Tag: family

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Range Anxiety

I got up and pan fried some leftover rice and stir fry for breakfast this morning. I figured it was early enough to eat a bit and still be hungry for lunch in Little Rock. I charged up to 90%, which should have given us well over 250 miles of range, and went home to shower before coming back to pick up the girls.

Eaddie didn’t want to go, citing too much homework and studying to do. I offered to push it back, or to take her with Gavin at a later date since I’d have all Thanksgiving break off with her. I picked up Summer and Autumn, and we headed toward Conway to stop for a car wash. The touchless was unexpectedly down though, so Summer went to chat for a bit and then we continued to Little Rock.

As we approached our exits, Tres was showing an arrival with just barely over 50% battery remaining. I had expected to arrive home with quite a bit left, so seeing that we had used nearly half of our energy made me nervous. I decided to take us to Cotham’s, where Autumn wanted to eat, so we could stop at Frankin’s Charging Hub on the way to the movies. The restaurant was closed though, so we ended up just stopping to charge for a few minutes instead. The facilities were really nice, and it looked like a swell place to stop and enjoy a coffee, if you could buy one somewhere. Unfortunately there wasn’t really anything around, so we just waited. Summer texted a handwritten number in the window so she could get an unlock code to use the restroom, and she said it was nice and clean inside. Charging with a level 2 Tesla wall connector was a bit slow, but I couldn’t complain about free charging. The faster ones would have cost, but there were already a couple vehicles there charging.

We ultimately decided to eat at the McDonald’s near the theater so we would still be hungry enough for popcorn and then dinner later. We made it to our movie plenty early, and enjoyed back-to-back trailers for a movie about Whitney Houston. As the movie started, a group of kids behind us continued to talk loudly enough that I had to stand up and ask them to stop. They should have known better, but fortunately they at least knew better than to talk back, and they piped down immediately. Unfortunately, the act of standing up popped the lid off of my soda, and I spilled a bit, but it all soaked in well enough that I didn’t feel all sticky.

The movie was amazing, and really showcased how absolutely terrible DC movies are in comparison. They introduced an entirely new race of people in an entirely new world hidden right in our own, all while making it believable enough within the context of the story. The CG was intentional, and obeyed expected inertial characteristics, and the dialog was fluid and sincere. I just wish DC could get their act together.

After the movie, we decided to drive straight home so we could get Eaddie her promised Popeye’s chicken sandwich. I was a bit worried about range, but keeping with the speed limit made my range estimates more accurate. We actually arrived home with about 4% more battery than I expected. It’ll take days to recharge back to 80% from 19%, but I think it was absolutely worth it.

Summer drove us home in the Montego, and we stopped to get the three of them some Popeye’s. Eaddie felt much better after having some time to herself to study, and I made her a bowl of Yonanas that she gobbled up. After that, it was a quick evening to bed for everyone else. For some reason, I started getting upset about the felt letterboard at work again, so that had me dwelling angrily for a bit before I made it to sleep.

Contain the rage.

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Veterinarians Day

I slept longer than usual last night, but still struggled to make it to work on time. We didn’t have much to cover in our meeting, as everyone else was run off relatively quickly, but I stuck around to chat with the newbies for a bit. After that, I just tried to stay productive until lunch time. Roy’s was there to work on our air conditioner up front, so Tammy came back to my office for a bit and I started to tell her the story of Sam the clam. Unfortunately I didn’t get to finish, because Kelsea walked up right as I was wrapping up and I didn’t want to spoil the ending.

Gary, Greg, Josh, and I were the only ones to go out today, and somebody decided on Fat Daddy’s. I actually had a really good burger there, but I still couldn’t imagine what takes them so long to make it. It’s a half hour burger for sure.

The afternoon was really quiet, and got pretty cold with the door hanging wide open all day. I went to Dwight for a bit, and then tinkered all afternoon. I never did get a chance to finish my story, so I guess I’ll have to start over later. I walked out a few minutes early so I could catch Summer at the Veterans Day parade.

I had to park on the side of the street on the south side and then walk across to find Summer. Then she ran across the street at the start of the parade so she could record Autumn with the American flag. I think she would have actually had a better view from where I was sitting, and I got aggravated thinking she was going to spend the rest of the parade over there, but fortunately she came back.

