Tag: deals

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16K Santa

It was a small crew this morning, so Ben sent the four of us to hang some touch panels before an early dismissal. We hung the first at Dwight before inspecting Sequoyah and then taking a lunch. We all agreed on Wendy’s, and then we were going to do work orders afterward. I chose to help Brice finish up at Sequoyah, and then finished the day delivering a speaker to my new office.

After work, I went home to change before heading out to the Clarksville Walmart for some TVs. I got four takers and picked up four ONN 50″ 4K TVs. The whole purpose of the trip was to replace Summer’s bedroom TV. Then my sister wanted one for her spare bedroom. I decided to pick one up for my parents since their TV still won’t play copy-protected sources. Finally, Gary decided to upgrade his smaller TV.

I made my way back home and delivered to Gary, and then my parents. I got Julie’s garage door camera and she let me in to her house while she was on the way home from work. I got the camera set up after a little trouble, and then she gave me a bowl of Blueberry Morning, which I don’t think I’ve had since before I moved out of my parents’ house. She said they stopped either making or carrying it locally, so she picked up a case or so.

You can’t say I never gave back!

Summer went to the gym after work, so I went to her house with the last TV and set it up as a surprise before taking Eaddie to my parents’ house for dinner and a swim. We stopped by the shop where I discarded her old TV before meeting her. Eaddie wasn’t hungry, so she jumped straight to the pool while I ate. When Summer got there, she didn’t want to eat either. I finished and then joined Eaddie for a swim, and Summer eventually came along for just a short while.

Dad got a couple telescopes out, but I think everyone was too tired to stand around looking through them. We ended the evening inside watching My Fair Lady, and headed back to Summer’s for the evening. I put on the rest of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse until Summer passed out.

Everybody knows that the best way to learn is under intense, life-threatening crisis!

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Sad Pickles

We got up and around today to go to the Atkins Pickle Fest. It seemed smaller than I remembered, and it’s possible that there were more people there yesterday. The girls weren’t too excited about it, and Autumn was especially cranky the whole time. I finally got to try fried gator on a stick, which wasn’t bad, but was mostly breading. When we got back to my house, Eaddie and Summer went to ride bikes while Autumn sat inside on her phone.

When they finished, Summer left to go to the gym and I took the girls to Walmart. I had learned of an adapter to modify their bikes’ Presta valve stems to work with the standard Schrader pumps that cost under $2. Eaddie got particularly moody while we were there. Autumn had the idea to surprise Summer with dinner, and I spotted a load of clearance items I wanted to check out. A couple hours and $300 later, we wrapped things up and headed back to my house.

Summer had finished working out and went home to shower. I tried cleaning my kitchen to cook dinner, but then gave up and decided to take it all to her instead. It was rainy, but not too bad, and still way easier than actually cleaning my own house. Hopefully I’ll get some time to do that tomorrow.

Autumn didn’t end up helping with dinner much, but it was relatively easy anyway. I threw a whole package of six boneless, skinless chicken breasts into the instant pot along with some taco seasoning, Rotel, and a bit of chicken broth. That pressurized and then cooked for 20 minutes while I chopped up an onion, cilantro, and serrano peppers, and made a creamy cilantro lime sauce to go on top. The chicken shredded up perfectly, and everyone seemed to really love the tacos. We got some slaw mix to go on top, which made the whole thing feel really fresh and healthy, but I lost count of how many tacos I actually ate. Next time I should probably use two packages of taco seasoning, and either drain the Rotel or omit the chicken broth.

After dinner, Autumn went to her room claiming she didn’t feel well while the rest of us watched a few episodes of Parks and Rec. Then Summer and I played a couple games of Magic before bed.

Who proposes at Pickle Fest?

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People That Do Things

I sort of halfway got to sleep in just a little bit today, but it wasn’t much. The girls went home while I showered and got the bike rack mounted. I had forgotten how heavy and cumbersome that thing is, and it makes me wish I had a better way to store it than boxing it back up in the retail package. It really is the most secure, uniform shape that way though.

Noah and Eaddie stayed behind, so it was just Summer, Autumn, and myself again heading to Little Rock. We went straight to Dick’s and met with Ryan, who I had spoken to over the phone. He threw the bike up and checked the breaks and a couple things, but evidently didn’t tighten the handlebars or air up the tires, and one of the valve stem caps was missing. Of course we didn’t notice any of this until we got home and tried to ride them.

