Tag: family

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Three Meal Day

We had three meals planned for today, so we had to get up in time to squeeze them all in. First it was Honey Bunches of Oats in maple bacon donut, and then chicken and waffle flavors. The maple was good, but I couldn’t catch much bacon other than the little flecks that looked like bacon bits stuck to the donut Os. The chicken and waffles had at least a bit of the fried chicken breading flavor. Both were good, and I’d eat them any time.

It was finally Eaddie’s day to learn how to mow the lawn, and Autumn was made to follow her around in case she got sucked into the blades. Summer and I watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica, and I fried a few fresh corn chips followed by some chicken strips for sandwiches. My sandwich was probably about three times the size I needed, but they were super delicious on the assorted bread bag we picked up. I guess Eaddie worked up an appetite mowing, because she ate two sandwiches and then another handful of strips. Autumn skimped as usual, even on a super plain bread-and-chicken sandwich. At least they successfully took turns mowing their huge lawn.

I finally picked myself up in the afternoon and headed home while Summer went to the gym. I was exhausted and wanted to nap once I got there, but got myself motivated enough to move some fish around, and then to mow my own lawn. I still love my battery powered lawn mower so much, and had even more juice left at the end of this round than last time. My back yard has grown up really badly though, and I need to burn all of the yard waste that’s back there soon.

Dinner time rolled around and I wasn’t hungry, but I knew I wasn’t going to be any more use at home with as tired as I was. Summer had the leftover chicken tacos warming up, so I went up to her place to catch the tail end of dinner. I couldn’t help but eat a number of tacos again, and then she let the girls stay up late to watch an episode of Parks and Rec with us. Then we watched a couple more without them before heading off to bed.

You just have to believe in your placebo!

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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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Picnicin

There weren’t any projects to be done today, and I got called to Oakland first thing, so I just spent all day there working on a printer issue. They were having their field day, which seemed like lots of fun, but I didn’t really make it outside to see what they had going on. I did eat a lot of popcorn though.

Brice called for Brangus for lunch, and then Dale ended up buying for all seven of us with his bonus employee of the year check. I was pretty proud of eating only half of my smaller-than-usual spud, which is starting to sound pretty good right about now.

Jason let us leave early, but Zach, Gary, and I sat around chatting for a while after, and ended up leaving around the regular time. I headed home and waited for the girls to come over so we could go to the spring picnic at the marina.

We stopped by the Neighborhood Market to grab some snacks along the way, and then headed out to the park. It was a pretty small turnout for as loud as they had the music cranked up. The weather was pretty nice though. The skies were clear, there was a bit of a breeze at first, and it didn’t really feel hot until I got moving around a bit. I ran into three people that I knew in the band alone. I didn’t even recognize Dylan for his huge beard and all the weight he had lost. Nathan looked about the same as I last saw him at AT&T. I actually didn’t really know David, but he was a friend of Julie’s evidently. Aaron was there grilling hot dogs for Arvest.

We stuck pretty close to Ronda and Steven most of the evening. The girls wandered off and kind of did their own thing for a while. I took the opportunity to jump up and take a bunch of photos that seemed really good on my phone, but looking at them on a computer screen left me a little disappointed. All of the official funsquad members were content wandering around on their phones recording poor vertical videos, or streaming live to the internet. I had to try and show them up by getting into the action a little bit, and even took a few photos from behind the band. I got at least one pretty decent picture of Mark up on stage playing with the band too.

After that wound down, we came back to my house for a bit to clean up, and then went to Summer’s for the evening. Eaddie stayed up and watched several episodes of Parks and Rec with us until Summer was ready to pass out.

Would have been a nice evening to sail.

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In the Unlikely Event

Amanda actually volunteered to drive to Plumerville today. She even picked me up at my house. There was a box turtle in the driveway right next to the garage door, so I put it inside the fence for safe keeping. We made the trip in good time, and even stopped at Love’s in Morrilton for meat breakfast tornados. Mine tasted about as good as one would expect. I probably should have stuck with the Soylent.

One of the guys from Arch Ford had a Model 3 there, so I got to see it up close. Not as close as I wanted, but it was still neat. I tried to hint that I wanted to ride with him to lunch, but he had other plans that didn’t involve driving a complete stranger around. Amanda and I went to Wendy’s, and I had a really good, quick salad.

The afternoon went by quickly as well, and I only got dizzy for a few seconds from what I assume was my new medication. It probably didn’t help that I had been sitting all day and had absolutely no stress at all to raise my blood pressure. I wish I could have measured it. It was a really good day of learning and playing around in the virtual lab environment. Everyone likes to complain about going to Arch Ford, but they just don’t get to do what I do.

