Tag: family

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Domo Arigato Mister Conky 2000, Ha Ha!

I had to wake up this morning to meet at the robotics tournament around 8, and the place was already pretty packed. Everything went pretty smoothly, and I only worked for about an hour before they cut me loose. I went up to Summer’s to see what they were doing, and she left Eaddie and me there while she went to the gym. I ate the last of the leftover noodles and then played on the Switch for a little bit while Eaddie took a shower. Just after Summer got back, I got a call about some trouble at the tournament, so I had to head back there.

I couldn’t find anything wrong with the wireless other than a slightly higher number of users in the area. I would think the access points could have handled the 30-40 users per device without too much trouble though. I spent a little while fiddling with it to see if I could narrow down the trouble, but in the end the only advice I could offer was to restart their tablets.

When I left, I met Summer and Eaddie at Sumo for lunch. They were super busy and our cook was unusually quiet for the venue. What made it even worse was that our noodles were basically completely inedible due to the amount of salt in them. They burned my mouth as I ate them, so I had to mix them with the rice to make them palatable. Then he forgot Summer’s vegetables and had to scrape enough from the scraps on the table for her. Overall I just felt like they were trying to hide poor quality with tons of sauce and seasoning.

From there, the girls went home so they could go with their father. I ran home to clean up some oil or grease stains on my shirt, and then made it back to the robotics tournament just as they were cleaning up. It went well for the most part, so hopefully the payment situation will be fairly straightforward. If I’m lucky they’ll contribute my extra to retirement as well. I left once most everyone was gone and headed back home to meet Summer.

On the way home, Zach texted and invited us to come play games with him, Sara, Gary, Bryan, and Daspri. We got there just in time to see that it was actually a dinner party they were having. We were still so full from lunch that we just awkwardly stood there and chatted with them while they ate. Apparently that’s a pretty regular thing for them to do though, which was kind of a bummer to learn. I thought we were getting in on something new there, but I ended up feeling like extras. It was still a fun time though once we started playing Unstable Unicorns. We even played by the proper rules this time so we didn’t get stuck in a stalemate for four hours. We wrapped up the evening with a learning game of Bears vs Babies. It went okay.

Enough with the grumblies!

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Feeling Flushed

It was a dreary second day of testing at Oakland this morning. Someone brought some toppings to the cafeteria and made some fantastic cinnamon rolls. I had a brown sugar and pecan one at first, and then one of the teachers gave me her fig one that was tasty, though not even half as good as my first. I decided to leave for a regular lunch this time, and I met some of the guys at CJ’s for an overpriced burger. At least the fries were super hot and a little crispy.

After lunch, I took care of some things at the junior high before going back to the shop to deliver a touch panel to Oakland. Just after I got the panel and toolbox out and pulled the truck up, it started to pour down rain, so I had to move the stuff under the awning. Just about then, I saw Crystal pulling the mail van in, so I abandoned all hope and ran the truck back to the lot before she locked the gate. I figured we would just deal with being a little late tomorrow, since Zach, Gary, and I should be able to hang it super fast anyway.

I went home for a bit before heading up to Summer’s for dinner. She picked up a couple buckets of KFC that the three kids destroyed. Autumn originally tried eating leftover buffalo chicken strips instead, but when they turned out dry and rubbery she gnawed on about a quarter of a breast before leaving it to be thrown away. Luckily I spotted it and Summer finished it off, but it’s that kind of wasteful spirit that infuriates me to the point that I want to physically harm her. There’s just no reason someone that age shouldn’t be more thoughtful about those things. They have too many outs when they don’t get their way.

As I finished the last little bit of gravy with a biscuit, I somehow managed to punch a tiny hole into the styrofoam and dripped gravy across the entire house and myself. I just felt so defeated, and ended up taking my shirt off to wash it in the sink. I didn’t stay long, and left after about three episodes of Parks and Recreaetion. I headed toward home to get gas, then clean the cat box and shrimp bowl. I pulled some of the stringy algae out, and thought for a while that I had accidentally pulled out the ghost shrimp as well, just before heading to bed I checked again and found him.

Triumph of the day.

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I don’t wanna be in this family any more!

I spent the morning at the junior high after being away all day yesterday. It was supposed to be another warmer day, but the cloud cover and moisture in the air made it a pretty cold ride in. I worked there until lunch and met the guys at the shop before riding with Zach to Popeye’s. After lunch, he helped me take a little mini Chromebook cart to Oakland before we got sidetracked with a call over to Sequoyah. Apparently they’re adding on to the cafetorium there, and there’s some cabling that runs across the outside of the building that will have to be relocated or removed. There were a couple kids there from Tracer that didn’t seem to be much help, and we ended up waiting for Ben to get there and make the final decision. I think ultimately we’re just going to end up cutting it and seeing what goes down.

