Tag: deals

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I’m in a Hurry to Get Things Done

Muad’Dib was full of some extra energy today, so I had him run up and down the stairs several times in the morning, and again in the afternoon. Things were a little oddly quiet, but I got called down for a task, which was nice. Otherwise I get bored of all the Microsoft documentation all day.

We took a break to get some McNuggets, and the experience was quite good. It’s to the point that I’ll have to update my review, which is great for everyone.

Summer and I planned to go to Cici’s for a cheap dinner salad, so we got to the house and I put Muad’Dib out back. It was the fastest, cheapest dinner in town at $6. The salad had plenty of options, and the pizza was coming out fresh.

Summer had to go to bed pretty quickly when we got back, and I took Muad’Dib to my parents’ house to look at Dad’s computer. For some reason, it wouldn’t allow user authentication for file access over the network until I created a whole different user account, but that worked perfectly.

Once back at the house, I planned to vacuum but had to do some other cleaning up first, and then wanted to get to bed early after missing so much sleep last night.

It’ll do 0 to 60 in 2.9

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Prodogtive

I tried extra hard to stay focused today, and it sort of went okay. I tried to tie up some loose ends and choose a project of some importance that could keep my focus. We ended up getting pulled away from that to go downstairs, and I decided to let Muad’Dib into the office with Teddybear. I was proud of him for listening and playing nice with the little pup, and even Rhonda had to stop and take a picture of them just staring at each other. Being down there gave me the project I needed to focus on, so we went back and pecked away at that.

Monopoly was back at McDonald’s, so I had to go there for lunch. Muad’Dib was mad that I left him in the car, but I was only inside for a little bit anyway. The afternoon went by at a very normal pace. I couldn’t remember whether I had my anxiety attack then, or earlier in the morning, but it hit me pretty hard whenever it was.

When we finally left, something caught Muad’Dib in a laser-focus, and I turned back around the corner to see one of the guys leaving the plant with a bag of chips. He offered one up for puppy tax, and then I had a little trouble rounding him up to leave. We stopped at the wash to see Summer, but she was too busy to really visit anyway.

We weren’t at the house for very long before Summer showed up, and we decided to go to Cici’s since they had the cheapest meal in town. I just had to go easy on the pizza, and left actually feeling pretty decent after a good salad. It was dark when we got back, but we walked Muad’Dib to my parents’ house to see Dad after his trip to Alabama. Then it was right back to the house for bed.

Toxic Gift Cards

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Get It, Snap It, Try It, Write It, Sell It, Trash It, Carbonate It

Muad’Dib must be putting on some weight, because I could hardly move with him on top of my covers all night. I got up shortly after Summer left for work, and got into moving stuff around again. I stopped for a slice of rye with mustard and pastrami, honey roasted turkey breast, and provolone for brunch, then took an early shower so I could keep cleaning and organizing.

I was in and out of the house quite a bit, and had to get into my car a couple of times. Muad’Dib thought we were going on an adventure and hopped right in, then refused to get out, so I gave in to him and drove us to Superfast to see if Summer needed anything. She was in the pit when we got there, and Muad’Dib ran all over trying to find the location of her voice. She asked for some soda water, so we crossed the street to get some from Walgreens. If I had thought of it sooner, we might have walked, but I didn’t have a leash to tie him up anyway.

While I was in the store, I spotted a big bag of Skittles with the original/superior/correct flavor of lime for the green ones. I also tried some peanut butter and jelly M&Ms, but I found the jelly to be lacking. We delivered Summer’s water, then went to Sonic for some onion rings and a slush before we made it back home.

Eaddie was gone all day, so I just kept going through stuff by myself. Muad’Dib was intermittently in the way, but overall a good boy. At some point, I pulled out one of the new smart locks I got from Vine and tried to swap out the lock on the front door. This one has a doorbell, camera, and fingerprint sensor on it, which seems better than just a PIN code. I wrapped that up just as Summer got home from work.

