Tag: anger management

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Alright, Bud

I woke up feeling pretty sick this morning after last night. I made it through my shower and to work, but it didn’t get better for quite a while, and I never quite made it back to 100%. Thomas was at work, but Zach and Gary were out. The others got together and split up into groups to close old work orders, and I went to Oakland to swap out old Chromebooks.

Brody called and said they were going to Fat Daddy’s downtown for lunch, so I went back to the shop and picked a group of them up. After we ordered, our server told us they were slammed with a short staff, and it showed when it took an hour to get our food. That would have made more sense if the food was actually hotter or fresher. They never cease to disappoint me, this time with a tough, dry tortilla, lukewarm filling, and dry, tough brisket. All of that was $17, and of course the server stands over you while you pay on their handheld device that everyone else has touched, making tipping accurately very awkward. I was out the door for just under 22 bucks, which absolutely disgusted me.

I spent the afternoon with more of the same, not quite finishing what I had started. I should be able to finish tomorrow for our half day though. As I finished, I started a support chat with Google because my Pixel Buds have been giving me trouble with battery life. My right bud constantly dies very early, after only two hours of playback. The battery percentage always reports with some disparity, but the right one has consistently been giving me less than half of the life it should have.

After work, I went home to change and then went to my eye appointment. I nearly fell asleep in the exam room waiting for the new doctor. She was kind, but I don’t think I got great news. It’s odd, because my vision doesn’t seem worse, but she seemed to indicate sub-optimal results. I guess we’ll see in 2023, because I dropped vision insurance for next year.

I went back home and waited for my UPS package, and then went up to Summer’s for the evening. Eaddie and I watched an episode of House while Summer and Autumn watched TV in the living room. Then everyone went to bed pretty early.

Just turn down your muchness.

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HAM on Ham

I went to bed pretty late last night, and then didn’t sleep in very long. I think I already knew I wasn’t going to get much done, and it didn’t feel great. When I got up, I picked at things in the fridge and eventually went home to clean up.

Summer had her store’s Christmas party, and made deviled eggs, mashed potatoes, and a ham. I was just a bystander, running late. I got my shower and came back to pick up Eaddie and the ham, then made it to the shop at a fair time considering when others were strolling in. It wasn’t a full turnout, which I considered disappointing.

We ate, cleaned up, and then went back up to their house.l I didn’t stick around too long, and came back home to do some chores. I started a load of laundry, and then had another annoying argument with Julie over nothing. I never know how these things start. It’s as though her existence breeds conflict. Dad mentioned that Julie didn’t appreciate the “Miss” prefix that Summer often casually attaches to people when she addresses them.

It’s really just not worth the effort to try any more, and I’m done with the excuses and the blame game. I finished my laundry, had a bunch to drink, watched some YouTube, and went to bed.

The backlash to the backlash to the thing that’s just begun.

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Doldrumly

The girls had me a little behind this morning, but I made it to work on time. It was pretty quiet all day long, and I think everyone was a bit bored around the shop. It’s odd that we have some techs with so many older work orders, and Zach has been struggling to inspire them.

I met Greg and the Trifecta at Old South for lunch, where I go the Reuben on a rushed whim. It was good, but didn’t seem to have any sauce on it, and the corned beef tasted a little bit old. Otherwise it was an awkwardly quiet lunch.

Afterward, I went by Oakland for a while and returned to the shop with an armful of Chromebooks. I fixed one, couldn’t find an issue with the second, and didn’t have a resolution for the third. Quitting time came slowly, but then snuck up on me at the last minute.

I ran home to change and get the crutches, then went to my parents’ house to see them for a bit. Mom cracked the bone right above her ankle and was in a boot, but was still spirited enough to argue about things that nobody cared about, and already agreed upon.

When I left there, I decided to go up to Summer’s for the evening. She was wrapping presents and the girls were doing late night chores after being away from home, and otherwise being lazy. Autumn expressed frustration and a feeling of unfairness about who went to New York on the band trip, and I wasn’t having any of it, knowing how little she practices. I remember how bad she is at squawking the clarinet. She earned nothing, and I was ready to fight about it.

Everyone went off to bed pretty quickly after that. I hadn’t slept very much all week, so it was as good a time as any to start.

I’ll show you attitude.

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P is for Parked

I woke up an hour earlier than a workday today so we could get Summer to Little Rock for her exercise event. I still felt pretty sour from last night, but I made it work. We stopped to get breakfast from McDonald’s in Conway, and I just ate mine once we got to Little Rock.

