Tag: family

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Pretzel Thief

Somehow I managed to get out of the house just a few minutes early today, so I stopped by Burger King for some breakfast for Summer and myself. The junior high had more testing, so I spent all morning smartly working on things there. Kevin came over for a little while and got on a rant about Chicago gang bangers and how Obama had empowered them. Then I met Allen at Wind Taste for lunch.

I stopped by Oakland for a little bit after lunch, but then spent the rest of the afternoon at the junior high cleaning up a few things. During last period, Jaiden the library aide tried to look me up on the school website. He scrolled down and, completely out of the blue said, “who’s Jason Williams? He looks like a butthole.” I lost it.

When I finally left, I stopped by the house for a few things before getting Autumn to pick up a couple pizzas. She, Summer, and I split up and ordered three of them from Little Caesar’s so we could all get promo 2-liters. When I told the guy my name, he gave me one for Mitchell and made a comment about not being able to spell. I told him it was an online order so my name shouldn’t have been misspelled, and he suggested that maybe I had misspelled it. It took me until I got to the car to check and see that I had failed to press the button to complete my order, so I ran back inside to explain myself and then completed the order on my phone so they could get paid for what I took. The guy seemed really cool about it, but then afterward I just kind of lost him staring into space.

Everyone loved the pretzel pizzas except Autumn, because it was different and she didn’t want to try it. I lost count of how many slices I ate, which was a very bad thing. When the kids went to bed, I played a little Breath of the Wild, then put on a couple episodes of Parks and Recreation before bed.

Well he’s not wrong.

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Six Months

I had ELPA testing all day at the junior high, so I spent all morning over there just in case something happened. Nothing did. I got a few other things cleaned up while I was there, then met Allen at Ruby Tuesday for $5 salads. I spent the rest of the afternoon at the shop and then visited Oakland for a bit on my way home.

I took off a couple hours early to take Grey to the vet since she’s been a little shyer than usual. It was a quick visit. One look to find three mammary tumors. She said cats don’t survive them 90% of the time, so surgery wouldn’t be a realistic option, and all we can do is watch her quality of life. She guessed it might give her six more months.

With that news, I took her back home and gave them both some wet food. Then we sat on the couch together for a couple hours until I had to pick Eaddie up from karate. She wanted to stay and hang out with her friend, but I had to get her home to shower.

Summer and Autumn showed up shortly thereafter, and Summer warmed up some leftover pasta for us before the girls shuffled off to bed. I played Breath of the Wild the rest of the evening while Summer nursed some gnarly shoulder pain.

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Pet the Kitty

I stayed pretty busy today, and just kept things going. It was a good mix of cleaning up loose ends and taking care of newer things that came in late last week. Zach and I went to Morelos for lunch, and for the first time in a long time I took about half of mine with me in a box. If he hadn’t been feeling sick and not eating much, I’m sure I would have finished my fajitas. They won’t be nearly as good later, but it was a nice change of pace.

The afternoon went by pretty quickly, just as the morning did. I went home for a while before going to my parents’ to pick up the cat carrier, and then to Summer’s for dinner. She improved upon the flavors of the barbecue and potatoes we had left over, and I left with a new catch tray for my oven.

I ended the night watching the weird TV streaming app built into my LG TV while brushing Grey’s hair out. I keep hoping it will prevent her from shedding so much at her appointment tomorrow, but in reality there’s probably no stopping it.

I wish I had more friends, but people are such jerks.
If you can just get most people to leave you alone, you’re doing good.
If you can find even one person you really like, you’re lucky.
And if that person can also stand you, you’re really lucky.

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Sunday Pickins

We slept in a little today after a good, long night of sleep. I started to clean up around the bedroom just a little bit, but it ended up being more like picking through a time capsule than a true cleaning day. Eventually Summer took off to go to the gym and shop for dinner stuffs. I ended up playing a little bit of Overwatch with Clint to pick up the last of my bonus loot boxes for the week. Then I got a shower and headed to Summer’s for dinner.

