Tag: anger management

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A Boiled Pot Never Watches

I slept in quite a bit later than I wanted to this morning. When I did finally roll out of bed, the girls were already up and picked at leftovers for lunch. I scavenged some chicken tacos myself as Summer got them onto chores for the day.

I felt pretty helpless all day, and wanted to go home to accomplish anything. Summer and Autumn went grocery shopping and brought back stuff to make patty melts for dinner, so I waited for that.

Instead of cooking any of it on the griddle, Autumn burned some onions in a pan and then made hamburger patties on the grill. She kept disappearing while she was supposed to be cooking, and didn’t realize when the fire had blown out from the wind outside. She had me cook fries because she didn’t want to deal with the deep fryer, but I ended up making a mess of things when the whole pot boiled over. Fortunately there was no serious damage, but it sure made a mess.

When we finished eating, I stuck around for half a game of Monopoly, and ended up settling in as the sprinkling outside turned into a full-fledged rain. Finally, we finished WandaVision, and did our best to go to bed at a reasonable time after losing an hour last night.

Get your hoe ready!

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On the Color of Sheep

Julie messaged me just as I was about to go to bed last night, so I went over to her place to try and chat with her and Dad. I was there for a little over an hour before she finally kicked me out, which is to say that it didn’t go well. Then this morning she started in on me again, but followed up later in a group text with a deal that I appreciated, so I’m hoping that’s an indication that it’s not a total loss. I’d really like my sister back.

We had a busy day today. Summer wanted to meet for lunch, so I got ready and met her at Mulan’s. Then we ran to Walmart for a card before picking up the girls to go to Maleea’s birthday party at the skating rink. The girls had a bit of fun, but it seemed like Maleea was starting to grow out of that kind of party. I remember having skating parties all the time in grade school, but not nearly as much into the double digit age.

There was just a little bit of time to kill before we had to get across town for another birthday party, so we went to my house for a bit. Then we took Eaddie to Washburn Park. Amber dropped her kid off and I waved her down so Summer could meet her. We waited for a little while for Jaylinn and Maristella, but gave up and headed on to the bowling alley to wait there.

Even then we had to wait, so eventually we went inside to play a game. The girls took turns bowling for Jaylinn until she got there, then we played one more game. It was a pretty good time, but that place was absolutely packed and hardly anyone had a mask on. The sign out front basically gave everyone a pass on having a health concern that they wouldn’t ask about, so even the staff weren’t wearing masks.

The kids finished their game and spent some time in the arcade while Summer and I waited outside. Then we headed on home for the evening. Summer and I watched a couple episodes of WandaVision to catch her up, and then it was off to bed and to lose an hour for daylight saving time.

It’s been Agatha all along!

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You’re Messing With My Chakras

It was frosty again this morning, and I only just made it to work. I found enough to do from my office, so I never bothered getting to a campus anywhere. Zach, Gary, Josh, and I went to Western Sizzlin for lunch, and I stuffed myself in preparation for the month of free birthday food. A little while after we got back, I was sent with Melinda to run some errands around town.

Our first stop was UPS to drop off a package. I didn’t realize we needed to go into a store to pay for a new shipment, so we ended up having to hit The UPS Store on the other side of town later on. Next up was Harbor Freight to try and find some good screwdrivers for laptop repairs. Melinda couldn’t find any the other day on her own, so this was my primary objective for the outing. After finding a passable set, she wanted to stop by Sonic for drinks. Then we had to go to Walmart for some cleaning wipes for the laptops as well. While we were there, we had permission to look for a sofa slipcover to hide the ratty, peeling skin of the sofa I inherited from Zach. I didn’t like the look or the value, so I passed on those but let her buy a couple throw pillows for the couch instead. We had barely made it past the clearance section and got our wipes when she decided she was going to pick up some things for home. What was supposed to be a run across town for screwdrivers was quickly turning into a two hour shopping spree. We finally shipped the package for Greg on the opposite end of town, and made it back to the office just in time for quitting time.

I ran home to change, then had to run back across town to Wesley’s to help with his Suddenlink equipment swap. It was nice and warm out, so I took the Shadow. That should have been a quick job too, but we ended up having to call support twice after the phones wouldn’t come online. A couple hours later the sun had gone down and it was a cold ride to my parents’ house just to pop in while I was on that end of town. We ended up chatting for a little bit, but I had to get home before it got too cold.