When we finally finished there, I worked a bit late on a computer at the front desk of the junior high to try and figure out why it would only work with a static IP address, and the best I could come up with was flaky termination on a patch cable in the switch closet. The computer was a bit janky when I set it back up, but it eventually worked itself out and restarted without issue several times, so I left.

I ran by the bank to see if they had $2 bills for lucky money and ran into Aaron there. I didn’t realize that was his branch, so we chatted for a little bit before we both left. I went to my parents’ house for some red envelopes and then had to run home to get the car to pick up Eaddie from karate. We ran back by my house so I could change and check on the pets, and then headed on to her house.

We watched an episode of Parks and Rec over leftover dinner, and Summer and Autumn put some more work into her National History Day project. Meanwhile, I racked my brain over trying to promote Summer’s Google account to family manager status, and was basically left with account deletion as an only resolution. Unfortunately since Summer was already a parent on Autumn’s family group, removing herself meant that she couldn’t even create a new family group with a brand new Google account for Eaddie until waiting out the 12-month cooldown period between families. Eaddie basically doesn’t have a way to create a new account without lying about her age. Google chat support was worthless and just plain bad, which was a huge surprise.

0/10 with rice.

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Don’t Get Testy

This morning was really warm, so I rode the bike in to work. Oakland started ACT Aspire today, so I was stuck there all morning. I was able to use their loaner laptop while I was in the office though, so I kept pretty busy just catching up on old emails. I sat there until a little after noon before ordering some Subway online, and then I picked that up and went to the shop.

I ate there and chatted with Gary for a while. It wasn’t too long after lunch until I had to go back to Oakland to meet with the guys that are running the robotics tournament this weekend. I had to find out what they needed from me, and luckily it sounded like a couple people from Tech should be around to help as well so we won’t all be completely without guidance.

By the time we finished there, school had let out, so I spent the rest of the afternoon at the shop just kind of vaguely working. When I got home, Bác Vân was sitting out back resting, so I chatted with her for a while until Julie got home so I could swing by to get the apple pie moonshine she didn’t want. We ended up talking for a little while too, but the sun was setting and I didn’t want to be out too late on the bike, so I headed to Gary’s place to give him the moonshine. I went in just because I had never seen his place before, and we chatted for just a few minutes before the girls blew up my phone.

I ran home to get the car and went to Walmart to look at some sandpaper for Autumn’s project. While I was there, I picked up a new bulb for the lamp to put over the shrimp bowl. I did a little Googling and decided that sandpaper wouldn’t work well for the papier-mâché, and left with just my bulbs. Autumn was making some slow but steady progress on her Challenger rockets. I had a little bite of what Eaddie didn’t finish for dinner, and then I had to run back home to test some aquarium water.

Earlier when I had checked on the shrimp bowl, the little baby fish was having trouble swimming. He seemed fine this morning, but couldn’t stay upright or swim straight in the evening. I wanted to test the water and try to fix it, but by the time I got home it was already dead. One of the shrimp even started to pick at it a little bit, so I just left it in the bowl. For some reason, the water was really alkaline in the bowl, but both of my big tanks have been really heavily acidic. I didn’t test the water in the 35 gallon since it’s just been sitting stagnant for years, but I’ll probably do that sometime soon. It definitely doesn’t look very good. In the end, I added a small piece of driftwood to try and bring the pH down a little bit, and got my new lamp set up on the timer.

WHATTUP FISH TANK PEOPLE

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Detlef Shrimp

I got up this morning and warmed up the last of the leftover quesadillas for breakfast. Eaddie continued watching Legends of Tomorrow until they left for home to get the house cleaned up. I’d like to say I cleaned up as well, but truthfully I spent most of my time staring at the shrimp. I ended up moving all four of them to the little bowl after deciding that the darker “ghost shrimp” may be a lighter male cherry red. Then I threw the clear ghost shrimp in as well just because I felt bad leaving it in the larger tank with the tetras. One of the reds molted at some point, and I was upset to have missed it.

I eventually got a shower and headed to Summer’s for dinner. She warmed up some leftover barbecue and made some really good cheesy potato pancake things out of the really gross nacho cheese potatoes. We watched an episode of Parks and Recreation while we ate, and then Summer continued helping Autumn with her papier-mâché rockets for history day. I played Breath of the Wild for the rest of the night, trying and failing repeatedly to defeat the island challenge. I’m going to have to step up my creativity.

It takes shrimp to make shrimp!

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Jack of All Your Labors

Summer had a quiz bowl tournament today, so I slept in a little before warming up some leftovers for brunch and heading home. Back home I played a little Overwatch to get my weekly loot boxes, then spent quite a while sifting through rocks so I could make a shrimp bowl with only black gravel. I found some plants that were still alive in my 35 gallon tank, so I pulled them out and threw them in along with the two cherry red shrimp and my last little baby molly.

