Tag: family

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Let’s Table That

We woke up reasonably early today, but it took us a little bit to get started. Summer went to the gym while I messed with things around the house. After she got back, we met Julie and Kevin at my old house to get the dining room table and futon. For some reason I thought he had a short truck bed, but everything fit perfectly and we got it all set up at home.

Eaddie made it home, but then left to spend the day with friends. Summer and I went to Ridgewood Brothers to try their baked potato, and Grant made us some extra special ones. He seemed a little off, so I invited him to the house after work. At first he said he couldn’t, but on the way out he asked if I was off tomorrow, so hopefully he comes around.

After that, we went to Lowe’s to exchange the toilet seat we got yesterday. We compared it with another new one in the box, and it was painfully obvious that the one we got yesterday was a return. From there, we picked up a couple things I forgot from the old house, and then made it home where I spent the rest of the evening casually cleaning, organizing, fixing, and generally trying to stay productive. Summer didn’t feel well, so she did a puzzle and watched TV all evening until bed. My big accomplishment was doing a deep clean on the washing machine, because it was smelling pretty bad. I don’t think the girls had ever cleaned it, so it was very mildewy.

I’m going to make this place into a home, one light bulb at a time.

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Have a Seat

I slept in a bit today before having a shower and seeing Eaddie out the door to go to her father’s for the night. I eventually made it to the old house to clean off the dining table and pack up some things to take to the new house. Summer went to the gym and then met me there, and we loaded up the chairs in her car.

We got everything unloaded at the new house, but then had to get back out for some cleaner for the chairs. We went to Lowe’s first to get a replacement toilet seat for Eaddie’s bathroom. Then I decided to stop in to Tractor Supply to see if they had any interesting tool chests, but they didn’t. We went to Harbor Freight to drool over their tool chests, and got a free magnetic tool tray on the way out. Then Summer wanted to stop by the wash to print off some music for Eaddie.

We kept hearing something rolling around in the floor of the car, so I poked around and figured it was probably in the HVAC ductwork in the floor. We stopped by my house for the cleaner, and then went to my parents’ house for some shrimp noodle soup. After we ate, I convinced Summer to lay in the floorboard and try to get the offending pebble out while I took sharp turns. We finally got it out with pure acceleration, and it ended up being a lone Skittle. I was just glad it didn’t melt to the car.

We cleaned up the chairs and then wrapped up the night with some stand-up on Netflix. We found Matt Rife to be too vulgar and not at all entertaining, so we switched to Pete Holmes and had some good laughs. I kept getting drawn into my phone, so I ended up staying awake way too long, but finally made it to bed a little after one.

Blanket time!

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Pump up the Jamf

Today was pretty mild. I made it to work and jumped right into Jamf to finish nit-picking the settings and get my iPads deployed for the special education folks. Kim left me for a while, so it was quiet until it got loud for lunch. I was pretty sleepy, but not bad for being up cleaning carpets for as late as I was.

Once I made it back to town, I fed the fish and headed home. Summer was in the bath, so I made a burrito to try and clean up the crap she’d accumulated in the refrigerator for the past few weeks. Eaddie got home just as I finished up, and ate some other leftovers. Then we went out on the porch to talk while the neighbor’s dog barked loudly at us.

Summer came out to join us for a bit, and then Eaddie left for a Tech band concert. Summer went to bed, and I wrapped up early.

Tomorrow, we sit.

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Productive Sunday

We all got up early this morning and Summer made chicken and waffles. Then once everyone was out of the shower, we took two trips with two cars to my old house to pick up some speakers. That will give us more room to clean off the dining room table and get it over to the new house as well. There’s only a handful of stuff I really want to get to the new house before Thanksgiving.

By then, furniture stores were open again, so we went to Funky Town Mall, Sofa City, and Hank’s. As we left there, we passed a car that had pulled over into a parking lot and caught on fire. We went to Good Deal Charlie’s while that billowed black smoke in the distance. Nothing really caught our attention at any of the places we went, so we took a quick restroom break and got a car wash, then went to Lowe’s where I remembered my previous idea of using a tool chest as a coffee bar. We saw a few we liked, but I remembered some even taller ones at Harbor Freight that might have a large, closable hutch on top.

We left Lowe’s and got some food at Sam’s. They were completely dead, but the food was still great. Then we stopped by Harbor Freight just to get our hands on some of their tool chests, and then I figured I could build something online. We got some gas for Eaddie and finally made it home, where I tried to maintain a little bit of the day’s momentum.

