Tag: food

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At Your Service

I had a rough start this morning, but planned to swing by the vet to cancel Muad’Dib’s appointment, since Eaddie wouldn’t be there to take him. We left the house a little later than usual, did that, and then made it to work late. I immediately got a call from Heaven, but that turned out to be a simple UPS update. Then Rhonda wanted help with something, but I brought Janice into the loop since I knew she would have a better understanding of the system procedures. We didn’t get to meet together, because Rhonda was on the phone for a while. Instead, I got pulled away to look at cameras because about half of them were offline.

I ended up staying quite a bit longer than I intended, since I still had to get to Little Rock for our appointments. Just as I was giving up, David mentioned PoE injectors in another location, so I figured I would look at that later. We left, and headed straight to Tokyo House for lunch with Summer after her meeting. We ate, and then ran by the NLRSD office to see if Randy was there. He was not, so we carried on to Gwatney Collision to drop off my car. That was a bit weird, since this was the third person I had spoken to, but he made marks around my car and I gave up my key card.

Next was Summer’s appointment at the Tesla service center. We got there really early, and basically learned that we would just be paying for the entire service. Diagnostics and all was something close to $400, and all they determined was a clogged cabin air filter. Phillip got me a loaner for my service, and Hunter took care of Summer’s car, so maybe we’ll have a little rapport if we have to take her back later.

Summer needed a charge, but thought she could make it to Conway. They indicated pets weren’t allowed in the loaner, so I met her at the Supercharger to load Muad’Dib’s stuff into the back of the car. I later read the loaner agreement, and the only mention of pets was that there would be an extra fee if they had to do extra cleaning due to pet hair.

I beat Summer home since she wanted to work out in Conway just to have some different scenery. I got home and cleaned up a bit before she and Eaddie got home. I got the new shower head, but decided to wait on installing that until I could spend some time straightening the shower arm coming out of the wall. I eventually took Muad’Dib on a run, and some incoming rain made it really nice outside. He ran nearly the whole way, we visited my parents, I cut open a spaghetti squash full of sprouts, and then we continued a short run home as it began to sprinkle.

Summer was off to bed, Eaddie left late, and I wrapped up as quickly as I could.

That’s an expensive filter.

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It’s a Machine

My shower wasn’t great with a messed up diverter this morning, but it could have been worse. It was still better than a hotel shower by a huge margin. We got to work, and things were again pretty quiet. I spent a large part of the morning troubleshooting a weird Start Menu issue where it keeps reverting back to category view. I found several articles mentioning group policy, but I couldn’t find anything similar that would have affected it in Intune.

I took a really late lunch and ended up at Wendy’s for a spicy chicken sandwich in a Minions & Monsters meal. For some reason they felt the need to serve it to me piecemeal, so I got my Frosty first. Then I got fries. Finally, my sandwich was delivered to my table. I guess at least the food was fresh?

The afternoon went by fairly quickly just because I ate so late. I had a sudden anxiety attack that didn’t linger too long, and then we made it home. Eaddie had received my Steam Machine that Johnny let me order, so I had been looking forward to opening that.

Summer got home shortly after I did, and I unboxed my new computer while she showered. I had to tinker with my home theater again, because for some reason there was no sound coming out of the subwoofer. Once I got everything set up, Summer decided she wanted Taco Villa for dinner, so Muad’Dib and I went to pick that up.

We ate, and then she went to bed. I cleaned all the stuff out of my car so I can leave it at the body shop, and made it to bed on time.

Now what?

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The Dolittles

I was surprised how late Summer slept in this morning. I was up and around for a little while before she finally got out of bed. I was feeling pretty hungry, but I waited on her to get up and we made cold sandwiches for lunch. Then we started picking at some stuff around the house, but didn’t get too wild with it. Eaddie eventually came out of her room and chatted a bit. I spent some time fighting the home theater setup, because ever since Eaddie and Eli dug out the PlayStation 3, the CEC controls haven’t been working to turn the TV off with the rest of the equipment.

I eventually took a shower, and then Summer and I took Muad’Dib out. Our first stop was the quarter wash to clean up my car a bit before we drop it off for body work. I would have finished for a buck, but I accidentally slipped a quarter into the machine between the metal facia and the actual receptacle, so I lost an extra 25%. After that, we went by Splash to vacuum out the inside. Then it was to Lowe’s for some bird seed. We took Muad’Dib inside since they have a published pet policy, and he did fine. I completely forgot to pick up air filters for the house, so we’ll have to go back again later.

By the time we made it back home, I was feeling pretty hungry again. Mom had eggplant soup, so I ran Muad’Dib over there to eat. Dad was almost home from Fort Smith, so we waited on him to eat. Then it was back home to clean up for the night. I had messed up the shower head diverter, so I rigged it up to come out both the handheld and top spout until I can get a replacement.

Take Five

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Keepin’ It Loki

Summer had to leave super early this morning for her race in Barling, so I slept in a while, then got up and had a bath. I played with my Anbernic RG Rotate for a bit since I got it to recognize my ROMs folder last night, and it was tiny and fun. I enjoyed relaxing in the tub a while, and then Summer made it home. She showered, and then I showered so the three of us could go to Brown’s for lunch. We still had a coupon to use, and Eaddie decided she wanted to go as well.

I didn’t realize they were about to close between lunch and dinner, so it was quite frustrating when our server came up to us right in the middle of my first plate to ask if we wanted anything else off of the hot bar before they took it down. Eaddie had a plate with, I think, one piece of fish and some broccoli slaw on it. I got another huge plate and a couple bowls just to keep some food available, and the girls picked at some other stuff while my plate slowly got cold.