We left in a hurry since I had to run across the street before the traffic started up. I sped home, quite pleased with the zippy, instant torque of my new car. It really made navigating stupid traffic feel much better. I took a moment to relax a bit, and eventually made my way up to the girls for the evening.

Summer kept talking about going out to get food, which further aggravated me on account of how much food was in the refrigerator. Of course they all picked at the tasty stuff, and nobody touched the mixing bowl full of salad that was slowly wilting. In fact, a couple of them didn’t even finish the plates they had made themselves, so I finished those up and then had a salad myself. Autumn never once made an appearance, and Eaddie didn’t stick around for very long. Summer and I looked at some houses for a bit, and then she went to bed really early.

I spent the rest of the evening mostly bored out of my mind. I tinkered on YouTube a bit, and finally got ready for bed so we could go to the robotics tournament in the morning.

How do you say “I don’t understand” in Spanish? “No Nintendo?” I simply do not.

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AKS69Z

I wanted to take a bike to work today because the weather was supposed to be really mild all day, but I didn’t really have room to get one out without moving the car first. Gary came back pretty early and asked me to finish up the EAST domain controller migration, so that’s on my plate again. I talked to him about Azure AD and using Autopilot to prep new computers, so he was stuck on that for most of the day.

Kelsea and I went upstairs when the girl from JTS showed up, and I opted out of any extra insurance again for this year. I figured 2024 or 2025 might be a good year for another vision exam, and without any major dental issues, I would have lost money on that plan. Kyle asked me to return Shavon’s laptop to her once I finished re-imaging it for him, since he was supposed to help out at the middle school today. I didn’t object, since it meant I would get to drive around a bit.

That got me to lunch time, but Gary wasn’t joining us. It ended up just being Thomas and me, and we sort of left awkwardly while Tammy upset herself thinking about the evils of marijuana. I don’t know what triggered her, but she was adamant that it was bad for us and that society was crumbling around her. Thomas agreed to Whatta-Burger for something different, and it was such an incredible disappointment. The wait was bad enough, but then the fries were absolute garbage and the meat patties were about an inch and a half smaller in diameter than the buns. They tasted okay, but I wouldn’t have minded to pay a little more for something that at least resembled what they used to sell.

The afternoon was pretty quiet, but I wasn’t super motivated. I tinkered a bit and then took another trip to the DMV to register my car. Evidently right before school lets out on a Wednesday is the perfect time to go, because I walked in and right up to the counter, and two other people showed up the entire time I was there. All the ladies behind the counter were friendly and chatty, so I can officially say the DMV was a better, friendlier experience than shopping at Target last weekend. Once I paid my sales tax and got my license, I went to Dwight to install an additional charger in a Chromebook cart. Then it was back to the office for the remainder of the day.

I got a little caught up in traffic and took the long way back to the shop. I figured tomorrow would be a fine time to start a big project, so I didn’t dig into anything too tough before quitting time. When I left work, I went to my parents’ house to return the critter traps I had set in the basement, since we never caught anything. Dad had fixed a couple rice cookers for me, and then Mom got home from work and offered bún bò Huế. I decided to stick around for dinner and chatted with them for a while before going home.

As soon as I got home, I installed my new license plate and then headed up to Summer’s for the evening. She and Eaddie were up talking, but then Eaddie scolded me for showing up and making Summer start talking about boring work stuff. Everyone went off to bed, and I tried not to get sucked down any rabbit holes online.

Poor kid had no idea.

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Fro, Yo.

Tammy came into my office first thing this morning and said she had something for me. She had mentioned some Vietnamese artwork before, and finally brought it for me. She thought it could be worth several hundred dollars, but I was pretty certain that it wasn’t based on other artwork I’ve seen throughout my life and visiting Oriental markets.

The boss was still out sick, so it was quiet downstairs again. I had some leftovers for breakfast, but otherwise kept relatively busy somehow. I wasn’t really hungry by the time lunch came around, but I went to Quiznos with Gary and Zach just to get out of the office for a bit. I went light with a cup of soup, but then nearly doubled the price with a bread bowl and drink. I can’t resist their lemonade though.

I spent a good part of the afternoon upstairs with the virtual academy folks, because they had a stack of several computers up there that they wanted serviced. Most of them didn’t exhibit any troubles for me, but I logged in and charged them up just to be sure. A couple were damaged enough to be discarded, but one of those was pretty well demolished. I even had a teacher device with a cracked screen, so nobody was safe.

