Tag: family

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New Digs

I went to the high school first thing this morning, but quickly realized that Mike wasn’t coming in again. Evidently he’s decided to get tested, so the next day or so will be an exercise in the “filling in” portion of my job. I felt mildly accomplished after spending too much time remembering how to configure switches, and then I took a break to pick up some Subway.

Summer was at the house after prepping a slow cooker roast, so I brought lunch and we ate there. Then I went back to work at the shop for the rest of the afternoon. I tinkered a bit in my new office while some slower processes churned away. I’ll enjoy being there more, but the soundproofing at the high school was unparallelled. I’ll miss the big tunes.

After work, I made it home just before the girls got there, and then Summer took Eaddie out for a bike ride. I had Autumn drive me to Walgreens in her new car, and then dropped her off for her night class. When I got back home, I finished digging out an old side table I’ve had in the garage forever, and used some furniture polish to bring it back to life.

We ate when the girls got back from their ride, and then I picked Autumn back up. We eventually got around to watching an episode of WandaVision, but Summer shut us down on watching any more for the night. Everyone’s getting up extra early tomorrow, so it’s off to bed early.

Needs more portraits.

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You Have to See It for Yourself

Summer and I got up this morning and went to breakfast at IHOP since I had a free birthday stack of pancakes. Our server was a former student of hers, but that only made us a little nervous. The restaurant was absolutely packed though, mostly from an after-church rush. She barely came by the table at all, but the food was good.

Summer was going to go home afterward, but we ended up hanging out at the house until the girls got home. Then we watched a couple episodes of WandaVision before heading to my parents’ house for fish soup. We chatted for a little while since we hadn’t been around much since Disney. Then we stopped by Summer’s parents’ house to pick up the Toyota Matrix they were giving to Autumn.

The battery was dead, so we had to jump start it in the rain. The dome light was also burned out, which made finding buttons in the car a little difficult too, but we got it going enough for Summer to bring it back to my house. The girls went on home from there, and I spent some time tinkering with my Galaxy Watch3. I’m afraid it’s not doing much to grow on me, but at least the used market for them looks decent.

AGTSMTH

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The Great Kitchen Cleanout

Summer went back to work today, so it was up to me to get the girls on chores. Autumn was up early and obviously wanted to go to their friends’ house, so she kept busy. Eaddie, on the other hand, woke up late and mostly lazed around as she showered and got ready for the day. I stripped most everything out of the kitchen cabinets and did some reorganizing. Not everything had a home in the end, so there was a lot left out on the counters by the time Summer got home.

I had pulled out the turkey stock I made from our Thanksgiving turkey carcass, and whipped up a noodle and vegetable soup out of them. Summer took the girls to their friends, then went to the gym before coming back home to eat. Then we watched Stardust and gawked at the list of stars cast.

It won’t be much longer before all the snow has melted.

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The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway

Summer really wanted to get out today, so we got up and went to Walmart to look for some salt for her parking lot at work. As I suspected, they were out, but thankfully Sam plowed for them while he was cleaning up their lot next door. I dropped her and Autumn off at the gym, then went home to shower and find something at least a little bit waterproof to wear for later.

As soon as we got back to their house, we all came outside to build a snowman. The girls had a big ball rolled up in no time, and I got at least some of it in a hyperlapse video. We all had a great time since the snow had finally melted just enough to be a little sticky instead of powdery. The snowman didn’t quite make it to life-size, but I think it was probably the biggest I’ve ever helped to make.

When we got back inside, Autumn wanted to grill some brats, so she and I ran back to Walmart for buns since nobody was working at the Dollar General. We got home and I picked through some stuff Eaddie wanted to throw away from cleaning her room, and then we had a nice dinner. Autumn went to bed early as usual. Summer went to bed feeling a bit of a head cold. Eaddie stayed up and played Fortnite on the Switch since her boyfriend was online. I cleaned up their medicine cabinet, and eventually made it to bed myself.

Baby got back!

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Snow Problem

I unintentionally slept in pretty late today. Summer got around to making pancakes for a late breakfast, and eventually we got up the nerve to leave the house. After a week of cooking multiple fresh meals every day, we ran out of a couple essentials, so Summer, Autumn, and I loaded up in her car to get down the hill. Things went pretty smoothly until she got stopped coming up the hill to get onto Weir Road. Luckily a truck stopped and a couple guys got out to help us push her car out of its little rut.

We stopped at my house first, since I was ill-dressed for the weather. I took a quick shower after having filled my boat shoes with dirty snow. Then we went to Walmart for some supplies. They were pretty picked apart, but we didn’t need much. We spent more time looking at clearance deals than anything else, and scored a bunch of smelly-good stuffs.

