Tag: family

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Video Game Movie

I slept in pretty hard today while Summer got up and did some working from home. When I finally got around to snack on some breakfast, she suggested going to Price Break and a movie in the afternoon. Dad said Uncle Giao, Erica, and Nova were in town, so I assembled my arcade stool and we stopped by their house for some lunch first. They were dropping Nova off at Tech, so they didn’t stick around super long.

Eaddie had band stuff all day, so Summer and I made a quick and mostly boring run through Price Break. It was $10 day, and there were a ton of people there rummaging through stuff. I think it’s more fun to find really cheap stuff that hasn’t been picked up yet.

After that, we went to UEC to watch Borderlands. I liked the visual style, but a lot of the CGI was really hoaky, and the story didn’t really grab me. I never really played the games because they weren’t made for mouse and keyboard, so I wasn’t invested in it at all. I was also still pretty exhausted from general stress and the heat, so I had trouble staying awake in the recliner.

Dad gave us their Roomba, so I cleaned it up when we got home, and had it vacuum the living area. I think I’d really like to get a mopping one for the hard floors, because that’s where the dirt ultimately comes from. It did pull a bunch of crap out of the carpet though, so I need to start seriously shopping for a new vacuum cleaner.

Eaddie didn’t get home until super late, and I spent too much time dawdling before bed. The overbearing heat has me lethargic, and is possibly causing anxiety attacks again, because I’ve been having at least one a day for the past few days. I couldn’t think of anything else that could be triggering them, but I hate it.

Park it.

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Experience Depreciation

I got up extra early today so I could try and beat the new guy to work, but that failed for multiple reasons. I stopped at Taco John’s for breakfast, which ate up all of that extra time, but he also showed up a full hour early. Todd had already given him the tour, and as I would learn later, Samuel had actually given him a tour the week before last, while I was still there. In fact, Samuel was the one that called him the week that Blake told me they weren’t going to keep me, and told him they were looking for a new Tech Coordinator. The entire thing has been super shady, and it just made my day worse and worse until the end.

I walked around with him again and we visited all of the switch closets in the high school and elementary. We didn’t bother going anywhere else, and I probably won’t, except maybe Plainview to see if there’s anything out there that I want for myself. Maybe I could get lucky and find some rails.

We had several waves of kids come in for password resets, but otherwise it was relatively quiet. I had to keep telling him that I wished him the best of luck in spite of how crappy they’ve been to me, but secretly I just hope he gets the same and leaves them in a short amount of time. It’s just not fair that I invested all of that time and effort to fix so many major problems, and he gets to come in and ride the calm seas at a higher rate of pay with two fewer years of school experience.

I was the last one out of the office, and I had already relinquished my keys, but luckily Keith was there and I could borrow his to lock the office. I headed toward home and fed the fish, and got gas at Casey’s. Summer was making a baked spaghetti with pink sauce when I got home, and I just held her for a bit before I got changed and went out to sit with the dogs.

Summer called Eaddie home for dinner, and the three of us ate. Julie called because she saw a Cybertruck in town and thought it might actually be me. Then I went out for a run with the dogs. They did super well, ran hard, had some mostly solid poops, and for the most part weren’t too bad about getting distracted until the very end. It got dark fast, so we only stopped at my parents’ house long enough to say, “hello.”

I wound down pretty quickly, and everyone was off to bed. It was an awful, emotional, maddening day of being the better person, and the frustration of living by an unmatched code of integrity just made me incredibly sad.

And either I’m right and justice is never served, or I’m wrong and I go to Hell anyway.

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Collared Greens

Summer was up early doing some work, and I ended up sleeping in later than I wanted. I eventually got up and made some more eggs for breakfast, and even cleaned up some leftover stir fried beef. It was rainy all morning, but it eventually dried up enough to go out with the dogs.

Eaddie wanted to take my car to drive around with her friends because it was nicer than her Pathfinder, and we ended up having a big family discussion after she didn’t like my answer. That threw all of us off for the rest of the day.

I took a really late shower and then took the dogs out for a walk. We took a new path up and around Inglewood this time, and on the way home I couldn’t break their focus off of a nearby squirrel. I’ve got to do something to fix that behavior, because Stilgar is just able to throw around too much weight.

They were about out of food when I got back with them, so I got Summer up and we went to Walmart to look around a bit. We got more food, and a couple cowhide sticks for them to chew on, with the hopes that they’d stop chewing on important things. Eaddie spotted us while we were there, but we didn’t actually see her. She was out super late, and we ended up going to bed before we ever saw her again.

Interesting days ahead…

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Interview Season

I let myself sleep in a while since I was up so late, but I still wanted to get up early enough to shower before my phone interview. I had leftover waffles for breakfast while Summer was at work, and then went outside to clean up after the dogs. They had gotten into a bag of potting mix and dumped it all over the porch, and at some point they also killed a possum. I cleaned up some poop in the yard, but I’d have to borrow a better shovel to dig a hole for the possum.

