Tag: family

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Stranger Thanks

We got a much needed slow start this morning. Eaddie and I watched some more House until I went home to clean up. Summer took her to get haircuts, and then I met back up with them to go to a Thanksgiving gathering with John, Melissa, Travis, and friends.

I upset Summer by being predictably surprised by how short her hair was cut, which set her mood toward me for the rest of the night. Autumn was still at Quiz Bowl camp until later in the evening, and Eaddie didn’t want to go, so the two of us left for my house to get some chairs, then my parents’ house to get a folding table.

We arrived at John and Melissa’s at just about the perfect time to be helpful for the setup but not in the way of others already helping. Actually, Summer helped and I mostly just sat by myself until others started to show up. It was a majority of new faces, but it was a good time. We were split up at three tables that were separated just enough to make communication relatively impossible, so Summer and I just chatted with Travis and Veronica, who sat with us.

We never did get to any games, and people filtered out a fair bit earlier than I expected. Summer’s cold shoulder wasn’t helping any, so I loaded up the car by myself and we awkwardly left. Just as we got home, Summer said she had to go check on a customer that claimed to have a massive oil leak after a service today. I took her to the shop, where we picked up Justin and headed up Mill Creek.

They did what they could by flashlight, and ultimately determined that their service wasn’t at fault for whatever was leaking, though they never really did find the source. All they could see for sure was that the filter and drain plug were in place with no signs of a leak in either place.

We weren’t out for very long, and headed back home for the night. Eaddie was in Summer’s bed when we got there, so the three of us watched more House until Eaddie wanted to go to her own bed, and Summer and I talked a bit before going to sleep.

“How is it that you always assume you’re right?”
“I don’t. I just find it hard to operate on the opposite assumption.”

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Blue Screen of Annoyance

I took the R1 to work today and it was actually pretty nice out. Thomas was hosting some more training in the morning, so he just locked me in for a couple hours while I worked on my own stuff. Several of us went to La Huerta for lunch, and as we were finishing up, Grant spotted us and came over to say hello.

The afternoon went by pretty quickly as well. I spent the last part of the day at Oakland, aside from having to rush back to the shop for an impromptu replacement laptop, and then went home until Mom had dinner ready. Summer wanted to go with me for bánh xèo, so I picked her up from work and we went to eat.

I called Bryan on the way back to talk about work stuff, and then we just kept talking about phone and other work stuff as I followed Summer home. Everyone went to bed pretty quickly, but Eaddie and I watched an episode of House to finish the night.

A princess tiara would be perfect.

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Bake ‘n Shows

We slept in a bit after a long day yesterday. Summer got up and baked some cookies, and I eventually made my way home after Summer and Autumn went to the gym. Eaddie stayed behind watching Frozen, since Autumn had put it on while doing chores.

I fiddled around with a few things at home since it wasn’t too cold inside. I cleaned a whole bunch of algae and gross plant matter out of my old shrimp tank, though it’s devoid of any shrimp now after I suffocated them all.

Summer baked bread and Brussels sprouts, and grilled some barbecue chicken for dinner, so I came back up for that. Then Eaddie and I ended the night with a couple episodes of House.

No! He’s like a stray. He’ll eat everything, shed all over the place, and crap on the floor.

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Gold Medal Flower

I got up early and dropped Eaddie off at the high school to go to her big string orchestra for the day, then went home to clean up before our day in Little Rock. My parents met us at Summer’s house, and we all piled into Mom’s car for the drive. Our first stop was MarketPlace Grill in Conway for lunch. We ended up having to wait about 45 minutes for a table. They were only seating about half of their tables, but disappointingly, they were still just packing everyone in super close to one another. One would think that COVID would have them spreading everyone out, but everyone seems to have just moved on from that sort of thing around here.

After we ate, we stopped by Kohl’s to do a little bit of quick shopping before continuing down to Little Rock. When we did finally get closer to showtime, we ran around Little Rock trying to find some flowers to take Eaddie. We stopped at a Kroger in the hood that didn’t have any, then tried to find a nearby florist that appeared to be a bad listing on Google Maps. Finally, we stopped by another grocery store that also didn’t have flowers, but they did have flours. Summer and I picked up a Gold Medal, and then ran back to the car to make it to the concert.