While in Little Rock, we tried to find somewhere to go for lunch and ended up at Hooter’s right around the corner. The girls kept being super apologetic about how slow they were and how behind the kitchen was, but I honestly didn’t really even notice it at all, especially for a Mother’s Day crowd. Autumn thought she could handle the heat of the wings, but she ended up struggling to eat. Summer lucked out and got a free salad for Mother’s Day.

We stopped in Conway on the way home to get the last bike. As we walked into Dick’s, we found they had lost power, so they let us shop around under the emergency lighting. Taylor met up with us and tried to talk me into biting the bullet on a new bike for myself with his n+1=x where n is the number of bikes I have, and x is the number of bikes I need. I passed, deciding instead to hoard my money for another day.

When we got home, I ordered some Domino’s for dinner and picked it up on the way to my parents’ house. Summer took the kids to her mother’s to visit for a bit on the way, and eventually we all made it to dinner with my parents. Julie got her own broccoli crust pizza from Brick Oven. I mostly ate salad, but had a slice of Hawaiian and a slice of Julie’s chicken bacon ranch that wasn’t bad. After we finished eating, we went outside and let everyone try riding the new bikes in the street a bit. That’s when we found Summer’s had not been put together completely, or at least not tightly enough.

They headed home, and I took the bikes home to try and clean out the garage enough to store them. I managed, but only because of how much junk I had that I could rearrange. Trying to store them with another vehicle in the garage will prove to be more difficult unless one of those vehicles is a Miata. Time will tell, I suppose.

Kleer the mind.

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Splashing in the Rain

We woke up unnaturally early today so we could get to Conway for Summer’s 5k before 7:30. Autumn and I dropped her off in a place with way too little parking, and nearly got stuck in the mud after a couple jerks in trucks parked in the middle of the exit. It rained most of the day, so rather than sit around in the car listening to that, we went across town to Walmart to pick up some food to share for breakfast. Once Summer was done, we continued on to Benton to meet Jeff and get a tour of the Splash Car Wash & Express Lube.

The facility was super new and super clean, and really showed how much work they put into maintaining a positive and clean atmosphere for both customers and employees. It would have been neat to see the car wash in action, but that will have to wait for another time I suppose. It was great getting the full tour of the place though. I didn’t care for the acrylic tip boxes they had out, but that may be me projecting my feelings about American tip culture than anything else. Maybe enough people have tried to tip the “behind the scenes” employees that the boxes became a necessity. I tend to always feel that tips in the US are just a company’s way of subsidizing their employees’ pay so they don’t have to pay them a fair hourly wage, which doesn’t seem to be the case here.

After the tour, Jeff treated us to lunch at Olive Garden back in Little Rock. Then we went across town to Walmart and Sam’s where I spent too much money and too much time. By the time we got out of there, we were all pretty tired. We made it back to Conway and decided to stop at Dick’s to check out the bicycle sale. Summer and Autumn both liked the ride height of the GT Laguna Pro, so we picked one up there and decided to try and order the other two colors online since we didn’t have the bike rack anyway.

We circled back to Pizza Ranch for dinner, which I learned was another strangely Christian pizza buffet. I guess that’s a thing? The bar was small and the food was pretty good, but I don’t think it was worth anywhere near the $12 price tag per head. It was a relatively enjoyable visit though, and a decent cap to our day.

Once we got back home, I dropped Summer off at my house, unloaded the bike, and Autumn and I went to pick up Eaddie from their grandparents’ house. When we got back, I had Eaddie try to ride the bike, and she passed that test with flying colors, and in a fraction of the time it took the others to get both feet off the ground. Summer was already in bed, so the girls started some TV while I tried ordering bikes. The website inventory seemed inaccurate, so I got right to calling stores. Little Rock was the only one of the three I tried that had the gunmetal color in the medium size frame, so I talked them into honoring the sale price the day after expiration. Then I called back to Conway and talked to Taylor again, and he agreed to do the same for the light blue. I guess tomorrow we’ll drive across the state again, only this time with a bike rack in tow.

Oh hey! Look, it’s a pikachWHAT THE HELL?!?

