Tag: anxiety

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May I Present to You…

We slept in a bit today since I didn’t really plan on seeing the opening keynote speakers. Breakfast had me feeling a bit off though, which made me a couple minutes late, which in turn made it awkward for me to walk into the first class I was thinking of attending. I ended up finding Ben in his booth for ARKSTE and chatted with him for a bit before making a round through the vendors and eventually finding my way to Esports 101 by the presumably unlikely ByteSpeed.

Fortunately that session ended up being wonderful, and in fact, one of the best I’ve ever attended. The guy was a former esports coach at the collegiate level, and you could tell he both really knew his stuff, and also wasn’t necessarily there just to sell us something. He definitely gave me some ideas for practice that I’ll have to use, assuming this thing ever gets off the ground for me.

My presentation was next after a bit of a break. I followed Adrian in the same room we were in before, and setup couldn’t have been easier for what I needed to do. I had a small crowd, including one guy that didn’t even know what esports are. It was small enough to be a little intimate, and my jokes were received well, so overall I thought it was a success. We actually used up the hour, which was my primary concern, and our conversations kind of floated from Discord to esports in general. All I can do is hope that tomorrow’s session will go as well.

I went to one more session before heading out. Summer came back to pick me up a bit early and was waiting outside, so I ran out after retrieving the laptop power supply I had forgotten in the classroom. Then we stopped by Dick’s to try and find something cheap to earn me the last point I needed for another reward certificate. Once we got that, we headed back to the hotel so she could get ready for dinner.

We met Ben in the lobby and had a few minutes to kill over beer, wine, burgers, and brats. I hadn’t eaten lunch and was pretty hungry, but I didn’t want to kill my appetite right before dinner, but I also didn’t want to be super hungry in case we ended up waiting for another couple hours to get our food in such a big group.

Dinner was at the same Back Porch Grill as last night, so we were welcomed back with open arms. I had the red fish this time, which was excellent. After trying Summers Cajun ribeye, I did have a taste for steak, but I still left satisfied. Summer did some work on some wine and wanted to go back to the room, so we dropped her off before heading to The Porterhouse for the ARKSTE party. I stuck to tea, and we spent most of the time chatting with a couple techs from Conway. The karaoke room was too loud, and the dining room was too old, so we stood by the bar like hip young men and got in the way of servers and ladies wishing to visit the loo.

None of us in our group won a door prize, and then they shut the thing down and we went out the back door. It was a quick trip back across town, and off to bed for one last day. I present early, and I need my beauty rest after today.

The eagle has landed.

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Winner, Winner, HSTI Dinner!

I had an absolutely terrible fit trying to sleep last night. I climbed up into the window to try and mask the street light right outside our window, and only just barely got it too dark to read inside. My heart raced, and I had all kinds of anxiety about waking up early enough to get to my preconference meeting. After what felt like no sleep at all, I got up and ready, woke Summer up, and we went down for breakfast.

Ultimately I made it in plenty of time. Breakfast was fast, traffic wasn’t bad, and even parking that early for a preconference day was easy. The class was pretty good, but I think the biggest thing I got out of it was seeing the number of schools that were not only competing, but already had fully funded labs. It’s frustrating still waiting to see if I’ll even get paid for it in the future, since I’ve already volunteered all of last semester.

Lunch was cold, cold burgers and surprisingly good hot dogs in the cafeteria where I sat alone until another group of people spilled over into the seats by me. I have always, and still struggle getting to know individuals, so I didn’t actually talk to any particular person long enough to hunt them down for a lunch buddy. It wasn’t bad, and may have even been better since I kept getting mustard in weird places like some kind of man child that had never eaten food before.

We finished up early in the afternoon, so I headed back to the hotel and caught Summer exploring outside. We went up to the room so I could change, then went for a walk down the street, marveling at the near-million-dollar homes along the water. It really is the best of both worlds, being close to nature, but still having access to broadband internet.