Eaddie went out with her friend Autumn once they got up. I sat down for my interview with DeepNet, and as the appointment time passed, I saw an email from the lady saying she couldn’t make it due to a family emergency. Fortunately I also made the shortlist for a job with Moodle, and the pay should be comparable to what I’ve been making. It’d be nice to get a raise, but not having to leave the house will save me some money and a lot of time.

Dad was mowing the lawns across town and wanted help moving a display case out of Bác Vân’s house, so I called Eaddie back with my car and headed over. The restoration people were also there to fix the drywall in the front bedroom, but I didn’t see much of them. It took some work to air up the tires in an old dolly to move the case, but we got it into his car and then I headed back toward home. I stopped and saw Mom along the way to borrow a shovel. Summer was home when I got there, so I sat with her for a little while.

Mom had leftover pork chops and noodles for dinner, so Summer and I headed over for that. We tried to get Eaddie to walk the dogs over, but she insisted that she couldn’t, and I drove back home to take them on the Onewheel while she drove over. We got there, I tied the dogs up, and then Summer and I went for a swim. Eaddie yelled at me for disciplining the dogs for being bad around the cat in the yard, and I got mad at her for speaking out of turn when I’ve been the only one to actually try and fix their behavior.

From there, the girls went home and I continued around the block with the dogs. They were still pulling really hard and trying to chase things, but we made it home alive. Everyone went to bed pretty quickly after that.

Sleep time.

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Big Ask

Breakfast was better this morning, but Kim was by all accounts worse. She disappeared often, and left at some point to drive to another town to retrieve her wallet from her husband’s unlocked truck where he parked at work. Fortunately it was mostly quiet for me. The afternoon dragged horribly after we got our hibachi food truck for lunch.

I got a call from Grace Manufacturing to do a same-day phone interview, so I took that at the end of the day after everyone had left. I thought it went alright, but I had the feeling they weren’t looking to pay anywhere near my asking price, and it’s not at all in the technology field either.

I eventually made it to the old house to grab some things and feed the fish. Then I headed home for some peace for a while before Summer got home and I left with the dogs. I took their water bottle along this time, and it really seemed to help pace them. We stopped at my parents’ house, and then went through the basin again. We ran across several others walking dogs, so we had to take some breaks and then ended up on the divided street before circling through the neighborhood again to get home.

Noah was back for some reason. Then Eaddie got home late, and I was upset at the state of her room. Summer failed to take the evening off for our concert tomorrow, and Eaddie still doesn’t want to go next week, and it has me wondering why I plan anything with them at all.

Good boys, anyway.

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Foaming

I got to work a little bit early this morning, but breakfast was already pretty picked-through, and definitely not as good as yesterday. It was quieter today though, I think because teachers were stuck in the auditorium for a large part of the day. I used my time to try and clean up some things before I got, but it’s getting harder to keep my spirits amicable.

Lunch wasn’t great either. I remembered the Junction Cafe having pretty awful chicken strips, and I was right. I don’t know how they got them so flat or dried out, but at least there was some food left over from yesterday.

I got the fish fed once I got back into town, and then headed home and played with the dogs. Then I took them out for a long run to my parents’ house for some water, and then the long way through the new neighborhood and the basin area. Stilgar was pulling and huffing pretty hard, and started to foam at the mouth quite a bit. I was a bit worried, but we tried stopping by some sprinklers along the way, and he managed to keep going. I gave him a good misting from the hose once we got back to the house, since he’s not allowed a bath for the time being.

I was pretty hot myself, so I rode back to my parents’ house for a quick swim before coming back home. Eaddie suddenly said she didn’t want to go to see Five Finger Death Punch next week even though I triple-checked with her before I submitted payment, so I really want to make her go anyway. It’ll be a lesson in maintaining a working calendar for her schedule.

Besides, we’ve got to start practicing now if we’re going to survive another Trump presidency.

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Walk and Roll

I slept fairly well after a long day yesterday, and got up at a decent hour to make some breakfast for myself. Summer got up and found that Stilgar had pulled the fountain apart and chewed up the spout and the intake filter. After feeding them, she took the dogs for a walk and then went to the store with Eaddie to get stuff to make burritos for dinner. I went through boxes of stuff to try and make room to bring home more stuff from the old house. My office badly needs to be organized, especially in case I actually get one of these work from home jobs.

Summer went to the gym, and then took Eaddie out to walk the dogs again in the afternoon. I started cooking some refried beans in the Instant Pot, and eventually got the taco meat going as well. We had to send Eaddie to the store for olives and tomato sauce, and then Dad rode a bottle of fish sauce over on his bicycle.

Dinner turned out pretty good, and afterward I took the dogs for a slow ride on the Onewheel. It wasn’t miserably hot by then, and they did much better than Friday night. We rode to my parents’ house and I kept them on a short leash. Then we took a different route home through Promenade Circle. They got a little slow, but overall did really well.

