Tag: family

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Mush Fry

Today didn’t manifest much. The girls got up and went home. I ate some leftovers and eventually took a shower. Then I met Summer at Walmart to pick up some groceries and walk around a bit. I bought a ton of cheese to try my hand at cold smoking it, so I’m excited for that. I also got a bunch of stuff to make smoked queso on the grill.

I picked up a taco on the way up to Summer’s house, then started prepping veggies for stir fry for dinner. I kept forgetting ingredients, so by the time everything made it into the wok, the broccoli and cauliflower was had all turned to mush. At least it tasted okay.

I was bored the rest of the night, and spent a little time cleaning up some email before bed. Weekends just aren’t what they used to be.

Damn, they got me with the more expensive quart jug.

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Clean Mess

I got up this morning and piddled around the house some more. There was some filing of paperwork, and more shuffling things around to different places. I still don’t know where I can put everything I’ve hoarded, but I’ve got to make room to move some furniture somehow. I eventually made it to the shower before Summer wanted to take Eaddie out for dinner.

Autumn left to spend the day with her father, so the three of us that remained went to Venezia’s for dinner. Eaddie was invited to the movies to see Sing 2, but wanted to come to my house for the evening, so we went to their house to get some clothes. Summer headed straight to my house, and I took Eaddie to the theater, stopping for my taco along the way. It made Eaddie really angry, but we made it to the theater with perfect timing.

I laid on the couch with Summer while she watched TV until it was time to get Eaddie again. Then the two of us watched the last episode of Hawkeye before bed. I felt like it was one of the weaker shows, and I really hated this version if Kingpin. Daredevil did it so well, and this just made me hate it. I guess that may not matter though, if the story was as short-lived as it appeared to be.

Persistence.

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Stand Up

I got in to work this morning and continued work on what I had to say for the CPPC meeting. Justin happened to call me with some thoughts just as Gary came back to review it with me, so he came down and they both listened to what I had to say before the meeting at 9:30.

It was drizzly out, so I drove around the building to our central office. I got there without much time to spare, so once the meeting started I actually took a little bit to get myself situated to make my speech. I got all kinds of looks, but I was too concentrated on breathing through my mask to notice much. I said what I had to say, and I got roughly the response I thought I would. It’s our meeting, and we’re welcome to come up with whatever policy changes we would like. Janie was back after being out for the last meeting, and her response was actually less incendiary than any of us expected. I think overall it went well, because everyone was pretty involved in the discussion of every policy moving forward for the rest of the meeting – at least until people started to disappear, one by one.

I made it back to the shop about half an hour before lunch, which gave me just enough time to get settled before Gary came around and said we were going to McAlister’s. I drove him, Josh, and Thomas there to meet Greg, and of course my online order that I submitted while we were still halfway through the line came out after they had gotten theirs at the table and already started eating. Mine was deliciously customized though, with every free vegetable they offered.

After lunch, I spent most of the afternoon working on the CPPC minutes. I decided to leave out my 30 minute diatribe about Chrissy, and instead stuck to the policies we changed. I’ve felt better, but it didn’t feel bad to stand up for something I believe in either. Near the end of the day we got an email announcing the closure of school for the students tomorrow. Thomas’s policy is that we would work unless Central Office closed, which was a break from what we were used to with Ben. I’d much rather just have the day off like everyone else, obviously.

Just as I got home from work, Julie called to talk about our Disney trip. She felt that I was making a grave mistake by threatening Autumn over her grades. She didn’t think it was right to position our family vacation either as a punishment or reward. I tried to stop and let her know that it was a non-issue, but she stood on principle. It was clear there was nothing I could say to satisfy her. She started the conversation with clear intent. Frankly, I had run out of polite ways to tell her that it was none of her fucking business how we choose to parent. She ended the call by saying that Disney was cancelled, and hanging up on me.

I’ve only ever had one other person that was able to stress me out so instantaneously, and I swore myself out of that situation. Julie is evidently incapable of accepting that there are things that she cannot change, and she refuses not to fight over it at every chance possible. I’m absolutely through with it. I’m mustering every bit of will that I have to make good decisions for myself and for my family, and I will not have anyone bring me down from that. She can blame me or our family for all of her issues, and I do not care. In the end it is personal responsibility that you can rely on. I hope she makes a better life, but I won’t have her making mine worse.

I walked a brisk 1.6 miles on the treadmill with a glass of apple pie moonshine and a cream ale to calm the nerves, and ended the evening with a couple tacos and some fries because I’m no stranger to bad decisions either. Eyes forward.

Quit wasting my time.

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Wanna Fight?