By the time I finished with all of that and had a shower, Summer was done and brought Eaddie over to go have dinner with Mom. She picked up a bunch of giò in Houston and made noodles for it today. Then we spent an hour trying to dissect a jackfruit without getting all of its sticky sap everywhere. I tried following a guide I found on YouTube, but it seemed like ours wasn’t ripe enough to pull apart like that.

When I finished with that, Uncle Mai called and gave me several minutes of advice and let me know that the value of his gift to me didn’t matter as long as I would use it at least once and that I liked it. Everyone was pretty tired by then, so we headed back to my house where Summer crashed, Eaddie loaded up Legends of Tomorrow, and I dug around to see if I had a lamp I could use to light the new shrimp bowl. Spoiler alert: I need to go to Walmart.

Now my fingers smell like sweet, fruity butt.

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Model Citizens

Jason was out again, so we didn’t have any projects today. I spent most of the morning at the junior high helping Ronda update student pictures for the library. Then I met the guys at the shop to head to Western Sizzlin for lunch. While we were there, somehow we got onto the subject of district policy, and Brice made a comment about how it shouldn’t apply to some people and not others. I was quick to call him out on his step 9 salary.

After lunch, I got to do Jason’s inventory job when we got some projector lamps in. While I was there, I modified some of the descriptions and models so they would be easier to find later. Then I went to Oakland for a bit before ending the day at the junior high. It slowed down pretty quickly for a Friday, and I headed home to watch the aquarium for survivors. Mom was visiting with Bác Vân when I got there, so I chatted with them first. Then after nearly an hour of watching the fish tank, I finally found both shrimp had survived, but it looked like all three fish had been eaten. I’ll have to find another home for the final remaining one.

When Summer got home with Autumn, I headed up for the night. Autumn was made to work on her history day project over the Challenger disaster. I tried helping just a little, but tried to take special care that I didn’t put more effort into it than she did. For someone that wanted so badly to model something out of clay, she didn’t seem to have much interest in shaping her rocket. I don’t even remember what my history day project was about, but I know I hated it. Finally, Summer and I ended the night on a couple episodes of Parks and Rec.

That’s enough belly aching for one night.

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MRIs are C❄❄l

Summer got up this morning and took the bookend kids to school while Autumn and I got ready. As soon as she made it back, we took off for Little Rock for Autumn’s MRI. The drive was pretty straightforward until we got into Little Rock and encountered two separate highway wrecks. Once we got to Arkansas Children’s Hospital and fought for a parking spot, the check-in process was really quick, and we didn’t spend more than about five minutes waiting to be called back.

Even the wait in the prep room was short, as Autumn got changed into a hospital gown and picked out a movie to watch. They gave us the option to go in with her, which I jumped on right away. I’d never been in a room with that much money per square foot before. It was pretty impressive, and neat to see how even huge medical equipment gets updated with the times as far as aesthetics and user interfaces go. They pumped audio to her through plastic tubes since having metal in there would have likely killed everyone. Summer nearly froze to death even covered up in half a dozen warm blankets.

After that was done, we went to Tokyo House to eat. Autumn objected to Chinese, which was nice. I didn’t want her to think of the trip in any positive, school-skipping kind of way. If she doesn’t follow basic health guidelines, then we can’t afford to pay to rule out the most expensive things first. I didn’t really feel like I got my money’s worth with those two, but the food was really good. I probably filled up too much on sushi, but I had pretty much everything else too. Some of the fruits were surprisingly and especially good.

The trip home was through pretty heavy traffic for being so early in the day. We stopped by PetCo first and I picked up a couple puny red cherry shrimp and a couple ghost shrimp. I pointed out a tank with only some baby mollies to Autumn, and the girl helping us offered to throw them in for free. I was probably a little too excited and anxious to get them, being fooled by a seemingly extra-healthy tank. The last stop was at Target to pick up a SlickDeal on some Starbucks bottled Frappuccinos I ordered the other day.

When we got home, I dropped the girls off at their house and headed home with my new aquatic buddies. I was super tired, but I had to get them acclimated. I took a break for a little while and installed a new watch face on my TicWatch E. When Summer finished dropping the girls off everywhere they needed to be, she came over and helped me run the gamut of water quality tests. I built out a spreadsheet to keep track of the stats over time, and was shocked at how high my nitrates were. Everything else seemed to be about where I expected it, but I was still worried about throwing shrimp and tiny baby mollies in with my tetras. After a huge water change, I finally dropped the two cheapo ghost shrimp and eventually three out of the four baby fish into the tank. We’ll see how they survive the night.

☃

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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.