Tag: anxiety

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It’s a Match?

Allen and I were sent off to do some finishing work at Crawford today. Evidently Jason had trouble toning out a line the other day, so I had to do it. The second task was to set up a touch USB line over Cat-5, and it was actually already set up, but plugged into the wrong port. All of that took us until lunch time, but I think most of the truly heavy lifting was giving relationship advice to Allen.

The two of us went to Wind Taste for lunch, so I’ll owe him lunch again. Then the afternoon was spent with Jason cleaning up and rearranging rooms at Center Valley. They got new cubbies and cabinets in several of the rooms, which necessitated some cable relocation. We were overstaffed with three, and with Jason we didn’t even have all of the equipment we needed in one trip, so I had to run back to town once, and then we’ll have to go again tomorrow.

After work, I rode home and waited for Summer to drop Eaddie off, and we watched a couple episodes of Daredevil. When Summer got back from the gym, we went to my parents’ house for dinner, and that pretty well burned up the last bit of the day. Eaddie and I finished the evening with one more episode, and then it was bedtime.

As I started my evening routine, I noticed an email from match.com confirming a new account setup. Having never even visited the site before, my internal alarms started going off, and I immediately went through the process of “forgetting” the password so I could gain control of the account. There didn’t seem to be any profile information there, and it wasn’t even set up with my name – only my email address. Evidently I was a male seeking another male in Colorado. Once I gained control of the rogue account, I shut it down and went on to bed. I have to admit I was a little curious what would have happened if I had left it open for a day, because it appeared as though they require some kind of review process before anything is actually posted to your profile, so it’s possible there was some information provided for it. I’m fine with not existing as a weird, gay impostor on the internet.

This is a weird form of identity theft.

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Quality Time

Summer had to work this morning. I got up after she left and went home to clean up before going to check Autumn out of band camp. Luckily I went up the right flight of stairs and ran right into her, so checkout was painless. I signed a piece of paper “Adult” and nobody cared who I was, but I completed the job.

From there, I went to get Eaddie and Summer, and we came back for Autumn’s concert. Dad texted me just after we sat down, so I had him meet us there as well. Autumn made the first band and even had a song introduction, but she struggled really badly between the anxiety and some of the words. The band was otherwise pretty good though, and afterward I took Summer back to work and the girls to Cicis for lunch.

We ate a bunch, then went to my parents’ house to swim for a while until Summer got out of work. Then we ran by Walmart for a couple things, and I scoped out a deal on a patio furniture set. We headed back up to their house and relaxed there for a bit before Autumn and I went back to Walmart for some hot dogs, and I went ahead and picked up one of the furniture sets.

I broke a pretty good sweat trying to fit the thing into the back of the Murano, and even more of a sweat outside trying to get the thing out of the box. Sylvia came over for dinner and to chat with Summer for a bit. I got two chairs built, but not before both of them decided to come inside away from the bugs. She didn’t stick around for very long though, and the others started crashing pretty quickly after she left. Eaddie and I stayed up watching Daredevil again, and we started getting into some of the cliffhanger episodes. Eventually I started falling asleep on the couch though, so I had to call it quits.

Knot what I was trying to do, but it did the trick.

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Well Hot Doggie!

We got up this morning and I started picking at leftover pizza. Summer took Eaddie to the gym, and after Autumn and Noah finished their game of Magic, we headed toward my parents’ house.

The first stop was Noah’s house so he could get what he needed for his job interview at Western Sizzlin. Then we stopped by Neighborhood Market for stuff to grill for dinner. It was a pretty tense stop, with way more anxiety than I was prepared for. We made it out as quickly as possible, but still not quickly enough.

Once at my parents’ house, Dad started Noah on mowing the back yard. When Summer and Eaddie got there, they swam for a little while until Noah finished, and we let him cool off with us for a little while until Summer had to take him to his interview. Then Autumn started mowing her half of the front yard while Eaddie picked up sticks, and then Eaddie finished up.

I got the hot links, cheddar jalapeño smoked sausages, beef franks, and Polish sausages grilled, along with the corn and asparagus. They had some bacon grease saved, so I used it with the asparagus, which turned out pretty tasty, though not as bacony as I expected. It was a pretty satisfying dinner overall, and afterward the others went to swim for a bit longer until it was time to go.

Noah’s interview ended up being an actual first day and orientation, as they had already decided to hire him based on his cousin’s referral. He’s really excited to start, but didn’t think to ask off for Spider-Man: Far From Home next weekend. Everyone else seems to think that asking off now would be bad form, so I guess he can be an adult now and figure it out for himself.

I stopped by Julie’s house to deliver some fish sauce and an onion, and then by my house to take care of some things. While I was there, I pulled the little fuzzy caterpillar that had ridden outside the car all the way from my parents’ house, and stuck him in a little container with some leaves. Finally it was off to Summer’s for the evening.

A murder most foul.

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Bring the Heat

We got up early this morning after a pretty good night of sleep. Summer went to pick up Autumn and get Eaddie ready for her concert. Dependable Air Conditioning made it out to fix her A/C, and just finished right as I got there after my own shower. We had just enough time to get to Tech to attend Eaddie’s band camp concert, which was held at the Doc Bryan lecture hall since Witherspoon was closed for renovations.

Eaddie made second chair in the symphonic band, so I think they were the last to play. It was a little crazy coming in, but by the end, I walked out of the room and out of the building without anyone else around. It was probably a bit chaotic once the kids got outside with their parents, but I was happy to wait patiently in the car. Once everyone came out, we took the girls to The 3D Cafe in the old Dixie Cafe building. The fries were weird, thick curls of potato that seemed to be fried from a frozen package. We got some chili cheese fries as an appetizer, and then I had a fish and shrimp basket, Summer had a deli sandwich, Autumn had a burger, and Eaddie had a moist grilled chicken sandwich. Everything was delicious, but I thought the portions were a bit small.

When we got back to the house, it had cooled down nicely. Summer had Eaddie start cleaning the house while she mowed the lawn and Autumn and I went to get groceries for dinner. On the way, I remembered that PetSmart was having a Reptile Roundup with coupons and a free mini “habitat” that was a derpy looking cardboard lizard in a plastic tub with some sand in it. We were there right at the end of the event, but still nobody was around the table at all. I stood there until one of the guys came by, and I asked to make one. Autumn was only focused on a kitten and refused to make one. I loved it though.

Finally we went to Walmart to get what we needed for dinner. I didn’t stray from the list too much, but I did choose to run home for some Gatorade instead of buying more powder there. Travis had to cancel coming over for Catan, so on the way back to Summer’s, I picked up some more zucchinis so we could feed my parents instead. Summer made little canoe-shaped boats out of the zucchinis that were cut the long way, and then cooked up some ground beef into meat balls. I boiled the potatoes for mashing, and we took everything to my parents’ house to assemble.

When we got there, Summer loaded the meatballs and I covered them all with pizza sauce and cheese before sticking them all in the oven. They turned out really well, and everyone seemed to really like them. I had trouble with the concept at first, which was difficult to wrap my own head around since I really liked all of the individual components of the meal. I just didn’t care much for the combination. After I finished one, I had gotten a taste for it though, so I had another before I went out with Summer and Autumn to swim.

It eventually started to look like lightning was coming in, so we dried off and came back inside. It started to rain quite a bit before we could get out, but after a few more minutes of waiting, we made it home. Everyone was completely exhausted, so everyone made it to their bedrooms pretty quickly.

That’s one derpy lizard. I love him.

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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???