She took a bath and did some more work on her laptop for quite a while, so I dug out a SodaStream adapter for my large CO2 tank and filled up every single bottle I could find. I’m pretty sure I found them all, and I’m glad that I did, because I paid $2 for her can of sparkling water earlier today, and she’s been drinking it every day.

Summer had some leftover rice while I finished bottling her water. Then I sat down myself and had the last piece of fried chicken and some leftover mashed potatoes from whenever she last made mashed potatoes. I couldn’t remember, but they didn’t smell bad. She went straight to bed after that, and nearly passed right out. I tried not to stay up too late, but got a couple reviews done until Eaddie finally made it home.

Technoholic

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Baths All Around

I couldn’t leave Muad’Dib outside, so I brought him in for a vacuum to get some of the smelly dirt off of him, then washed his paws in the tub. By the end of it, I was satisfied enough to let him sleep with us. We slept in pretty late, too. When I finally got up, I warmed my leftover SuperSONIC Breakfast Burrito in a skillet, then continued to tinker with more Vine stuff. I started to feel a little sick and decided to take a bubble bath to relax for a while, and as soon as I got settled in, Summer asked if I wanted to get lunch with her.

We ended up going out for an early dinner, not long after Eaddie woke up and made herself some ramen. I drove to Mulan’s to meet her like she said, but had to wait 25 minutes for her to show up because she thought “I need to get dressed” meant it would take me so long that I would have to tell her when I was on the way.

Dinner was pretty good, but I’ve been stuffed all week. As we left, there was a big wreck on Main and Knoxville that had traffic diverted, so I spun around and went back up to Parkway. We got home and Summer had a bath. I tried to keep up with Vine reviews as multiple deliveries arrived today, and I eventually took Muad’Dib out for a run.

We made pretty decent time for how hot it was. We got chased down by a dog that slipped away from its owner, so we turned around to return it. I was proud of Muad’Dib for minding so well. We got around to my parents’ house and visited very briefly before making it home.

It was time to give Muad’Dib another proper bath with some new shampoo I got from Vine. He was immediately warry, and hid from me outside when we got home. Eaddie got him back inside and I vacuumed him, bathed him, blow dried him outside, then vacuumed him some more before bed.1

I was up quite a while later, finishing up some more reviews and getting lost in thoughts. A somber weekend approaches.

Thinkin’ how you left me for dead.

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Greatest HSTI Album

I had so much trouble getting to sleep last night. I had to go outside a couple of times to drain the basement because the water was nearly up to the door. I even had to turn the pump on again this morning because it was full again. I got up with my normal work alarm and got out the door without too much trouble. I stopped at Burger King for a croissant, and then hit Highway 7 like a madman.

The roads were completely wet, but I didn’t encounter much rain. It wasn’t enough to make anything particularly dangerous, and it was fun to triple the suggested speed warnings and get white knuckled on the way to Hot Springs again like I used to do in the olden days. I carved off nearly half an hour of the estimated drive, and got to experience a newer highway that I hadn’t been on before once I got closer to town.

There weren’t a ton of people there when I arrived, and that was because the first class didn’t actually start until nine. I worked so hard to get there at 7:30, and I could have really used the extra hour of sleep. Randy, Jim, and Kyle eventually showed up for a little bit of breakfast before we split into our different rooms.

My network security class was mostly stuff I had actually just done this year in North Little Rock, but they didn’t tell us that in the course description. I breezed through the morning, then had cold, boxed burgers with the guys, and then had a short afternoon wrapping things up.

I got to the hotel early, but it took about half an hour for the old, seemingly clueless lady behind the counter to process the three people in front of me. I did get checked in and up to the room to rest for a bit though. Jim was humorously the last one out of class, and then I met Randy, Kyle, and Jay downstairs. Jay drove out just to visit us for some shooting and dinner. We drove forever to get to a shooting range in the mountains. There was one other guy there with some high-powered stuff, and they took turns blowing chunks out of the mountainside.

