Tag: family

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Shattered Dreams of Corn Dogs

It was another day hiding away at the junior high. I got a few things done, but the highlight was 50 cent corn dogs at Sonic. Ronda and I went to pick it up. We had like 11 corn dogs, and I got the notion that I needed to get all three of my favorite snacks as well, so I got large orders of onion rings, cheese sticks, and cheddar peppers as well. I did really well until Ronda and Summer both backed out of their third corn dogs, so I skipped mine as well in favor of the sides.

After school, I ran by Walmart to pick up some avocados and an insulated backpack I ordered using Walmart Pickup last week. I “checked in” before I got to the store, as it instructed me to do, and then did my avo shopping before stopping at the pickup area. Then I waited. For twenty Earth minutes. I would have rather walked to the back of the store and gotten it myself, but instead I was stood next to a locked locker that had my UPS-delivered package in it, waiting for a rep to show up. I still don’t even know what took so long, but this whole service is a hard pass for me now.

From there, I ran home to take care of a few things before heading to Summer’s. She had just left the gym, so I offered to pick up corn dogs for the kids. A few minutes after placing my app order and checking in, a girl came out and informed me that they were all out of corn dogs, but offered to give me my drink order and her last singular corn dog for free. It wasn’t quite the 15(!) the kids wanted, but I took what they had. What she said next surprised me more than anything else I’d seen all day. She said she couldn’t refund my order there, and instructed me to open a help ticket through the app and explain there that I was unable to get my order because they had sold out. At least I got my free drink, because otherwise that would have been a horrible review as well.

Failing at Sonic, I called and suggested some Hot-N-Readies. Somehow surprised at the selling out of corn dogs on 50 cent corn dog day, they agreed and I placed another app order and made my way across town. What happened next was my biggest score all day. I pulled into the drive-through with only one car ahead, and was greeted by a friendly employee that literally pulled my pizzas out of the oven and cut them while I waited. Perfect timing. Even better, since they weren’t all stressed from being completely slammed, the pizzas were expertly made and precisely sliced. Best looking and tasting pizzas from Little Caesars ever. And a free 2-liter because coupons. Score.

Finally at Summer’s, I loaded the kids up with food, then had Summer spank them all at Super Mario Party. I’m certain that real family bonds were destroyed. It was a good game night.

The skill games are just there to throw you off the scent that this game is really a STEAMING PILE OF HORSESH–!

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S’More Scool

I spent some time in the graveyard this morning helping Ben sort through the things we removed from the field house. When I left there, Oakland was having a s’mores cookout, so I managed to mingle around there for the rest of the morning. Surprisingly it didn’t seem to be very popular, and I guess some people were too busy with other things, but I just can’t imagine not taking the time to toast a marshmallow.

My Soylent kept me going through lunch, so I just went straight to the junior high to work through the afternoon. I still didn’t get a whole lot done because what I did do was relatively time consuming. I stayed just a little bit late before heading home to set up the other Switch and clean up after the cats. Wendy’s still had any size fries for a buck, and I still had a coupon code for a $1.99 Dave’s Single, so it was too hard to resist my first solid meal of the day.

When I got home, my betta was still hiding, so I did a bunch of water quality tests between both tanks and ended up doing a water change with the hopes that it would help enough that I won’t have to move her in such a rush. I still have some tadpoles that don’t seem to have any intention of becoming frogs. There is one frog in there now, but he has a retarded leg. I don’t really know what to do with him other than maybe feed him to Autumn’s turtle. There’s no way he’d last very long with that deformity, and to put him in the cold would be near-instant death.

Once the house was in order, I headed to Summer’s house, and we all played a little bit of Super Mario Party. The party mode was going to take too long, so we backed out of that and played some mini games before the girls headed to bed. Then Summer and I played Diablo III until bedtime. I’m not really sure how we both managed to play together since I only redeemed one copy of the game code, but I guess it doesn’t really matter for now.

That almost seemed like genuine excitement!

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Wild Deal Chasing

Summer got up and hit the gym. I finished a bunch of mashed potatoes and stuffing from several weeks ago. Both were accomplishments in their own way.

Once I was ready, I picked Summer up at her house and we went to Gamestop to do some Christmas shopping for the quiz bowl team’s adopted Whirlwind. They didn’t have any Nintendo 64 stuff, so we went to Game X Change and picked up a console, a couple games, and an extra controller. From there, we headed to PetSmart to look around. Summer got some turtle food, and I drooled over more aquarium stuff. I spent a good amount of time trying to accumulate enough in purchases to use my $10 off $50 coupon, but in the end I found myself frustrated with the higher prices negating the savings of the coupon, and I put everything back.