It was a really small crowd of people there. In fact, it was only five teams of five competing. I dropped Summer off and went to Kroger for some bottled water and a bathroom, and then went back and waited for five hours for them to finish. I took the time to test my Pixel Buds battery life some more, and I’m still getting wildly different battery life reported from each earbud. I wouldn’t expect them to be regularly 25% off from one another.

Summer had a blast, and when they finished, we went right around the block to a ghost town Red Lobster. The manager came out to seat us and complained about his lack of staff. He said they were down to three servers for the day, and it showed during our over-two hour visit. At least the food was pretty decent.

When we finished there, I drove us across town to hunt for a deal at Home Depot. The guy that helped us was very kind, but in the end it was up to Summer and me to roam aimlessly until we just happened upon a strip of them near the electrical boxes.

Our nest stop was Target for some gifts, and then Kohl’s to blow some rewards cash. We just picked up a few little things, but I was more or less satisfied enough to head home. Traffic was awful the entire way though, and it just cemented my absolute loathing for the holidays. I was tense the entire trip back.

The girls got home from their grandparents’ house shortly after we got home. Eaddie made first chair at all-region, and evidently she completely obliterated the competition. Autumn was bitter, and we had to have a sit-down talk with her, again. I just told her she needed to put enough work into getting good at something so we could be proud of her for any reason at all, instead of just making everyone hate her.

Eaddie and I ended the night with a couple episodes of House. I was exhausted, but still didn’t actually get to bed until after midnight.

Well that was… ill advised.

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Watermelon Sugar Is a Helluva Drug

I got up early this morning and went home to get ready for a day in Little Rock with Summer and Eaddie. Summer dropped Autumn off with her parents since she got in trouble last night, and then Summer had to do some more work setting up the new lube shop on Chenal. We hung out at the shop for just a little bit before meeting a couple of her coworkers at U.S. Pizza Co.

The service was pretty slow, but mostly when we were waiting to pay and leave. The pizza wasn’t bad, but reminded me of a worse Brick Oven. We really didn’t get why the others liked it so much, but at least Splash paid.

Afterward, Eaddie and I dropped Summer off back at the shop and then made our way across town to get the car washed inside and out. There were over half a dozen people standing around outside, so they had us done in mere minutes. I didn’t have a plan as we pulled out, so I ended up turning down a residential street. I’ve never seen so many leaves in my entire life. The entire street had a wall of fallen leaves that were all raked up to the edge of the street. I’m guessing they have street sweepers that come along and suck them up later. It was hilly and leafy and pretty, but much too dense of a neighborhood for me.

Eaddie decided she wanted ice cream, so we went to The Original ScoopDog and sat in the car to eat. Neither of us could finish our treats, so we drove back across town to Summer and let her finish them off. Then she dropped us off at the AMC for Eternals. Eaddie hadn’t seen it, I didn’t mind watching it again, and we needed to kill some time before their concert.

After the movie, we struggled to settle on a place to eat, and were also worried about how much time they had before they needed to be at the Simmons Arena. Chuy’s was out because of a relatively small wait, so we ultimately decided on Wendy’s. Summer found one near the arena, but the lobby wasn’t open, so they ate in the car. Then I dropped them off at the arena for Harry Styles.

The rest of the night was just me killing time. I went by the liquor store where I picked up a habanero whiskey a couple years ago, but unfortunately I couldn’t find it again, and I don’t think they carry it any more. I hung out in the parking lot there for just a few minutes before migrating to McDonald’s.

Again, I brought a bunch of things to keep myself entertained, and used absolutely none of them. I didn’t even use my earbuds because I felt super uncomfortable sitting around in that neighborhood. There were far too many people on foot around there, and every single lobby appeared to be closed. I just played on my phone and drank a bottled mojito until I noticed one of the employees writing down license plate numbers.

I gave her a minute to get back inside and then drove on to a gas station for a bottle of water and restroom break. The restroom was super gross, and of course the only soap was a bar that had fallen into the sink and was stopping up the drain. I tried hanging out in the parking lot there for a bit, but got pretty sketched out when some guy started crawling around on the ground right outside my window. He appeared to be using a crayon or something to draw on the concrete, but then he rolled over onto the ground and started “washing his hands” with leaves that had blown up against the curb. I decided to move on, driving up the road a bit and then coming back to settle into a dark Taco Bell.

Eventually Summer let me know they were almost done with the encore, so I moved further down the street to the Shell station near the onramp to the highway. There was even more foot traffic there, so I didn’t hang out long before going back across the street to the Wendy’s next to the McDonald’s where I started. It wasn’t but a minute after I pulled in that they walked up, so we loaded up and headed home.

I had to stop by my house for a package first, but then we went up to Summer’s for the evening. Autumn was staying the night with her grandparents, and the other two went straight to bed after a long day. I don’t think I’ll do this again.