When we got back home, I found a second snail had died in the kitchen aquarium, so I moved the other one back to the bathroom and cleaned a couple of the tanks up a bit. I think I’m most excited about moving to the high school so I can set up an aquarium in the office. I’m pretty sure every other aspect of the move still just gives me anxiety.

Eventually I went to get Eaddie from her grandparents’ house, and I took the old FryDaddy up to their house to start dinner. It worked perfectly to fry up a bunch of chicken strips for the dinner salads. I still ate way too many chicken strips, but they were just so delicious. I wish I had more right now with some of that spicy ketchup.

Ultimately I had to make my way back home for an early bedtime again. We’ll have to leave training early tomorrow to make it back to our mandatory end-of-year assembly, unless I can convince Ben to let us finish our training day, since central office has already approved our leave some time ago.

I’m not a cat. I don’t say, “meow.”

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Pickup Lines

I rode to the high school early this morning to help with the laptop pickup. As I was walking into the building, Al stopped me to ask about esports, and wanted to know if we could do it during their advisory half hour. I kind of laughed, half-heartedly at the thought. At least his gut reaction to my response was that I shouldn’t be doing it for free. I’d just like to see some kind of number from someone that actually makes decisions.

The laptop pickup went just as it should have, I suppose. I was upset because we didn’t have the student help desk kids to help with power adapters. They were all seniors, and have basically all finished school already, so it’s all on us now. I’m not sure who I’m going to have to pester to fix that, but I know I don’t want to be touching 1300+ devices any more than I absolutely must.

Dale and I went to an early lunch at Taco John’s, where I had a steak and shrimp burrito that was just excellent. Doubly so, because it was free after filling out my punch card. We thought Allen was coming too, but he had suggested KFC, and probably ended up at McDonald’s.

I stuck around the high school until their last pickup, when I had to leave for esports. I stopped by on my way out to check my blood pressure, and came in averagely high. Then I rushed by Oakland and had to do some work there that got me a little frustrated, so on my way out of there I measured frustratingly high, and I could feel it on my skin.

Finally at the junior high, I ran across the building to check it again, knowing I didn’t have a proper rest period. I thought for sure I was going to stroke out during esports. I made it to the lab a bit late, so the kids were already rowdy. I had to yell at them at one point because of a usual yeller in the class. Some of them just get too excited, and haven’t been scolded for it enough I suppose. It makes the experience worse for those quiet ones that are in there for serious competition. Next year, we’ll have to weed out the club from the teams.

After work, I ran by Summer’s to try and help load the extra chicken strips into her freezers, but she had already done all of the work. Instead, she took the last case that wouldn’t fit, picked the girls up from karate, and met me at my house so we could stick it in my freezer. Then she was craving Stoby’s, so we all went out for dinner. I tried the PB&J burger, which was actually really good. The sweetness of the jelly with the jalapeños really did it. I could have gone without the peanut butter though.

Finally it was back home for the evening to cool the jets after a long, but fast-paced day of running around.

Nobody nose whistling like I do.

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I Want a New Duck

It was really slow again today, but I spent most of my time trying not to hulk out instead of cleaning or doing much of substance. My morning systolic blood pressure was pretty good, but my diastolic doesn’t like to hang out much below 90. I stopped by Sonic to get some Ched ‘R’ Peppers for Summer and a free fresh cherry lemonade that I stuck in my fridge to sip on over time. Jessica finally got power for her TVs outside the library, but I had to climb up to reset the Chromebits.

Allen wanted Dairy Queen for lunch, so I met him and Jason there. They had a promo chicken and waffles meal that was super good. The waffle was really crispy on the outside and perfectly soft in the middle, and I even got some gravy for the chicken strips. Even the fries were hot and tasty today. I felt that it was a great accomplishment to order a 4-piece meal instead of the 6 that was offered. Baby steps.

A little while after lunch, I had to go back to the doctor to let them take my blood pressure a couple times until they found a number they liked. The bad thing is that they kept my diastolic blood pressure of 80, which is an all-time low that I’ve only ever reached once before during a reading where I was distracted and taking a phone call. I always just assumed that one was bogus and should be thrown out. In any case, they wrote me a proper prescription for the 10mg of amlodipine besylate I’ve been taking, plus a new prescription for 25mg of hydrochlorothiazide. I’ve only got one more double-shot of my original prescription, so I guess I’ll wait a day and take my new ones together so they run out at the same time.