We were both pretty hungry at that point, so I ordered some snacks from Sonic that we picked up on the way back to her house. The girls arrived shortly after we did, and Autumn packed a bag for her grandparents’ place since she has a blood sugar test in the morning. Mom made curry for dinner, so Eaddie and I headed that way while Summer dropped Autumn off.

Eaddie said she had just eaten and wasn’t too hungry, but she still enjoyed some curry. Summer went a little light, but I went back a couple extra times. Then it was back to my house for the evening. Eaddie took a shower before we all sat down and watched a couple episodes of The Office before bed.

Hang on a sec. Your mom and I are trying to have a fight!

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The Gift Card Investment Plan

Summer and Autumn slept in this morning, but luckily Summer jumped out of bed in time to get her up and out to the school for their quiz bowl trip. I tried not to sleep too late, but Eaddie still beat me to the living room. She wanted cereal for breakfast, but we didn’t have any milk, so I took the opportunity to try and pick up some Nintendo eShop gift cards that were on sale at the Dollar General right up the road. I must have looked like some kind of fool getting $200 worth of Nintendo gift cards, but I only paid $170, so the joke was on them. I did make a mistake though, and tried to scratch the first card with a metal file, and it chewed right through the ink on the paper. Luckily I called Nintendo, and after speaking with a couple guys, they were able to confirm the validity of the card and applied it to my account for me.

After Eaddie and I had some cereal, I messed around on the Switch some more while she watched Legends of Tomorrow. Eventually I had to find a way to convince her that she probably didn’t take a shower last night, and that she definitely needed to take one today. It took some effort, but I eventually got her ready to leave the house, and we headed back to my house so I could clean up. On the way, we stopped at another Dollar general and I picked up another $180 worth of gift cards. We should be set for some games now.

Summer was already heading back from Greenwood by the time we got to my house, so I warmed up some food for Eaddie and then jumped into the shower. Once I was ready, we took the bike to Walmart to look for a Super Mario Party and Joy-Con bundle. We ran into Ana with her grandparents there, but Ana acted all shy, and I’m pretty sure her grandparents didn’t really recognize me. We continued on to the electronics, and luckily there were still three copies of the game, so I limited myself to just the one and we headed on to Summer’s house so the girls could pack bags for their stay with their father.

Hannah and Dylan wanted to meet us at Chili’s for dinner, so Summer took a shower and we both drove to meet up with them. My food was pretty good, but cold. Summer said she liked hers, but the other two both wanted to send their sirloins back to the grill. We had a good time though, and I got Dylan’s Steam info so we can hopefully join up for some Rocket League or other games at some point in the future.

When we finished dessert, Summer and I headed back to my house for the evening. We thought momentarily about visiting the remaining three Dollar Generals in town to clean the rest of them out on gift cards, but she was sleepy and I figured $380 should last until next holiday season when hopefully they’ll have another sale.

Motorcycle weather in December, but you look at our air and our water and it’s right now at a record clean.

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Switch Things Up

I got in to work a couple minutes late this morning after traffic was backed up a quarter mile up Fairway. I have no idea what was going on, but we actually cleared through the intersection relatively quickly. As I suspected, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of conversation about work going on. When we finally did split up, I volunteered to help Zach and Amanda hang a TV for the resource officers at the high school.

I ended up hurting my leg just barely above my right ankle when I tripped over a rolling chair. Zach caught me and kept me from face planting, and luckily the damage didn’t seem to be on my ankle itself, but it definitely sat me down for a little bit. We finally got the TV hung though, and then went to the field house to help Ben, Allen, and Brice remove a bunch of old equipment before they renovate the place.

Gary, Heather, and I went to a new Latino restaurant called Zona K-Tracha that was super good. Gary had most of a 14-inch burrito that looked amazing. My fajitas were great, and it was probably the first time I’ve eaten at a place that had a noticeably different flavor of seasoning in their meat. I was a little disappointed by the quantity of vegetables in my fajitas, but the flip side was that I had a lot of meat instead. The restaurant had more of a polish than most of the others in town, which made it that much stranger to see so many mistakes or inconsistencies in the nicely made menus. It just made me want to fix it all for them.

After lunch, I went to the junior high to take care of a few things. Summer was out at a meeting all day and didn’t get back until around the time I finished working. When she did finally show up, she took Autumn and I took Eaddie home with me for a couple hours. My Blue Yeti shock mount and my Switch screen protectors came in, so I spent my time setting those up while Eaddie watched her last episode of Arrow.