Back in the room, we watched the end of The Amazing Spider-Man and the beginning of the new, dark Fantastic Four before leaving for dinner with Next Step. We went into The Back Porch Grill as relative strangers, but ended up sitting with a pretty good, chummy group of folks. It was a good time, and the conversation was casual and topical enough that Summer had plenty to talk about as well. I’d hate to even see the bill, but needless to say we all left with full bellies.

Charlie hitched a ride with us to Woody’s Big Party at Terry Martin’s bar, where things got a bit crazier than I’ve seen at other conferences. Summer had never seen anything like it, so it was a good experience for her to have, even if it was only educational. The craziest thing to happen was with the door prizes though. Those guys running the show were rowdy, and drew the whole thing out forever. Summer and I both had winning, sequential tickets. First I got up for a tiny Bluetooth JBL speaker and wall power splitter. Then at the end we won the grand prize, which was a new Lenovo Chromebook.

We split after that, heading straight back to the hotel and to bed to hopefully get a good night’s sleep before the regular conference starts tomorrow.

FREE STUFF!!!!!

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Trash or Treasure

Going back to work this morning wasn’t quite as difficult as I thought it would be. I managed to get there with time to spare, and brought along plenty of Soylent to choose for brunch. We met at the shop, but didn’t really have any major projects to do. Ben just had me go to the junior high to clean up my office all day. I loaded up a trunk full of stuff to bring home, and then after lunch time he came in a work truck to help me with a bunch more. We filled the truck bed nearly to the brim, and there’s still more little stuff to pack as well. I’m cautious to start moving anything to the high school yet, and it’s hard to motivate myself to move things out when it feels like Heather doesn’t have anything major to move into the space I’m leaving.

I met Ben back at the shop to unload, and then Gary invited me to the server room to move the phone equipment between racks, and then mount four new servers we got in. It was a very light $100,000 worth of equipment, which snapped into place as easily as Lego bricks. I really enjoyed the hands-on, though I’d like to see the software setup side as well.

That got us to the end of the day, and I went home to unload the trunk and grab a couple things I needed for the evening. Dad had come over earlier in the day and had someone look at my broken air conditioner. They deemed it irreparable and quoted $4,945 for a new one, which felt like chump change after dealing with the new stuff at work. It’ll be nice to have something reliable and relevant to this century though, and hopefully we can get some duct work done as well.

I left home and went to my parents’ to chat about it, and ate some leftovers while I was there. I also brought Dad a box full of some old yearbook photography equipment that he sifted through. Summer was working late on her first day at the new job, so I took her some fried rice and egg rolls when I left. We watched Parks and Rec over a big strawberry shortcake, and then it was off to bed.

Throw it away?!?

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Basskitball

Crawford and Oakland had their staff basketball game this morning. I thought it was after school, but they reminded me that nobody would show up if it was after hours. They all bussed all of their kids to the high school arena, and had a rowdy game with an eagle mascot, and cheerleaders, and everything. Ben was playing for Oakland, so I tried to get the others to join me, but nobody cared enough. I noticed pretty quickly that nobody was around taking pictures up close, so I jumped right into the photographer role again. All I had was my phone, which was pretty terrible at catching the fast motion of the game, but I did what I could. I should have tried turning off HDR to see if it improved, but it’s too late now. The game went into double overtime and ultimately they agreed to end it in a tie where nobody went home a loser. It felt like the perfect analogy for public school.

After the game, I went to the junior high for a while and took care of some things. Summer and Autumn were going to leave for lunch, but I got stuck working on a phone issue and then got frustrated with some whining, so I just skipped lunch and went by Oakland, and then to the high school to work on keyboard bezels with Dale. He got some news that Ryan accepted a job with Thomas in Bentonville and sent a video of me working on laptops. Ryan replied with something about a timer and I had been curious for a little while, so I checked myself in at about six and a half minutes.