The girls had other food sorted and went to bed pretty soon after that. Summer made a really great pasta out of some of the leftover pulled pork, and I transferred her big tray of leftover baked beans to smaller containers for freezing. Then Summer and I watched an episode of Parks and Rec before I headed home to do one last load of laundry for the weekend. Clint and I ended the night with a few more rounds of Overwatch while my towels dried.

Baked beans, the plentiful legume.
The more you get, the more you entomb.
The more you entomb, the cheaper you eat,
So freeze beans from every quiz bowl meet!

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I Know Best Because Mother Knew Best

We split up for projects today, but somehow I was left out. I ran upstairs to see if Ben’s group wanted help with running some lines, but they turned me away with three or four of them already going. I ended up just working on little side projects for my own education all day, starting with phones and eventually making it to G Suite.

Nobody really knew what they wanted for lunch all morning, but several of us agreed at the last second that Long John Silver’s sounded good. It took two vehicles to get there, which was a surprising number of people. Afterward I was sent by an achy, breaky backed Jason to go with Dale to help Brice hang a touch panel, or so we thought.

When we got there, I could tell from several feet away that the SMART board’s camera sensors were filthy. I showed him how to run his finger around the reflective border, and as if by magic it immediately began working perfectly. He made a comment about how his electric air duster must not have been enough to clean it, but by the amount of dust I removed, I suspected it would have helped if he had plugged it in at all. Dale and I just sort of rolled our eyes and pushed him not to just swap the board out anyway while we were there. That seemed like it shouldn’t have taken as much convincing as it did, but evidently he had really sold the teacher on getting a new touch panel.

With that overpaid failure to launch out of the way, I spent the rest of the afternoon at the shop fighting sleep and contemplating the use of a guinea pig in a computer lab class such as EAST. I think the more puzzling part was the fact that they had received a grant to get this guinea pig, but needed someone else to care for it over the summer. The mind reels.

After work, I had just made it home and called to make a vet appointment for Grey when Summer said her car wouldn’t start. I ran over to rescue her and Eaddie just as Autumn, who had malingered her way out of class early, was returned by her grandparents. After some more convincing that shouldn’t have been necessary, I took them to O’Reilly to pick up a new battery. Then she tried to have Alex come swap it out for her after he left the shop, but my impatience and annoyance at her lack of faith drove me to borrow tools from Wesley’s office to complete the swap myself before he got there.

We ran to my house so I could lock the battery down properly, and Autumn begged to ride with me back to their house for a little more time away from Eaddie. I packed up a bunch of leftovers, and we headed to her house to eat before everyone settled in to bed. The night wouldn’t have been complete if I hadn’t had to force Autumn to eat more than her own tablespoon of plain steamed rice. I force fed her baby carrots the way I’ve had to force feed pills to my cats, and I don’t plan on having cats ever again.

Hey! Listen!

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Something Fishy

I should have dug out the battery charger last night so we could charge Summer’s car. I spent most of the morning stressing over whether I would be getting a group gas discount with my parents at Kroger, and after I finally gave up after waiting all day, I found out that Julie used all of the fuel points by herself. I ran on fumes all day long just to end up getting a couple gallons to last me until Wednesday for 10 cents off per gallon.

We started the day by taking Autumn to her friend’s birthday party. Then we stopped by my house for the battery charger and so I could check on the house. To my surprise, the betta was super dead, and looked to have most of the color drained out of her overnight. She was alive when I left last night, so I don’t know what happened so suddenly. I knew she looked a little pale and I wanted to change the water last night, but I figured I’d have time today. It looked like she laid a bunch more eggs again, and then just died. I was super disappointed after nursing her back to health over the course of a month. She seemed really healthy again, so this caught me by complete surprise.

