Tag: family

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Good Jhaab

I got everything loaded up this morning and my parents picked Julie up, and then had her drive to get me and head to the Fayetteville airport. The timing worked out fairly well, and we didn’t have to wait too terribly long before we could board the plane. Then the flight was only about an hour and a half to O’Hare. From there, we took a rental car to a sandwich shop called Al & Joe’s. It was predictably complicated to order food for the four of us, but it was decent food. I had a pastrami sandwich which was heavily center-loaded and not cut all the way through. Mustard got all over my hands, so I just had to thoroughly clean up afterward.

From there, we made it to Tru by Hilton, which seemed like a small, “trendy” hotel. They had a pool table in the lobby, so after a little bit of rest and then fighting over who would talk to whom about when to go where and what to eat, Dad and I went down to play. We were both pretty equally bad, but it was fun. Then we ended up going to Thomas’s house to gather for dinner.

It was great to see the cousins we hardly knew, and meet all of their partners or otherwise. Brandan spent most of the time grilling burgers while the ladies got everything else ready. We really didn’t want to make anyone host, and had hoped to take them out to eat, but after two events in such a short period, maybe this is just how it goes. All I have to say is that people had better expect a potluck for our parents, because we’re not hosting a bunch of judgmental family in our time of grief.

We had a reasonably good time in spite of the added stress, and hopefully this weekend we’ll have some time for fun. It sounds like nobody really expected us to be around for this long though, so we’ll just see what happens.

I think we were pretty much the last ones out of the house, and we made it back to the hotel reasonably quickly. Julie and I stayed up chatting for quite a while, which turned a 10-minute blogging routine into a two hour ordeal. We’ll be up early for breakfast and a funeral tomorrow, so hopefully the bed will be comfortable, but not so comfortable that I won’t be able to get up in the morning.

One, big, happy.

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Switching Cart Wheels

I had a Soylent today for the first time in a while, and it served to keep me going. I spent the morning tinkering with the switch, and learned that link aggregation set at the core was preventing our downstream switch from talking. Once I had that fixed, I was able to get the fieldhouse working again, and spent some more time factory resetting the old fieldhouse switch. Once I had that done, I felt like I really showed some ability to some of those guys. Unfortunately it doesn’t sound like they’ll be doing anything to keep me around, and I hate that because I really love the job.

Kim came in and needed some help with a printer at the elementary. Then I drove us to Plainview to dig out some nasty carts. We found just enough for what we needed, so hopefully they’re workable. A few had broken wheels or doors, but we won’t really know until next week. It’s seeming more and more like we just won’t start school prepared.

I ended up leaving a little bit early so I could meet the girls at UEC to see Barbie. I stopped at Taco John’s for a little bit to eat first, since I was pretty hungry. Then I made it to the movie just in time to find a seat at the back of the floor section. I got us some “free” popcorn, and we really enjoyed the movie. I wished they had made the movie a little bit less inappropriate, but it really was a steady stream of laughs. It wasn’t until the very end that things got a little drawn out and weird.

After the movie, we went to my parents’ house so the girls could see what plants needed watering. Mom invited a little coworker over for dinner, and Julie was already there making rolls to take back to Kevin. I had a few myself, and then we headed home.

Eaddie did a great job driving across town in the dark, first with Summer to get her car from my house, and then with me to get back home. It was a bit sticky and hot in the house, but we settled in quickly. Summer went to bed while Eaddie stayed up to chat with me for quite awhile. I showed her the intro to 2001: A Space Odyssey that Barbie parodied. Then we went outside to listen to the super loud mockingbird in the yard for a bit before coming back inside where I showed her the original King’s Quest game. For some reason I couldn’t find a version online that had the bird sound effect in the background, but I thought it would be funny to teach the mockingbird a new tune. That may be a project for later.

Cause actually, my job is just “beach.”

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Where’d Y’all Brang Us?

I was a little worried that he hadn’t emailed us back yet by this morning, so I sent a text to Nick, the home inspector that Lelan recommended. Summer made breakfast again, but I was a little frustrated that she burned my Petit Jean bacon in the oven, and then let the bacon sit in the grease-filled pan after she took it out of the oven. She said they were out of paper towels, so we couldn’t soak it up with anything and it just made my stomach hurt.

I poked around a little bit, and then went home for a few hours. I took a shower and had a really bad anxiety attack that lasted quite a while. I had to open the shower door to breathe some cooler air, and my ears started ringing really badly.