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Tuckered

Some woman came to my door in the rain this morning, but I was just out of the shower and didn’t get to see what she wanted. Unfortunately nobody recognized her from the school, so I guess it will remain forever a mystery. It was another quiet day of testing once I got in. I took care of a couple things, but the morning went by really fast. It felt like no time at all before my half day was up, and Summer and I started our afternoon of errands for the car show on Saturday.

We went to Advance Auto Parts first, and picked up two car wash bucket kits. Then we went to Tyson to pick up 100 pounds of chicken strips. This is what I was most excited about, because if there’s anything I enjoy, it’s a good chicken strip. We had to ask a guard for directions, and then weaved between a bunch of semi trailers to get where we needed to go. They were very specific in mentioning that we couldn’t take any photographs, but that level of security seemed a little silly to me.

Summer’s freezer was too small to fit the unopened boxes, so rather than cram bags of chicken in there, we went back to the junior high and unloaded it all into the cafeteria freezer. Being in there for only a couple minutes reminded me of working in pizza, and made me really miss it. More specifically, I missed being able to go into a big room that is instantly winter. It’s so nice to just go in there during the summer time to cool off.

With that unloaded, we headed to Morrilton Walmart to try and find a clearanced Yeti microphone. I spent way too much time there, but it looked like they were remodeling and had a ton of stuff on clearance. I couldn’t help myself. In the end I couldn’t find any of the mics I was looking for, but I did pick up a Logitech G430 headset for 15 bucks. I still question whether those mics are just hidden in the store somewhere, but it wasn’t obvious, and the employees seemed clueless to it, and even insistent that they have never carried microphones.

From there, we went across the street to Chopsticks for lunch. It was too late in the afternoon for it to be particularly fresh, but they still did a good job of keeping the food decent. For at least a little while, we were the only ones there, but others did trickle in afterward. The éclairs were unexpectedly delicious, and I think Summer ate a hundred of them. I ran out of room, or I would have done the same.

Finally, we continued on to Conway to go to Sam’s Club. We loaded a full cart, and subsequently my car. Barry came strolling out just as I was loading up, and they were parked just a couple spaces away. I swear I run into him in the wild more than anyone else. We headed back home to unload at the junior high, and then I brought Eaddie back home with me for a while.

Summer came over eventually to get her for the band concert. I didn’t feel great, so as soon as they left, I passed out and took a nap until about the time I normally go to bed. When I woke up, I spent a while cleaning out my inbox before cleaning up for bed again.

Calling that “7.1” is absolutely false advertising.

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Dinghy Gamer Peripherals

Testing saw another boring morning. At least I finished making esports giveaways, so it’s on to the next cleanup project. Zach, Summer, and I all met at Ruby Tuesday for $5 salads. It didn’t seem to help my blood pressure any. I lack the commitment to go on a completely Soylent diet because I’m a social eater. The American workday and lunch schedule just doesn’t fit how my body wants to be treated. Vacations are splendid at correcting this, and I’m feeling like it’s about time for one of those.

I stayed at the junior high all day, because Heather wanted to come check out the building for a bit at the end of the day, and then I had to stay late for esports. I’ve lost some of my motivation here just because of the lack of payoff so far, but I’m still hopeful. I just can’t afford to keep pouring more volunteer time into it when I’m feeling short on time at home too.

After work, I stopped by the house before going to my parents’ for dinner, and then to Walmart to do some deal hunting. I picked up a Corsair keyboard and mouse at a pretty steep clearance price as sort of a treat for all the anxiety I’ll be going through to move over to the high school. The Executive Director and Game Master of Esports can’t be seen using rubber dome keyboards, after all.

Back home for the evening, I don’t even know where my time went. I swear I just got out of work.

You can’t get there from here.

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Planted Fitness

Summer had her RussVegas Half Marathon this morning. I had delusions of getting the girls out early enough to eat breakfast and cheer her on, but we weren’t up in time for West Main Donuts, and Hardee’s evidently closed due to a fire. We ended up getting some Burger King to go and made it downtown, parked, and walked toward the finish line just in time to meet Summer at the last turn toward the finish. She didn’t see us and I didn’t have my camera up to take a picture, but she looked to be in significantly better shape than pretty much any other run I’ve seen her participate in.