The bike died on the way home, presumably because it was out of gas. I flipped the reserve switch and made it home to pick up a jacket, and then went to the gas station to fill up. When I finally made it back home, I exhausted myself doing a 37-point turn getting the bike back in its slot. I wasn’t up for much else, so it was off to bed a little early.

Assistant to the Information Systems Director

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What Are You Syncing About?

I had to get up extra early this morning to get the girls to school. I decided to take Eaddie in first, since we usually drop Autumn off first, and I needed to end up at the high school anyway. Autumn didn’t appreciate it, and Eaddie dawdled getting out the door, but hopefully having the tables turned will teach both of them to be more considerate and thoughtful in the future.

The office was super cold all morning, stuck at around 64 degrees. I could never tell that the thermostat kicked on, and I’m convinced it’s actually just a thermometer they installed to mock me. I spent all morning and into lunch just working on getting some software loaded for some digital electronics kids. I really hate those HP laptops we got, but I never would have seen that coming when we chose them in the first place.

I ran home and ate the leftover nachos for lunch, then went back to the shop for the afternoon. I did a few work orders remotely for the junior high and middle school, and tinkered with Web Help Desk a bit to see if it would benefit me to set myself as a manager over the other secondary techs. It was a pretty quiet afternoon otherwise. I stayed a bit late just messing with things in my office, then had to run to the high school to get Eaddie’s karate bag that Autumn forgot in the library. I still don’t understand why Autumn did think to bring Eaddie’s stuff with her to the high school, but left her own stuff at home.

After dropping off their gear, I went to my parents’ house and hung out for a little while. Dad had the stereo slides from vacation out, so I looked at those before dinner. Then we worked on the fish soup some more. Eventually I headed home for the evening and bounced around the house picking at various things. I had to sync my text messages with Google Fi again, which wreaked havoc on my notifications. With any luck, my phone won’t be dead when I wake up in the morning.

Am I really just doing all of this, only to wipe my phone and have to do it all over again?

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One Man’s Treasure

I forced myself out of bed this morning so I wouldn’t ruin my bedtime for the whole weekend. It was finally time to head back home to freezing temperatures after our week around the palm trees. We got breakfast on our resort, then took the bus back to the airport. After that, we spent all day flying or hanging out in terminals. We were long gone by the time I realized that housekeeping had thrown away the souvenir Coke bottles I picked up at Black Spire Outpost. After making it all the way through the vacation with my new phone, I also scratched the hell out of the back of it on my seatbelt.

The flights were a bit bumpy as we flew through some turbulence, but we made it out alive and relatively on time, even after our last flight changed terminals at the last second in Dallas. The drive home was exhausting as well, so I got particularly upset when we got back home to Summer’s house to find a cat had been left inside the house and tore up a bunch of stuff. The smell really got to me, so I ended up just heading straight home by myself after that.

Good talk.

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The Room is Spinning

We almost got out of our rooms in time this morning. The day started off with some pretty heavy lightning storms. Mom wasn’t ready on time either, but we still made it to the Animal Kingdom in time to cover everything we wanted that was actually operational, in addition to a second round on a couple favorites at the end of the day. The first thing we did once we got into the park was make a break for the Avatar First Flight ride. Julie expected both of the rides on the Pandora wing of the park to be pretty popular, but the rides were worth the waits.

We trekked across the map a bit, but it was a much smaller park with super fast moving lines compared to some of the older rides. Mom rode everything again, even Expedition Everest. When we stopped for lunch, Noah, Summer, and I tried the foot-long chili cheese dog, and it was one of the best, most reasonably priced meals in any of the parks. We wrapped things up with enough time to ride Everest and First Flight again before grabbing some dinner and heading back to the room.

The food was pretty good, but Eaddie ate one of my hamburger bao and then didn’t let me eat my fair half of her rice bowl. We shuffled back to the buses, all finally feeling at least a bit of the wear from all the walking. The kids left to wander the resort for a while, and I ate the leftover salad from our first day here. Tomorrow is our rest day, and I don’t think it could have come any sooner. Just laying in bed after all these rides is starting to make me a little dizzy.

