Tag: family

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Classified Woe Is Me Committee

It was a little rainy this morning, but it cleared up and got a little hot by the afternoon. All I could do was try and wrap up a couple projects in my office this morning before my performance review, upon which nothing is based. When lunch time came around, a group of us went to Zaxby’s since the dining room was open. Then I got kicked out of my office for the rest of the day while other reviews happened.

Kyle asked me to take care of something at Sequoyah while he had his turn with Ben, so I ran across town and updated iOS on an iPad while James, The Too Busy For eSchool, Yet Overpaid for a Teacher’s Aid, was running around unable to help. I got back to the shop just in time for our CPPC meeting, so I walked across the street and listened to an old man drone on about simplifying some policies, which I actually agreed with for the most part.

By the end of the meeting, we were all pretty tired of hearing him talk, but we had a mission to condense job titles or roles, and add job descriptions to every role that we have. I’ll be taking that and running with it to try and completely restructure our department, which very possibly might not work, but at least I’ll have tried.

When I finally left work, I had to run by Walgreens to drop off a FedEx package for Josh and pick up some medication that the nurse assured me would stop being filled by the pharmacy since I’ve been off the medication for months. Then I went home for a while before going to Summer’s for dinner.

I wasn’t hungry, but Summer grilled steaks and made some asparagus that sounded really good, and I hadn’t gotten to see any of them today anyway. We ate and chatted for a little bit, and then I headed home to miss the rain and thunderstorms.

Double or nothing.

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Ballooned

The girls left for a 5k this morning and let me sleep in. Summer didn’t realize it, but Ben texted me and said she won second in her division. When she got back to the event, she realized Eaddie had also gotten first in her division. I didn’t sleep for too long, and tried to get around to doing something.

Doge was doing pretty well, so it was hard not to get sucked into watching it. I did get showered and moved a few things around, but I never did get the TVs moved and re-hung the way I wanted to. The girls came back over in the late afternoon and were hungry, so we went to CiCi’s for dinner. Afterward they were too tired to go to the hot air balloon event, so we dropped them off at my house.

Dad wanted to go with us, so we picked him up and went to the soccer complex on the other side of the mountain. There wasn’t nearly enough parking to have the event out there, but for whatever reason they didn’t hold the event at Old Post. We had to walk quite a ways to get there, and then spent about half of our time looking at the wood carvings.

When we did get to the hot air balloons, there were only three of them working on getting inflated. Then one of them didn’t stay inflated for very long before they packed it back up. I guess it was just too windy to really do tethered rides, so it was a pretty lame turnout.

The girls were in bed by the time we got home, so Summer went straight to bed while I tinkered on the computer until I got sleepy too.

Howling at the moon for the next week.

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Review Letters

It was nice out again, so I took the Shadow to work. I made it just on time for a non-meeting this morning, and then worked in my office until lunch. I convinced everybody to go to Ridgewood Brothers again, and we waited in line until Zach told us we were too late to eat outside. Instead, everyone brought food back to the shop and we ate in the back.

I went with Zach and Gary to swap a projector for a touch panel at Crawford a bit after lunch, then stayed after they left to help demo the new equipment. When I got back to the shop, they were unloading a truckload of new touch panels.

Once back inside, Zach convinced Ben to let us go home at 3:30. Ben had to start reviews, so he kicked me out of my office for the rest of the day and I went to the back and chatted with some of the guys until it was time to go.

Autumn went with a friend after school, but I still had to get Eaddie, so I ran home for a helmet and picked her up. Then she wanted to go see Summer at the shop for a bit before going back to the house to ride her bike. I finally got my letter from Sheri, and as predicted, she had the most to say by a whole lot.

I tinkered around the house picking up random things until Eaddie got back and wanted to watch some House. Summer came over after the gym with a frozen skillet meal, so I cooked that and we watched TV while we ate. Autumn eventually got home after going to the school play, and everyone slowly trickled off to bed.

When things just aren’t going your way, buy Doge.

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Ex Officio

It was still a bit rainy today after some storms last night. I never woke up or heard anything big, so I guess it wasn’t as bad as it looked on the radar. Work was pretty uneventful again until the afternoon. A bunch of us went to Linh’s and actually had good, fast service. Then I went to the junior high to help Brody with some stuff.

School was nearly out, so I waited for Eaddie to get out before heading back to my office. We loaded up some more stuff to bring back home, and then finished the day there before picking up Autumn at the high school.

We went by the shop to see Summer, and she was forced to work down in the pit after someone called in. She had a pretty bad day, so we waited and then all went out to eat at La Huerta for dinner. After we stuffed ourselves, I took the girls home and laid down with Summer for some TV before heading back home to bed.

Not Baader, Meinhof.

