Tag: deals

Uncategorised

I’ll Never Forget About Larry

Summer had to work this morning, which allowed for me to sleep in a while. With Thanksgiving break nearly over, I let myself get a pretty slow start to the day. I had to get the girls from their friend’s house, but first I stopped by the Ridgewood Brothers to try and snag some brisket. Grant handed me a cube of it out the window as I approached, and it just melted in my mouth. I picked up a couple pounds along with some sides, picked up the girls, and took them home.

Summer got home just a bit after us, we ate, and then left the girls to clean house while we went shopping. My first stop was Bath & Body Works, where I dragged her around the store sniffing soaps. I had a coupon, a need for fancy foaming soaps, and a complete lack of shame for being the one that wanted to go shopping there.

Next we stopped at my house for just a moment before heading to Walmart for groceries and other shopping list things I needed. I ended up grabbing one of those Black Friday pressure washers that Julie was going on about, since they had a pallet of them left over. I wish we could have spent a little more time looking, but we had to get back before Harry got to the house.

When we got there, the girls were inside giggling about how he was driving up and down the road trying to find their house, rather than trying to help direct him to the place. Summer started cooking most of the meal, and I changed the oil for some sweet potato fries. The kids played the Switch a bit before wandering back through the house. Dinner was simple and good, though I was still pretty full from the late BBQ lunch.

We played a couple quick rounds of Stuff Happens and Uno before the girls settled in to watch The Conjuring. Eaddie was probably the most excited to watch a scary movie, but I knew the game. Harry ended up having to leave before the movie was over, so Autumn went to her room for the night while I helped Eaddie finish the movie. Once that was over, she beat me in some Mario Kart before awkwardly snuggling to some Luke Cage. She started to fall asleep in the middle of the second episode, so that was the end of the day.

Just trying to make up for lost time…

Uncategorised

Not a Fan of the Wobble

I got up a little earlier this morning so I could go to Starbucks for their free holiday cup. It was a cheaper plastic than I expected, and they didn’t even use it for the drink I ordered, but the $5 caramel brulee latee was delicious in spite of how much it had cooled down by the time I got through the line. I was feeling pretty congested all morning, so I took a half sick day from work and spent it cleaning and trying to balance my ceiling fan. The cleaning alone helped the wobble an embarassing amount, but there’s still a sway at low speed that I just can’t shake (heh heh).

Summer and I met at Arby’s for some lunch before we had to start our days. She had a Chamber meeting, and I chose to show up for the last half of my day at work. I didn’t get a lot done, but it looked like not many at the shop did either because it had flooded again, and the worst yet. I left work after what felt like no time and went home to rest a bit before dinner with my parents.

The girls met me there once they finished with their activities, and then we all went to our homes for an early night of rest.

Proper story’s supposed to start at the beginning. Ain’t so simple with this one.

Uncategorised

Let’s Get Weird

We got up a little early this morning so we could get out of town for lunch. Our first stop was Home Depot to pick up some work lights I bought, and then we went to a little diner called Taylors’ Made on the other side of Conway. Summer had breakfast food, and I got the reuben. It was all pretty good, but I didn’t care for the super thin onion rings. I wish we had tried some of the appetizers.

As we got into Little Rock, I decided to go down to the Park Plaza Mall rather than the usual McCain. I figured it would be closer to the hotel, and we could kill enough time there until check-in time at the hotel. Summer was happy to look around but was reluctant to pick up anything. I got an armful of clothing from Dillard’s, which reminded me of how much I hated shopping there with my parents as a child. It was just always so boring, but now I get it. We covered most of the mall by about 3 in the afternoon, and then headed to the Wyndham Riverfront to get our room.

Eventually Amanda messaged me back, and we met her at the Red Lobster for dinner. Sarah decide she didn’t want to go to the concert, so she brought her father along instead. Summer and I got our fix of endless shrimp, and then we headed back for the concert.