I really hate the city.

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Fat Patty’s

I had to take Eaddie to school this morning, but I jumped right into my morning routine and finished up about half an hour early, which meant I spent the rest of the time waiting for her to get ready. Miraculously, I managed to drop her off and get to work right on time. My office had a revolving door for most of the morning, but I got a few things done, and cleaned up some more work orders.

The morning went by pretty quickly, and four of us went to Fat Daddy’s downtown for lunch. I’m always opposed to eating at either Fat Daddy’s just because the food is almost always pretty bad for barbecue, but I tried the burger this time, and it was great. It could have used some vegetables, and my jaw hit the floor when our server told us it took 25 minutes to make, but it was one of like three things there that I can actually recommend. I very nearly went with the chicken strips, but the cost of everything was superficially high.

After lunch was pretty quiet. Shane came by with some cookies from Howard, and I ended the day at Oakland again. Eaddie was outside, so I took her home to watch an episode of House before Autumn showed up to take her to their last night at karate.

I tried booking a room for next week so Summer wouldn’t have to drive Eaddie home from the Harry Styles concert, but somehow the date changed on my reservation and I was given false hope for finding an open room anywhere near the arena. Without being able to walk to the hotel, I figure they might as well just drive home instead. Traffic is infuriating after that place unloads. I guess we’ll see what we decide as the date approaches.

It’s like a musical tug-of-war.

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I Don’t See How That’s Helpful

I had to dig out some new contacts this morning, and I ended up using a trial pair I got last year. They went in fine, but I had trouble with them all day, so I don’t know how long I’ll keep wearing them. Fortunately it was slow enough at work that I wasn’t really impeded in any way. I stuck around in my office while Brody called me a bunch. Then the Big Three and Greg had a meeting with Chris about some potential equipment going in to record and transmit video from the busses.

When lunch time came around, six of us went to Linh’s for a surprisingly quick and delicious meal. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon trying to make sense of the new salary schedule drafts that were floating around, because Janie sent out the optimistic one while I had been looking at one that actually hurt our long-term employees.

After work, I went straight home and tried to pick at things a little bit, but didn’t really get anything accomplished. Today was a real struggle with the time change, and early winter is always hard on me anyway. I eventually made a couple hot dogs in some leftover homemade tortillas from La Huerta, with some mustard from Ridgewood Brothers. After a while I made some popcorn to snack on, and finally it was off to bed.

It seems to me that maybe someone should have been watching spending a bit better for all these years.

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Alumna Foil

I rolled into work a little late again today. I guess it’s that time of year that I need to set my alarm about five minutes earlier. We had a brief meeting to go over some things for the newbies, and then Thomas showed us his requirements for the three new tech levels, assuming they will be written into policy this year.

The morning went by relatively quickly as I struggled to make things work the way I wanted. When lunch time came around, multiple people reached out to me about lunch, but then it seemed like we were splitting into two groups because the Service Plus guys were going to have a little reunion. For whatever reason, everyone kept waiting for the holy trinity to leave, which ended up making Gary yell at us for standing around. It’s been nothing but mixed signals, and I’m over it.

We ended up driving in four groups to Brangus, but Greg and Josh didn’t make it in time to eat with their old coworkers. We didn’t even sit in the same room because I was the one that requested the table and nobody would tell me how many people we actually had coming. We ended up removing a table, and then bringing it back when Josh and his wife and baby showed up. By the time it was all said and done, there were nine of us there to eat.

Lunch ran long because we left about half an hour late. When we got back, Zach kind of got on to me about not skipping out on the group lunch to go help Jacob hang a touch panel at the junior high. It wouldn’t have mattered, except that Central Office called to tell us to go home at three. I ended up just loading up a truck and bringing it to Jacob by myself in spite of the fact that it wasn’t a huge rush to begin with.

I made it back to the shop just before three, and tried to finish up some weekly paperwork before going home. That’s about the time the lights went out and Thomas, for the first time that I’ve ever seen since he started in July, came through the shop and shut everything down. Normally office lights, shop lights, TVs, and everything are all left on as everyone goes home and I’m the one that goes through the effort to save a buck.

With him hollering at me to leave since there was nobody left to turn paperwork into, I went home and waited for the girls to show up. I picked up a few things to make some room, and then Summer and Eaddie eventually showed up after the homecoming parade. Summer wasn’t there long though, and got called in to work to look at something. Eaddie was hungry and wanted me to take her out for some pasta, but I made her wait for Summer to get back.