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Battle of the Bulk

Summer and I got up this morning and started shuffling things in the garage. After some debate, we decided to get rid of the chest of drawers that has been rotting away in the garage due to some water damage. Then we got rid of some larger pallets from the shed out back, and moved some of the smaller ones from the garage out into the shed. There was a nest of some kind of flying ant-looking bugs out there, and they didn’t seem to be eating up anything, but they just went everywhere when we disturbed them. I just left the shed open all day, and they moved on out.

By the time we got the majority of everything out, we had worked up an appetite for lunch, so we loaded up the girls and went to Smackin’ Wings and Things. I guess I had slightly forgotten how high that place is, and I outright refused to get Autumn the 5-piece chicken strip meal she wanted for $16.49(!), especially since she was the only one of us that had already eaten something in the form of two leftover soft tacos just minutes earlier. Instead, we had them split an order of 20 boneless wings, and Summer and I shared some Curious George fries. We still didn’t get out the door for under $50 after a tip, so I hope at those prices even the servers get paid a living wage.

After we ate, we took the girls home to clean up and mow the lawn while Summer and I loaded their old mattress onto her car for a trip back to my house for bulk item pickup day. I was pleasantly surprised with how well it rode up there, and we made it home without incident. I continued to clean up and started some laundry while she went back home.

Eaddie wanted to go to an Among Us real-life game with her boyfriend, what’s-his-face, so Summer dropped her off and then came to visit me for a while later in the evening. I felt pretty tired, and was surprised to see how early it was by the time I was winding down for bed. I’ll take the sleep when I can get it.

Seriously, for $2.75 more we could have gotten a dinner buffet at Brown’s.

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Crouching Cow, Hidden Cable

Autumn had a carwash fundraiser with the explorers group this morning, so Summer dropped her off while I got up and around. When she got back, she and Eaddie wanted to go to New China, so we went out for lunch before continuing on to shop for some jeans for Eaddie.

I dropped them off at Maurices while I ran home to get some unused parts to return to Harbor Freight and Lowe’s. Then I met them back at the store as they finished up. From there, we went to Lowe’s while Eaddie stayed in the car. I returned my stuff, and then Summer and I went back to look at the tile and stuff.

Autumn was finishing up around that time, so we went to pick her up at Dairy Queen. Then Eaddie went on a bike ride while Summer took Autumn home so she could go out with Harry, then went on to the gym. While everyone else was away, I took the time to clean up a bit more in the garage, and then climbed around in the attic a bunch to run a new sensor wire and controller for the garage door. It took me a while, but so far it seems way more responsive than the Momentum camera system I’ve had up.

Eaddie eventually came back home and I needed a break, so I came in and started watching The Winter Soldier. I didn’t intend to watch the whole movie, but Summer got back right as I started it, and became interested enough to finish it. When Autumn finally came home, Eaddie and I ran to Taco Bell for a super late dinner. Then we watched another episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Eaddie stayed up a little later watching Invincible, which took a bit to catch my attention. I don’t know how serious I’ll be about watching the whole series, but I let it take up a few minutes of my time before going off to bed.

He’s just going to extort you and do that stupid head-tilt thing.

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Wholly Holy Hole

I forced myself up this morning instead of sleeping in, with the hopes that I could get back to sleep for work the next day. Summer got up and immediately left for her nail appointment, then came back and took Autumn to the gym. I went home and mounted a couple bikes to the Murano so she could take Eaddie out for a bike ride while Autumn was at a graduation party at Old Post.

Once the bikes were mounted, I started moving things around in the garage and called Dad so we could start mounting the new dryer vent duct in the garage. I had to go to the office to borrow the hammer drill, though we never got far enough to actually need the hammer function. We had to go to Harbor Freight for a hole saw, and then Lowe’s for mounting hardware. Then we went back to my parents’ house for a couple things before we could get started.

We decided to repair the drywall next to the power outlet first, since the dryer vent would likely cover that up, or at least make it more difficult to access. We finished up the drywall and drilled a hole through the outside cabinet wall and the garage drywall. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t a bit of insulation in the garage walls. There’s at least one area with some pretty heavy water or pest damage, so I’m hoping that will be a good excuse to redo the walls with some proper insulation.

Dinner time came, and we didn’t want to start drilling brick that late, so we packed everything up for the day. The girls brought the Murano back and I unloaded, then went to my parents’ house for some leftovers. Dad and I chatted for a while after, and eventually I made it back home for the evening.

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King Zilla

I got up this morning and ate some leftover pasta while Summer went to the gym. Then I went home to clean up for our trip to Conway. As I was leaving, Bác Vân asked me to take some pictures of her garden for Bác Tran. Then I continued on up to get the girls.