Ladies and gentlemen: the story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

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Whatever’s Left of The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow Center

It took quite a bit more prodding to get everyone out of the resort hotel this morning, which was a pretty good indicator for the rest of the day. I knew the hours were pretty severely cut, but I still had high hopes for my favorite park. We actually had the closest resort to the Skyliner that would be taking us to EPCOT, but had to walk to the farthest resort just to get in line. The ride was pretty neat, but seemed somehow less elegant than a lot of the other rides because there was no moving loading platform, and the gondolas shook a bit as you stepped on, making boarding that much trickier.

When we finally got to EPCOT, we unloaded at the back of the park right next to where we had dinner reservations. I knew that didn’t work out in my favor since I mostly wanted to see the front of the park, and we would have to retrace our steps after dinner for whatever time was left before the park closed. The kids didn’t get that grand welcoming experience that we’ve always had in the past, and it all sort of felt like walking into the dingy back door of a restaurant. Everyone was slow to get moving, because obviously everything they saw was new and exciting. People started immediately splitting up and disappearing, so I eventually just wandered in the direction I wanted to go to try and prevent getting trapped in a gift shop loop.

We got to the Test Track line just in time to be called to the opposite side with the slower rides and aquarium. Eaddie lost her phone momentarily on The Seas, but luckily they caught it before it wandered off. Shortly after that, Julie stressed that we had to get moving IMMEDIATELY if we were going to make it back to the opposite side of the park in time for dinner. It felt like we had only just gotten there, and she just took off walking without the rest of my family behind. Summer and Autumn got the message to catch up, but evidently they weren’t anywhere near Noah and Eaddie. I had to run back to find them, then catch up to Spaceship Earth again.

At the end of the day, we basically skipped all of the World Showcase rides just to get to dinner. Luckily Julie was able to move our reservation to just before the park closed, so we just ate through the park closing time. The food was good, but tasted a whole lot like my cheap slow cooker pot roast. Maybe I should be a chef.

I’ve been on rides so much that I feel like I’ve got sea legs.

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NERF THIS!

Melinda was dropped off a bit early this morning, so I just barely made it there in time to get into place. Ben showed up late, so I ended up waiting for him outside, and then came in once everyone was in the shop area. They had a short meeting, and then I had Zach and Gary shoot the disc launchers at her. They sort of chased her into the hallway, where I was waiting in my trench coat with my battery powered dart Gatling gun.

The assault was short lived, and we spent way more time hunting down the projectiles than we did shooting them. I really do think it would be more fun to have just a single shooter and a pocket full of darts. Who knows what we’ve escalated now though.

They didn’t have any projects for me, so I spent all day at the junior high trying to get anything at all prepped. They’re still waiting on laptops for so many teachers, and Matt has been super high strung about it. He did at least start enforcing some record keeping, so they know how many kids keep losing or breaking things.

Five of us went to Sam’s for lunch, and when Greg ordered the gumbo, I knew I had to try it. She brought out a good sized bowl full of gumbo, along with another bowl full of rice. It was less than half the price of my usual order, and super delicious. Did I miss out on the fried, fishy goodness? Yes, but the gumbo was piping hot and full of flavor.

The afternoon creeped along, and I ultimately only got one device deployed all day long. It was pretty dumb, especially since after all that fuss, Matt didn’t even make the teacher give up the student device she was using. She even had an entire laptop cart full of unused devices that she had to keep in the room to meet the class requirements, even though the kids will never use them.

I worked a little late, then picked up Autumn on the way home. We went to my house for a little while, then ran through Walmart on the way to her house. She said they didn’t have anything to eat at home and wanted to make taco salads, so we spent about 20 times what I was expecting to spend when we walked into the store. It took us a while, but we eventually made it up the hill just behind Summer and Eaddie.

Autumn got to cooking, and I left to deliver a big piece of pork to Dad for smoking tomorrow. I dawdled a bit on the way back, angry about being duped into buying dinner while they truthfully had a refrigerator packed to the brim with food. I stopped at Lowe’s to hunt down a couple deals, then got gas before going back. When I walked in, Autumn fussed about being tired, but the food was done. We had to press her to finish even prepping the vegetables correctly, because they looked like they had been sliced by a three year old.

After dinner, Autumn went to bed and Eaddie stayed on the couch while we watched Cobra Kai. We made it all the way through to the last episode, which we’ll probably finish tomorrow. I really hope the next season makes it out soon.