I eventually made it back to their house after they had gone out into town for a bit themselves. Eaddie was going to see Barbie with some friends, so she wouldn’t be joining us at Brangus for Julie’s birthday dinner. We dropped her off a little early or the movie, and then arrived at the restaurant just moments after my parents, Julie, and Kevin showed up.

Dinner was good, and we stood around to talk for a bit afterward. When Julie and Kevin left, the rest of us went by my house so Mom could check out Bác Vân’s garden, and so I could give Dad some old bug spray I had. I took a small handful of peaches, and then we went across town to get Eaddie. We had a little bit of time to kill, so we drove down Sherwood just to check the place out at night. Then we waited in the UEC parking lot for Eaddie.

We headed straight to the house, and the girls went to their rooms. I was way more tired than I expected, so even I took the opportunity to crash early.

Peaches peaches peaches peaches peaches.

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Bank On It

I got in touch with Missy this morning about our loan application, and spent most of the morning after breakfast trying to decide on which loan to take. All of the rates were pretty bad, so I ultimately picked a 15 year loan just to keep the interest to an absolute minimum. It will be a little bit tighter than usual, but I should also be able to count on a raise pretty soon, one way or another.

I sat down to watch one episode of The Good Place with the girls, but otherwise I was feeling a little stressed being the only one paying attention to the loan information. As lunch time came around, Summer made some more spaghetti to finish up the sauce from the other day. Since we didn’t get out of the house, Eaddie decided she wanted to bake something. We dug out the Stranger Things pizza cookies we bought a while back and made those. We really didn’t get up to much of anything else.

Michael called me to ask about crypto trading bots, and as usual I had to tell him I just wasn’t paying any attention to that kind of stuff. We talked for a while, and eventually Summer decided she was ready to go to bed. Eaddie came in and we watched some Modern Family, and then everyone was in bed by midnight.

Such disinterest in comparing interest for interests.

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Housing by the Foot

Summer made sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits for breakfast this morning. I talked to Alisha sporadically throughout the day about the Sherwood house. Summer wanted to take Eaddie out on a hike, but I had to do some laundry, so they went to Haw Creek Falls while I went home. Summer’s car was still low on charge from our trip to Rogers, so I took it to my house to top it off.

Eaddie felt pretty cruddy when they got back, so we gave her a bunch of sinus medicine and she took a short nap. It didn’t take long for her to feel better, and we went to my parents’ house for spring rolls. Julie and Kevin were already there and watching TV. I tried to help out a little bit, but there wasn’t a lot left to do.

We had to split up into two tables, but dinner was good. Afterward, I showed Eaddie the World Book Encyclopedia I had growing up. Then Dad brought out a few slides to share. We hung out for a little while before heading back to the house.

Autumn tried calling late in the evening because she found out Rick died, but after the conversation with Beth last night and the subsequent unfriending she did on Facebook, nobody had much sympathy. She ended up hanging up on me, and then Eaddie came out to chat with me for about an hour before I went to bed.

Those tears are reptilian.

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Oo-De-lally, Oo-De-lally

Even after getting to bed near three in the morning, I was wide awake before nine. I’m dead all week, and then fine all weekend. I got up and sent a text to Alisha to try and schedule a time to look at the house on Sherwood. They added some pictures of the kitchen, and we were interested enough to have a closer look.

I had a burger for brunch and then went home to clean up before. Then I went back for the girls before meeting my dad and Alisha at the house. Dad went to the house next door at first, which happened to be Kevin’s and his parents’ old house. Alisha’s kids were there running all around the place, but they weren’t too bad. We really liked the quirky layout of the house. The garage was a little small, and the whole lot itself was pretty tiny, but that just meant there was less to mow.

Everything was pretty soggy after the heavy rains, but even before that, the shop out back had a pretty extensive water leak. The ceiling and the floor were both really bad, and particularly squishy in a few places. They had it set up like a little apartment though, and if it were a little larger with a powered garage door, it would have been exactly what I wanted for the motorcycles. Dad also spotted some rotting wood on the fascia and soffit, but it may have been from before the roof was replaced.

We went by my parents’ house for a few minutes after we finished at the house, and then we continued back to Summer’s to start cooking some ribs. I started my smoker tube and got the ribs seasoned to slow smoke, and then Summer left for the gym. Eaddie hung out with me in the dining room after Vicky dropped off some snacks for her. I baked potatoes for dinner, and then we ate a little while after Summer got home.