Summer had a really rough day and was super frustrated with everyone, so I took the girls with me while she went to the gym. We stopped by Walgreens so I could pick up my prescriptions, and then I took Autumn home since she was dealing with a bad attitude as well, and Eaddie wanted to join Summer and me for bún thang at my parents’ house. The soup was great, but it’ll be interesting to see how my body deals with the extra spice tomorrow.

After dinner, Summer took Eaddie home and I went to my house and did a little cleaning before setting up my replacement TicWatch E. I really love my Pebble more though, so I may try to sell the TicWatch and come back to Wear OS later in the future. A big part of me is frustrated by how many interests I’m trying to juggle right now though, and just wants to sail off and disconnect for a while. At least I think it does. I suppose it’s possible this is just another one of my many interests that is feeling neglected at the moment. I haven’t been on the water in a while.

One that’s never gonna try to migrate or escape!

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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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Hamburglar

It was no surprise that Jason didn’t have any projects for us. That’s probably not totally fair to say since a lot of that has to do with nobody else asking for help doing anything, but he’s already made himself an easy target. I went on about my own business and spent most of the morning at Oakland with my best blood pressure yet. Then I went to the junior high a bit before lunch so I could get a hamburger from there for lunch. I’m pretty sure that if I had timed it right, I could have had a free hamburger for lunch every single day this week.

I spent most of the afternoon there until it started raining, and I went back to the shop to pick up a badge for someone. Just as I was about to leave, Ben and Dale got back with a truck and trailer load of carts from Thomas, so I had to help unload those. Then we went across the street to give Brenda our best for her retirement. The snacks helped, but I feel so guilty going to those gatherings just for the food, so I always try to make an effort to chat a bit with whoever we’re celebrating. It’s still super awkward if I’ve never spent much time with that person though.

I delivered the badge on the way home, and then it wasn’t long before Summer and Autumn got there so we could all go to dinner at the shop. We got rained out of the park, so Ben got Summer’s crew together to grill ribeyes in the shop. It probably would have been less awkward in the park, but it wasn’t an awful time. I don’t know that anybody stuck around for a super long time after they ate. We left to go get gas and stop by PetSmart.

On the way home, Eaddie texted Summer and said she had forgotten her homework in her locker, so we went by my house to get the keys and then picked Eaddie up from her grandparents’ house. We got into the middle school, and Summer slipped on the wet floor and hurt her knee pretty badly. Then almost inevitably, Eaddie’s homework wasn’t in her locker. We took her back, then came back to my house for bed.

It’s too cold to be out running this early.

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Underpaid Factory Work

It was rainy all day, so I decided to start at the high school. Dale was expecting a bunch of keyboard bezels in today, so we had the afternoon to start that. I spent most of the morning trying to augment his barcode scanning sheet so he wouldn’t have to scan both the library tag and the laptop serial tag, and instead have it auto-populate the serial from a sheet with the complete inventory CSV.

He had to leave a bit early for lunch with the super, so I went to Oakland to work on a couple things. I ended up sitting and chatting with Sharon, Stephen, and Marcia for a while before getting back to the science room to fix the issue. By the time I got back to the front of the building, everyone had pretty much eaten all of the barbecue they brought in. I managed to scrap together a ham sandwich and sat in the lounge watching the rain outside.

Afterward I went back to the office and got around to checking my blood pressure. One of the diabetic kids was in there, and we laughed about how we were dying. He started rambling a bit about his mom, and as Leslie was turned around seemingly ignoring us, I told him he should run away. We both turned to look at her still facing the computer, and giggled that she wasn’t listening. Of course she turned around laughing, and told him not to run away. My numbers were pretty high, so I tried to chill out the rest of the day.

Back at the high school, Dale and I started tearing into the repairs. We had a pretty big stack of bezels come in, and he showed me how to replace them. Something like 27 screws and some calloused fingers later, I had the old part out. Then it was just a matter of doing it again in reverse to put the things back together. My back hurt from leaning over to perform this mindless task, and I found myself really hating it. If I’m going to last there any length of time at all, they’re going to have to let me come inspect them throughout the year so I’m not stuck rushing through it all over the summer.

We left work a bit early since Dale had a haircut, and I worked through most of my lunch. I went home for just a little while before having to get back out in the rain to make it up to Summer’s house. She had taken the day off and made a nice dinner for everyone. I never really got to feeling better about my blood pressure all afternoon, and that carried over into the evening with the kids being of normal volume. I couldn’t be mad because they were all behaving relatively well, but I just couldn’t decompress the way I really needed to.

Eventually everyone made it to bed. At least tomorrow morning I’ll have a break from the already tedious labor I’ve been assigned, but I imagine it will be back to that old grind stone in the afternoon again.

I have learned absolutely nothing today.