Tag: family

Adventure Time!

Gauntlet Wars

We had to get up super early this morning to make it to Little Rock for Summer’s run at Conquer the Gauntlet. Somehow we managed to get out the door and all the way there without incident, and we dropped her off in the middle of a huge grassy field where everyone was parking.

I took the girls to Sonic since we were all super hungry. I thought that would have gotten them into better moods, but but it was mostly downhill from there. I had some trouble with the Sonic app ordering again, which I think makes four out of five times that I’ve had an issue with it. This time, I was unable to place my order and was double charged for a $40 refill on my gift card. Fortunately, it looks like customer service will be able to refund me if I give them a call. When we got done eating, we went to the McCain Mall to shop around. The girls started off okay, but things quickly devolved into more or less constant bickering. We had a moment of brief quiet as I picked up a Rocket League blind box pull-back racer car. We even went back to try and recover my decade-old preorder credit without any luck.

We made a quick stop at Dick’s to try and refill my CO2 canisters before heading out to pick Summer up again. It was my first denial for the age of the tanks and how long it’s been since they’d been hydrostatically tested. Summer texted as we were walking out, so we made our way back to the event to pick her up. I called when we got there to find out where to find her, and as soon as I hung up I got a call from a girl I was messaging on the Fbook about a CPAP. She wanted to meet at the McCain Mall at 3, so we got Summer, went to eat a celebratory meal at Red Lobster, and then picked up my new CPAP.

From there we stopped at Sam’s for a few things, and I nearly picked up a box of Coca-Cola syrup before deciding against it until I had more CO2. We stopped by the Dick’s in Conway so I could be denied for that one last time, and then headed home so the girls could go with their father to the county fair. Once they were gone, we headed back to my house to set up my new CPAP and start some laundry.

As soon as Summer flopped down on the bed, she spotted a brown recluse, and then a second just a few seconds later. After a mad dash to strip the bed sheets, I killed a total of half a dozen of them of various sizes. At least the new sheets seem soft. And spider-free.

I can’t even imagine how many of them I’ve swallowed in the night.

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They See Me Enrollin’

Gary and I spent all morning enrolling Chromebooks for CBI classrooms. Then after an overpriced lunch at CJ’s, Amanda and I delivered most of them to the junior high. Zach joined us to install a touch panel at Sequoyah, and that pretty much made the work day. I pulled some more scrap out of the auditorium, but all the good stuff has really already been scrapped, and it still upsets me. I guess I just should have asked sooner.

I went home for a while after work to clean up, and then picked Eaddie up from an after school event. Summer made a big spaghetti dinner in preparation for her Conquer the Gauntlet run tomorrow. Autumn wasn’t having any of it, so some words had to be said. I’m nervous about getting everyone up and around in the morning, particularly because it didn’t seem like anyone showered before bed. I guess we’ll just have to see what happens.

Go to sleep doo doo doo doo doo doo.

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That Time I Trolled the Police

I parked in my usual space at Oakland this morning. Unthreatened by unwarranted police force, I couldn’t resist the temptation. I had too many people and too much logic and too much of the law on my side. I had just walked into the office after doing some work when Erica said Sheri was on the phone with him. I didn’t find out until later that he had pulled up behind me and was calling from just outside the building, but Sheri told him to leave me alone because she needed more help dealing with actual real life dangers like speeding and cell phone usage down the street in front of the school. Justice is.. well.. I didn’t go to jail. So, whatever, Beyette.

Zach and I went to Morelos to get some fajitas for lunch. I was super hungry and made a happy plate. Then I spent all afternoon mostly catching up with people at the junior high. I told Kevin about my victory in the morning, and he pulled me into his office to ask what time my confrontation happened the day before. He already had the cameras pulled up for that campus and day, and wanted to see the guy’s stupid face when he tried to intimidate me. It went downhill from “not a fan” pretty fast.

When it was time to leave, I took Eaddie to my parents’ house for some mango soup. I told her it was one of my favorite soups that Mom makes, and she said I say that every time. I asked if I had ever lead her astray, and she sheepishly shook her head and grinned.

Summer went to the football game to see Autumn perform at halftime, and Eaddie and I went back to my house to pick up some things for tomorrow before heading back to their house. This week has gone by fast, and I’m ready to have some time at home. Those cats just can’t keep the place tidy. I don’t know what their deal is.

It’s pretty bad when your own brothers in blue don’t have your back.

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The Day Before I Almost Got Arrested

I started the day off at Oakland, working on a handful of things. The moment that stands out, though, was when I was helping Sheri with some technical issues she was having in a testing room. Erica came by and tapped on the glass and pointed at me, so I came out and was greeted by a uniformed police officer. He informed me that I was parked in a no-parking zone. I corrected him that it was a no-unloading-zone. He said I could finish what I was doing in the testing room before moving my vehicle, so I offered to walk him outside to confirm. He tried getting all tough-guy and said we could do things the hard way if I wanted. He asked to see my ID, but I insisted we should go outside to look first.