I borrowed Summer’s gun and shot a few rounds. Then Jay let me shoot his pistol and I blew several holes into a coffee can before it flew off its post. I was pretty proud of those shots. Summer’s gun was super small, so it was much harder to hold onto. The guys had their fill, and then we headed back to town to have dinner at Back Porch Grill.

It was a pretty quiet night there. I split a special with Randy, but our steak was super bland. It was cooked well, and was obviously a pretty decent cut of meat, but it just didn’t have enough seasoning. The lobster and shrimp were okay, but I think the scallops were my favorite. After we ate, Randy, Kyle, and I thought we’d go to A&W, but they were closed. My second suggestion, Kringles and Kones, was closed permanently. That took us to a whiskey tasting at Hotel Hot Springs with ProMAS. I had a bunch of banana “moonshine” that had been mixed with coconut syrup and orange juice, and it was delicious. We sat and the guys talked for a while, and then it was back to the room.

I spent most of my night alone writing Vine reviews to get my ratio up over 90%. I’m still not quite there, so hopefully they’ll get approved quickly as I finish them up tomorrow.

Whatever you do, don’t touch the water.

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Welcome to My Level

Summer had to check Eaddie in to band camp this morning, and then went to the gym. I worked on more Vine reviews and then took a shower. I talked to Dad about what he might want to do for Father’s Day, and he ultimately landed on pizza. Julie and Kevin were out of town, so it would just be Summer and me to come over.

We thought we might walk, but it started to rain and we decided to take him in the car anyway. It was a pretty short visit. We ate and then went back home so I could continue cleaning up and working on reviews before my conference week. I tried to wait until it got a little cooler and then took Muad’Dib out for a run. I thought we’d go by the Neighborhood Market to drop off some recycling that had been sitting in the laundry room. We generate so many plastic bags, but I don’t even remember the last time I went to Walmart to be able to recycle them.

On the ride down, I had a pretty wild anxiety attack. I was riding down the hill and then became super disoriented. I remember seeing the street sign and then just used muscle memory to guide me on down the road. I shook it off and we made it to the store without any more trouble. It didn’t take long to drop off the bags, though I wish they would put their bin back by the front door so I wouldn’t have to keep walking it in to the service desk.

We rode back to our normal path, but avoided the flooded basin. We visited my parents again, and I dipped my feet in the pool while I tried washing some of the dirt off of Muad’Dib’s paws. We got home and I took him to the bathtub just to scrub his feet, and he didn’t protest too much. It seemed like Summer started to feel the stress I’d been feeling for the past several months, so we talked very briefly and then just sat together for a bit before I continued cleaning.

I got a load of laundry done and packed way too late, so I got to bed about two hours later than I wanted. I’ll let the adrenaline of Highway 7 wake me up in the morning.

But you turned into a pretty big waste of my time.

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The C-Words

Randy texted on my way in that he would be a couple hours late after last night’s board meeting. Jimmy and I were basically the only two around all day, except for a brief appearance by Jay. Several others were out, but things were still bound to get exciting.

Anita knocked on the door a couple times after Maggie’s and Randy’s phones rang. Sonya in HR was trying to reach us, and was upset that we weren’t at her whim. Anita asked me to call her, and I wished I had recorded the conversation, because she immediately became snotty with me. I killed her with kindness, but just like last time, she hung up on me and basically said somebody was on their way to resolve the issue in person.

Not long after that, Randy did show up with Jacob, and I relayed the story in an emailed record of conversation. I got the feeling that Jacob was over her shenanigans as well. After that, things got super quiet again for the rest of the day. Summer called in the early afternoon to say that her biopsy results came back positive for ductal carcinoma, which sounded like the best case scenario for the threat of cancer. I reassured her the best I could, but she was obviously bothered.

I took a late lunch and ran through Rally’s for a pretty good Super Loaded Buford. The fries were hot and fresh enough to melt away my worries for the amount of time it took me to scarf them down. Randy was somewhere else for most of the afternoon, but came back in time to see that we didn’t leave at three.

