Tag: cleanup on aisle 5

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Capital Punishment

We got up this morning and scrounged for brunch. I found some old leftover pizza they had frozen and finished it up. The girls didn’t really come out of their rooms while I was still there. Eventually I went home so I could clean up and work on my taxes.

Evidently for the year, I was still floating pretty high on capital gains. I’m still sitting on the loss from those gains, but haven’t sold yet, so it just looks like I made way more money than I really did. I guess if I were to sell this year, it would balance out, but I’d rather try and reduce my taxable income for last year.

When Summer finished at the gym, I met her at Walmart to pick up dinner. We grabbed a couple more ice scrapers for cheap, and even found an open-box Rocketbook that was marked down a bit. The place was packed for Easter, but we managed to make it out without incident.

I filled up on gas and then headed up to their house, where Noah had come to visit. Summer made chicken alfredo with spaghetti noodles, and then the kids wanted to go out to the park. Summer and I went back to my house to try and clean up the old refrigerator. We thought we could use Noah’s truck to move it, but his tailgate was broken and we didn’t feel confident in lifting the refrigerator up and over it to get into the bed.

Cleaning the other half of the fridge, and especially the top, turned out to be quite a chore. Teamwork persevered, and Summer even vacuumed out the underside. I threw door bins into the dishwasher, but the shelves should be pretty easy to clean by hand. Brody offered his truck once they got back into town, but we decided to wait for daylight. As we were winding down, Michael called with questions about taxes on crypto. He had been playing with multiple exchanges though, which complicated his beyond anything I was dealing with. At least Robinhood had the paperwork I needed.

We made it back up to Summer’s house, and Summer headed off to watch TV in bed. Noah and Eaddie were watching TV until he left, and then everyone was off to sleep.

Should have sold, or at least not bought back.

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Panel Envy

I started at Oakland first thing this morning so I could set their printers back up after kindergarten registration night. Paul had already moved them, so my job was easy. While I was there, my first new kindergarten hallway projector went out. It won’t be long before the rest go out, and I’m not excited about hanging the oversized touch panels in their place.

I continued on to the shop to work until lunch time. We met Dale for Taco Tuesday about half an hour early, which didn’t make a huge difference in our day. It was good catching up again, and we even saw Brice come in just as we were about to leave.

Josh volunteered to help me hang the touch panel in the afternoon, so Greg helped me load the truck up before he showed up. We had a little less trouble overall than I expected, even though the install didn’t go quite as I had planned. We ended up having to go back to the shop for some parts because the old wiring had to be pulled out. Fortunately Josh was able to use the old lines to pull the new ones, and we hung the obnoxiously heavy, oversized touch panel while the kids were out of the room.

When I got back, Gary called and asked for some help at Central Office, so I walked across the street with some parts, and then ended up having to climb up into the ceiling to do some work that he couldn’t accomplish with his broken arm. Fortunately that went alright, and the rest of the day was cake.

I went by Superfast after work to see Summer and fill up on coolant. Then we came back to my house to chat for a bit about her promotion at work. She’ll be traveling more, but I still think she needs to make a bigger play for bigger pay. After she left, I finished moving stuff out of the old refrigerator, and tomorrow I’ll be able to clean it up properly for the move to her house.

And then Sam sung.

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Two Cool for School

Just as I was about to walk out the door this morning, I got a call from the Lowe’s delivery Hispanics saying they would be at my house in 30 to 45 minutes. It took them a little longer than that, but it gave me plenty of time to clear a path since Summer didn’t show up until they were waddling the thing through the front door. The whole process went through without incident, though they wouldn’t hook up my water line for me, so I just had to leave my unstoppable, dripping line hanging over a bucket until I could look at it after work. Summer went back to work, and I quickly wiped down the inside surfaces before going to work myself.

It was quiet downstairs, but Jacob came into my office as soon as I got there and needed help stopping his junior high kids from downloading Roblox from the Microsoft Store. I got that figured out, but accidentally broke the calculator and other Windows apps in the process.

I kind of worked through lunch, though most everyone ate there anyway, which made me feel a little guilty for not actually taking time off for showing up late. I brought the leftover breakfast sandwich and snacked on apples throughout the afternoon. I figure I still had days worth of comp time that I never cashed in anyway, so it’ll all come out in the wash.

I had to go by Oakland a couple of times, but otherwise it really was quiet. I ended the day there, and took Eaddie home with me at quitting time. She didn’t stay long though, because she wanted to go to a dinner gathering with the tennis team. Summer picked her up and left me to finish setting up the new refrigerator. Dad came to the rescue with some parts to help me hook up the water line, since I couldn’t get it to quit leaking.