We walked toward Old Bank and sat at a table just outside for a while to eat our breakfast. I ran inside for a moment to say hello to Ryan and told him we were going to come in for a Quiz Bowl watch party for the high school team on AETN. Nobody around him had heard anything about it, but eventually we meandered in and ultimately filled up a room with maybe 50 people. The girls picked mostly a bunch of snack food to eat, and I had some “street tacos” that were good, but not what I would consider deserving of the “street” title. I’m only just remembering that I forgot my leftover cheese dip on the table when we left.

Summer took Autumn back home, and Eaddie and I went to my house so I could clean up a bit. Evidently the litter box took off on its own and left wet litter, so I had to spend most of my time cleaning up after that. She watched TV until I was ready to go, and we went back to their house so I could swap Eaddie for Autumn. I had to take her to her grandparents’ house to mow the lawn, and then I went to my parents’ house and helped Dad plant the baby raspberry bushes. I really hope they make it, but I also secretly wish they were blackberries.

It started to rain a bit, and Autumn finished with her mowing. I went to get her, then Noah, and we went to Lowe’s to scope out the promotion they were running. You could basically get free money to use in store today only by texting a word to their promotion number. I had everyone and then some try for me, but I never found anyone with more than $5. Autumn and Noah were pretty restless and agitated that I kept them there as long as I did, so we grabbed some snacks for (mostly) free and went back to their house.

Some of us were getting hungry, so I made a game plan and loaded everyone up. We went to my house so I could measure the toilet seat. Then I tried unnecessarily to switch Noah’s phone service to a different device so I could get his coupon code. I didn’t realize he was able to get the response but unable to view the web page, so in the end I just had him forward the text to me. Then we went back with all five codes and picked up a new toilet seat and four bags of Miracle-Gro® Performance Organics™ All Purpose Container Mix, which I’m hoping is their new name for Miracle-Gro Organic Potting Mix. I wanted to use it to plant my aquariums and also not murder my fish. Time will tell.

We finally made it out of the store just a little bit before closing time, and went to my parents’ house for dinner. Autumn ate boring ham and steamed rice, and the rest of us had bún bò Huế. After dinner, I tried to troubleshoot my parents’ first generation Chromecast. It would show video during the boot process, but then go to a black screen after the “G” logo. The online support just had me submit a feedback report, so we’ll see what happens.

With the whole troupe exhausted, we headed back to their house for the evening. I couldn’t resist a huge glass of water before bed, but I think tomorrow will have to be mostly dry to make it through Endgame.

Peaches come from a can! They were put there by a man in a factory downtown.

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Mow, Mow, Mow your Moat

We got up this morning at a pretty reasonable hour and finished the first season of Battlestar Galactica. Afterward, my parents came by and discussed getting rid of my Fieros, much to my annoyance. I guess it would ultimately probably be best, but I do miss driving them, and I can’t shake the feeling that I should have them fixed up again.

Once my parents left, Summer went to the gym and Bác Vân helped me with some yard work. We trimmed a bunch of branches and cleaned up the front yard so Summer could mow when she got back. It was pretty soggy in some places, but we got it all done and the yard looks a lot better. I’ll have to clear a bunch of brush in the back, but hopefully that won’t be too terrible. The mower seems to do a great job of mulching, and the single battery lasted almost exactly long enough to do both the front and back of the house. I’m sure when it’s thicker, I’ll probably have to bring out the second battery, but for now I’m very pleased.

After all that yard work was done, we came in to shower and then met my parents at Kroger to use some fuel points before going to New China for dinner. Nearly my entire body cramped up from all of the yard work, but I managed to work them out well enough to go eat. When we finished there, we went to Walmart to pick up some things for Easter dinner tomorrow, and then wandered around the store for a while to hunt for deals. We picked up a couple snow scrapers for just pennies, so I call it a win.

Summer went to bed pretty much as soon as we got home, and I played some Overwatch with Clint until bedtime.

…and some Sour Patch Kids and a Coke can!

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Large Scale Shopping Trips

We got up this morning and headed to Hot Springs to pick up the aquarium stand I bought from PetSmart. There wasn’t an option to do a store transfer, so we just decided to make a day of it. We stopped in Ola for a potty break, and then made it as far as Nimrod Dam before she ran off to the bathroom again.