When Summer finally got back, we tried going to Venezia’s and had to bypass a stopped train. Failing that, we went across town to Pasta Grill. They had a mob of people waiting outside, so we took the overpass back to Venezia’s to see if they were any better. The parking lot was full and Summer decided she needed to get to the football game, so Eaddie hopped in my car. We thought we’d try waiting for Summer to be done at Autumn’s game, but got stuck at the train again going back to my house for about 35 minutes.

Summer made it to the game to watch Autumn present the flag for JROTC, and after committing to wait for the train to leave, Eaddie and I made it back to the house. When Summer got back, we tried going to Pasta Grill again. I found a parking space that was labeled as a tow zone for non banking customers, but the bank was closed and I thought I’d take a chance. As we walked across the street though, we saw there was still a mob of people waiting to get in. I didn’t want to deal with any of that homecoming nonsense, and the girls were too hungry to wait any longer anyway, so we left.

At the end of the day, CiCi’s had it. It was my speed of people, with no dresses or six-inch spike heels, or really anybody I didn’t want to see. The food was good, and we even got a whole custom spinach alfredo with mushrooms pizza delivered to the table after nobody else in the restaurant would claim it. The biggest problem we had was carrying out everything we had eaten.

They closed up a couple hours earlier than their posted hours, which I thought was super weird for a Friday night. We headed back home and split right up. Eaddie went to her room to watch a movie. Summer went to bed. I stayed up, but for no real reason since Eaddie didn’t want to watch TV with me until her movie was over. Autumn eventually made it home from the game, and everyone went to sleep.

From everything to nothing.

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Pessimist in Denial

I mistakenly told Summer not to let me sleep in too late today, so she got me out of bed way earlier than I was ready. I ached from the lack of sleep all day long. I had some leftovers for breakfast and eventually made it home to clean up. The grill cover I had to buy from a scalper off of eBay showed up, so I got the new grill moved outside. Eventually I got a shower and Summer showed up so we could go help Dad cover the pool.

When we got there, he said Uncle Rick tested positive for COVID, so he was trying to be careful while we were there. We covered the pool and then took off for Lowe’s.

We only needed to pick up the air filters I ordered for her, but Summer and I walked around the store for a while first. They had some nice bathroom vanity displays up, so we spent a while back there before making it through some more of the store. Then we picked up the filters on the way out.

We were both a little hungry by then, and she wanted seafood, so I took her down the road to Sam’s. We ordered the big fish, shrimp, and crab cakes platter I usually get, along with a smaller one with some chicken and shrimp to share. I wish I had just gotten the gumbo instead, because it made me feel like crap the rest of the night.

As we left, Summer expressed how she often visualizes worst-case scenarios in her mind. It finally dawned on me that she has really just been a pessimist all along and didn’t realize it. Every example I could come up with lead to her thinking of the most negative outcome. With that insight, I figure I’m an optimist in denial.

I wanted to clean up the house when we got back, but I barely picked at anything. It got hot outside with the sun shining directly into the garage, and I was already feeling sleepy. Summer went home and I tried to pick at a couple more things before following after her.

Autumn came home as we were watching Modern Family, and it was quickly off to bed for her. We didn’t stay up very late either. Hopefully I can make some use of tomorrow.

Spit Fire

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Gossip Girl

I woke up about 15 minutes before my alarm this morning, to the sound of my security cameras going off from the lightning outside. I never heard it storm overnight, but it was mostly clear the rest of the day. I squeaked into work and spent about an hour answering questions before getting into much else.

I ended up going to Oakland before lunch, and then took lunch to go home and finish up some leftover grilled hotdogs from a couple weeks ago. It was actually kind of nice to have a quiet lunch to myself.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty quiet as well, until my phone started going off with all the gossip chatter of our Facebook group chat. I never cared for the gossip, and said as much. I didn’t expect that to be particularly well received, but I wasn’t planning to hold it back either. That got Travis on the defensive the rest of the evening, but at least he quit going on and on.

I finished the day at Oakland, working a bit late to try and figure out a SMART board. I figure the controller went bad or something, so I gave up for the day and went to my parents’ house for some leftover phở. Once Eaddie was done with karate, I picked her up and we went to my house so I could change before taking her home.

Summer was winding down. Autumn came in late from after school events. I watched the schoolboard meeting just out of curiosity, but didn’t learn much other than that the general public seemed overwhelmingly in favor of spreading COVID. I had Eaddie read our group chat just to see if I was the asshole, and she finally concluded that I was, but just as I had said, that didn’t make me any less right. She just seemed to think that what I said didn’t change anything, but it did at least serve to change the direction of the conversation, which was my entire goal in the first place.

We finished the night with an episode of House before everyone made it off to sleep.

Don’t be silly. If anything, I’d be solar-lighting you.