Doug came knocking on the door a little while later and wanted me to come next door to work on Bác Vân’s sewing machine. I had concerns about how much time it would take, and I wasn’t wrong. In the end, I got the new gear in place, but couldn’t get the timing right so the needle would pick up the bobbin on the downswing. I might be able to figure it out with some research time, but she seemed to be in enough of a rush to get a professional on the task.

I ended the night moving some food around, and got the freezer and the door of the refrigerator loaded up. The main body of the refrigerator is mostly full of junk, so that will take some sorting tomorrow. For now, I just hope it keeps everything properly frozen. Then as soon as it stops raining this week, we’ll get the old fridge up to Summer’s house.

Here’s hoping for heavy sleep.

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Get Busy; Stay Busy

Summer got up early this morning to go to Cabot for their grand opening, but then arrived back home a few minutes later with Wendy’s breakfast instead. I was glad to have her home for the weekend, though I didn’t see her much. She took Eaddie out to practice driving and play tennis while I went home to clean house.

I was super hyped up about cleaning up the kitchen, and felt really good about the progress I made. There’s still so much to do, but with something of a vision in mind, I felt like it might actually be possible to turn this into something great.

Summer eventually came back over after taking Eaddie and Zane to the park to play tennis, and we went to Walmart to shop for a baby shower gift. I scored some really heavy-duty ice scrapers on clearance for like a third of the markdown price on their stickers. Afterward, Summer dropped me back off at home while she went to play with the kids.

When they finished, they came and got me for dinner. We went to New China, where the kids ran into some friends and left our table. After we ate, we came back to my house and I made a small fire. I was a little disappointed that the kids only roasted like four marshmallows and then went back inside. Autumn stopped by to give Summer the medication she forgot at home, but then was quick to leave.

Eventually Summer ran Zane home and came back, straight to TV in bed. I was pretty tired after a relatively busy day, so I finished up what I could and went to sleep.

Rude.

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Sleep on It

I couldn’t sleep in very late today because of the light and phone noises. The girls all slept in a little while, but Autumn had to wake up for a full shift at work. I had some coffee and split a bagel with Summer, then had a bath while she and Eaddie went out for lunch.

After they got back, I went home to clean up. Summer and Eaddie took apart one of her twin beds and brought the frame over, so Summer helped me clean out a corner in the bedroom for it. Then we left Eaddie at my house while we went to Walmart for food, then back to their house to pick up the mattress and box spring.

The girls got the bed put together and then went home to shower before coming back over for the night. I used my new griddle plate on my grill to cook some bacon, and grilled burgers for dinner while the other two watched TV. Autumn ended up staying home after work since she had to do some laundry.

Eaddie spent most of the night in her room. Summer and I went to bed and watched Jimmy Carr: His Dark Material. By the time that was over, we were both ready to fall asleep. Tomorrow, I’ll try to griddle breakfast.

Recharge

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The Monster Under the Refrigerator

I woke up a bit early today and sulked in the quiet. The girls would be going to Little Rock with the high school’s JROTC kids for the Run for the Fallen, instead of with me on the way to Hot Springs. I truthfully needed the time to clean up, but it was still aggravating to be working on the assumption that we had plans for the whole week.

I cleaned up around the refrigerator and moved it away from the wall so I could clean behind and under it. It was super nasty, but I didn’t even know what from at that point. It hadn’t really been moved in 18 years. I just vacuumed up what I could, then sprayed a lot of cleaner repeatedly until everything came up. At the end of it all, the linoleum under the fridge looked better than the rest of the kitchen just because it hadn’t faded and worn down.

The girls wanted to go to CiCi’s when they got home, but after my shower I decided against joining them. I just continued cleaning and finished up more leftovers when I got hungry. There’s almost room for some more food in the fridge again.

TOTALLY AWESOME™

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What a Gas

I got a slow start this morning and laid in bed to watch an episode of The IT Crowd. It hasn’t been very good so far, so I’m hoping it gets better, while also not feeling guilty for watching it by myself because I don’t think any of the girls would enjoy it.

The replacement gas cylinder for my Aeron chair came in, so I started to take my chair apart before realizing I was missing parts to the cylinder removal tool. Bác Vân didn’t have a pipe wrench, so I went to my parents’ house to borrow Dad’s. It’s a good thing I took the chair over there, because it took quite a bit of force from the both of us to get the thing loose. In the end we were successful, and I made my way home to reassemble it with the new cylinder.

I spent the rest of the day cleaning up a bit in preparation for the new refrigerator to be delivered. I did some laundry and shuffled some things around a bit. I’m still nervous about getting the thing into the house once, so I think I’m really glad that I decided to have it delivered here rather than to Summer’s, only to bring it back here in the future. It’s going to be a chore getting my old one out and up to her house, but I bought some moving straps that should make it a bit easier.

