a little bit. Having her son translate so much seemed a little unnecessary, but I figured she just didn’t want to misunderstand anything. She had questions about peaches, and then wanted to know if she could pick a couple, so I grabbed an old hoe from my garage so they could pull down some branches.

Once I got showered and back up to Summer’s, it wasn’t long before we had to drive up to Dover to test drive a used car for Eaddie. We had her drive, and she said she felt zoomy hitting 60 miles per hour. The little Nissan Sentra didn’t seem to be in great shape, and the brakes sounded pretty bad when Summer test drove it, so we decided to pass. I took us back to town and we stopped at Dollar General for some things before going back to the house.

My parents got home a little late, but I headed over and had some more fish soup, and then the three of us stayed up pretty late chatting at the dinner table. Mom did a lot more talking, and I really enjoyed getting to hear her stories. There’s so much family history that she just never shared because of how painful it was to experience, but I think having that context helps us grow closer together and it’s important to know the things that forged her and the rest of the family.

I eventually made it back to Summer’s around midnight, so the girls were long in bed. I had a bit of a bellyache, but made it to bed as quickly as I could.

The Age of Reptiles

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Don’t Be Alarmed

I woke up around seven this morning because I forgot to turn my alarm on for Friday. We switched our off day to Monday so we could have a four-day weekend, but it didn’t even cross my mind that my alarm wouldn’t be prepared for that. I considered rushing straight into work, but ultimately gave in to my desire for a nice shower, and just accepted that I would get to work really late.

When I pulled up, four of the maintenance guys were hanging out on the loading dock chatting, and I talked to them a bit about my car. I offered to give rides, but Toby said he was too sweaty and dirty at the moment. I went on inside, and that’s when the adventure started.

I sent an email to Gary to decline the offer I got from Green Bay Packaging. I didn’t notice his near-immediate reply by email, but a few minutes later he called and wanted to ask about my concerns. We spoke for a little while about the pay I was hoping for, and the fact that I really wanted to talk to the school to see if they would reconsider my position’s salary schedule. He pretty quickly came up from $60,000 to $66,000, with the disclaimer that he would need to talk to the plant manager for approval. I was a little surprised at how quickly that happened, but not nearly as surprised as I was when he called me back just five minutes later with a general manager-approved offer of $70,000. He joked that he liked to keep things interesting, to which I responded that I also had an interview scheduled at ANO. He understood that I wanted to hear out all of the offers, if there is another one, and just asked that I let him know how my conversations go with both of my other interested parties.

I spent the rest of the day troubleshooting, and pinning down the last few devices that had gotten lost in the shuffle, and then sent an email to SHI with a list of serial numbers with specific failure notes. It got really quiet really fast, which made it easier to get back home in time for Summer’s therapy appointment. I thought we would start her EMDR therapy, but instead she said that Summer wanted her to explain the therapy to me so I would know what to expect. That felt pretty silly to me, since I had already done my research the moment Summer mentioned it to me weeks ago, but we continued with the feel-good talk for the remainder of the hour. I left feeling like we could have just watched some YouTube videos instead.

Eaddie needed a ride to dinner with friends and her flute tutor, so I rushed Summer home to take her while I went to my parents’ house for dinner. Mom made fish soup out of some old fish that didn’t taste very good. Dad and I talked for a while, and eventually I made it back home to get the Murano so I could take Eaddie for a drive.

I had her take me to Casey’s for a free drink I won, and then we went further south to find Noah at work. We parked outside and I gave him the hairy eyeball for a while, and then we parked around the side of the building and went inside to sit at a table until he had some time to chat. He had a relatively steady flow of customers, so we didn’t stay long. I had Eaddie drive up Skyline and around the marina before we turned back toward my parents’ house, and then down the road to look at a Mazda 6 we saw for sale the other day. It was quite a bit more expensive than we expected, and it had gotten so dark that Eaddie was having trouble seeing to drive, so we headed back to their house for the night.

I hung out in bed with Summer while she watched TV for a bit, and then got up and found every distraction. I was up until two in the morning, feeling stupid and exhausted for not shutting down earlier. Oh well.

Inconvenient Opportunity