In one of my trips back upstairs, I ran across Danielle, who wanted to look at my car. I thought she was going to stick around while I dropped off some junk, but she went up to her office instead and said she would come by tomorrow. By the time I finished running around, it was time to leave.

Autumn ran around after school and went to karate, so I had to get Eaddie from band. She wanted to go by her grandparents’ house, but evidently they forgot and weren’t home either. Instead, we went to get a pumpkin cake from my dad, then swapped cars and headed home where Summer was busy cooking dinner after going home early from not feeling well.

We arrived to a super smoky house, but most of that was just from a dirty oven. Summer had made chicken cordon bleu with mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts, and it was awesome. The three of us scarfed that down pretty quickly, and then I broke out the new Yonanas machine we bought on clearance. I didn’t realize the bananas needed to be on the ripe side, but it still came out super good with some mixed fruit. I’d always heard that frozen bananas tasted a lot like soft serve, but in reality the similarity was uncanny.

Autumn came home, and all three girls were off to bed pretty early. I stayed up doing my usual things and found a deal on an LG refrigerator with the craft ice from Costco, so I messaged Julie to see if she could order it for me. That turned into a bit of an ordeal because you can’t pick it up from Costco, but they also won’t deliver it farther than 50 miles from a store, nor would they deliver it to the Splash in Conway. I ended up getting Ben to be my fridge mule, and we’ll just have to pick it up from his house after Thanksgiving. All of that, of course, was on a whim since I’ve been without a refrigerator for several months now.

A sad chicken, named James.

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First Bath

Summer and I got up this morning and went to Hardee’s for breakfast. She planned to go home afterward, so we drove separately but then took mine back home when we realized I forgot our coupons. Their biscuits were awesome again, and I was glad the recipe hadn’t changed like I thought from a prior visit. They must have just had an off day.

When we finished, I went home to get some quarters and then went to the car wash to get some of the dust and grime off of the 3. I’ve driven it so much in the rain that it’s actually stayed relatively clean, but there was a bit of grime on the back end that I wanted to clean off, not to mention fingerprints showing up on the door handles.

I decided to drive around town a bit to dry off, and went toward my parents’ house. I called Brody to see if he was home, but they were only just leaving church. I chatted with him for a moment before going in to talk to Mom until Dad got home from church. She was being critical of the car again, so I did some quick math to calculate how much I’ve had to spend on fuel. I actually figured it would be more, but it costs me about 0.8 cents per mile for electricity when charging at home, versus a lifetime average of 13.8 cents per mile for gas for the Murano. I know mine is beyond overkill, but having a small, electric commuter just seems like a complete no-brainer.

I finally headed back home to shower before picking up Summer to go to Walmart. We picked up a Yonanas machine on clearance, just out of curiosity, and then went across the store for dinner. Eaddie wanted stir fry, so we got a ton of vegetables and headed home to cook.

Summer and I prepped veggies as quickly as we could, and then I stir fried everything together. It barely fit in the wok, and I overcooked things a bit again, but it still turned out really good. We had things split into “long” and “short” cook bowls, but I really need to split it up better in the future to keep things from getting mushy.

The early evening dragged on a bit just because I wasn’t used to the time change yet. When Summer was ready for bed, I found Weird: The Al Yankovic Story on the Roku channel and we watched the first half of it. I couldn’t quite tell if she was serious when she made comments about it being a true story, but I enjoyed the show. It was longer than I expected, so I look forward to finishing it soon.

Oh Tres, you’ve got chips all over your face. :(

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Submatoes

I made it to work a few minutes early today, and briefly got to meet our newest team member, Jeff. He and Jacob hung out there for a bit in the morning as Jacob did a little bit of introductory training. It was neat to see someone trying to provide a little bit of structure to the team. I ended up going to Dwight for a little bit before lunch, and everyone seemed very excited to see me.

Thomas took the usual four of us to Taco Tuesday, where they were still out of lettuce due to “supply chain issues.” Shredding is hard, I suppose. I guess the lettuce also brings the temperature of the tacos way down too, because for the first time ever, I got scalding hot tacos. After lunch, Gary helped me run a single network line at Support Services. That took a solid couple of hours, and we ran into some trouble with his end of the termination. It was nice to get that out of my queue though.