Summer got word back that our condo time would be cut in half from what she was planning, which was a real bummer. I was skeptical just because we hadn’t received any solid plans yet, and I was doubly nervous leaving town before knowing a real plan. In the end, I figured it would be best to have the girls take the bus to Little Rock for the 5K Run for the Fallen. That would give me an extra day at home to prep for the appliance deliver. In addition to that, my head cold is still making mornings pretty rough, so I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind to try and make last minute accommodations. There will still be plenty of time to do things.

Like sitting on solid air.

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I’m a Lumberjack

Autumn got up for a job interview at Denny’s this morning, and by the time I got up and around, she had made it back and gotten a call offering her the job. Summer had to go in for a meeting at work, and then the girls were supposed to meet her at her parents’ house to help trim some fallen tree branches. Autumn insisted that she had to go in immediately to fill out new hire paperwork, so then I was left getting Eaddie across town to help.

We ran by my house first for some gloves and a change of shoes. Then we met up with Summer and got to work cutting up some branches. The damage was a little worse than I expected, but we made quick work of it once we had charged batteries for the comically small chainsaw. I actually had fun slinging it around, but by the end of it all, Eaddie said I had become too comfortable with it. She envisioned me posing, cutting branches behind my back and doing tricks. She was probably right.

When we finished, Eaddie wanted to go to Stoby’s for lunch. She had trouble remembering the name of what she wanted, and kept confusing it for onomatopoeia. Our server was super chipper, but seemed to really have something against pitas and recommended the croissant for my cranberry chicken salad instead. Eaddie was undeterred and got her tuna pita. My croissant was good, and fully loaded with the chicken salad, but could have been made incredible if the bread had simply been toasted and served warm. I couldn’t get pitas out of my head for the rest of the afternoon though, since I now had this incredible idea for a restaurant called Onomatopita. I spent the rest of the afternoon coming up with menu items with unique, themed names based on the sound the animal made in the particular culture whose flavors inspired the dish. I imagined Eaddie ordering a BLUB Pita with a side of POP Kettle Corn and Cherry Vanilla FIZZ.

After lunch, I went home and started some laundry before taking a shower to wash the sawdust out of my hair. Then I fought sleep a while with an energy drink before heading up to Summer’s for a super boring evening until bed.

I’m okay.

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Prepare for Battle

We got the message early this morning that our central office would be closed due to an incoming ice storm, so we had the day off. I slept in a few hours, then got up and continued working on my new desk setup. There was plenty of thunder-sleet, but that wasn’t the only thing freezing. I spent a couple hours troubleshooting an issue with the computer freezing up at random, and finally narrowed it down to an issue with the discrete video card. With that out of the loop, the computer never froze up again.

It took me several tries, but I also finally got my monitor and speakers set up in a way that I think I really like them. I even found a use for a piece of hardware from Apple in the mix. I tinkered with the setup for the rest of the day and into the evening, slowly pulling over peripherals from my old desk. It’s still a tremendous mess, but progress was made.

Arr, jeebee!

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About 180

I got up early today so I could pick Gary up for work. Zach and Thomas went on a trip with Jeff and possibly others to “experience” Avigilon at a couple of other schools, so they were gone pretty much all day. I don’t think anyone was super motivated to work, but I kept occupied. Gary came and spent some time with me, and then Justin came downstairs to talk about maintenance pay. It didn’t seem to take very long to get close to lunch time.

Gary had an appointment to check on his arm, so I took him to that around 11. We thought he was early and wouldn’t actually get to his appointment time until 11:30, but he ended up finishing relatively quickly. I had driven across town to pick up Summer, and we had just gotten some cheese dip at Stoby’s when he called and said he was done. Summer ordered some food for him, and I brought him back to the restaurant for lunch.

The afternoon dragged on a bit. Gary took a half day, so I took him home after dropping Summer off at work. I spent a little time gossiping with the girls up front until Josh came downstairs with a question from one of his teachers in the virtual academy. I took him back to my office for a little research, but couldn’t come up with a real answer from Google’s documentation. Zach and Thomas eventually showed up, and Zach spent a while on my couch before making his way to his office.

Eventually quitting time arrived, and I headed home to try and move my computer around. That went relatively poorly, on account of the questionable reliability of the computer I brought home, the home theater amplifier that wouldn’t receive audio from the computer’s HDMI output, and the awkward size of my monitor and speakers on such a small desk. I thought it was going to be great, but it’s actually pretty awful so far. Now my room is a mess, and I can’t even make it through a blog post without my computer freezing up on me.

But at least it’s quiet…?