We both parked at the hotel and walked the quarter mile or so to the arena. We were early, so we had to stand out in the heat for a little while before we could go in. Once the line started moving, I had trouble getting the TicketMaster app to load the tickets, but fortunately I saved them to Google Pay and that worked to get us in.

The concert was incredible, but I was surprised they didn’t have the upper bowl open. We were in a lower section of removable seating right by the stage, so we could see everything really well. It was awesome having the orchestra there, especially seeing a McLovin lookalike on the French horn. They started off with some Indiana Jones, and we loved the Superman theme song. They took a 20 minute break after the warm up routine, and then Weird Al came out with his crew and performed a huge mix of songs I expected, as well as some I’d never even heard before. Afterward, Summer and I made our way through the merch line to get a couple shirts, and then walked back to the hotel for the evening.

And protect them from the evils of the world, like trigonometry and prime numbers!

Uncategorised

Gotta Spend Money to Save Money

I slept in a bit this morning since Summer had to work. When I got up, I made some tacos out of leftover beans, cheese, and veggies, and then the girls and I watched an episode of Jessica Jones. After that, I headed home to clean up before Summer got home. I ended up having to do some water changes in a couple of the aquariums, and I think one of my black skirt tetras that got stuck in Spongebob’s pineapple window may be on its way out. I guess they are pretty old by now, since I got them second-hand about five years ago. I don’t have a clue how old they were when I got them from the random Redditor.

As soon as I was cleaned up and ready, I headed up to Summer’s with my mango tree since it seemed not to be doing so well since my air conditioner was replaced. They walked out the door as soon as I got there, so we didn’t waste any time getting to Conway.

I had $30 in rewards to use at Dick’s, so we picked up a paddle for Summer’s kayak, then went on down the strip to let the girls do some back to school shopping. It was the start of the tax-free weekend, so Summer picked up quite a bit of stuff for them. By the end of it all, we were all pretty hungry and agreed on Golden Corral for dinner. We all stuffed ourselves and then headed out for one last stop.

We dropped the girls off at Books-A-Million to let them wander through that shopping center while we went to Sam’s. I wanted to pick up some hanging shop lights for the garage since it’s incredibly dark out there. I may have gotten too many, but it will be nice to have when I need it. We made one last stop at PetCo to check on their shrimp inventory before heading back home.

Summer and Autumn went straight to bed while Eaddie and I finished up the first season of Jessica Jones. Then we got one episode of Daredevil season 2 in before Eaddie was too tired to go on.

I mean, why not just “Snuffcarcass?”

Uncategorised

Quality Time

Summer had to work this morning. I got up after she left and went home to clean up before going to check Autumn out of band camp. Luckily I went up the right flight of stairs and ran right into her, so checkout was painless. I signed a piece of paper “Adult” and nobody cared who I was, but I completed the job.

From there, I went to get Eaddie and Summer, and we came back for Autumn’s concert. Dad texted me just after we sat down, so I had him meet us there as well. Autumn made the first band and even had a song introduction, but she struggled really badly between the anxiety and some of the words. The band was otherwise pretty good though, and afterward I took Summer back to work and the girls to Cicis for lunch.

We ate a bunch, then went to my parents’ house to swim for a while until Summer got out of work. Then we ran by Walmart for a couple things, and I scoped out a deal on a patio furniture set. We headed back up to their house and relaxed there for a bit before Autumn and I went back to Walmart for some hot dogs, and I went ahead and picked up one of the furniture sets.

I broke a pretty good sweat trying to fit the thing into the back of the Murano, and even more of a sweat outside trying to get the thing out of the box. Sylvia came over for dinner and to chat with Summer for a bit. I got two chairs built, but not before both of them decided to come inside away from the bugs. She didn’t stick around for very long though, and the others started crashing pretty quickly after she left. Eaddie and I stayed up watching Daredevil again, and we started getting into some of the cliffhanger episodes. Eventually I started falling asleep on the couch though, so I had to call it quits.

Knot what I was trying to do, but it did the trick.

Uncategorised

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!

Uncategorised

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?

Uncategorised

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.

Uncategorised

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?!?

Uncategorised

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.