I got in a couple minutes late this morning after a split night of sleep. I wasn’t as sore as I thought I might be, but I still felt pretty gross in general until I had my shower. Thomas was out again, and Zach was transient all morning until he took off for the afternoon. That left me with a grumpy Gary to sort through everyone’s messes.

Several of us went to Taco John’s for Taco Tuesday, and I had a light lunch that left me surprisingly satisfied, if not a little peckish. The afternoon was pretty quiet, but I had Justin come down to chat about our meeting tomorrow. It’s time to put thoughts into action and stand up for what I believe. At least I won’t be completely alone, and maybe I can get a couple raises out of the deal.

After work, I ran home to change before going to my parents’ house to wish them a happy new year. Then I stopped by the bank so I could be prepared to put my money where my mouth is, picked up my “free” taco, and headed up to Summer’s for the evening.

Noah came over, and all of the kids went to some kind of wrestling event. I showed Summer a bit of what I was working on until the kids made it back home. Then Eaddie and Noah stayed up being super loud until Noah went home. I kept feeling like my blood pressure was up, even after being pretty good over the last couple of days without medication, but I didn’t have my cuff to check. I guess that’s one more thing to check during my morning prep.

Opinions are like armpits, and yours are wrong.

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Gossip Grill

I woke up at one point this morning and thought I would be up for good, but then slipped back into a deep sleep for a couple more hours. I felt pretty good after that, but woke up to Eaddie in the doorway, talking at hyperspeed after pulling an all-nighter with friends. It didn’t take very long for her to slow down to a crawl after Summer left for the gym though.

I grilled some leftover cheddar jalapeño sausages for us for lunch, which took quite a bit longer than I expected over a single burner on the grill turned up to high. It probably would have heated up a lot more with extra burners on, but I just figured one should be enough.

The rest of the day was pretty well burned up as Eaddie eventually passed out. I let her sleep for a while, but eventually had to get her home. We stopped at Walmart for a pork loin, as well as some shrimp, a salmon fillet, and asparagus on a whim. Summer made some butternut squash and fried potatoes at home, and I grilled the rest for a big dinner.

The girls finished up some chores, and then it was really early to bed. I was just happy to be tired after sleeping in so late.

What a gas!

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Heavyweight Champion

This morning started out pretty rough after I weighed myself at my heaviest ever. Apparently everything is sticking to my bones now. I thought momentarily that the weight I lost with COVID would stay off, but I gained it all back and then some in record time.

We had a pretty quiet meeting at work, since Thomas was still hoarse and Zach was still out with COVID. Greg was out for his birthday, so Gary sent the others to do a trash pickup at their offices while he and I decommissioned the old domain controller. We ended up having to walk over to the server room to restart the thing, because a drive failure kept it from spinning back up on its own. Fortunately that was the most trouble we had out of it, and everything else went smoothly after we bypassed the warning message.

I had to leave a little before lunch to meet my parents for a call with an accountant. He did share some additional insight, but I wasn’t sure the whole conversation was really what we were looking for. Hopefully it at least motivates them to look into some insurance to protect their assets.

I ran through McDonald’s and Taco Bell for a cheap lunch, that actually totalled $1. Then I went back to the shop to eat and get back to work. I ran to Oakland for a little while before school let out, and eventually headed home to change for Dale’s father’s visitation.

I’ve never experienced anything like this, which was a tiny room with two doors. It was practically a drive-through. Gary eventually showed up so the two of us felt slightly less awkward not knowing anyone else. We watched the slideshow for a while, and eventually filtered out since Dale was constantly gabbing with friends and family coming in.

The girls go to the house a little while after I had changed back into some casual clothes, and we went to my parents’ house for mango soup. Mom also made some sweet potato and shrimp fried fritter things, and some fried rice. The girls really loved the fritters. We chatted for a little while after we ate, and then headed back home to watch a movie.

Eaddie didn’t want to join us, so I made popcorn for Summer and we watched Idiocracy. It wasn’t quite as profound, and was quite a bit more stupid than I was hoping. At least I can finally check it off of my watch list, since it’s been bouncing around for years. Then we watched an episode of Modern Family before Summer went to bed. I tinkered on YouTube a bit longer, and then headed to bed myself.

That’s a long tour. Somebody must’ve run out of money!

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Killing Me, Smalls

I came in to work this morning and had everything of my own wrapped up pretty quickly, so Gary gave me three of his work orders. I went nextdoor to the transportation office first, and picked up a couple old computers to swap out and clean up. Then I went upstairs to get a couple broken laptops. One of them was a broken screen, and the other was a super gross looking one from a remote student.