From there, I dropped Summer off at the gym and went back to her house to charge her car battery, shower, and try to plan the rest of my day. Eaddie failed to shower early or quickly enough, so by the time I actually took mine the water was ice cold. As soon as I finished, I went straight to the water heater and raised both thermostats quite a bit. Then I went to pick up Summer at the gym and Autumn at Hourglass Escape Rooms. They just barely finished the room in time, so I was proud of their accomplishment. Finally I took them back home and got things ready to go back to my house and start dinner.

I had a roast thawed out for Saturday, so I had to get it cooked. I tried using an Instant Pot recipe using some of the homemade wine that Allen gave me, and it turned out pretty good. It would have been even better with the dry rub, but I just barely had enough time to get it done for the kids to go back home and to bed. They came over and watched Criminal Minds while it cooked for 35 minutes, then Emogenius while they ate. Then I got dishes started before crashing myself.

So much for planning.

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Glasstric Bypass

I had quite a bit of trouble falling asleep last night, and then it felt like I slept really lightly all night long. Then we had to get up early to make it to Conway for the movie. Summer took the kids home to shower and clean up, and I did the same before heading out to pick them up.

We made it with plenty of time to get seated. It was actually really nice, with only a few other people in the theater. The tickets were quite a bit cheaper as well. We watched Glass after having seen Unbreakable and Split earlier last year. I thought it was pretty amazing, but I think the plot twist did more to aggravate the others. It makes me wonder if they’ll actually continue with more movies, or perhaps a series.

After the movie, we took the kids to Game Point to look around. We let them pick up a couple games, and I even grabbed a couple myself. Then we went to Walmart to see if I could find any of the clearance-priced Chromecast and Google Home Mini bundles. They were all sealed up behind glass, and BrickSeek indicated it was “limited stock” anyway, which likely meant they had none at the $17 price. By the time we left there, we were all pretty hungry, so we started the quest to find someplace to eat.

We drove through greater Conway to find something, and ultimately landed at Golden Corral. It worked out well for everyone to find something they liked, and we all pretty well stuffed ourselves beyond any reason. I actually didn’t overdo it as much as I often do, but I was already pretty full from popcorn anyway.

From there, we went to Sam’s to walk off some of the food. I very nearly picked up a box of Dr. Pepper syrup to use with the SodaStream, but I ultimately passed with a 2-1 vote against from the kids. I’m still not really sure how that happened. Then we went by PetCo to look for some shrimp, followed by BestBuy to cruise for deals. With nothing of interest there, we made a final stop at Target, where we picked up just a few things before heading home.

I dropped them off at Summer’s house and headed home to prepare for their arrival, but Summer said her car wouldn’t start. I dug out the Xbox so they could play their new game and headed to their house for the night. Autumn crawled into bed pretty early while Eaddie watched Noah play Left 4 Dead 2. Summer and I ended the night with a couple episodes of Parks and Recreation.

I have a dream that my four little coworkers will one day work in a department where they will not be judged by the length of their employment, but by the quality of their work.

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Hangin with the Big Earners

We had a bunch of projects for today. I was sent off to Sequoyah with Brice and Allen. Allen was in a mood and didn’t want to go with us though, so he tried to break off and go with Zach and Jason. Then he was basically a jerk all day when that didn’t work. When we got there to hang a touch panel, it looked like they already had a newer projector and I wondered if it was actually still under warranty. Without much of a plan or direction, we ended up cutting and removing some cables to pull a new HDMI cable, but it ended up not working. We needed nearly 70 feet of cable for the room though, so Brice will just have to go back later to swap it out again. We left with a shorter cable across the floor for temporary use. We also had to run an extra audio cable to replace a group of four-plus extensions that were feeding some nicer speakers. It all seemed a little silly, and I wasn’t too excited to be the only one up on the ladder all morning.