Eventually we loaded everything up and headed to Summer’s for dinner. She made some chicken breasts encrusted with French onions, along with a mixture of some vegetables and some mashed potatoes. I think Eaddie ate more than all of us, but she just couldn’t behave at the table and kept aggravating everyone. After we ate, Summer frustrated herself even further trying to peel some hard boiled eggs, and I had to make her take a break for a bit.

I tried downloading some games to the Switch, and got a few things going that we could do, but Autumn was so tired that she went to bed early, and Eaddie eventually got dishes done, then played computer games until bedtime. Summer and I finally got the eggs peeled and deviled, and it was off to bed with her. The storm riled her up for a little while, but for the most part it was over pretty quickly.

Of course it’s 70 degrees outside with a thunderstorm and tornado warning. Why wouldn’t it be, on the first day of December?

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Afternoon Social

I stopped by the shop this morning for some help with LanSchool. Ben pointed me at a couple things that I missed, but in the end it didn’t matter because my setup was already working and I just didn’t know it.

My FedEx package came in just before lunch, so I headed home then to get it. I grabbed some Burger King nuggets on the way so I could have them with leftover mashed potatoes for lunch. While I was home, I saw an article that Project Fi is rebranding to Google Fi, and opening the doors to other previously incompatible phones. They also changed their (ultimately) half-off Pixel 3 promotion for a full-price Pixel 3 with an equal-value travel gift card, plus a $100 referral credit. I had to stop and think about that one for a while.

I didn’t really do anything after lunch, except sit and socialize with Gary. It was mostly work-related chat though, and I got some more insight into the inner machinations of the technology hive mind. I spent a little more time chatting with Ben, then bounced around until the work day was over.

From there, I headed straight home to bring the Nintendo Switches inside, that had been delivered a couple hours earlier. At least the UPS guy delivered them to the front door. FedEx only rang my doorbell after he saw my note requesting it. I still have screen protectors on the way, so unfortunately they’ll have to stay in the boxes until those arrive.

When Summer finished at the gym, I headed over to pick everyone up, and we went to CiCi’s for dinner. Noah and Eaddie wanted to go to PetSmart with me, but Autumn had homework, and Summer had exactly what you would expect to have after an evening at CiCi’s, so we compromised and went straight home for the evening.

To wrap up the evening, Summer agreed that signing up for Google Fi would be her best option right now, so I sent the referral, checked the credit, paid sales tax on a phone, and now we’re playing the waiting game. I’m so jelly.

What’s the deal, yo?

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Birthday Blunders

I woke up with another headache this morning, but fortunately I shook it off after a shower. There wasn’t much going on at Oakland, so I stopped by the shop to pick up some things on my way to the junior high. It was Ronda’s birthday, so I went with her to Stoby’s to pick up a bunch of lunch orders for those of us that were eating together for the occasion.

When we got back to the library, we discovered Janie’s order was missing, and I didn’t get my cheese dip. I let them eat and went back to Stoby’s by myself to pick up the rest, and the girl found Janie’s order immediately, but then told me the people in the back were “100% certain” they gave us a large cheese dip. I confirmed that they did, in fact, give us one out of the two that we paid for. She said she would check my order to make sure I was charged for it properly, but after driving back once already for what we clearly didn’t receive, I felt like she should have at least just given me the benefit of the doubt. It wasn’t until after I got back to my cold taco salad that I realized they also didn’t give me any chips for it.

Nearing the end of my meal, a guy from the home theater place that mounted our cafeteria media rack found me and wanted me to look at it with him. He didn’t seem to understand why we weren’t satisfied with their install, and insisted that there was no way the weight of the equipment could be held up properly in a wall rack. I told him we work with wall racks all the time, and that if the rack was overloaded, then they should have purchased a heavier-duty rack. I flat out had to tell him I wouldn’t allow an installation like that to pass in my home. I guess he works with a different set of standards.

A few work orders later, we reached the end of the day, and I ran home to pack up my NVIDIA RTX 2080 TI Founders Edition cards that I paid way too much for, and took them to UPS for return shipping. It was just a little over $40, which kind of surprised me. I guess that’s a fine lesson. I’m still not certain I made the right choice, and it sucks that my plan didn’t pay off better. There’ll probably be a shortage of cards closer to Christmas, and I’ll regret returning them.

From there, I went to Summer’s and scraped up some leftover dinner while she watched TV and the girls fiddled around. I had to head home for more laundry though, so I didn’t stay very long. Then I just surfed Cyber Monday deals into the evening long after I finished laundry. With any luck, I won’t go completely broke before I can find a new job.

People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.

