Tag: cleanup on aisle 5

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The Great Kitchen Cleanout

Summer went back to work today, so it was up to me to get the girls on chores. Autumn was up early and obviously wanted to go to their friends’ house, so she kept busy. Eaddie, on the other hand, woke up late and mostly lazed around as she showered and got ready for the day. I stripped most everything out of the kitchen cabinets and did some reorganizing. Not everything had a home in the end, so there was a lot left out on the counters by the time Summer got home.

I had pulled out the turkey stock I made from our Thanksgiving turkey carcass, and whipped up a noodle and vegetable soup out of them. Summer took the girls to their friends, then went to the gym before coming back home to eat. Then we watched Stardust and gawked at the list of stars cast.

It won’t be much longer before all the snow has melted.

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Entitlement

The girls got up this morning and went home so I could clean up around the house some more. I semi-randomly wandered around and cleaned up clutter, throwing out a fair amount of trash in the process. I looked some more for the title for my ’84 Fiero, but all I found were old check registers and medical bills.

When dinner time came around, I went to my parents’ house for shrimp noodle soup. Then I headed back home a little melancholy. I spent some more time cleaning in the kitchen, and what would you know, I found the title. It was on the kitchen counter all this time, because evidently I couldn’t find a better place for it.

It’s been all carrot and no stick for too long.

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Router? I hardly know her!

Most everyone was off for the holiday today. We weren’t, because of course we had to be there. Why wouldn’t we? I spent all morning at the shop setting up a new virtual machine for another Impero server. That should make us at least a little bit future-proof.

Lunch couldn’t come early enough, and Josh, Kyle, Ben, and I went to Stoby’s as an act of rebellion against Zach and Greg wanting to go out of town for Fat Daddy’s. I’d be fine never eating there ever again. It’s not bad. It’s just not worth driving out of town when the one in town has a bigger menu.

After lunch, I spent a couple hours at the junior high. Most of that time was eaten up when I had to assemble Bri’s new dual monitor stand setup. What made that so ridiculous was the fact that she has a desktop with dual monitors about six feet away. That class budget is just too damn high, so she’s left buying useless or redundant crap just to spend it all. I don’t even know how many lamps she had in that room.

I ended the day at the high school just for a little while to try and resolve an issue in one of my labs. Then I headed home for the evening. I originally thought I’d be heading up to Summer’s for the evening, but I lost track of time while picking and cleaning. She didn’t really have any plans anyway, so I just stayed in and cleaned up the leftover salad for dinner.

Between bouncing around from room to room, I occasionally stopped at the computer and discovered some weirdness going on with my router and internet. I tried repeatedly to update the firmware, to no avail. It was pretty frustrating, but I continued to juggle that along with all the cleaning and organizing until bedtime.

Well it looks different to me.

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Don’t Look Up

It was really frosty out this morning, but I made it back for a true full day at work. I was catching up with Karen in the library when Julie called to say Bác Tran was blowing up her phone to check on Bác Vân. I got a hold of Doug without too much trouble and confirmed that Dad and Lelan were already on the way. When I got into my office, I found the bucket I had placed above the drop ceiling had crashed through the tile and shattered when it hit the cubbies, dumping rainwater all over everything. I wouldn’t have expected to get that much water there, but it did rain for a really long time.

I took a late lunch to run by the post office, then just grabbed some Tropical Smoothie on the way back to the shop. I spent most of the afternoon there catching up with Ben and boxing up the three laptops we had ready to ship off to the depot repair center. I did eventually make it back to the high school to wrap up the day and pick up the girls.

We got home and Eaddie took off on her bike just before another guy came by to check out the renovations we want to make to the bathrooms. This guy was a recommendation from Julie, and he seemed much less sales-y than the previous group. He wasn’t pushy at all and basically said he was just there to complete exactly what we wanted and nothing more, which I appreciated. I think the quote will probably come back quite a bit cheaper because of that. He also name-dropped my superintendent, who is on an entirely different reality of a pay grade, and I wasn’t quite certain how I felt about it.

Once they left, I took the girls home and started prepping stuff for salads. Summer arrived shortly thereafter and we ate, then watched an episode of Glee. Eaddie and I heard something that sounded like it was running across the roof, and we came out to discover two cats that appeared to have difficulty finding a way down. I’m not sure how they got up in the first place, but it just sort of made me mad that they’ve been hanging around, tearing things up.

At least it’s a rental?

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Don’t Quote Me on That

It rained all day long today, but that just kept it from feeling too frigid. Mike and I cleaned up the office some more, then met Greg and Ben at Las Palmas for lunch. Afterward, we started our “training” so we could do HP self maintainer claims.

After work, I had to get home and continue cleaning before my parents came over with the guys from Father and Sons Construction & Remodeling Co. to look at the bathrooms. I felt pretty happy with where I got, and then had a moment to breathe before they got here because they were running behind.

We went from needing six walls hung and tiled, to having both bathrooms completely stripped and remodeled, paint everywhere, new cabinets with sinks and fixtures, and new windows all around the house. It felt very much like a sales pitch at first, and I quickly became very agitated. Finally looking at some of their previous work, I feel more confident that I could do the majority of the work and then just hire someone for plumbing and laying tile when I’m ready.

They were here for about an hour and a half before everyone left. Then I waited around for Summer to come over, since the girls were staying the night with their friends. She picked up some food from Spices and we ate, then went to bed.

All this talking is driving me crazy.

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Widening the Path

Mike and I were sent to the high school all day again today, with an added task of mounting a touch panel that was already prestaged. I feel so much less overwhelmed having someone there to help me sort through all the student devices. For the first time in forever, I feel regularly whelmed.