Sometime after Summer went to bed, Aunt Beth started texting about Autumn, saying they were trying to get her into college, and scolding her for dropping her health insurance because they would have to pay for it. Summer got incredibly frustrated but wouldn’t respond, so I ended up doing it for her. Not one person in that family knows a damn thing about being a parent, and it shows in every single one of the kids they collected. The entire thing is a hot, dysfunctional mess, and we don’t want anything to do with it.

Golly, what a day!

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I’m a Tipi! I’m a Wigwam! I’m a Tipi!

I had quite a bit of trouble falling asleep last night as I tossed and turned, and it felt like I kept getting ant bites, but we haven’t had any bugs. Once I did finally fall asleep, it was only a couple of hours before I woke up feeling wide awake again, but fortunately I was able to fall right back to sleep.

Work was really quiet as I rehearsed my conversation with the superintendent. I brought leftover donuts and a kolache for lunch, but then fought gnats until all the food was gone. Toby came to my office and basically said that Harry was on his back to get stuff moved out of my office, so I doubly had to find time to talk to him. I had a FedEx truck show up without a lift gate and had to unload a pallet of Chromebooks by hand. I basically saved my conversation until the last couple hours of work.

I went into the front office and was a little worried that he might not be there. Everyone else was long gone, and the locks had been changed to keep everyone else out. Harry heard my footsteps and slowly turned around to see me in his doorway, and he seemed a little spooked. I assumed he might be expecting the conversation about my office, but instead I started by talking about my expectations versus reality regarding my position. I shared my thoughts about what it would take to keep someone in that position, and he kind of just did the finance dance and tried to explain budgeting. I was no stranger to the concept, so the conversation ran a bit longer than it really needed to. My hope was to put him at a little bit of ease, but also to make my concerns into his concerns in order to stimulate some results.

As I started to leave, I finally brought up the office situation and expressed our need for a place to work and also store inventory. He seemed to be caught between work and his wife, and I wasn’t intimidated by either. We ended up walking through her office where she was still working, and then through mine.

I finally got home late, and went to my parents’ house to help clean up some leftovers. They still had so much random food from even before having family over, so I finished what I could. Then Dad got out a new telescope to briefly look at Venus, which basically looked like a micro-crescent moon with no resolution. High resolution photos from space telescopes have spoiled me.

Eaddie and Summer were in bed when I got to their house. Eaddie got a new fan because her old one kept tripping the breaker. The new one has way brighter lights, so I think she’s happy. Summer fell asleep pretty quickly, leaving me to finish my nightly chores before bed.

Relax man, you’re two tents!

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Family Matters

I cleaned up some more leftovers by making omelets for breakfast. Then we had Eaddie drive us to Gifts on Parkway so she could get her ears pierced in a second place. I went home afterward to clean up, and while I was outside, a Hispanic lady and her son stopped in front of the house and then backed up to pull into Bác Vân’s driveway. I went over to see who it was, and had to break the unfortunate news to her. She had her son get out to translate, but she knew her name and seemed to know how to speak a little bit. Having her son translate so much seemed a little unnecessary, but I figured she just didn’t want to misunderstand anything. She had questions about peaches, and then wanted to know if she could pick a couple, so I grabbed an old hoe from my garage so they could pull down some branches.

Once I got showered and back up to Summer’s, it wasn’t long before we had to drive up to Dover to test drive a used car for Eaddie. We had her drive, and she said she felt zoomy hitting 60 miles per hour. The little Nissan Sentra didn’t seem to be in great shape, and the brakes sounded pretty bad when Summer test drove it, so we decided to pass. I took us back to town and we stopped at Dollar General for some things before going back to the house.

My parents got home a little late, but I headed over and had some more fish soup, and then the three of us stayed up pretty late chatting at the dinner table. Mom did a lot more talking, and I really enjoyed getting to hear her stories. There’s so much family history that she just never shared because of how painful it was to experience, but I think having that context helps us grow closer together and it’s important to know the things that forged her and the rest of the family.

I eventually made it back to Summer’s around midnight, so the girls were long in bed. I had a bit of a bellyache, but made it to bed as quickly as I could.

The Age of Reptiles

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Don’t Be Alarmed

I woke up around seven this morning because I forgot to turn my alarm on for Friday. We switched our off day to Monday so we could have a four-day weekend, but it didn’t even cross my mind that my alarm wouldn’t be prepared for that. I considered rushing straight into work, but ultimately gave in to my desire for a nice shower, and just accepted that I would get to work really late.