The rest of the afternoon was relatively quiet after working up that sweat. Summer called after school let out to tell me that Eaddie had lost her phone. We saw it leave the high school, but then it was powered off just at the intersection of 19th Street. I went to the high school when I left work, to get her from robotics. I talked to Ethan for a bit while I was there, and he talked me into volunteering for a tournament next weekend. Then we went outside to chat about my car. He said they had been going through new cars every few months just because they were selling them for more than they were paying to order new ones.

From there, we went to my house so I could change, and then I took Eaddie home to practice her flute. I had a little bit of chicken and dumplings, but there wasn’t really enough to go around. Summer came home after her workout, and she, Eaddie, and I went to La Huerta. I thought I’d eat super light, but left super stuffed somehow. I even traded Eaddie for a much smaller taco.

Eaddie kept playing her flute when we got home. Autumn went to karate, but was home by the time we got back. Everyone was pretty tired, so it was quickly off to bed.

This is the opposite of good customer service.

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Not Playing

I got up this morning and dug out all the leftovers I could find to make breakfast. I started by caramelizing some onions and serrano peppers, and defrosting some ham. Once I got all of that diced up and into the pan, I added all the eggs we had, along with some tomatoes and cheese. Once that was scrambled up together, I loaded up some whole wheat pita bread that we had in the freezer. I thought it turned out really well, and the girls seemed to like it.

The girls wanted to go to the high school play again in the afternoon, so I went home to clean up. I ended up springing a leak and couldn’t stop the bleeding for several hours, so I just stayed home and did a couple loads of laundry. Once I had things under control, I headed back up to Summer’s for dinner.

She made chicken and dumplings for me, but forgot the green onions, so I turned around and ran through Walmart first. They were actually out of green onions, so I picked up some chives and cilantro instead. Those, along with some more fresh onion and serrano peppers made for a really good dinner, though I’m not sure anyone else enjoyed it as much as I did.

I laid on the couch with Summer for a bit while she wound down. Autumn took Eaddie to her friend’s house for the night, and then came back wanting to play Monopoly. Summer just wanted to relax though, so it ended up being a really quiet, early night.

Frustered

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Re-Pumpkined

The girls went to Tech for the band’s Member for a Day event. It ended up raining when they were supposed to go out onto the field, so Eaddie ended up wishing she had gone to orchestra tryouts instead. I took Tres out in the rain and picked up Summer after her workout, and we went to Taco John’s for lunch. Eaddie didn’t want to go to the game in the rain, so we picked her up and let Autumn stay on her own. Summer really wanted to go to TJ Maxx for a yoga mat , and then Eaddie wanted to go to Hobby Lobby for a new paint-by-number.

Once I dropped the girls back off at the Murano, I went home and traded for the Montego before going up to their house. Once Autumn got home, Summer had to talk to her about her failing English grade. The kid is just lazy and unfocused, and needs to be micromanaged. I was a lot like that growing up, so I get it.

I ordered a pizza, and once Summer got out of the shower, we went to my parents’ house to carve the last couple of pumpkins. Autumn did hers in a rush and then hopped right back onto her computer, allegedly to do homework. Judging by how much she was smiling, I would say she probably had other things going on. Dad and I finished ours with the new tool kit I got from Amazon, and it made things a lot easier. Julie stopped by for a bit after Mom bragged about my car to her on the phone, but we didn’t drive it there.

I was the last one to finish, and once I did, we headed back to the house for the evening. I pretty much hit a brick wall once we got there, and I laid in bed for a bit. Then I got back up to finish my evening chores before going to bed.

Needs mud flaps.

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I Trust You Completely

Mom and Dad both snored for most of the night, and I’m convinced they would both sleep better if they would just commit to their CPAPs. I tossed and turned a bit myself, and had trouble staying asleep after going to bed so early. I finally got out of bed around 6:30 and had to re-apply for my loan because it had been too long since I actually ordered the car. The application went through fine though, and then to my surprise, it looked as though I could have paid directly from my savings account. My Arvest account actually had both transfers, so I actually had twice what I needed. I’ll have to get cash to pay Summer back now.

I took a shower, and then everyone got up and around for breakfast. The biscuits were surprisingly good, and I didn’t eat so much that I felt sick the rest of the day. Summer took a shower when she got back to the room, and then we loaded everything back up for checkout. Our first stop was an Oriental market, but Mom wasn’t super impressed. For some reason she expected it to be all Vietnamese products.

