Tag: anger management

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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.

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It’s Complicated Salad

We slept in a little bit today before the girls left. I had big plans that ended up being big dawdling around the house. Eventually I made it up to Summer’s for dinner, where she planned chicken tacos with lettuce leaves instead of tortillas. The execution was more annoying than anything else for me, since I could have just made a salad with the same taco-inspired toppings and eaten it with a fork instead of having to get up and completely wash my hands in the middle of the meal. I hate messy food, but I eat tacos because they’re delicious.

It’s back to normal tomorrow, and I just hope it’s not awful.

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Standard Fair

Summer had to work today but didn’t go in until late morning. I had some cereal for breakfast that I only regretted a little. The girls were to do chores all day to get the house back into shape, and Autumn did pretty well on her own. Eaddie wasn’t having any of it, and required more persuasion.

In the afternoon, Julie had us over for traditional New Year’s fixings. On the way out, I said something to try and correct some misinformation, but ended up just striking a nerve again. More on that later. A little while after we got back to the house, Autumn left with her father to go shopping and get some food. Eaddie didn’t feel like going, so I helped her clean under her bed. Eventually Summer got home from work and took Autumn to the gym with her. I went home to clean up before they followed me over.

Julie offered me the leftover ham bone, so I went to pick it up and she yelled at me some more about how life isn’t fair. It really got me aggravated with the whole family feud to the point that I’m going to have to settle it once and for all with some quick number crunching. It’s easy to cry foul when you’re using imagined statistics.

Back home, the girls arrived with some Tropical Smoothie, and I made some popcorn for the Dark Knight finale. Autumn spent a lot of the movie confused. Summer spent most of it behind her hands. Eaddie and I really loved it. I hated not getting to follow the Robin story line, but at least it was wrapped up in a nice little trilogy.

It’s not your year yet.

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On Time Management

Summer worked again today, which left me on kid duty. We had a fair amount of stuff to get done, but I only knew about a tenth of it before I went home to shower. Sara and Zach invited us over for cards in the evening, so we had to get dinner made so Summer could eat as soon as she got home.

I got a call from someone about my extended leave from work due to COVID while I was in the shower. Summer wanted me to pick up lunch for her, so I couldn’t call back until later. I also had to call the eye clinic to order my contacts so they could put them on this year’s insurance. That was a quick call, and then I grabbed some Burger King for Summer.

As soon as I left there, I had to get Autumn and take her to therapy. On the way out, I got stuck for about 15 minutes by a train before I could get home to make my other call. As soon as that was done, I ran to Walmart to get everything for tonight’s dinner and Christmas.

Of course Walmart was a freaking zoo, and I was stressing pretty hard physically just to get out of there. I kept coughing all over the place, which got me lots of looks from the increasing number of maskless people wandering the aisles. As soon as I could get out, I picked up Autumn and we headed home to cook as quickly as we could.

Autumn wanted to make ratatouille out of some squash and zucchini they got from their friends’ mother. Instead of looking up a recipe that would also use the fresh tomatoes they got, she had me buy a can of tomato paste. She also completely missed the fact that she was supposed to do something with the chicken breasts we thawed out several days ago, so suddenly that was my problem.

Things escalated when she wanted to cut all of the vegetables with a steak knife instead of one of the half dozen chef knives she’s brought home this year. It took her forever to slice anything, and I made an entire chicken casserole and had it in the oven, AND pan fried some leftover chicken that wouldn’t fit in the casserole, all before she even finished slicing her vegetables. I kept giving her instructions that she continued to ignore until I blew up at her and she stormed off to her room.

Once I had all the food at least cooking, we made our apologies. I got some gas while we waited for the food to cook, and then we actually had a really delicious, modified ratatouille with mozzarella instead of mascarpone for dinner. Unfortunately the casserole was too big to have cooked all the way through before we had to go, but it will make a great dinner tomorrow when all the kids are here to open presents.

We got up to Zach and Sara’s place quite a bit later than we wanted, and played a couple games of Unstable Unicorns with them and Gary. Their girls just wandered around harassing the cats most of the night. I know Summer was tired, but Autumn and I at least had a great time, and Eaddie got to eat a bunch of little hot dogs.

As soon as we made it back home, the usual suspects shuffled off to bed. I stayed up until the casserole was cool enough to put in the fridge, and Eaddie came out to watch an episode of Jessica Jones with me. As soon as it was over, it was finally bedtime.

Presentation only matters when time allows, and it turns out you can eat the eggplant skin.

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On the Subject of Customer Service

I had a few new things come in this morning, so I spent all day working on those. The kids were back, which meant I had to work around the bell schedule again. I also kept getting phone calls instead of work orders, but fortunately it wasn’t anything too serious.

Summer got a lunch break, so I picked her up and we went to Brangus. A big group of the guys were there with Dale, and it hurt my feelers that not one of them said a word to me about it. I knew it was Gary’s birthday, so I guess it was my fault for not finding my way back to the shop before lunch, but a text doesn’t seem like too much trouble if they wanted me there. On the plus side, our waitress was my favorite, and remembered my order.

I spent all afternoon fighting my way around a switch configuration, which really ended up being due to port security and forgetting that there was another network device in line that kept breaking things as I fixed them. I won in the end, except for some lag in how often PaperCut updates printer IPs.

After work, Julie brought me some leftover donuts from work. Then Summer came over and took a bath while I finished up some leftovers. Autumn called for a ride because Nick’s car quit on them on the drive over, so we picked them up.

While the girls were inside watching TV, I called Belkin WeMo support for help with my new light switch that won’t update firmware. The support was surprisingly really great in spite of having to call back when the line went dead the first time. The guy I got the second time could tell I knew my stuff, so we sped through the troubleshooting stuff really quickly and he escalated the issue with an expected callback in a day or two. Best of all, they’re open 24/7, so I really can take care of it when it’s convenient for me.

Once off the phone, I had to play catch-up on a conversation with emotion that the girls were having. We de-escalated pretty easily, and set some expectations. With that, the leash will get just a little bit shorter, and the behavior will have to show marked improvement.

Finally, just before bed, I ordered a new Shorai battery for the Shadow. I had to email the manufacturer this afternoon for the correct part number, and they responded in like an hour. Of course I went back to MotoMummy for the battery, since they’ve always been spectacular on top of having the best price by a long shot. This time we’ll see if they can draw my namesake on the shipping box.

“Like hugging a giant rotisserie chicken.”
Sometimes you just have to take the compliments as they come.

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On the Subject of Furnishing

The whole district scheduled virtual learning days today and tomorrow, so it was super quiet all day. I kept myself slowly busy, but didn’t ever feel very accomplished. I took a late lunch and picked up another free Big Mac, then went by the shop to find a spare desktop I could use to replace one in the front office.

After work, I changed and went to get Autumn to an Explorers meeting. Then I mostly played some Rocket League on the Switch until Summer got home. Eaddie came out so we could watch an episode of Glee, and then I picked Autumn up after her meeting.

When we got back to the house, we stopped by the neighbor’s trash pile to scavenge a couple lamps. I half joked with Autumn, telling her that’s how we would furnish her college dorm room. That’s when she threw a tantrum about not going to college and hating school and not having to tell us what she likes or doesn’t like.

Summer had a talk with her once inside, and eventually they included me, but by that time I felt like my part had been mostly diminished. I think it’s going to take a firmer hand to produce better results from her than Summer is willing to give.

Eaddie came around and I showed her how to set up filters in Gmail, and then everyone wandered off to bed.

‘Cause you’re his cheeseburger; his yummy cheeseburger!