Summer got some laundry done, and then I did a load myself while Eaddie had Eli over to do some bead crafts and watch TV. I was up later than I intended, but it was a solid day for this crew.

But is it repeatable?

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The More Geese, the Better

I woke up hungry and had a pretty bad headache this morning. Summer had made burritos while I was gone, so I made one for breakfast before taking a shower to get out for the day. By the time we got out of the house, the girls wanted to eat. Eaddie was being pretty rude, which made me mad on top of other general aggravations, so when we got to Stoby’s where they wanted to eat, I just left them and went to my house to get my computer chair.

By the time I got it loaded up, poked around the house a bit, and got about halfway to the new house, they said they were done eating. I went to pick them up and we went to the house to drop off my computer chair. Then my parents came over to go furniture shopping with us. I had made a floor plan for the living room on an app I found for my phone, so we could visualize the space a bit better this time.

We went to Strouds first, and the guy there was the opposite of a pressuring salesman. Then we went to Cleo’s where we looked at the same sectionals we had liked from before. We should have shopped again earlier, because the ones we wanted weren’t in stock. We ended up ordering one online that was much more expensive, and we had no way to test it out beyond one picture on their website. Hopefully we like it.

From there, we went to the junk store to see what they had. My parents left from there while Eaddie waited in the car for Summer and me to finish looking around. We didn’t find anything of any interest, so we went back home for a while. I had another burrito, and then they girls decided they wanted to go back out to do some more shopping.

We went to Walmart for a few things we needed, and then stopped by my old house to get some things from the pantry. Finally we made it home for the night, and Summer went to bed. Eaddie went out with some friends, and I sorted the spice cabinet.

I guess it’s not nothing.

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I Woke up on a Farm

I slept fairly well last night. The little space heater kept us plenty warm in the tiny guest house. I woke up a few times from a fairly light sleep overall, but I was comfortable. Summer said she didn’t sleep well for some reason. We slept longer than I originally thought, because it was the end of Daylight Saving Time. I got Summer around, and we packed up and headed back to the house to see the others. The kids were getting ready to go off to church with their grandparents, and Josh looked a little more ready to face the day than Alice. Summer decided we should skip breakfast with them and head on home in time for Eaddie’s concert with the Tech band.

The drive home wasn’t bad since I took the back roads to Plumerville. Eaddie’s phone was dead so we couldn’t reach her on the drive, but she was up when we got there. We unloaded and then went to the new Old South for breakfast. They were closed, so Summer decided she wanted IHOP. The parking lot was packed from the church crowd, and I expected poor service anyway, but we were actually seated in a really short amount of time. The food was probably the best I’d ever had from an IHOP, and the service wasn’t bad either. It made the $50 bill a lot more bearable.

After we ate, we went back to the house to wait for Eaddie’s concert. She left early for that while Summer and I cleaned up at home. When it was time for the concert, my parents met us at Witherspoon. It was a pretty quick concert again, and then we tried going to Peter’s to look at some furniture for their 80th anniversary, but they were closed.

My parents went on home to prepare some spring rolls for dinner while Summer and I went to my house to get a few things. Then we picked up Eaddie at the house and went to my parents’. Dinner was good, but we didn’t stick around long since I had to do some laundry for my week-long conference.

Summer went to bed at a fairly usual time while I did my laundry. Eaddie went to bed pretty early, and I somehow managed to get to bed before midnight.

That’s quite enough “Halcyon Hearts” for me.

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Al imPastor

I held on to a headache for most of the day. I wanted to move some more stuff from the old house, but I guess we got rained out, or at least de-prioritized again. Maybe I’m just not being vocal, specific, or immediate enough when I say that I want to move things, but I really thought I made this weekend’s goals clear. The girls left at some point to get some stuff so Eaddie could make Oreo balls, and Summer said she was making al pastor for dinner. I didn’t unpack what she bought, otherwise I would have noticed the slab of beef.

We ended up getting two things done today. Dad came over to carve pumpkins, and brought his drain snake along to try and clean out the drain for the driveway. He tried to run an old washcloth through after he got the snake all the way down the pipe, but it wouldn’t make the turn. I’ll just have to get a hose out later to clean it out, assuming I can access the spigot at ground level on the front of the house. It’s possible that it doesn’t work, like the second on on the back of the house.

Once we finished with that, we came inside and carved pumpkins. I couldn’t think of anything more scary than “8.5% for 30 years” worth of home loans, so that was my pumpkin. I carved until my fingers bled, and then ended up cutting out the letters anyway because they weren’t visible enough.