Nobody went out for lunch, so I just stopped by Burger King to grab a quick bite before going back to the high school. It was another short afternoon, and then I went home until Eaddie asked me to take them to Strikers Bowling Alley for some kind of multi-date. Summer met us there, and after some back and forth on whether or not we would bowl, we ended up leaving the kids for some dinner at Stoby’s.

When I got back home, I had to do some major excavating to clean a path to the bathrooms. Dad was able to schedule a quote with someone for the bathroom remodels, and though I can see progress in all the cleaning I’ve done this year, it would still look like a hoarded mess to a complete stranger.

Yes, this is better.

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Re-Pathing

I made little ham sandwiches for brunch this morning before Summer took Autumn to her Explorers group for their camp trip. Eaddie decided to stay with her friend for another night, so after the gym, Summer came back to help me rearrange the garage.

We finally got the workbench moved to the other wall under the cabinets, which required us to move a whole lot of stuff out into the driveway first. I didn’t get to explore quite as much as I wanted, so there’s still a ton of stuff to get rid of, but I still felt really accomplished. The motorcycles are going to be problematic once we’re ready to garage two cars, but I’ll have some time before I need to tackle that.

It really was like going through a time capsule though. It was a real bummer that John got motor oil all over my NEW flag. I never really put much thought into the publishing of stock prices back before the internet. We also got rid of a huge red carpet, but I don’t have a clue how I inherited it. I don’t think it was the first carpet in my house, but it could have been.

We took a break and got some Zaxby’s for dinner before moving everything back inside. With the motorcycles lined up on the right wall, I had a slightly different path into the house. It’ll be much better once I have some more time to reorganize the things I have in there. After the move, everything was stored pretty inefficiently.

Once we finished up, Summer went home to clean house a bit. I had an amazing shower to get the grime of a good day of work off of me. Then I headed up to her house for the evening before her work Friendsgiving event tomorrow.

We literally rolled out the red carpet to make room for the motorcycles.

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Flushed

We slept for a really long time last night, and woke up feeling pretty good. The girls were up around the same time, so Summer took them home while I got started tearing my toilet apart. It could have been a simple three minute fix to replace the lever arm, but I was tired of the flapper valve getting stuck on the chain because it was oriented incorrectly, so I decided to strip out all of the hardware and completely rebuild it.

Summer met me at Lowe’s in the afternoon so we could walk around and browse for some deals too. They didn’t have anything great, but I got a little Frankenstein pot with a succulent in it for half off after Halloween. It was nice just to shop around for a bit together without dragging the kids around too.

Afterward, I went to my parents’ house because they made some bánh giò. I helped them move some plants around in preparation for the potential frost, and then I picked at some older leftovers for dinner.

On the way back home, I stopped by a house near the end of the street where someone recently moved out, and picked up a huge sheet of half-inch acrylic and a couple other little things. Then I got to work putting the toilet back together. Now I’m ready for the next project.

After spending all day fixing a toilet, I think I know my useless superpower. I can do things in super slow motion, while appearing to move at regular speed.

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In Charge

Summer and I got up this morning and went on a mission to replace the battery in the Murano. I didn’t even bother trying to start the car, and instead just pulled the battery out. We stopped at Wendy’s to pick up some breakfast just for the two of us, then ate it in the AutoZone parking lot before going inside. When we went inside, the store manager wasn’t there and we got a pretty young kid to just take the battery back and exchange it no questions asked. He didn’t even press me to let him test it. He just wandered straight back and got me a new one.

When we got back to the house, we got the battery in and then Summer took all the kids home to start their chores. I stayed pretty busy for the rest of the day. I opened up the car and pulled out the spare tire to find a big puddle of the spilled spring water from yesterday. Then I walked around outside with Bác Vân for a while. We moved one of the water hoses to the other side of the house, and chatted for a bit about the landscaping she’s done.

I spent the afternoon going in and out of the house, randomly cleaning and reorganizing things. I can actually walk up to one end of my workbench now, which was an accomplishment in itself. The only time I sat down for any length of time was after I installed another Belkin WEMO light switch and couldn’t get it to connect to my wireless.

Summer eventually made it back over for the evening after dropping Noah off at work and taking the girls to their father’s house. She settled in while I continued tinkering with my WEMO. Hopefully leaving it on overnight will help, and I won’t have to spend any more hours tomorrow getting the stupid thing to work.

I can’t even imagine not having to spend six hours connecting a smart device any more.

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Are You Shedding Me?

The three of us got up and went to Denny’s for breakfast as a treat. We had what was probably the best service we’d ever had there, but then ran into an awkwardly slow checkout experience. None of the other customers seemed very happy about it, but I don’t know why they were all so surly.

On the way home we rescued a box turtle. Summer didn’t feel well for most of the day, and spent most of it on the couch. I hung the hammocks in case Eaddie wanted to do some school work outside. Then I cleaned out the shed where some animals evidently got in and shredded a bunch of cardboard boxes I had in there. Once it was cleaned out enough, Summer helped me move the kayaks out of the garage, so I’m just a little bit closer to being able to park in there again.

We came back inside to cool down in front of the TV, and when dinner time rolled around, we all agreed on pizza. I had some Papa John’s reward money expiring soon, so I picked that up for dinner and we watched some Glee. Then Eaddie and I ran to Julie’s house because she made some beef stew for us to try. Mom and Dad were there, but we didn’t stay long since Summer was still home on the couch. We watched a bit more TV, and then for some reason everyone went to bed really early.

How do I love thee?