Tag: cleanup on aisle 5

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Clean Mess

I got up this morning and piddled around the house some more. There was some filing of paperwork, and more shuffling things around to different places. I still don’t know where I can put everything I’ve hoarded, but I’ve got to make room to move some furniture somehow. I eventually made it to the shower before Summer wanted to take Eaddie out for dinner.

Autumn left to spend the day with her father, so the three of us that remained went to Venezia’s for dinner. Eaddie was invited to the movies to see Sing 2, but wanted to come to my house for the evening, so we went to their house to get some clothes. Summer headed straight to my house, and I took Eaddie to the theater, stopping for my taco along the way. It made Eaddie really angry, but we made it to the theater with perfect timing.

I laid on the couch with Summer while she watched TV until it was time to get Eaddie again. Then the two of us watched the last episode of Hawkeye before bed. I felt like it was one of the weaker shows, and I really hated this version if Kingpin. Daredevil did it so well, and this just made me hate it. I guess that may not matter though, if the story was as short-lived as it appeared to be.

Persistence.

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Iced Out

I woke up this morning and cautiously waited for a notification that never came. Work was happening, in spite of any remaining ice. I went outside in the dark and tried to get into my car, but there was a quarter inch thick sheet of ice wrapped smoothly around my entire door. I managed to get to my door handle, but the more I pulled, the more I felt like I was going to rip the handle right off. It just wasn’t worth the damage, so I opted to work from home for the morning.

I answered some emails, had an hour and a half phone call with Aimee about bus driver pay and benefits, and tried to help someone with a VPN issue. As I wrapped that up, Bác Vân called to offer some sweet rice she made for the new year’s celebration. As I walked next door, I was able to get my car door open, so I started the car and let it defrost while I went nextdoor. She gave me a big bag of fruit and a couple rounds of rice.

Heading in to work was a piece of cake, as the roads were almost completely clear. I arrived just as a big group of the guys were headed to lunch. I wasn’t much interested in La Chiquita, so I just went inside and shared my rice ball with Thomas and Tammy. I didn’t have a lot to work on right away, but eventually the guys made it back from lunch and I went over some CPPC stuff with Zach.

Eventually Thomas came back to socialize with everyone, and after a while he sent us on home for the weekend. I went home and tried to keep up my momentum to clean up a bit. It was less cleaning, and more trying to organize a bunch of random stuff that ended up in the bedroom floor. Time got away from me as I documented healthcare receipts for later HSA reimbursement. Eventually I gave up and took a shower so I could go to bed grime-free.

It’s poteen, me boys!

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Back on Track

I wasn’t as early to work this morning as I had been the past couple days, but I still squeaked in under the wire. We gathered in the shop for just a bit before deciding to get started on a regular workday in spite of an absence of students. Teachers were still there, and were even encouraged to bring their own kids to school with them, so it wasn’t a complete ghost town. I stayed in my office all day anyway, so it didn’t matter much.

I spent most of the day helping others. When I wasn’t doing that, I was turning those helping moments into FAQs in Web Help Desk. It was boring, but maybe it will help in the future.

Most of us went to Nonna Bella’s for lunch. I had the chicken alfredo lunch special, which was pretty good. The price was the best part though. The food took a bit to come out, so we had plenty of time to chit chat around the table.

The afternoon went by super slowly, and then I finally left a bit late after wrapping things up. I stopped by Casey’s for a free deal, then went home where Autumn and Eaddie had just arrived to pick up a hotspot so they could go to their father’s.

I changed, then went to Lowe’s to get the part I needed to mount the track light electrical box. I got really frustrated trying to mount the thing, and didn’t have a great time due to the orientation of the screws, but I eventually got it mounted well enough. I didn’t end up drilling any holes for the toggle bolts, and just went with screw-in anchors instead. They were white, so they actually blended in pretty well in case I ever wanted to remove the track in the future.

When I finally finished setting up the new lights and Hue bulbs, I headed up to Summer’s for the evening. She was already in bed as I expected, so I laid down with her for a bit until she went to sleep. Then I wrapped up and tried going to sleep myself.

Anchors aweigh, my boy.

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Shut It Down!