When we did leave, I headed across town to check if the Target in West Little Rock had a Samsung The Frame TV on clearance. They did actually have one in stock, but it was still priced more than twice what I was willing to pay, so I had to walk away. While I was there, I guess I got hot on top of being a bit amped up, because my heart rate skyrocketed and I started to get a bit dizzy again. I chewed a fragment of a clonidine I had in my pocket, and it either helped or I just managed to calm myself down enough that it didn’t become an issue.

I headed back across town to Franklin’s Charging to get some juice before Mitch finished with work. As I pulled in, a guy asked me to slide over into another spot to try a different charger. He ended up being the owner, by the name of Jeff. He talked to me for the entirety of my visit, and seemed a proper EV nerd. As we were chatting, another guy pulled up next to me to charge his F150 Lightning. He was John, from AEV Solar, and the two of them continued the conversation as I mostly leaned back and listened. It was neat to hear a bit of Jeff’s journey in growing his business.

I eventually made it to Mitch’s hotel and waited for him to finish uploading some photos from the workday. Then by chance we were able to meet Blake and his friend Alyssa at Southern Tail, where we initially took drinks out to a picnic table at the edge of the property, but later found a table at the patio. We had a good time catching up, but it was definitely more rowdy than last time. We left as it just started to get dark, and I made my way home to the girls.

It rained a bit on the drive, but it was otherwise uneventful. The girls were chatting in the bedroom, so I laid with them for a bit before Eaddie went back to her room, and then it was a quick wind down to bed.

I’d like to say that it’s been real, but it’s been fake as hell.

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Alaska Dreamin’

An hour drive inside my head every day hasn’t been great. Between that and exhaustion, I don’t even remember most of the drive in to work today. I zoned out hard. Randy was back from his bereavacation and had a comically and expectedly foul reaction to being back at work. He confirmed my suspicions on the couple things I saved for him to look at, and then disappeared with Maggie for some meeting somewhere.

I had some coffee and tinkered for a while, but Jim needed some help with imaging at the high school. It was about lunch time, so Randy and I drove separately across the river to Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken to meet Kyle. The spice in that chicken was exactly what my soul needed to find peace for about twenty minutes. Then we split up and I headed to the high school to find Jim.

He had laptops spread across a table in the library where he was trying to image, and they would join the domain but then immediately lose their trust, so he couldn’t log in without dropping and rejoining the domain. I didn’t have much time to troubleshoot, but I had a couple of ideas before I had to leave to meet Summer.

I got through town as quickly as I could and met Summer at the Conway Regional Imaging Center for her breast MRI. The appointment was actually quite a bit faster than either of us expected, but of course we have to wait a few days for answers. She was super hungry after that due to fasting in the morning, so we went to Los 3 Potrillos for an early dinner. I parked at a hotel charger while we ate and got enough juice to get home. The food was good and reasonably fast, and I got out for less than half of what I normally pay in Little Rock.

After we ate, Summer went to pick up tickets to Eaddie’s graduation. I went straight home and took Muad’Dib to my parents’ house to see Dad, then over to Walgreens to pick up my prescription. On the way back, he got overheated and parked under a closed drive-through awning to catch his breath. I took the opportunity to return a call from Michael, who wanted to borrow some speakers for Oakland’s Dancing Through the Decades party. We chatted briefly, and then Muad’Dib and I made it back to our neighborhood where we stopped to chat with Mason for a minute.

Once we got home, I started hammering out reviews for Vine to get my ratio up. I’m almost at the point where I have to start unboxing things that I had stocked up on, like light bulbs, in order to give a proper review. That should be easy, but time consuming, so I’ve got to lock in. Unfortunately my lock-in juice appears to be causing some swelling, and I have blood tests incoming, so I’d probably do well to sober up.

That guy sailed away, man. He’s gone. Probably crashed into an iceberg.

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Unbreakable

I woke up just before my alarm this morning and made it to work pretty early. I really thought I had to get Jim’s imaging issue fixed, but he called me away to babysit a Google Meet interview in the boardroom. You would think with so many educated people in a room, they could figure out how to click the button to join a meeting. I wasn’t even that surprised to find it was the interviewee who couldn’t figure out how to show our video, but I could at least have the chief of staff pull the Meet up on his phone and prove that our video was broadcasting correctly.