Thomas came in and appeared to be in good spirits, but he still sounded awful. It seemed a little like he was afraid to show too much weakness from it. The morning went by quickly, and Brody came to the office and took Gary and me to Linhs for lunch. As we were finishing up, Kelsea came in with her family. Evidently she took a half day, so we didn’t see her again.

After lunch was pretty quiet as I finished up the work Gary had given me. I picked Eaddie up from Oakland on the way home, and we watched an episode of Hawkeye until Summer got there. She really wanted to go out for Chinese, and I talked myself into feeling hungry enough to go.

The hostess sat us in the tiniest booth in the place, so it was super awkward for me. Eaddie and I werre both basically sandwiched on either side, between the table and our chair. I overate and felt awful, so I came home and put about a mile and a half on the treadmill. It felt awful for about a mile, but then got better just in time for my shins to start cramping. The only real solution is to stop eating food. Maybe I can just take a Soylent with me so I can still socialize during lunch.

Being value-driven is really going to end me.

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Occam’s Cable

Today was to be warm, with a high in the 60s, but starting with some light frost on my car. I made it through my morning quicker than I expected, which got me to work about five minutes early, even after stopping at Casey’s for a free slice of breakfast pizza.

I kept busy all day, first on my own, then by going to the high school to help Brody with Jazz’s chips. After everything, it really did turn out to be the USB cables causing the trouble. I’d lost count of how many hours we worked on that, all for it to be the stupid cable.

I wasn’t at all hungry by the time lunch came around, nor did La Chiquita sound like a very good choice, so I just stayed in my office and tinkered for an hour. When everyone got back, Gary made his way back to my office and had me run through some other configuration changes for the new domain controller, or more specifically, the new Server 2019 VM template I created. That got us through to the end of the day.

Eaddie called me just as I was leaving work, and asked me to pick her up at Oakland. We went back to my house just long enough to change out of work clothes, and then we headed up to their house. I stopped for my daily taco along the way, and then we ate and chatted about her day.

Summer got home and had to do more work stuff. Autumn got home after doing some homework with her grandparents. Then everyone shuffled off to bed pretty quietly.

Microsoft Endpoint Manager Configuration Manager just has too many managers. Like us!

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Mario Cam Live

Autumn had a PT event with JROTC this morning, so she was gone all day. Summer got up and made eggs for breakfast, and then we got out the Ring Fit Adventure game to try it out. I think Summer was a little surprised at the workout she got from it. Then Eaddie got out the Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit games to try setting up a track. It was actually really cool, though the cars were a little bit bigger than I expected, which meant they didn’t have quite enough room to make a really good track in their house.

Eventually Summer went to work out, and I took Eaddie to get her phone that she forgot at the junior high, and then to drop her off at her grandmother’s house so she could work on Eaddie’s dress. On the way, we stopped to pick up my “free” taco from Taco Bell, along with a burrito for good measure. Eaddie ate the burrito, and I dumped my taco in the floorboard. There was just enough of it left in the wrapper that I could eat, and then I cleaned up what I could to throw away.

After I dropped Eaddie off, I went home to clean up. Eventually I made my way back up to Summer’s to take her shopping. We went by Lowe’s, then Walmart to pick up dinner. I wasn’t really successful in finding any interesting deals. We picked Eaddie up, then headed home to make tacos.

Summer made all the fresh veggies while I cooked the taco meat and cheese dip. Dinner was great, but I ate way too much. Afterward, we got Mario Kart Live out again and Eaddie played some more. Then Summer went to bed and I laid on the couch with Eaddie to watch Romeo + Juliet. I started dozing off pretty early, and Eaddie decided to save the rest of the movie for tomorrow, so we went to bed.

“Hoes.” That’s what we call a group of women now. Feminism won.

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Down Loading

I made it in to work on time for the first time in several days. It felt like we were missing more people than we really were, but it was just Thomas and Greg. We got a really slow start to the day, and burned about an hour just hanging out. Once we got up from that, I got started working on my project for Jazz. That went even slower, on account of how large all of the installers were for the four required pieces of software to make the stupid chip work.

It was a quiet lunch, too. Gary, Zach, and I went to Taco Bell for significantly cheaper than the sit-down restaurants we usually visit. I was frustrated by the app again though, because my order was never made until I went to the counter to ask about it. Last time they had already made it at the other restaurant. I just want to know what the expected protocol is to get my food.

The afternoon went by pretty quickly as I found some success in getting the S7 chip to work. Then I went to Oakland to take care of a couple work orders, and then ended my day early to make up for coming in a couple weekends ago.

I hung out at my house a while, just kind of piddling around until Summer got home. Then I went up to her place for the evening. We chatted for a while, looked at cars and boats, and then went to bed.

If you’re not better, you’re worse.