I left there a bit early and went to the shop to drop off a Chromebook. When Jason left, Ben, Gary, and I went upstairs to check out the refurbished auditorium. It looked better, but not great. The reverb on stage was too much to handle, and made basically everything incomprehensible. From there, I went to my parents’ house and had some leftovers before coming home to get ready and pack for New Orleans. Travel anxiety is always worse with other people involved, but having a checklist premade from previous trips made it easier.

Traveling on a bus for this long is going to be a challenge.

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Stress Ball

I started this morning at the high school, repeating three different data entry tasks in a meticulously crafted beast machine of over-documentation. Dale seems to have accepted that things will probably change pretty quickly after he’s gone, but more importantly it seems like I’m going to have to be demanding some additional buy-in from certain people. At least I feel efficient with the way that I perform his processes.

I could have worked through lunch, but he clocked out and ate some leftovers. I didn’t really feel like doing anything, so I went home and warmed up a frozen chicken slider that was pretty gross. Afterward, I came back a bit early to perform some intake and output of replacement parts and serviced laptops. I’ll have to do some more of that I think, before I really grasp the full process. The most aggravating part about any of that is the physical paperwork. Needless to say, 2019 is going paperless.

When we finished with that stuff, I left for the junior high to deal with needy esports kids. I gave two more PCs to the library for distribution, but I wish I had some face time with the parents at least to explain what it is that I’m doing. Summer had most of her room packed up, and then left with the kids so Nick could take them all to dinner. She ended up wanting CiCi’s too, so I met her there and stuffed myself to make up for the particularly terrible lunch. I ran into David and his tiny baby family there, and it was really great to see them. It pleased me that they seemed to be doing so well as such a young couple.

After dinner, I went to my parents’ house to pick up some mosquito larvae for my fish and banana trees for Tammy. I dropped them off at Oakland on the way home so I could check my blood pressure. It was surprisingly only “normally” high, but I did give myself a really long period of time to rest first. Then it was home to fight with a ridiculous cat box. I can’t be done with that nonsense soon enough.

It’s aight.

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So Long Haired Dale

I had a pretty slow morning again, mostly due to lack of desire to accomplish much. I ended up at the shop for a while before lunch, where they had a lockdown just before I arrived. For a while, it was the safest basement in all the land, with at least four cops and two of our security guys. I legitimately lost count.

Ronda and Jessica wanted to take the time to go out for lunch with me, so we went to Ruby Tuesday for $5 salads. It was delicious and green, but most notably the peaches were amazing. I don’t know why I don’t get more peach things more often.

After lunch I had to go to the high school to help with keyboard bezels. We got pulled away twice to go to the safe room due to some storms that rolled through. The second time, I brought some bezels along with me just in case we got stuck there for a while. I only had time to do one replacement, but it felt good all the same. We finished a big stack of them just in time to go to the library for Dale’s retirement shindig.

It really seemed like we crammed more people in that library than Alene had at the Center for her retirement, and it felt good. I’ve never made it to the very first part of anyone’s retirement party, so I assume it’s at least a little customary to say some words. Regardless of what normally happens, it wasn’t unlike Dale to have a story. He recalled starting his adult life in the high school library where he spoke with a recruiter that got him into the Marines. Eventually he retired from that and came back to the school district, where he had a retirement party in the same library. It seemed as though he might have started to choke up a bit, and it was sweet. I’ll really miss him.

Hannah had agreed to babysit my esports kids until I could get back to the junior high, so after the party I ran over there for just the tail end of practice. It was a pretty small crowd there, since most had been checked out early, or didn’t even have to come at all after being exempted from finals. I wish I had prepared for the end of the year, and the last week of practice better. I gave the district magazine to those that wanted it for the article about us. Then we took a trip to my office where I handed out a couple old computers so they could practice at home. I should have prepared for that better too. Having to move to high school has me all kinds of messed up.