I tried not to get us to Conway too early because our movie was super late, but they were getting hungry. I still had a couple gift cards for places that closed in Russellville, so we stopped by Firehouse for dinner first. We split sandwiches and used up some of my rewards points, but I’ve still got enough for another trip. There was only one guy there and they got a little bit busy, but it turned out fine. He started singing a couple times, and it was actually really nice.

Our next stop was Game Point to kill some time. Autumn wanted to look for Mario Party on the Nintendo DS, but they didn’t have it. We didn’t stay long before going to Steak ‘n Shake to burn another gift card. I also had a free burger, which I think was for my birthday, but again I didn’t consume all of the gift card.

Autumn really wanted to go to Books-A-Million, so we went there for a while and browsed around. The girls took off to go next door to Five Below, then Dollar Tree. We missed Sam’s Club because they closed early, so we spent the rest of the evening at Target until showtime.

We made it to Cinemark with plenty of time, though it took me three trips to the concession stand to satisfy everyone. We watched nearly half an hour of previews before the movie started, which just showed how much of a backlog of movies there are since the pandemic started. The next few months are gonna be bangin.

I liked the movie pretty well. The script was pretty trash, but I knew going in that we were really only going for the CG. It was almost exclusively monster action, which was probably its only saving grace. The story felt like it was just on rails the entire time so we could get to see epic titan fights. It was fun though, and you just can’t beat the screen size and audio in a theater for a good monster flick.

The drive home was fast and uneventful. The girls barely made it out of town before falling asleep, so everyone was off to bed as soon as we got home.

The movie would have been just as good, or better, with no speech or humans at all. Kind of like real life.

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An M. Night Shyamalan Plot Twist

We had a shortish meeting at work this morning, and then I unboxed a giant iMac that I would have to learn to enroll in our device management system. I didn’t notice until much later, but Josh and Brody basically burned the whole day putting the wrong image on a bunch of flash drives to take to the middle school because Josh didn’t want to image them over the network.

Most of us went to CJ’s for lunch, and when we got back, I helped make the correct flash drives while Josh started some lab computers imaging over the network. Kyle came in and kept me company while I churned out drives. I started to wrap my head around Jamf Apple computer management, but ultimately had to leave it for Monday.

Mark asked me to come by after work, so I ran home to grab my laptop and then went to his office for a little under an hour. Then I picked up the girls to meet my family at Pasta Grill to celebrate Mom’s birthday.

We had a really great time at dinner, and it was nice to see the family actually functioning and smiling. I think everyone was pretty satisfied with their food too. My blackened redfish pasta started out tasting like it was floating in butter, but either it got better or I just got used to it, and I really enjoyed the rest after a while.

When we got home, Summer wanted to talk with Autumn because I had caught her leaving town with Harry without Summer’s permission. What I thought was going to be more or less a disciplinary talk ended up being everyone coming together and spilling their guts all over the place. It was pretty hard for Summer. I’m still not really sure how I feel about some of it, but at least it was a proper airing of the past. I’ve said for a long time that therapy only goes so far, and that eventually the kids would have to come home and talk to us.

Summer and Autumn went to bed immediately after that. I stayed up a little bit longer and tried to finish an episode of House with Eaddie, but even she was tired and ended up just wanting to sleep on the couch.

We’ll never make it through the entire MonsterVerse like this!

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Mama Bear

I slept on top of the sheets last night, so it was pretty rough getting out of bed. I eventually made it to the high school to drop off the last of my CDs for Daniel to use in their play. Then I continued to the shop for the day. I told Melinda about the trouble I had the night before, and she went full-on mother-mode with the advice and being super nice all day.

Brody and Kyle came to the shop so we could hang a touch panel at Crawford, which got us through to lunch. Melinda and I were the only ones still at the shop, so she insisted that I choose, and we went to New China so I could eat my feelings. Then when we got back, she turned off her Britney Spears playlist and played Linkin Park for me for most of the rest of the day.

My office has been a big hit lately for people to mingle, which is both new and kind of neat, though distracting. I spent most of the day trying to help other people and not getting much of anything else done. I worked a little bit late, but had to get the girls to karate.

Both of the girls were pretty quiet today, and the drive to karate didn’t take long. Once they were out, I went to my parents’ house to figure out what was really going to happen with my living situation. As I suspected, it was all a misunderstanding since I’ve been watching the housing market. I’ve been pretty vocal about my plan, but still caught a lot of flak for reasons I don’t understand. At the end of the day, I get to keep living here, which is what really matters.

Dad came back with me to seal the wall back up, then move the cabinet back into its corner. We had to try multiple times because it wasn’t quite square, causing the doors to not open or not stay closed. I never got it quite perfect, but it worked well enough to load up with a bunch of stuff from the garage. Still not enough room for activities, but at least it’s easier to move around in there.

When attacked by a bear, simply lie still on the ground and cover your face and head with your hands. When the bear is finished batting you around and mauling you, contact the US Forest Service.