When we finished there, we headed to the Tesla dealership early. It rained the entire day without letting up, so we just did our best to work around it. Nobody seemed particularly interested in talking to us, so as soon as the app would let me, I accepted the delivery. Summer and I drove around the parking lot before I came back in to talk to someone. The guys in the service bay didn’t seem to be doing anything, but the guy I asked about panel gaps said they were booked solid and that I would have to schedule a service appointment in the app. He suggested it could all be done with mobile service, but that wasn’t an option in the app, and he disappeared before I could go back and ask him. I was actually able to fix the gap I was most concerned about, so I just signed one piece of paper, and we were off.

Mom got a little fussy and didn’t want to do anything else, so I told them to go on home if they didn’t want to do anything else. We drove down to a gas station on the corner to move things over to my car, and then they left for home. Summer was a bit hungry and picked a Chinese buffet in Nevada where we could charge after, and we were off.

The buffet was pretty small compared to what we have at home, but the food was really good. Ironically, the place was called Chinese Chef, but the old lady at the counter was Vietnamese. We talked a little bit while I waited for Summer to finish cleaning up, and then we went a little ways down the road for my first Supercharger experience at a Casey’s. The process was super simple, and I poked at options in the car while we waited.

The drive wasn’t too bad, but it took me a while to get used to any of the autopilot features. It really took me about half the entire trip to be really comfortable with how it operated, and by then it felt really natural. We stopped in both Lowell and Ozark because the rain was absolutely killing my efficiency. The first charge was actually the slowest because we stopped so early with a battery that was already mostly full. The second two charges went much faster, though I did have to switch stalls in Lowell when the first one errored out. The stop in Ozark was really just so that we would make it back home with plenty left in the pack.

We stopped at my parents’ house to get Summer’s car, then went to my house to unpack. I got my mobile charger hooked up directly to the wall because I couldn’t get the UPS to stop fussing. Then we went up to her place for the evening. Eaddie was the only one that came out to greet us, so we talked to her for just a moment before bed.

Driving by myself is super stressful when the car gets to take over for all the easy parts!

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Blown Away

I remember Eaddie bursting loudly into the bedroom last night to try and find the TV remote and batteries. I was pretty startled, but made it back to sleep. I didn’t stress getting out the door, but made it home to shower and pack. While in the bathroom, I noticed some little bug had burrowed into my windowsill and left a little mound similar to a crawdad. I sprayed some bug spray on the hole, but wasn’t sure it would do anything.

I picked Summer up around 8:30 and made our way to my parents’ house. They were ready to go and already had the car out of the garage, so we parked Summer’s Montego inside for what was probably its first overnight stay ever.

The drive went by really quickly for me because I wasn’t having to drive. I played Into the Breach for a good portion of the trip. Summer dozed in and out periodically. We stopped at a McDonald’s for lunch around Fayetteville, and then continued straight through to Kansas City. I decided at the last minute that we should stop by the dealership to try and find my car while it was dry out, so we made another pit stop at another McDonald’s on the corner before making our way to the service center.

They had my car right up front in the corner of the lot, so I was able to verify the VIN really quickly. I was a little surprised it was so easy to find. Everyone got out into the gusty wind for pictures and to inspect every inch of the car, and I was surprised at how good everything seemed to look on the outside. I won’t get to check out the inside until they open tomorrow, but the panels all seemed to be aligned really well on the outside. There were a couple extremely minor adjustments that I wanted to have them investigate, but otherwise it looked ready to go.

After that, we continued on to the Holiday Inn Express to unpack everything. Everyone got cleaned up, and we made our way across town to walk through IKEA. Mom kept wandering off in circles through the showroom, and it was neat to see all of the different designs they had. She was mostly concerned about finding a dining room table, and found a neat adjustable one that had a stowable leaf insert.

We had dinner at the restaurant, and Mom wasn’t super impressed by the Swedish meatballs. I thought they were good, but I get that it’s more of a tradition than something I look forward to for the flavor. Getting lost, finding the lighted path, and eating cafeteria food is all just kind of the experience.

By the time we made it out of that enormous cube of a maze, everyone else was too tired to do anything else. We made it back to the hotel and everyone went to bed. I stayed up for a bit and plotted a course home. I guess if everyone gets to sleep early, we’ll have a better chance of leaving early to do something else in the city before we leave.

Hello. You are Tres.