We showed up just in time to get some decent seats before the two bands got started. Eaddie’s junior high band was first, and they seemed very disjointed. I knew that Eaddie was good, and expected her to be in an orchestra of equally-talented people, but that didn’t appear to be the case.

We stuck around for the high school band, and then filed out of the building to decide on what to do next. Mom wanted to hit up a couple Oriental food stores, so we did that first, and then ended up heading back to Conway for dinner after failing to get into The Butcher Shop without waiting an hour or more to be seated.

On the Border was probably the best decision we made all day. The service and food were both pretty great, and Eaddie got her fill of everyone else’s food after having repeatedly told everyone that she wasn’t hungry enough for dinner.

As soon as we finished, we loaded back up and Dad dropped us off at Summer’s house. Eaddie and I stayed up to finish season six of House. We were both exhausted by then, so it was off to bed for the night.

How do you even play a whole note on a drum?

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Rain on the Parade

I took the Shadow to work this morning in spite of the wet, since it would be clear all day. I didn’t get a whole lot done before lunch, outside of working up an email and sharing my salary comparison worksheet with Judy. Gary took Brody and me to Arby’s for lunch, and when we got back, Judy had actually started looking at my sheet, and we chatted for a while within the document, which was cool. She actually fixed a couple of the issues I found, but still didn’t make the changes I suggested for our department.

It took me a while, but I finally made it to Oakland in the afternoon about an hour before school let out. I found out that Mollie’s been out sick, so I reached out to her later in the evening to see how she was doing.

They let us off of work early to go to the Veterans Day parade. Autumn asked me to go so I could see her walk the American flag at the head of the parade, so I met Summer and Eaddie at the church downtown. We stayed for almost the entire parade, but left just before traffic got stupid.

We went back to my house for just a few minutes before Summer dropped Eaddie off to have dinner with Autumn and their father. Then I met her at Nonna Bella’s for a pizza before she had to go to the superintendent search committee meeting. Christina was evidently working there and served us, which was only a little bit odd considering I knew her from the call center days, and she knew the girls through their father.

Summer took off just before her meeting started, and I headed home for the evening. Mollie finally responded and said she had a hard limit of one visitor per day, so I may go visit her if we can plan it successfully.

All the positive vibes.

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Entombed Raider

I got up and out a little bit early today for no particular reason. I didn’t really get to anything I wanted to do though, because of meetings and an overwhelming need to decipher the latest draft of the proposed salary schedule. I actually spent all day crunching numbers on a combined spreadsheet, and it was a nice bit of self-confirmation that I could do that job, and probably better than those tasked with it.

Not long into the morning, several from central office came over for some training. I’m not sure why they didn’t do it in their own conference room, for for whatever reason they did it outside of my office, so I was made to lock myself in and stay quiet in the dark.

I snuck out for lunch with Gary and Greg, and we went to Taco John’s for the first time in ages. My Boss Burrito was mostly beans and rice, but the Potato Olés were on point, and I even let the girl upsell the nacho cheese.

We had a video call with an Apple guy in the afternoon so Brody could ask some questions, but it really just turned into Gary learning things and then assigning work to Greg and me. I guess that’s the job, so I can’t complain too much.

Eaddie had walked to my house and gone out for a bike ride, so I went home after work and then met her at the high school with the Grom. The helmet communicator worked pretty great, and I coached her through some laps around the parking lot as the sun set. We rode back home and then went to their house with some ribs I needed to grill.

Summer eventually made it home from the gym, and we ate while she had a video call of her own. The girls were still doing laundry for most of the evening, so there wasn’t much for me to do besides put some more work into my spreadsheet with some updated numbers from Judy, and then research home Dolby Atmos configurations. If you can have 11.2.8 at home, I can’t think of a single reason that you shouldn’t have 11.2.8 at home.

But what number do they use for the seat shakers?

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Looky Looky Who Plays Hooky

I knew I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep in time last night to be productive at work today, so I took a sick day to recover from the trip. The girls were already at school by the time I woke up. Summer had to go to work for a bit, so I ate some leftovers and then went home for a while.

It was cold in the house, and I had a hard time getting motivated to do anything. I mostly just sat around until I headed back up to Summer’s for the evening. She grilled pork chops and made mashed potatoes and asparagus for dinner. The girls had to do some chores when they got home from school. Otherwise it was a quiet, early night.