I had called out Old Post BBQ for lunch when we were still in our meeting, and though everyone seemed happy with that, nobody else met us there. We did run a bit late, but nobody else even said anything about going anywhere else. Allen refused to sit in a booth with Brice and me, and he weirdly sat at a group of tables with a couple other ladies. I saw Nicole working there, and she helped me identify and order something I saw in a picture frame called The Dagwood. She said if I finished it in under 30 minutes I could get my picture on the wall. It only took me 20, but I declined the photo and we went along our way.

After lunch, I resolved an issue with my HSA for payroll, so hopefully I’m not out anything there. Then I helped Allen run an HDMI cable to resolve a video issue at Center Valley. That likely could have been fixed with software and drivers as well, but he and Jason couldn’t figure it out, so we ran the cable. Then I was on my own, so I finished up a rash of work orders I had gotten from Oakland.

When I finally got home, I was so exhausted but had to clean up the living room a bit. I managed to finish before the girls got here, and even set up Catan because Autumn wanted to play. Eaddie was rowdy and completely uncontrollable all night, and I ended up sending her to bed before we finished the game. I think I got my new network storage box reset, but I’m still having trouble completing the setup, and I’m too exhausted to continue messing with it.

Kids these days don’t even know who Dagwood was.

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Closet Racism

Jason was supposed to spend half the day with me “in the field,” but he ended up having me cover his campus for testing instead while he went to work on some of Allen’s stuff. Just as we were discussing that, our usual Dell service tech showed up to replace a power cable in one of my teacher’s computers. I took him over to Oakland and walked him all the way to the back of the building, panting and wheezing. Luckily she was super nice about the random, unexpected interruption, and I took her computer to a nearby closet for service.

As we situated ourselves, the tech learn-ed me about the “Vietnamese Squat” he had to perform to sit in the unusually small elementary school chair. I commented back that yes, my Vietnamese mother had spent many a night squatted over a giant bowl of egg roll ingredients. From then on, it was mostly comments about how the white man had wronged people like the Indians. It was still less awkward than the OSHA presenter that joked about submitting a new hazard pictogram of a guy with a turban to warn of explosive chemicals.

I spent the rest of the morning trying to wipe Summer’s mother’s iPad that she had activation locked, since I had to sit around to babysit testing anyway. A big group of us went to Mulan’s for lunch, and then I eventually made it to the junior high to close a few work orders.

After work, I ran home to get a few things before heading to Summer’s for dinner. She made chicken salads, but we didn’t quite get to eat before her mother showed up to retrieve her iPad and finish the unlock process. I was really impressed with the proximity setup process, and even the camera authentication that would normally show a QR code was made to look more stylized and futuristic. You know, I disagree with Apple on many counts… But you cannot deny they’ve got style.

When everyone finished eating and acting up, we managed to quiet everyone down for the first half of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Evidently Noah watched it recently, and he was upset that Summer decided to stop us right before The Tale of Sir Lancelot.

Why can’t you guys settle down and obsess over your repressed depression like normal teenagers?

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Only Half of Us Is Sick

Summer called in to work today, so I took a half day as well since I wasn’t sure how taking the kids to school would work. I slept in about half an hour later than I normally would and dropped the girls off, and drove by work about 15 minutes early. I could have made it work, but I had enough to do at home that I didn’t really get any time off anyway.

I spent most of my time cleaning up after the cats, but I checked on the fish and got a shower myself as well. I finished all of that just in time to run by Linh to get some egg drop soup for Summer. She was up and cleaning house, though still feeling pretty pitiful. I didn’t stay long, because I had to get to work.

There wasn’t really much going on, but I closed a few work orders. Most of what I have left are more complicated projects that will take some time and focus. Autumn had quiz bowl after school, but basically wasted time not participating. It didn’t put me out too much since I had to work until 4:30 anyway. By the time it was all over, we were all pretty hungry. We collectively agreed on pizza, and we picked up some Little Caesar’s on the way back to their house.

We watched an episode of Criminal Minds, then some Parks and Rec, and then everyone was off to bed.

I like saying, “no.” It lowers their enthusiasm.