They decided to close the schools down for the rest of the week, so today was for getting everyone ready to work remotely. I actually didn’t have much to tend to, so I went to Oakland in the morning and replaced a camera switch. Evidently I didn’t plug the fiber modules into the correct ports, so Gary actually took care of that after lunch for me, but at least I had the rack looking much nicer with shorter patch cables.

After I left Oakland, I ran by the high school and waited for Shirley to show back up. She sent Brody a work order, and evidently left right after. I just barely caught her in the parking lot on my way out to lunch, so we went back in and got the girl that needed some dictation software installed. As I left for real, Gary texted and said they were going to Brangus. Evidently they got a late start to lunch, which worked out perfectly as I arrived just as they were being seated.

After lunch was really quiet for me. I piddled a lot, but got called to deliver some Chromebook chargers to Sequoyah as they were dismissing students for the day. As I made the delivery to the office, I got my second compliment of the day – this time for my awesome emails.

We filtered out at the end of the day and I went home to change before going to my parents’ house to finish up some spring rolls. I didn’t stick around long though, because I wanted to get started on my track lighting.

I had to call Dad for some guidance, but got the old pendant light down and finally wired up the new parts. Unfortunately I’ll need another part to rotate the screw holes around, but then I can actually hang the track. The cover won’t quite cover the entire hole left by the old light, but that can be a problem for Future Me.

Oh, buds.

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Fill the Box

I woke up shortly after Summer left for work this morning. I felt hungry, so I thawed out a bagel, then started poking around the house to see what I could store in my new garage cabinet. Autumn eventually came to take Eaddie home, to get her mandated locker at school, and then out for an evening with her friends.

About mid afternoon, I went to my parents’ house to chat for a while. We scheduled a day to talk to their financial advisor about his retirement, and hopefully that will be the last of that, but I’m not so sure. As Summer finished up at work and went to the gym, I made my way up to her house for the evening.

The kids showed up after Eaddie’s night out with friends, but then left for their father’s once Eaddie packed some things. Then it was an early night to bed.

Rolls on rolls on rolls.

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Vacation in Spirit

I went to bed super early last night, and then woke up early this morning after many hours of sleep. I found a charge on my Discover card from Disney, but didn’t go with the rest of my family a couple weeks ago. After some digging, we discovered that Dad had somehow been signed into my account and charged a couple things to my card. I was just glad I didn’t have to cancel my card and get a new number.

Summer had to do some shopping for work, so she came to get me and we went to Walmart, Harbor Freight, AutoZone, and then Sumo for lunch. Afterward, she dropped me off at my house so I could do some things there.

It was nice outside, so I took the opportunity to clean out a corner of the garage and put together the last part of my new metal cabinet. It was a bit of a struggle to get everything to align properly, and I’m still not super happy with the door, but it works. Now I just have to figure out what to store in it.

After a quick shower, Summer finished at work and took me back to her house. Eaddie had been deep cleaning her room all day, which she had needed to start for a while. I stayed there and played some Don’t Starve while Summer went to the gym.

For dinner, I took Eaddie to pick up Summer at the gym, and went to my parents’ house for egg roll salads. Mom seemed to function pretty well as long as I could get her to whatever corner of the kitchen had what she needed. We ate, told Dad jokes, and then I took Summer back to her car and met her at my house.

Eaddie and I had been wanting to watch Hawkeye for a while, so we finally started it. I felt like it started super slow, and didn’t have a very interesting plot or memorable soundtrack. I was also pretty disappointed with the surround sound in general, and I had some strange artifacting in the picture. I couldn’t tell if it was from Disney+ or possibly something with my Chromecast.

Once we finished the first two episodes, Summer went to bed and I started the first episode of What If…?. Eaddie didn’t stick around for much of it, but I was at least appeased with the level of action and the pacing of the episode. By then, I was pretty tired, so I finished up my chores and went to bed.

Have some Upper 10. It’s more than 7 Up!

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Cleanup Checkup

The kids all made it to school and work this morning, which let Summer and me sleep in a bit. Summer left to shop for an ugly sweater while I cleaned up at home. Then we went to her follow-up appointment at the clinic. The doctor and nurse went on about how much tissue they serrated-ice-cream-scooped out of her, but it was all benign, so hopefully the procedure will have the desired result.