It’s super affective!

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Ride About, Now

Summer made breakfast this morning, but Autumn and her visitor chose to continue stuffing their faces with junk food instead. Eaddie didn’t want to get out of bed, and I didn’t get home to clean up until the afternoon.

Autumn had wrestling practice in the evening, so eventually Summer brought Eaddie over and we went to the high school so she could practice driving. She didn’t drive around in the car for very long before she was tired of that and wanted to try riding the Grom. We never got out of first gear, but she only killed the engine a couple times. I had the benefit of knowing how to drive a manual transmission when I learned to ride, so I could understand her hesitation.

We didn’t stay for very long, and went to my parents’ house for some phở. Then we stopped by Brody’s house to try and drop off a tripod, but they weren’t home. Summer dropped me off at my house, and I tried to do a little more organizing before bed. It’ll be a short week, and I’m both excited and dreading it.

The funk soul sister.

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Take a Seat

Summer and Autumn had a race this morning, but I didn’t get to sleep in. Eaddie had to be at the high school by 8:15 to go to Conway for orchestra tryouts, but not before running home to get her music. I got her breakfast at Wendy’s on the way, and then I was on my own until the other two got back home. I spent my time cleaning up after last night, vacuuming and cleaning up outside.

When they got back, Autumn went home to clean up and Summer wanted to go by Fall Fest. I had just gotten out of the shower and needed to get ready. My parents stopped by to borrow a laser measuring tool, and then we were off. Fall Fest was busy with people, but not much of interest. We made a loop, stopping to buy some baked goods from her mother’s church, who opted not to pay the booth fee to the community, and instead set up on the church stoop to peddle their confections.

When we got back home, Summer left and I waited for Eaddie to get back from her trip. She made first chair, so I offered to take her out to a celebratory dinner. She wasn’t hungry right then though, so we headed on home.Autumn had a new friend over for the night, but we didn’t get into anything. Summer hid in the bedroom, and eventually Eaddie got tired of homework and wanted food.

After tossing around the idea of a taco truck, she decided on Bocadillos in Dardanelle for their frozen desserts. She chatted a bunch and talked about her day at tryouts in Conway. We both stuffed ourselves silly, but she made room for half a scoop of ice cream, and I couldn’t leave without a mangonada.

Everyone but Autumn’s friend was immediately off to sleep when we made it home. I felt a little bad, but I empathized with how tired everyone was. Now we just have to make it through breakfast, and hopefully I can get some more accomplished tomorrow.

22% minimum? Seriously?

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Sidetracks

Today was pretty hectic for being in the office. It started quiet enough, and I thought I was actually going to get my project done, but then the calls just kept coming in. Brody was having a hard time remembering how to do things for himself, and it eventually got me in trouble.

Gary came back to the office to fetch me for lunch, and the two of us went to Wendy’s since nobody else was around to go. Zach had apparently spent the entire day walking around with some new access control people that want to replace all of the electronic door locks in the district.

When we got back, Brody called me about a printer issue that ended up with me remoting into the computer he was looking at. What I didn’t realize was that he was remoted into the PaperCut server from there, so I had a ripe case of RDP Inception and didn’t even realize it. I ended up accidentally deleting a bunch of printers from the server, which required us to roll the server back to the last nightly backup. The fix was simple enough, but the whole server had to come down for us to fix it, which caused problems for everyone, everywhere.

I left work frustrated that I wasn’t able to complete my own task for all the calls I kept getting. Eaddie was at Oakland waiting for me to pick her up, so I couldn’t even stay late just to finish up. I picked her up and expected to go home to clean, but she was hungry, so I ended up taking her out for a dinner date.

Summer had to work late and Autumn was still coming back from a Quiz Bowl tournament, so Eaddie and I went to La Huerta to eat. She was super chatty, and we had a good time. We weren’t back home for very long before Summer came over to get her, and left me to start cleaning up the bedroom on my own. I didn’t get as much done as I could have, but I got a bunch of little things done in a lot of places. At least the bed is uncovered now, but I can’t say much about the floor. I’ll have to make a decision tomorrow about running some speaker wire, because I really want the speakers to all be functional for Friday.

Sidetracked? We’re not even on the right train!