Once we got back home, I finished putting away the leftovers and started getting ready for bed. It wasn’t as late as I thought it was, but I still didn’t get to bed early on account of some dawdling and some email and bill housekeeping.

You have to separate them by color, just as people should be!

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Three Blind Eyes

Today was a short day at work. I got in and immediately started tinkering with the router’s VLAN settings. I thought I had some of it figured out, and connected to a guest network, and even got the captive portal working for guests. That was when things started to break. For some reason, all of the access points dropped off of management, and a couple of the custodians came in to harass me about the wireless being broken. I was able to get everything back to “normal” again, and then sent a long email to the superintendents informing them of some changes and the fact that I was leaving after lunch.

Summer got home before I did so she could get ready, and once I got home we loaded up for a trip to Rogers. We stopped for a snack and charge in Ozark, and then got to the Walmart Amp where we had dinner at Chuy’s just down the block. This ended up being perfect parking for the concert. It wasn’t much more of a walk than we usually make, but there weren’t any hills or stairs to climb.

Arizona was an odd band. I thought I might like them, but the more they played, the less I was into it. Yellowcard was my favorite. I got one of their shirts. The girls both got Third Eye Blind shirts. Eaddie really liked their part of the concert. They put on a great show, but I didn’t know most of their songs.

After the show, we actually got out super quickly and hit the interstate without stopping in any traffic at all. We did have to stop and charge in Lowell and again in Ozark because I misunderstood what the app was trying to to tell me, but we got home without any trouble. The dogs were sad and staring in the back door when we walked in, so I fed them but had to get to sleep.

Smile big for everyone, even though you know what they done.

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Rogue Tech

It was kind of a weird and quiet day at work, feeling like I’m caught in limbo with zero oversight and literally no administration present. I’ve been a little bit concerned, or at least cautious after being told that people might have tried to throw me under the bus somehow, but I’m really working on my own terms right now. I could potentially even rack up a bunch of overtime and they would be stuck paying for it. I did see where Samuel had logged in to some of our systems, and given the lack of trust I have for Todd, I don’t really know what to think. I’d left his accounts active just because I wasn’t sure if I was sticking around, but he really has no business in my stuff while I’m there.

I’ve sent a steady flow of applications out, and gotten a few automatic rejection letters. I think only one of them was from a place I was excited about, but there haven’t been too many exciting places either. Other than that, my biggest accomplishment was getting my USG-Pro-4 to successfully re-adopt to my network. Now I’ve just got to figure out how the heck to configure the VLANs for it again without breaking everything else in the process.

Summer made shredded chicken tacos for dinner, so I fed the fish and stopped by the Neighborhood Market again for some slaw mix. It wasn’t really necessary because I think I was the main person to eat any of it. The kids were being numbskulls, so I stepped out with the dogs and a beer while they ate. After I came in to eat, they went out to walk the dogs. Noah disappeared to the guest room after Summer upset him when she pressed him to apply for jobs making more than minimum wage. We’re not running a charity, but she hasn’t told him that to his face.

When Eaddie and Eli got back from walking the dogs, they said Muad’Dib still had some energy, so I took him for a run on the Onewheel to my parents’ house. I picked up some baking dishes from them, and then took a long route back. By then the dogs were pretty tuckered out and quiet for the rest of the night. I wrapped up as quickly as I could, and then it was off to bed.

I’d walk with my people, if I could find them.

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Conspiratorial

I ran a little late to work, but who cares? Muad’Dib lost his collar, but I couldn’t crawl under the deck to get it until I got home from work.

I kept pretty busy, and even ran down to the elementary building a couple of times. Jill came through and was about as helpful as usual. Todd passed through and was uncharacteristically quiet. Becky stopped in and behaved cryptically, suggesting that I had been thrown under the bus somehow. I don’t even know what they could have against me, but given the lack of response I’ve had during my entire time there, and the behavior I had already witnessed, I’m not going to fight to stay for the same rate of pay. I made my stand clear to everyone, for better or worse.

I must have fifty applications out in the wild by now, and Indeed makes it so easy to apply to a dozen more every day. There have been a few that got me properly excited, but still the vast majority have been remote. I’ll need to clean up my office space for that to work.

I left a little late after fighting my USG-Pro-4 again. Summer chopped the leftover rotisserie chicken up with some fruit and stuff, and wanted me to pick up some more lettuce. I fed the fish and then ran through the Neighborhood Market on the way home. Eli was there to eat with us, and then we sent him and Eaddie out to walk the dogs. Evidently they ran into Noah on the way out, so they all went together.

I followed up with some more applications, and pressed Noah to apply for a custodial position at the school. I’d do anything to get him out of here.

Appreciation in lieu of compensation, but sometimes not even that.