When we got outside, John was already there and started telling the officer that maintenance and I park in that area all the time because we are employees that travel and may have to unload equipment or otherwise access areas that are not normally accessed by the public. When we got to my car, I pointed at each word on the sign as I read them aloud slowly. He pointed at the ground behind my vehicle where the old parking spaces had been painted over and re-marked with NO PARKING. I guess he missed the bright yellow school bus that was parked squarely on top of a painted NO PARKING area. He said he was checking all of the schools after complaints about people parking “suspiciously.” Outside of the building I didn’t want to push my luck, so I gave up my ID when he asked again, and then moved to a parking space so he would leave.

Back inside, Mollie said she would make me my own parking space. I insisted it would have to be in the front lawn by the tree, or somewhere else conspicuous and obviously not a parking area. She said that wouldn’t be a problem. After a quick run through Wendy’s for lunch, I ended up at the junior high and told Kevin about my harassment. He knew almost immediately who I was talking to and indicated that he wasn’t a fan of the guy’s attitude either. He even went as far as to tell me I should hang a “TECHNOLOGY PARKING ONLY” sign on top of the no-unloading-zone sign when I park there tomorrow, because he would be on duty again. I think the real problem was that he came into the building without a visitor badge. Office staff should really be trained to take IDs from everyone, even if they’re dressed up like cops. We’ve got to be vigilant with these predators and sexual offenders.

After work, I ran home to tend to the ailing betta. It looked worse off and seemed even less active, but I’ll keep doing what I can. I moved him to a small betta cup with just a little bit of water in it so he wouldn’t have to swim so high to get to the surface for air, but his eyes are clouded over and I’m not sure he’ll eat anything. I’ll feel a lot better if I can get him to eat something.

Summer beat me to my parents’ house for dinner, but they weren’t home anyway. They arrived shortly after I did, and we had dinner and played some more arcade games and foosball. The kids all ate pretty well, and then Summer had to get them home for homework and bedtime. I filled up on gas on the way, and it was pretty much straight to bed since Summer’s neck was out again.

Julie messaged the family late with her own troubles, and I guess all I can really do is hope for the best. Sometimes you’ve just got to make your own fortune.

I’ll give you one guess which one of us has more authority inside this building right now.

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Fortin’ Around

Summer got up and went to the gym this morning while I got showered and ready to go. We got to my parents’ house right before noon, and we all headed to Fort Smith. We dropped Dad off at the library for the magic club meeting, then the three of us went to a coffee shop and had a white people version of Vietnamese French roast coffee without all the drip gear. Mom and Summer ate cinnamon rolls, and then we went across town so they could get their nails done. I had just dropped them off when they called me back because there weren’t any openings, so we went to Sam’s instead.

When Dad’s meeting was over, we went to pick him up, then went to Red Lobster for dinner. Endless shrimp was a little slow, but we all managed to get our fill. Mom was presented with her live lobster before it was cooked for her, and I was left sort of wishing that more restaurants would do that.

After dinner, we hit up a couple of the oriental food stores before driving home. We considered stopping in Clarksville to cram the girls into the car, but the timing didn’t work out. We got back to town, ran by my house to clean up some things, and eventually found our way to bed.

Bye, Pinchy!

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Dinner and a Shower

The girls went home this morning to clean house while I sat around the house with my head cold. Summer brought some potatoes back for me to bake for dinner, and once they were finished, I went to pick them all up and head to my parents’ house. We went for a swim until the charcoal was hot enough to start cooking, and I grilled some steaks, hot dogs, and Polish sausage. I thought that was it, so I jumped back into the pool, but then Mom brought some squash and shrimp out to grill too.

We decided to eat outside, so Mom brought everything out to set the table, and then we had to battle the flies. It would have been much easier to build our plates inside. We mostly finished without incident though, and fortunately everyone had just finished eating by the time we got a little shower of rain. It didn’t rain too long, but everyone was ready to come inside for dessert anyway.

When we got back home, we watched Tag to much delight, then went to bed.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

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Every being in the universe knows right from wrong, Mark.

I’ve been struggling with my head cold all day. I didn’t want to sleep in too late, but I wasn’t much use either way. Summer went home to try and mow, but had trouble with her mower. The most I could do was muster enough energy to take a shower in the late afternoon before going to my parents’ house.

When Summer finally got back with the girls, we all loaded up and went to visit my parents for dinner. Autumn, who turns her nose up at everything, had a couple ribs and some steamed rice while the rest of us had fish soup. I probably should have added some hot peppers to my soup to help with my congestion, but I just wasn’t up for the space tonight.