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Keep Pressure on It

I made myself get up and out of bed this morning since it’s back to work tomorrow. After digging through my SIM cards, I pulled out my old HTC phones and tried activating one for Summer to use. It took me a while to get them going, and the SIM I found didn’t work, but I think I’ve about figured out a plan.

Once Eaddie was up, she and Summer had some leftovers for breakfast, and then Summer went to work out. Eaddie spent all day watching Arrow, and I bounced around the house, mostly still working on the phones. I still had a ham bone in the fridge that I wanted to throw into the Instant Pot, so I talked Summer into running to the store for an onion, some carrots, and celery. I had enough of everything else here to try making some soup. I don’t remember my parents ever using dried beans before, but I found some Instant Pot recipes that I could blend together and tweak to make it work.

I sauteed what was left of the meaty ham bits with the onion, carrots, celery, garlic, and olive oil, while Summer sorted through the bag of organic great northern beans that John left me years and years ago. Then I added the two cups of beans, the mostly cleaned ham bone, eight cups of water, and some fresh rosemary and thyme to the pot. I originally set it to pressure cook on high for 35 minutes, but then after depressurizing and trying the beans, they were still a bit hard. Fortunately it didn’t take very long for the pot to regain pressure, and another 20 minutes finished them right up.

While the Instant Pot was going, I called the jury line to see when I would have to report for jury duty or selection, or whatever it was that I was summoned to do. The line was busy for quite a while, but eventually I got through and received a message that my summons was cancelled, or at the very least put on hold. I still have mixed feelings about that, but at least it’s one less thing I have to worry about for the time being.

Once the soup was done, I went through the surprisingly long process of depressurizing the pot again, and served up three bowls. The ham hock had nearly completely disintegrated, and all of the flavors poured out into the soup. The girls really liked it, so I called Julie to see if she wanted to try some, but she wasn’t hungry. I thought it was too sweet because it was a glazed ham and I used all of the juices from the pan as well. Next time I’ll avoid the drippings if they’re sweet. Overall it was a great success, and I can’t wait to try cooking another animal carcass. I think I’m even a little more excited to try cooking more dry beans, because they’re just so cheap. This thing is probably killer with chili too.

We watched The Office while we ate, with a windstorm in the background. Then the girls had to head out to pick up Autumn and get ready for school in the morning. I spent the evening hand-washing dishes, partly because I wasn’t completely sold on using the dishwasher on the Instant Pot, partly because I didn’t really have a full load of dishes, and partly for just a little bit of old school Zen to wrap up the week off.

All of that, and I forgot to take a picture. Guess I’ll have to do it all over again.

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Cleanup for Company

I got up this morning and continued working on chores all day. By the time I got to a good stopping place, I was late getting to Summer’s. Autumn had her boyfriend, Adrian over for dinner, and I don’t think I’d ever seen her room, the bathroom, or the rest of the visible house so spotless before. Summer had me sit in on her hand of Uno so she could start dinner.

The kids all gave up, since they were barely paying attention to the game anyway. Then we had a chicken alfredo with weird vegetable pasta. It wasn’t bad I guess, if we’re making healthier choices. Autumn had to go to her grandmother’s house for the evening so she could help with something the next day, so Summer took her and Adrian to drop them off, and I took Eaddie to my house.

Eaddie started to feel a little sick again, so I made her some Swiss Miss and let her watch Arrow while I started up some more laundry. When Summer got here, she started playing Torchlight II on her laptop until I got to a point with my laundry that I could watch some TV, and we put on The Office. Eaddie passed out eventually to some Nyquil, and we called it a night.

But I don’t want to turn the alarm on again!

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Home Sweep Home

Summer and I got up and played some more Torchlight II this morning. I put on The Christmas Chronicles for the girls while they munched on whatever they could find for breakfast. Eaddie still wasn’t feeling the best, but she pretty well kicked it by the end of the day. Evidently she had a rough night though, and I had to get my carpet/upholstery cleaner for her bed.

While I was at home, I started up some laundry, cleaned up after the cats, and did some work on the aquariums. I didn’t get to visit PetSmart like I wanted, but I guess it was just as well. I don’t have the time or space to put much more effort into my tanks anyway. I got to a stopping point and headed back to Summer’s with the cleaner, then went to my parents’ house with Julie for some leftovers.

After dinner, I headed back home and did some more laundry and picking up. There’s still so much more to do. I also got a reminder that I have to call Sunday night to find out what day I have to go to Little Rock for what I’m assuming is jury duty selection. I’m tired of coming back home to so much anxiety.

At least I was successful in my controlled laundry shrinking experiment.