I worked super late, but finally made it over to my parents’ house for some leftover mango soup. Then I helped Dad fix his smart garage door opener I had gotten them. I guess he misread the directions and wired it up incorrectly, so we fixed it without too much trouble. From there, I headed home to try and clean up, but half got distracted by email, and spent a large portion of the remainder of my evening unsubscribing from several of the overly talkative newsletters. Tomorrow morning it’s back to the high school to learn more web forms for submitting these tickets. I’m going to hate that so much.

Who’s that???

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Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels

Heather met me at the junior high this morning, and we ran around working on a few of the individual work orders I had collected last week. It wasn’t much, but she did at least get to open up a computer to pull out a power supply. We, or I, should probably be going over some of them with more urgency, but summer is nearly here, and I’ve lost a lot of steam. Jesica was in town for a meeting and wanted to get lunch, so I met her at Stoby’s and we caught up a bit.

After lunch, I went to the high school and helped Dale out by doing a stack of keyboard bezels. Then we brought two more carts full of laptops to the office and stowed them away under the bins. It was tiring, boring, and thankless work, but evidently I have to do it now. I did pull a quarter out of one of the card readers, but I’m sure if anyone from central office had seen me earn that bonus, they would have relieved me of it. At one point we did get a little bit of excitement when Paul burst into the office asking what our IP was. After some digging and looking at the snipping tool clip of a screenshot he printed on paper, I discovered he had gotten a popup regarding a reset password. I was relatively certain he was crazy, but I gave him a couple pointers and sent him on his way. He came back just minutes later and asked us to come take a look at it, and left in an audible huff when Dale told him we were too busy at the moment. I honestly think there may have been tears. It must have been remorse for not paying attention, or not having a damn clue.

We left at the end of the day, feeling vaguely accomplished. I went home and tried to clean up a bit through a headache I had been incubating. I spent a bit of time on the aquariums, less in the kitchen, and a bit more on the computer. I’ve got to get things ready for the trip, but my travel anxiety is already well on its way. I ate my leftover beef spud from last week when I got home, but after wandering around the house for a couple more hours, I worked up enough of an appetite to run to my parents’ house for some more leftovers. They were watching Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves on TV, and they both had forgotten we had watched it before. It was one of my favorite movies as a child, and I thought we had the VHS, but it’s possible we had borrowed it from someone. I never remembered much of it myself for some reason, but I sure remembered those fire arrows!

Back home, I wound it down pretty quickly and headed to bed for a long sleep.

A snake, a snake! Snake! Snake! Oooh, it’s a snake!

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Beats per Second

I got up early again this morning and picked Amanda up for our training day at Arch Ford. She said she was pretty hungover and couldn’t eat her Tornado from Love’s, so she gave the rest to me. Then I loaded up on Pop-Tarts and a Rice Krispies Treat. I really enjoyed learning and playing around in the lab again, so I was a bit upset that we had to leave at lunch time. I guess we really could have gotten away with not coming back, but Amanda was already begging to leave an hour earlier than we did. I didn’t feel too sympathetic since it was self-inflicted, but I did want to be back in time for the end of the year retirement assembly.

My anxiety was already pretty high, and I stopped by Oakland to see that my blood pressure was also really high. Then my anxiety shot through the roof once I got to the Center. I hadn’t eaten lunch either, and my hand started shaking while I was getting some punch, and I almost lost it. After we finally made our way in and sat down, my heart rate shot up to about 127 BPM and stayed about that high for the entire assembly. Nothing I did could calm it down, and I was left wishing I had brought my last Xanax. I guess I’ll need to ask to renew that for emergencies the next time I go in to the clinic.

Ben had a pretty decent speech for Dale’s retirement, but I think more than anything we were surprised to see anyone actually retire from our department. Mark’s closing statement to “trust him” regarding pay scales left some pretty bitter I think, but what do you do? When they won’t even let someone retire with their original letter and make them rewrite it to be more friendly, what kind of environment are we really fostering?