Kobra Kai Karate?

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You Too Shall Pass

We got a bit of a downpour last night, with lightning, thunder, and the works. My power went out just long enough to turn all the living room lights on, and evidently something happened to at least one of the stoplights on the way to work, because it defaulted to either flashing yellow or red. I started the day off at the shop and quickly got pulled into looking at other peoples’ problems. We just have too many freshies and not enough support for them. They’ll be great if they stick around a while, but it’s too tempting to go somewhere that pays better for similar work.

Gary, Zach, and Greg wanted to go to Linhs for lunch. The food was great, but the service has been severely lacking lately, for similar reasons. I think I’ve seen new servers working every time I come in, and everyone she hires seems very green. It took us an hour and a half to get out of there, but nobody complained.

I spent the afternoon with Mike at the high school, and tried to show him a few other things. I’m sure he’s capable, but he really is kind of all over the place. I imagine he’s acting exactly like I did when I started, which is understandable. Working for the school is a whole different kind of beast. We left later than we should have to get a TV to mount downstairs. Of course we had to mount a plywood board first, since it was a drywall installation. We actually made pretty good time for it just being the two of us, but we didn’t get any of the new cabling run. We also forgot to remove the black tag from the box before we threw it in the dumpster.

As soon as we got back to the shop, I hopped in the car and went to pick up the girls that were still at the high school, and took them to my parents’ for dinner. We just had some quick leftovers before I had to get Autumn back to the high school for Monday night class. She failed her biology class, so for the next seven weeks she’s going to be eating up an hour and a half of our time every Monday evening.

I decided to treat Eaddie to some ice cream at Bocadillos since she passed all of her classes, and I guess that’s the bar we had inadvertently set. Then we went back to my house for a little while since we had more time to kill. When we got back to the high school, I ran back to the dumpster to retrieve the black tag we threw away, and then we waited for Autumn to make her way through a big crowd of students as they left for the evening.

Summer is leaving me on kid duty tomorrow morning since she has to drive to Little Rock, so I took the girls home to clean up, and then we all came back to my house for the evening. Hopefully tomorrow I can close out some of my own tickets.

Much disappoint.

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B-

I got up this morning and cleaned up some old frozen French toast sticks the kids refused to eat themselves. Then I tried going through some more practice tests before it was time to check in for my A+ exam. I didn’t really get as much cramming done as I had hoped, but the first test was more or less a breeze. I felt pretty confident about most of my answers and ended up passing with what I’m guessing was a mid 90%.

My second exam was scheduled a little later so I had time for a shower and a little more studying. Then literally moments before I had to check in for the test, Summer said she was bringing Autumn home to shower because she suddenly couldn’t withstand her scented body wash. I told her that they would have to be completely silent and not come anywhere near me, so one could imagine my rage when Autumn started blaring music in the shower.

I had already started my exam and couldn’t back out or do anything to signal to her to turn the music down. So for half an hour, or an entire third of my allotted exam time, I shook with absolute rage that I couldn’t even read the questions in front of me. The exam was a big deal that I had put off for four years. I specifically scheduled a time when no one would be home, and when that didn’t pan out, it was a simple request for silence. I thought I had absolutely, without any doubt, completely bombed the test. My stomach was in knots for the entire 90 minutes, and when I read that I had passed, I was absolutely astounded. Of course when I confronted Autumn, the only response I got through her door was that “it wasn’t that loud.” I was just glad it was over and that I had another hour pass since my hottest moments.

Hungry and relieved, I re-prepared some awful hamburger meat that Autumn cooked a week ago. It only needed an intelligent touch of seasoning to be great enough for Eaddie and me to eat for dinner, but the star chef just couldn’t crack the code and left it to rot in the fridge.

Summer took Autumn to therapy and I took Eaddie home with me so I could pick up my contacts for real. Then we watched an episode of House until it was time to get Autumn and drop them off at karate. I waited for them at my parents’ house, where I finished setting up their new Chromecast with Google TV. I didn’t have long before I had to get the girls, and we got home just in time to realize Eaddie had forgotten her phone at the dojo. Summer eventually got home, and everyone was pretty quick to wind down from there.

If you’re not going to be prideworthy, at least be respectful and considerate.