When we got through most of the mountains, we stopped at The Shack for lunch. I let myself get a little rushed when placing my order, so we both just got small burgers, and then we had some sweet potato fries and onion rings. It was all pretty good, but unremarkable. The homemade lemonade was amazing though, likely because of how much sugar it had.

Once into Hot Springs, we went straight to PetSmart and wandered around for a while before driving across the parking lot to go to Bed Bath & Beyond. I don’t even know how many hours we spent in there. I passed up some clearanced clear ice molds in favor of splurging a bit more on some larger round ones. We did pick up a FitBit smart scale though, which turned out to be a bit cheaper than I expected. It didn’t take much thought to decide to return to the store to pick up the last three on the shelf. As I was checking out, the cashier mentioned hearing us talk about them and said she thought about getting one for herself. I left her one to stick under the counter, and we were on our way.

It was time to eat again, and it took us a while to settle on something. We ended up at Osaka Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi Bar, where I had trouble finding anything that looked good on the menu. I didn’t realize it when I declined the option to sit at the grill, but evidently they had different menus depending on where you sat. It turned out okay though, because Summer really liked her teriyaki combination, and I had the katsu don, which was really tasty and cost about half that of what I would have ordered from the hibachi.

After we ate, we stopped by the sexiest store in town to see what all the fuss was about. It was really just another one of those places where retail pricing is still ridiculous, and I was super surprised at the variety and quantity of people that passed through while we were there. I guess it’s just marketing and convenience, and hopefully not a generous return policy.

We stopped by the spring water fountain and filled our box full of bottles on the way out of town. I took a perceived shortcut on the way out just to see what it was like, but the lack of lighting made it a worse choice overall. We did just barely make out a yard full of toilets though. As we made it out to Hot Springs Village, we stopped at Walmart for another bathroom break and perused a bit for some cookies, beer, picture frames, and any clearance stuff we found interesting. Then it was over the mountain and through the fog to get back home.

Alexa? Lights! Camera? Action!

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Getting Tanked at Home

I noticed what looked like some baby snails in my bathroom aquarium this morning. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to check them out, but I saw what I thought were at least two different ones. I wonder if they’re offspring from one of my other snails, or possibly a tiny hitchhiker from the plant I bought last. They seemed too small to have been around since then, so I’m guessing they’re new.

I stayed pretty busy at work with a few new work orders and more phone swaps. Then I met Dale, Allen, and Gary at Kob Jai for lunch. I had the chicken pad thai, which was probably the best food I’ve ever had there, but that really isn’t saying much. The waitress asked how spicy I wanted it from 1-4. I asked for 4, and she kind of super panicked and kept trying to talk me out of it, so I finally relented after my comments about being Asian seemed to fly over her head. Turns out the level 3 spice was pretty tame.

Near the end of work, I tripped over some stuff in my office and took a pretty good spill over a pile of bad monitors. I just had to sit there for a moment to gather myself. I got both ankles and hands, so I’m sure I’ll be pretty bruised by tomorrow.

After work, I ran by Airgas and picked up a 20 pound CO₂ tank for $143. I was a bit nervous on the way home with it rolling around in the trunk, but I made it and got it unloaded into the garage. I was a little surprised how dirty the tank was for being sold as beverage-grade CO₂, but it was the only tank they had anyway. I had several packages come in all at once ranging from laundry supplies to aquarium test kits to a movie poster from Into the Spider-Verse. After unpacking everything, I hooked up the paintball refill station that had come in, and I was in business.

Unfortunately the paintball tank I filled seemed to have a pretty bad leak at the base of the pin valve, so I expect it will probably be empty by tomorrow. While I had it, I filled every single pressure-holding bottle I could find, and then ran to Walmart to try and pick up the remaining clearanced SodaStream bottles. I only grabbed two pairs the other day, and they only had one left, so I was glad I didn’t wait any longer. That brought my total bottle count to 9, plus some other glass bottles I refilled from the SodaStream bottles. I thought about just dropping the tank into one of my aquariums so the plants could use it while it leaks out, but instead decided to leave it in the freezer with the hopes that I’ll have some left tomorrow.

This all seems horribly dangerous.