Tag: cleanup on aisle 5

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Rooting For You

We started testing today, so it was pretty quiet. It sprinkled for most of the day too, so I didn’t make it down to the field house. Gary had a few minutes to call me and help with some things I had been tinkering with, and I think I learned a bit, and maybe even proved myself a little.

I took an early lunch to meet Ronda, Steven, and a coworker of his at Ruby Tuesday for $5 salads. It was pretty quiet there today, but it’s possible that was just due to how early we were. I went by the shop for a little bit afterward, then went back to the high school in the rain.

I guess I was a bit too ambitious, because I didn’t quite finish all I wanted to before quitting time. I actually ended up staying pretty late, fighting with a replacement computer I deployed. I actually didn’t even finish, so I’ll have to check on it in the morning as well.

Dad left me a big, flat drain tape to run up under the house, so I met Summer at home to see what we could do. The girls sat in the car the whole time because I don’t think they realized how long it was going to take me. I ran the snake all the way up the sewer pipe without too much trouble, so I had to coil it all back up and go down from the inside of the house. It wasn’t too difficult in spite of how gross the toilet mounting bolts looked. They were so rusted that I could just about pull the whole thing straight up.

With the toilet out of the way, I could see a bright orange root snaking around the drain. Inside was a literal wall of cat poop, completely blocking the pipe. Water could only seep out the drain, and a lot of that was probably my fault for flushing dry cat poop out of the litter box. I’m about at the point that I’m ready to quit using that half-broken automatic CatGenie and go back to a regular box. I called Dad, and we decided to get Roto-Rooter back out to properly snake the drain.

I spent the rest of the evening cleaning up a bit, then went to Summer’s for the evening. All the extra work running around the house made me hungry, so I cleaned up some random leftovers and eventually made it to bed.

Well, shit.

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Hot Swaps

I made it to work a bit early this morning and went straight to work swapping out computers so I could take the older ones to the old fieldhouse. Other work kept coming in as well, making it a super busy day for me. Allen wanted to go to lunch, and was actually willing to go five minutes late because I was in the middle of working on something. I met him at Arby’s, and luckily found a pretty good meal-for-two coupon in my car.

After lunch was just as busy, but I was still mostly fighting with imaging the old computers I pulled out. I didn’t get them to the fieldhouse today, but I can have an intern help me tomorrow. When I got home, I started right away on cleaning the cat box. That’s when the trouble really started.

The toilet in my guest bathroom slowed down after a few flushes, and eventually stopped up almost completely. Gross water came out from the bottom, so I know the seal is broken. I spent a while cleaning everything up again, but I’ll probably try and pull the toilet tomorrow to see what’s going on down there.

The remainder of the evening went by pretty quickly as I parsed more email and skimmed through articles of varying interest.

The handyman can, ’cause he fixes it with tape…

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Tending the Dumber Slumbered

We got up this morning and decided on a cheapish Burger King lunch for the horde. Summer left for the gym, and after a bit I took the kids up to her house so they could shed their collective stench. I had gotten a call earlier in the morning that my final(?) pair of trial contacts had come in, so I stopped to get them on the way home. Then I spent the afternoon cleaning house.

I found myself getting bitter over the careless, wasteful, and generally unsanitary nature of the kids, but they’ve grown into their filthy habits without regard for the types of things that matter to me. I shouldn’t have much room to gripe on account of my own lifestyle, but so much of what irks me comes from a lack of consideration or respect. Sometimes I feel like I just have to step around them and ignore what they’ve done as I clean up after them, but ultimately it just makes me want them around less.

Summer eventually brought them all over again, along with a bunch of stuff for dinner. We left them here watching The Simpsons against my better judgement, while Summer and I went to Walmart to pick up groceries for New Year’s Eve. Hopefully it’s a fun time for everyone. We should have plenty of snacks, but I still think I’ll end up getting more vegetables.

We made salads and sloppy joes for dinner, then finished The Lord of the Rings saga with The Return of the King. Overall it was a better night than last. I even put together a shoe rack to bring some order to my entryway.

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

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Getting Baked for Family

I got to sleep in a little today while Summer went off to work. The kids were all up playing Mario Kart when I finally got around. Noah and I finished up some salad stuff, and then Eaddie and I shared what was left of Veronica’s tamales. Summer had me bake the cookies so they’d be cool for decorating in the evening. Eaddie wanted to help at first, but didn’t really commit. Once they were done, I headed home to start cleaning up the house for everyone to stay the night.

Everything cleaned up relatively easily, but I’ve still got a ton of clutter that needs to be managed. I definitely had to skimp in the evening as Summer finished up work and I had to pick up some groceries for Christmas dinner. Walmart had been extremely busy the past few times I’d been, but had surprisingly calmed down a bunch for the evening. Erica yelled out at me as I was running out the door and said she still wasn’t having any of the crowd.

The kids ambushed Summer when she got home, so she called in an order for some pizza. I was pretty early to get them, but it was fun watching the make line and I chatted a bit with who I presume was the shift leader about my nostalgia from my first job working in pizza. With pizzas in hand, I made my way up to Summer’s where the kids were mostly practicing being in the way. We ultimately decided to put off decorating cookies until tomorrow so we could get started watching The Fellowship of the Ring with Noah. The kids decorated the tree and then we were off.

Summer went straight to bed. Autumn watched, I’m estimating the first 30 seconds of the film before she passed out. Eaddie made it a bit farther. Noah was aggravated after spending two day swatching Harry Potter when Autumn wouldn’t provide him the same courtesy. We eventually called it quits just as we made it to Rivendell.