It was a quick appointment, and we were hungry, so our next stop was New China for lunch. I didn’t have a single grain of rice, and it made me feel weird about the visit, but I also didn’t feel super stuffed when we left. We headed back home and lounged around for a while before getting back up to clean up outside. I was surprised I still had hot coals in the fire pit, but I guess we did burn a lot of wood, so there was a lot of ash to insulate them.

When we finished outside, Summer went home to do some cleaning of her own while I filed paperwork inside. Then she and Eaddie came back over to get me for Autumn’s band concert in the evening. We got there early because Autumn did a poor job of informing us of the event, so we caught the last middle school band before the high school started.

Surprisingly, some of the middle school sounded better than the worst junior high band from the other day. The high school only had two bands, which were fine. The symphonic band seemed to be cheating with the pieces they had for their trip to Carnegie Hall. There were constantly so many notes that they masked any possible mistakes throughout the performance.

Eaddie went with Autumn to a group IHOP meet after the concert, so Summer dropped me off and I wound down for the day by testing my Pixel Buds and catching up on normal computery stuff that I do every day.

Three down, half to go.

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Streamer

Summer and Autumn had a Quiz Bowl tournament at the high school today. I couldn’t get back to sleep after they left, so I just got up and picked at some leftovers for breakfast. Then I tinkered around some more with the Steam Link, which worked really well. Some of the controller support still felt pretty unintuitive, but overall it was a really good experience. I played Don’t Starve on it for quite a while.

Eventually I had to get out and get things done, so I headed home to spend some time there for the first time in what felt like forever. Bác Vân had called last night with TV remote trouble, so I went next door and re-paired the remotes to her cable boxes. After a little while, I started going through laundry and washed a whole bunch of shirts.

I pretty much spent the rest of my down time on YouTube all night, watching videos on music theory, science, and anything else the algorithm thought I would be interested in watching.

Split the load.

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We Have You Surrounded!

Today was a bit quieter at work, but I still struggled to accomplish much. I ended up contacting SMART support and got a quick, yet apparently incorrect answer that I’ll have to address tomorrow. I also got a repaired Chromebook back from Dell, but it doesn’t want to let me set it up because it “can’t connect to the internet” even though I can absolutely see that it is connected to the internet.

If I didn’t have chores to do, I would have hung out after work with Gary, who was building his new gaming rig in the shop. Instead, I went straight home and started cleaning up the kitchen. Summer came over as soon as she was back in town from another day on the road, but she didn’t feel up to much. I abandoned cleaning in favor of wiring all of my speakers, and I don’t think anyone ever questioned my priorities.

Summer went to bed and left me up pretty late getting everything calibrated. Hopefully we have enough time after work tomorrow to get things ready for the shindig. At the very least, we can watch a movie.

Things are finally starting to look… roughly different…

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Sidetracks

Today was pretty hectic for being in the office. It started quiet enough, and I thought I was actually going to get my project done, but then the calls just kept coming in. Brody was having a hard time remembering how to do things for himself, and it eventually got me in trouble.

Gary came back to the office to fetch me for lunch, and the two of us went to Wendy’s since nobody else was around to go. Zach had apparently spent the entire day walking around with some new access control people that want to replace all of the electronic door locks in the district.

When we got back, Brody called me about a printer issue that ended up with me remoting into the computer he was looking at. What I didn’t realize was that he was remoted into the PaperCut server from there, so I had a ripe case of RDP Inception and didn’t even realize it. I ended up accidentally deleting a bunch of printers from the server, which required us to roll the server back to the last nightly backup. The fix was simple enough, but the whole server had to come down for us to fix it, which caused problems for everyone, everywhere.

I left work frustrated that I wasn’t able to complete my own task for all the calls I kept getting. Eaddie was at Oakland waiting for me to pick her up, so I couldn’t even stay late just to finish up. I picked her up and expected to go home to clean, but she was hungry, so I ended up taking her out for a dinner date.

Summer had to work late and Autumn was still coming back from a Quiz Bowl tournament, so Eaddie and I went to La Huerta to eat. She was super chatty, and we had a good time. We weren’t back home for very long before Summer came over to get her, and left me to start cleaning up the bedroom on my own. I didn’t get as much done as I could have, but I got a bunch of little things done in a lot of places. At least the bed is uncovered now, but I can’t say much about the floor. I’ll have to make a decision tomorrow about running some speaker wire, because I really want the speakers to all be functional for Friday.

Sidetracked? We’re not even on the right train!