After that, I decided to give Captain D’s a try since I was already on that side of town. The girl at the counter could not have been more disinterested, but somehow the food was really great. I stopped at Walmart for some drinks on the way back to the office, and finished out the day in relative quiet. I had also picked up some dog food on clearance, but was overcharged, so I stopped by Walmart again on my way out of town to correct that.

I got home and Summer and the kids were on the couch watching gymnastics. I went out to play with Muad’Dib for a bit. Eaddie left to go stay the night with her father, and Summer came outside to sit with me for a little bit. Things have been super volatile, which made it a terrible time to try and discuss any of our issues, so she yelled at me and stormed off. I gave her a minute before following her to the living room, and she yelled at me a bunch more. That was when I saw she had gotten a new tattoo that said “Unbreakable” on her left forearm, and it crushed me.

Once we had cooled off, she sent me to take Muad’Dib for a run. He did great, didn’t chase any geese, and got to play in the creek for a little while since I just needed to be in the air for a little while. We made it over to my parents’ house to visit with them, and he got some more leftover pork before we headed home. Mom had leftover bún thang, so I asked Summer to come have dinner with them. We used to go visit much more often, and it’s been a big issue for me that it seems like she never wants to make the time with my family. I explained this again, and was super happy that she agreed this time. It was a great visit and great food.

We talked a bunch more when we got home, and things shifted from good to bad and back again several times. I got some laundry done, and she got some sleep before her 5k in Dover tomorrow. I was ready to pass out at any moment, but had things to do.

You gotta give them to the land

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Cold Day, Hot Pot

I slept in just a little bit today because we didn’t have to be at work until 10. Summer left in a bit of a hurry, so I fed the dogs before I got out the door. I thought I was running behind, but I was actually ahead by about 20 minutes, so I decided to stop at Whataburger in Conway to see what their breakfast was like, and then sat to eat it at the Supercharger. The honey butter chicken biscuit was pretty good, but the jalapeño cheddar biscuit was pretty dry. The coffee wasn’t even lukewarm, but the hash brown sticks were pretty good.

I charged up until the moment I had to leave to get to work on time, and I was surprised to walk into an office full of people. Even Jimmy was still there, playing solitaire on his computer. Nobody was really up to anything, and though Randy put me in charge while he was out sick, I wasn’t really up to much either. I worked on a couple things for Jim before he left, and before I knew it, Maggie was asking about lunch.

After some back and forth, she, Jay, and I went to KPOT. We got there before they opened, so we had to wait in the car. Then we all three just had the hot pot without the grill. Maggie had never been, but she seemed to enjoy it. Jay was upset he didn’t get much shrimp, and I wished I had gotten the same soup I had last time, but it was alright. Our waitress was super helpful, if not a little bit chatty, and the food was pretty good.

After lunch, I finally figured out how to get Jim into SCCM, by updating his Configuration Manager Console version. I never would have thought it would outright deny the connection for that, and assumed it would just update it in line. With that, I had fixed twice as many things as I thought I might.

Everyone slowly filtered out, and I was the last one to leave. I had to stop in Conway to charge again because it was so cold, and then I made it home to run the dogs. We had a good run, so they got the rest of their Ridgewood pulled pork before dinner. Summer was exhausted when she got home, so I built her a pretty awesome looking burger before unboxing a handful of Vine stuff. I got the sofa table I ordered, and was super impressed by the quality, for being such a small, cheap table.

Eaddie got home late and went to bed pretty early, and Summer practically crawled to bed after working in pain all day from her fall on the ice yesterday. I was up too late, but suddenly it’s the weekend again. We’ll have to get up and shop for groceries early tomorrow, because Noah and his buddy Michael passed whatever test they took so they could build scaffolding for power plant outages. Maybe this will be good for them, but for now, Summer wanted to celebrate them with a steak dinner.

Okay, now even I’m surprised by all these deliveries.