Bah Humbug, now that’s too strong!

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Surprisingly Productive

I got up this morning and headed home to get ready for my all-you-can-eat date with Allen at Long John Silver’s. He called while I was in the shower and said he was on his way back from church, and then immediately gave up on me and went to eat without me instead of picking me up like we had planned. I met him there, but he had already finished eating. I made sure he wasn’t going to just get up and leave by the time I got my food, and we ended up sitting and chatting for a while. I was pretty aggravated at first, but I let that fizzle out as usual.

After I was stuffed with fish and chicken, we both headed home and I started washing my sheets and cleaning up the bedroom. I worked on that all day and late into the evening until bedtime. A better person would have made more progress, but I was happy with what I accomplished in my one little corner.

Well that was nearly half of my entire life.

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Demolition Derpy

I got up and started picking up around the house this morning until Dad came over to start tearing down my master bathroom tile. I haven’t used that bathroom in years because the water ate through the tile and into the evidently unprotected drywall. He chipped away at the tile while I shuttled trash out to the curb, and then he got the back wall down with some effort.

Once we got to that stopping point, I cleaned up to go to Summer’s for the evening. She had a pretty terrible day at the shop, so I stopped by McDonald’s for a couple Happy Meals. I used to do that occasionally if I had a rough day, and it helped me feel better. Then we watched some Jeopardy! on Netflix with Eaddie until bedtime.

Impendingiving Day!

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Party Pooper

I managed to sleep until a little after noon today. I never really got hungry which was nice, but I also didn’t feel up to much after popping my Dulcolax tablets. Originally I had envisioned cleaning up the house a bit, and I did try, but I just didn’t accomplish a whole lot. I spent most of my time playing some more Oxygen Not Included until things started getting gurgly. Then I watched The World According to Jeff Goldblum, which honestly kind of left me not really liking him as much just because he seemed completely unable to be even a little bit normal. He’s an entertaining character in smaller doses, but I could see how someone would become tired of him after a while, like an annoying, weird uncle.

Overall it felt very much like the old days of hiding in my home and not seeing anyone for days. I completely forgot to go out and get gas for Hog Wild Wednesday. I wonder if I can last another week.

Won’t this be fun…

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That Spiked Pear Tree Can Burn

We slept in a bit today, then got up to a couple episodes of Battlestar Galactica before lunch. I started craving Taco Bell and needed to run a couple errands, so the yard work waited a bit longer. I should have known I was in for trouble when I couldn’t get the Taco Bell app to work again. I’ve still got quite a bit of money wrapped up in e-gift cards in the app, and I can’t use them because the app won’t keep me signed in. When I finally gave up and went to the counter to order and pay, it took them 24 minutes to get our food out to us. They were pretty busy with a couple vans worth of kids there, but the wait was still unreal.

After eating, we went to Lowe’s to dispose of some CFL bulbs and then wandered around a bit to check out any seasonal clearances. They had some blinds outside that the lady practically wanted to give away, but we couldn’t find any the right size. Next was a quick stop at Walmart to return the globe light bulbs I picked up last night because they were too big to fit inside my fixtures. I didn’t much care for the color anyway.

When we finally got back home, we went out back to start cleaning up the yard. It took me a while to get a fire going because it just wasn’t getting any airflow without any breeze at all, but I finally got it going well enough to burn down my ant-infested stump. As we wound down, Summer went home to clean up as I tended the coals, then I cleaned myself up and waited for her return. She brought a bunch of salad stuff over, I chopped up some dinner, and we ended the night with some surprisingly sappy Parks and Rec for a lighter evening.

Goodbye Ann. I have enjoyed parts of our time together.

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An Attempt at Cleaning That Was Really Mostly Playing with Shrimp

Summer got called into work this morning, so I slept in for a bit before heading home to try and clean house. I got a little bit done, but mostly wandered around picking at little things all day. I did a pretty big trimp to the plants in the Imagitarium, and moved some plants from the ghost shrimp tank over since the snails were preventing them from growing any leaves anyway. Hopefully they do better without all the pest snails running amok. I did manage to clean up the guest bathroom a bit, which seemed to be my focus all day.

After work and some gym time, Summer came over and we went to have dinner at Mom’s. She was asleep on the couch but got up to help assemble some phở for us. We watched TV with her there for a bit, then left for Walmart so I could pick up a new flapper for my leaky guest toilet. We perused any clearance areas we could find and picked up a couple other things, then came back to my house for the evening. Summer went to bed while I spent some time changing light bulbs and cleaning up the bathroom a bit more before following suit.

Maybe I’m the reason I have so many brown recluse spiders here.

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A Laundry List

We got up pretty early this morning after some storming last night. Summer went to get bread for French toast and ended up at the shop because they lost a bunch of equipment due to a power surge or lightning strike. Eaddie and I watched some Daredevil until she got back, and then after breakfast I went back to the shop with her to see if I could be of any help.

I found a few bad ethernet ports on several pieces of equipment, and swapped things around enough to get them limping. It was hot though, and I needed a shower, so I went home to get ready. We were going to go to Conway to go shopping, but by the time Summer got rid of the girls and was ready to go, I decided it was too late and started some laundry instead. It’ll free up tomorrow having so much of it done, which will be nice as the last weekend before school starts.

Summer eventually came over but didn’t feel like getting out for dinner, so I went to eat with my parents by myself. When I got back, we were both so tired that we called it an early night and went to bed.

Shopping for stuff from China is always so fun!