We stopped by Sonic on the way home for a couple drinks, and they seemed to have forgotten us for about 20 minutes, so I had to walk up into the building to see what was up. There, the kid told me their system had messed up and didn’t show that we had checked in yet, and I guess he didn’t bother to look and see. Back at home, we finished watching Mamma Mia, and then I put on K-PAX and watched it with Eaddie while everyone else went to sleep.

I wanna tell you something Mark, something you do not yet know, that we K-PAXians have been around long enough to have discovered. The universe will expand, then it will collapse back on itself, then will expand again. It will repeat this process forever. What you don’t know is that when the universe expands again, everything will be as it is now. Whatever mistakes you make this time around, you will live through on your next pass. Every mistake you make, you will live through again, and again, forever. So my advice to you is to get it right this time around. Because this time is all you have.

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Tired Again

I’ve spent every morning this week waking up so tired that I don’t know why anyone would ever want to be retired. At least I felt like I got a lot accomplished at work. I’m still getting a lot of work orders coming in, and I still have projects ahead of me that I need to finish sooner than later, but I feel like I’m learning things at a faster pace.

I spent the morning at Oakland before Ronda and I went to Long John Silver’s for lunch with my BoGo coupon, then I spent the afternoon at the junior high. Tomorrow may be kind of rough with projects, depending on who all decides not to show up. I’ll never understand the mindset of the people on my team when they say they can take an extra day off to make it a longer weekend. That’s literally always the case.

After work, I went to my parents’ house and met up with my newly retired father. It’s probably not even possible for me to retire from a job after 43 years now. I guess I could from the school, but I’d like to make enough money to do more than eat by then. Summer and Eaddie came over and had curry with us when they got out of their respective athletic activities. Finally it was back home for an earlier bedtime.

I should have taken tomorrow off so I could have a four day weekend…

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Moment of Focus

I stopped by Oakland to wrap up a couple things before heading to the junior high to get the chicken biscuit that Summer got me. Once there, I spent a little time running around, then found myself intensely focused on some System Center stuff. I started digging around in Ryan’s OS deployment task sequence to see how it ticked, and I was actually having fun.

During one of my trips out of my office and across the building, one of the SpEd kids had gotten loose and was tearing down the halls with all kinds of people chasing after him. I wasn’t sure what my place in all of this was, which only got worse when I turned a corner and found him running straight toward me. I nearly tackled him, but Joe got to him first with his tallman legs.

When I finally got out for a late lunch, I went to Wendy’s for a dollar Double Stack with a free order of Baconator fries. I’m killin it with cheap lunches lately. I just took it with me to the shop and continued working on things there until the end of the day.

It started to storm really hard right before quitting time, so I hung out a bit late finishing some stuff, then went to Summer’s for dinner. She made some slow cooker ribs, and we tried watching something educational instead of the Vine compilations the kids kept wanting to watch. I’m sure my parents thought I was rotting my brain doing the things I did as a kid, but these days I feel like the memes have reached critical mass, and kids are just completely ignorant. It’s always the same 5-second videos over and over again, and they’ve nothing to learn from it.

Back home, I finished sorting socks and worked on a computer for a while longer before heading to bed. These mornings are killing me.

What have you done?

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Fifty Dollars an Hour

I’ve been having so much trouble getting out of bed all week. I really think it’s just the time of the year, the temperature, and the daylight hours, because I always get this way coming out of summer.

Allen and I were supposed to meet at Long John Silver’s for lunch, but he ended up ditching me because he couldn’t communicate effectively. I decided to try McDonald’s for another dollar burger, but then Ronda messaged me and said she had a soft taco left over for me. I went ahead and got the Big Mac, then went to the junior high to eat everything.

I wanted to get back to Oakland for a bit, but I got busy fighting with their sign computer at the shop until quitting time. From there, I went straight home to get the gas lawn mower to make an exchange at Walmart. For some reason I thought it might be best to park by the garden center, but I ended up having to walk all the way back to the service desk. It took another couple trips across the store and some explaining to a manager, but he ultimately agreed to give me an additional $50 discount to the already low negotiated price bringing my total to $200 for both mowers. It wasn’t an awful way to spend an hour, but now that I’ve mastered the art of negotiation, I want to see if McDonald’s will sell me a Big Mac for 75 cents.

Just as I got packed up and climbed into the car, Julie said she was on her way to Pasta Grill for Dad’s birthday dinner. I pulled up just as my parents did, and Julie came along a bit after we were seated. We were sat right by a large table full of some Asurion folks, and Ben waved to me as we left. Most of the rest of them can go to the hot place. The jambalaya pasta was amazing.

When I got back home, I started a load of laundry and then headed to Summer’s with my leftovers. I couldn’t stay long though, because folding socks is another thing my smart house won’t do.

That cow is staring right at me!