Summer got dinner going while I went to the Neighborhood Market for the things they forgot. I found some bags of rice that apparently just had to be microwaved. They smelled good when we cooked them, but the rice was rubbery. Summer’s beef “al pastor” was tough and mostly cold and dry. I had been excited all day, so dinner was a big letdown. I don’t think she could even tell me what cut of beef she bought. I’m pretty sure she exclusively shops by complete impulse after a weekend of fighting various things around the house.

My headache compounded with at least a dozen other aggravations from the day got the best of me, so I went to find some quiet in the bedroom, and then called it an early night.

I should really have checked the murder basement.

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Electrifying

I had a really good Sausage McMuffin on the way to work this morning, and I was glad I did because lunch was a pretty small portion of a “walking taco” with a strange bag of low fat Doritos and a tiny scoop of meat and cheese on a big, plastic lunch tray. I didn’t really complete any big projects, but I jumped around a lot to figure out some new things that have been sitting in my queue for a while.

Dad spent most of the day at the house while the electrician was there running cable for the Wall Connector and then replacing the whole electrical panel. They finished up near the end of the school day, so when I left work, I went to the old house briefly to feed the fish before going home.

Summer beat me there and was cooking dinner. The floors were left a mess with drywall dust everywhere, but I had one mission on my mind, and that was to set up the Wall Connector. I got it mounted to the wall and started charging my car, and then we all ate a good dinner.

Afterward, Summer cleaned the floors, Eaddie vacuumed, and I cleaned up other stuff before getting Summer’s car turned around to charge. At the end of it all, it was a successful day.

Definitely haunted.

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Zero Productivity

I was early to work today, but that was about as good as it got. I pretty quickly got sucked into doing other peoples’ jobs. The one task I set out to do for myself ended up breaking a switch again, so I had to factory reset it. Fortunately that didn’t take down the entire network like what happened on Monday.

People keep calling or stopping in, which is throwing off my flow too. At least Denice wasn’t there for most of the day, but being cramped in half as much space has also made things more frustrating. I’ve just been having a bad time overall.

I tried watching the Pixel launch event, but struggled with that too. I ended up ordering a new phone and watch since my S21 Ultra has been on the struggle bus for a while now with its battery. I guess two and a half years is about the best I can hope for these days.

I thought I might sneak out a little early, but somehow still ended up a little late instead. The stupid kids hit my car with a basketball again, and it infuriates me that the teacher just sits there rocking in his chair the whole time. There’s still no damage, but I don’t want any more scuffs or dents. They just don’t respect peoples things.

Summer made dinner, so I ran home to change, stopped at my parents’ house for some moving boxes and eggs, and then made it to the new house for dinner. Afterward, I tried showing Summer how to load the dishwasher better, took care of my plants outside, cleaned up in the bathroom, and tried removing some more screws from the stupid extra cabinets in the laundry room. I still have one super stubborn screw to get out of one side, and then possibly more on the other side before we can take that thing out. Once we do, we should have plenty more room for the spare refrigerator.

Down the review rabbit hole.

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Could Should

I went home for my shower this morning and let my car charge for a bit. I was early for work, but then ran into directed traffic at the Scenic 7 junction, so I just showed up on time. I wasn’t too worried about the aftermath of yesterday’s snafu, but we did have a couple wireless shots that went down. Luckily a power cycle fixed those issues, but in reality, at least one of those should be a fiber run anyway. I don’t really know what else I even got into. I rearranged my desk a little bit more because it was super cramped where I was sitting. The front of that office simply isn’t big enough, and I’m mad about it. I’m trying to give them a fair shake, and Denice has been nice enough for what it’s worth.

Lunch was mid with a side of chips, but at least it was filling. I went home a little bit late just because I was busy catching up on a bunch of crap. It’s so hard to juggle everything I have to do, and by the time we’ll be slow enough for me to actually accomplish things, I don’t think I’ll care enough.

I spent a little time at home before meeting Julie and Kevin at my parents’ house to cover the pool. I hated to see it go, but this is just the way of our summers. Underutilized and undervalued. Afterward, we all sat down to eat some leftovers, and then I left to wash my car and then meet Eaddie at my house to try and dispose of an old mattress that wasn’t picked up for bulk pickup week. Unfortunately it wouldn’t fit into the Murano, so we left it in the garage as not to get wet in the eventual rain.

I finally made it to the new house late, and Summer was in a quiet mood. I tinkered for just a short bit, and then it was off to bed.

Cold Shold