I went home for the evening feeling worn out from my body’s inability to properly human today. Summer had to pick Autumn up after she injured her knee somehow, and wants to schedule an X-ray now. I’m just ready for any kind of break.

I just want a field day like everybody else.

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People That Do Things

I sort of halfway got to sleep in just a little bit today, but it wasn’t much. The girls went home while I showered and got the bike rack mounted. I had forgotten how heavy and cumbersome that thing is, and it makes me wish I had a better way to store it than boxing it back up in the retail package. It really is the most secure, uniform shape that way though.

Noah and Eaddie stayed behind, so it was just Summer, Autumn, and myself again heading to Little Rock. We went straight to Dick’s and met with Ryan, who I had spoken to over the phone. He threw the bike up and checked the breaks and a couple things, but evidently didn’t tighten the handlebars or air up the tires, and one of the valve stem caps was missing. Of course we didn’t notice any of this until we got home and tried to ride them.

While in Little Rock, we tried to find somewhere to go for lunch and ended up at Hooter’s right around the corner. The girls kept being super apologetic about how slow they were and how behind the kitchen was, but I honestly didn’t really even notice it at all, especially for a Mother’s Day crowd. Autumn thought she could handle the heat of the wings, but she ended up struggling to eat. Summer lucked out and got a free salad for Mother’s Day.

We stopped in Conway on the way home to get the last bike. As we walked into Dick’s, we found they had lost power, so they let us shop around under the emergency lighting. Taylor met up with us and tried to talk me into biting the bullet on a new bike for myself with his n+1=x where n is the number of bikes I have, and x is the number of bikes I need. I passed, deciding instead to hoard my money for another day.

When we got home, I ordered some Domino’s for dinner and picked it up on the way to my parents’ house. Summer took the kids to her mother’s to visit for a bit on the way, and eventually we all made it to dinner with my parents. Julie got her own broccoli crust pizza from Brick Oven. I mostly ate salad, but had a slice of Hawaiian and a slice of Julie’s chicken bacon ranch that wasn’t bad. After we finished eating, we went outside and let everyone try riding the new bikes in the street a bit. That’s when we found Summer’s had not been put together completely, or at least not tightly enough.

They headed home, and I took the bikes home to try and clean out the garage enough to store them. I managed, but only because of how much junk I had that I could rearrange. Trying to store them with another vehicle in the garage will prove to be more difficult unless one of those vehicles is a Miata. Time will tell, I suppose.

Kleer the mind.

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The Unlikely Lunch

The weather was nice today and I really wanted to ride the bike in to work, but I had to set up the five new computer monitors that Ben offered to Oakland to make up for moving me to another campus. I think all the shuffling around has stressed me out, or at least caused some anxiety because I haven’t quite accepted the inevitability of it. I guess I just have to remind myself that in the end, none of it really matters anyway. Otherwise it was a pretty slow day.

CiCi’s had free buffets for teacher appreciation week today, so I convinced Jason and Allen to go there for lunch with me. Allen spaced and tried to pay for his. I guess I should be relieved that he didn’t show up at Pizza Hut instead, even though I drove us all. I started with a huge salad full of leafy green stuff. The spinach looked pretty wilted, but it tasted good. I couldn’t leave without at least a little pizza, but it was definitely a different mindset than what I normally have. The downside was that I was really hungry again later in the day.

I had esports today, and had a couple kids get caught making out after they had left the building to wait for their rides outside. They seemed like relatively unlikely ones, but what the hell do I know? Kids these days are a whole different breed altogether. When I left work, I went to my parents’ house to help clean up leftovers. I stuffed myself there with a lot more roughage. Once I get into a groove at high school, I’m going to try and skip lunch and do the Soylent thing for a while. I should have at least a week or two where that will work out conveniently.

Back home, I continued to feel the anxiety as I did my best to sit through the Google I/O stream. Somehow I didn’t make it through the hour and a half stream in all of that time, so I’ll have to wrap up the last part of it tomorrow.

All you can SHēt for $5.99