The trip back up to Summer’s was easy enough until we got to her hill of a driveway. Autumn and I had to back her into the street to get a running start, then push her up over a hump before she could get up to the house. Summer’s spaghetti dinner was great, and then Autumn wanted to play a game of classic Rummy. Afterward, she and Summer went to their rooms and Eaddie and I watched some more House until bed.

CHKNDROP

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White Out Black Out

I’ve been trying not to sleep in too much since the snow days aren’t super predictable. I don’t know when they’ll open schools back up, but the snow is still just as powdery as it was when it first fell. A little bit of it melted, or sublimated away in the sun, but not much. We haven’t even been out of the house since this whole thing started, so we have no idea how the main roads have been. There’s been very little traffic here.

Summer’s been knocking out meals with whatever she’s found in the fridge, and it’s been pretty great. It’ll be nice to get to start fresh with a mostly empty fridge when this all blows over. Eaddie has at least appeared to do some school work whenever I’ve checked on her. Autumn is mostly sleeping or watching shows on one of her too-many devices, claiming that none of her teachers have given her any work. I almost look forward to some hellish punishment when her grades aren’t where they need to be.

We played some more Phase 10, but that’s about as interactive as it’s gotten. Right in the middle of that, the power went out and we had to break out the candles to finish our game. We weren’t sure how long it would last, hoping it was just a temporary, planned outage to help with power shortages elsewhere. Whether or not it was planned, it thankfully came back on almost exactly a half hour later.

The girls all went to bed pretty early, but I stayed up to toy with QR codes. Now I’ve got even more neat ideas to be underutilized.

You can’t click cookies without power!

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Hibernation 101

We woke up this morning and had a great breakfast. Summer scrambled some eggs with veggies and some of the pork Dad smoked for us. Snow piled up for most of the day, stacking high in dry, fluffy peaks. The girls went outside and played in it a little bit more, but none of us really had proper attire for wet, winter weather. Most of our day was killed in front of our TVs or computers.

We did at least take some time to play Monopoly and Phase 10 before bed. Eaddie and I watched some House until she fell asleep on me. School’s out “until further notice” which may extend my vacation to a full three weeks. I’m not complaining. I just hope I remember how to do my job when I get back. I’ve been away from work more than I’ve been at work for the past four months.

The Grandmapocalypse is upon us.

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Snow Place Like Home

We slept in just a little bit today before getting around to doing nothing. I spent most of my day clicking cookies, but broke away for a while to clean out Summer’s junk drawer while looking for a tape measure. She went to the gym, but otherwise stuck around the house with the rest of us.

It snowed pretty much all day, but the snow was super fluffy and didn’t stick together at all. It also didn’t seem to stack up very high, but that may have been because of how light it was, and how much room it had to compact. Summer and Eaddie went outside in it for just a little bit, but my time outside mostly reminded me of how annoying it is when you try to come back into the house.

Meals were all from frozen kits too, but they turned out well. The cats have been destroying anything left on the counter overnight, so all we have left is what’s stored in the big, metal boxes. School’s out for the weather tomorrow, so if we’re stuck in the house much longer, we may resort to eating them.

So much for getting rich on Doge.

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Dude, You’re Getting a Dell!

I ran home this morning after clicking some more cookies with Eaddie. Uncle Giao and the family came down, so I had to get a laptop ready for him to take. It took me a while to get everything updated and ready to go, but hopefully it works well for him. I spent most of the afternoon at my parents’ house until they left. Then I ate some leftovers before heading back to Summer’s.

Nobody was really hungry for a proper dinner, but Autumn grilled some hot dogs and we all munched a bit in the evening. Then she wanted to watch The Greatest Showman, which I surprisingly didn’t really care for. I didn’t dislike it by any means, but I think I had just built it up to be something completely different in my mind.

When we finished that, I put on The History of Time Travel until Summer and Autumn went to bed. Then Eaddie and I stayed up and watched an episode of House before bed.

No, that was not a real documentary about how someone invented an actual time machine out of an Atari.

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One Man’s Treasure

I forced myself out of bed this morning so I wouldn’t ruin my bedtime for the whole weekend. It was finally time to head back home to freezing temperatures after our week around the palm trees. We got breakfast on our resort, then took the bus back to the airport. After that, we spent all day flying or hanging out in terminals. We were long gone by the time I realized that housekeeping had thrown away the souvenir Coke bottles I picked up at Black Spire Outpost. After making it all the way through the vacation with my new phone, I also scratched the hell out of the back of it on my seatbelt.

The flights were a bit bumpy as we flew through some turbulence, but we made it out alive and relatively on time, even after our last flight changed terminals at the last second in Dallas. The drive home was exhausting as well, so I got particularly upset when we got back home to Summer’s house to find a cat had been left inside the house and tore up a bunch of stuff. The smell really got to me, so I ended up just heading straight home by myself after that.

Good talk.