When I pulled up, four of the maintenance guys were hanging out on the loading dock chatting, and I talked to them a bit about my car. I offered to give rides, but Toby said he was too sweaty and dirty at the moment. I went on inside, and that’s when the adventure started.

I sent an email to Gary to decline the offer I got from Green Bay Packaging. I didn’t notice his near-immediate reply by email, but a few minutes later he called and wanted to ask about my concerns. We spoke for a little while about the pay I was hoping for, and the fact that I really wanted to talk to the school to see if they would reconsider my position’s salary schedule. He pretty quickly came up from $60,000 to $66,000, with the disclaimer that he would need to talk to the plant manager for approval. I was a little surprised at how quickly that happened, but not nearly as surprised as I was when he called me back just five minutes later with a general manager-approved offer of $70,000. He joked that he liked to keep things interesting, to which I responded that I also had an interview scheduled at ANO. He understood that I wanted to hear out all of the offers, if there is another one, and just asked that I let him know how my conversations go with both of my other interested parties.

I spent the rest of the day troubleshooting, and pinning down the last few devices that had gotten lost in the shuffle, and then sent an email to SHI with a list of serial numbers with specific failure notes. It got really quiet really fast, which made it easier to get back home in time for Summer’s therapy appointment. I thought we would start her EMDR therapy, but instead she said that Summer wanted her to explain the therapy to me so I would know what to expect. That felt pretty silly to me, since I had already done my research the moment Summer mentioned it to me weeks ago, but we continued with the feel-good talk for the remainder of the hour. I left feeling like we could have just watched some YouTube videos instead.

Eaddie needed a ride to dinner with friends and her flute tutor, so I rushed Summer home to take her while I went to my parents’ house for dinner. Mom made fish soup out of some old fish that didn’t taste very good. Dad and I talked for a while, and eventually I made it back home to get the Murano so I could take Eaddie for a drive.

I had her take me to Casey’s for a free drink I won, and then we went further south to find Noah at work. We parked outside and I gave him the hairy eyeball for a while, and then we parked around the side of the building and went inside to sit at a table until he had some time to chat. He had a relatively steady flow of customers, so we didn’t stay long. I had Eaddie drive up Skyline and around the marina before we turned back toward my parents’ house, and then down the road to look at a Mazda 6 we saw for sale the other day. It was quite a bit more expensive than we expected, and it had gotten so dark that Eaddie was having trouble seeing to drive, so we headed back to their house for the night.

I hung out in bed with Summer while she watched TV for a bit, and then got up and found every distraction. I was up until two in the morning, feeling stupid and exhausted for not shutting down earlier. Oh well.

Inconvenient Opportunity

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Time is Money

Summer took the Model 3 to Little Rock this morning since the Model Y wasn’t charged quite enough to get her around to everywhere she might want to go, so I took the Y to work. I made the mistake of stopping by McDonald’s for a coffee on the way in, and I went from being about five minutes early to about 20 minutes late. The drive-through there is always pretty slow, but today was the worst I had seen it.

Shortly after I got there, I received a call from Gary at Green Bay Packaging with a job offer. I wouldn’t know the details until I received the official offer letter from HR later in the afternoon. Kim came in late again today, which had me wondering how she was keeping track of her comp time if she plans to take off extra time during the year. Shortly after she got there, I got another call from Entergy to schedule an interview. Every bit of this has happened at the least opportune time, but this year has been nothing but chaos from the start.

We spent a lot of time tracking down Chromebooks to have repaired under warranty, and I spent a while troubleshooting some of them in the afternoon. Kim left pretty early, and since I didn’t own the entire process, I couldn’t actually lay hands on every single device I wanted to ship off for repairs, so I’ll have to dig into that again tomorrow.

I headed home a bit late and charged the Y for a bit before heading to Summer’s. I had some promo drinks from Chick-fil-A and Sonic, so I stopped for those on the way. Summer shredded some chicken to help finish up some of the taco stuff from the other day, so we ate that, and then I made a root beer float with one of my drinks.

Summer and I chatted for a little bit about the opportunities I have, and then she went to bed with a headache and some sinus issues. Eaddie ended up coming out of her room to hang out with me for a couple hours, and we talked and went through a bunch of old photos together. I’ll have to come up with some answers pretty quickly, all while trying to be respectful of everyone else who will be affected by my decisions. I suppose these are finally some good problems to have, but it would help to know what I really want out of the deal.

Wake up, you need to make money!