We came home after that, and Eaddie left with Eli to watch the Drum Corps International competition in Little Rock. Summer climbed into bed and we finished Funny AF. Then she put on Loki and fell asleep moments later. I laid in bed and watched TV and played on my phone for quite a while before giving up on the rest of the day.

Eaddie came home late and said the competition got rained out. It had stormed briefly here, but it didn’t look like Little Rock was going to get any. She and Eli watched something in her room, and I eventually made it to bed.

Livin’ like a dog.

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Time Wasters

There have been a ton of police on the roads lately, and I saw an article about Arkansas joining a national campaign against speeders. I just sit back and let the car do its thing. I spent an inordinate amount of time fighting limitations in Exchange and Outlook today. I had a call right after lunch, so we went to Sonic a little bit early. I wasn’t super hungry, but I got their usual deal and burned my mouth on some cheddar peppers. An older lady came up and offered Muad’Dib her leftovers, but I didn’t expect to see her pull out half of a hamburger and nearly a whole large order of tots. He made quick work of all of it.

Our call was short, and I eventually got all 124 emails sent out manually since mail merge won’t work to send from a group address. We ended up leaving just a hair late, but it was a quick drive home. We stopped at the shop to see Summer, who had been at it for an extra long day. She had a call-in and had to close, so we headed home after a while.

Summer said she wanted pasta for dinner, so I expected her to get home and take her out for dinner after she had a shower. She did not expect that for some reason, but I talked her into putting on some clothes. We went to my parents’ house to drop off Muad’Dib, and they were both working on some leftover spaghetti. We ended up coming in to help finish it off, instead of going out to eat.

When we got back home, I just went to my office for the rest of the night until bed. Summer has a run in Barling in the morning, so I won’t see her until she gets back home.

Every one.

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Firefence

I didn’t sleep well again last night, but I knew I’d be coming in to some additional work this morning, so we didn’t waste any time. It was actually a little sporadic, but I kept pretty busy. One of my first big projects was making sense of the Sophos equipment logs. One of my high availability pair was showing a fault, and I hoped to find a reason before just rebooting it, or possibly having to kick everyone off. Ultimately it was just a power cycle that got them talking again.

We met Summer at Ortega’s for lunch, and saw Tracy just as she was leaving with a group. They were super busy once we got inside, and we were seated with a new, odd looking kid that spoke almost no English, and half the time what sounded like a conscious, forced falsetto. The usual young gal that we see came to help him and we were finally able to order food.

The afternoon was a bit more dull, but went by fairly quickly. I was still up and down the stairs a fair bit, but otherwise things were fairly quiet. I left a little late after I got caught up, forgetting to leave early for therapy, so I showed up about ten minutes late. Summer didn’t want to go anyway, so I thought she was going to cancel for us.

Traffic was light leaving after the half hour mark, so we got there and went in to basically sit on the couch and talk to each other. It was like Dwayne wasn’t even there for the most part, so I thought Summer had already told him we were going to be ending our sessions. Of course she did not actually do that, so I’ll have to deal with it later.

We made it home and I took Muad’Dib for a run. He didn’t want to leave the driveway again, so I finally started giving him little shocks to motivate him. He started running a bit, and it seemed like he was having a better time once we got down the block. We visited with Dad a bit before heading straight back home.

I finished up some leftovers, and then Summer and I laid down to watch TV. I specifically got an email that Jeff Arcuri’s standup special was released, but the app said it wasn’t available yet. We watched most of an episode of Funny AF instead, and only found a couple of the comedians to be very notable.

The evening went by quicker than I expected, so we had to stop the show so I could get ready for bed. I hurriedly ran through my routine and packed for the next day, and hit the sack.

No kidding!

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See? See?!

Teisha texted me this morning just as I left the house, to say that the internet was still down. I saw it go down during the storm over the weekend, but completely forgot to check that it came back up. I raced in and started working on it right away. Of course I also had Heaven stressed from getting a new computer, so there was a lot to do right off the bat.

All of the equipment lights were on, but it looked like the firewall/router had choked. Of course as soon as I reset that, Joel reset the AT&T equipment and everything came back up, so he felt like he fixed it. I think one of the firewall pair was still having trouble, but I never had a chance to circle back to that because of everything else that broke. I had several unexpected devices at every level start pulling dynamic addresses, which ideally would have been set statically or by reservation. I just couldn’t understand why the Sophos wouldn’t allow for reservations, but it’s what we’ve got.

I was up and down the stairs several times as Heaven encountered new issues, but I think I finally had her satisfied by the afternoon. I ended up taking lunch late, which was fine since I brought leftover roast. Teisha also announced that there were several salads from Colton’s in the refrigerator that the guys who worked over the break didn’t eat. The entire day went by super fast, and then I ended up staying late trying to help Rhonda with a weird phone issue that may also be due to the outage this weekend.

The drive home was infuriating, as I followed someone at 40mph down the entire offramp, watching as the huge, wide-open space passes us by and was replaced by two lanes of trucks and other vehicles. I just barely squeezed around them and took off, but later got stuck behind two cars needlessly locked side-by-side under the speed limit. We finally were able to pass one of them on the right, I think because the person on the right realized how stupid it was and sped up.

We made it home where Muad’Dib was anxious to get inside, still fearful for the fireworks. Eaddie and Eli would be joining Summer and me at Cici’s for dinner, but she didn’t want to load everyone up in her car for some reason, and we didn’t want to have to unload the dog hammock. We left him in the bedroom to watch Spider-Man and met the kids at the restaurant for the pizza that all of us were craving.

After dinner, we came straight home and I tried taking Muad’Dib for a run. He absolutely refused to leave the driveway toward my parents’ house, so I tried to lead him in the opposite direction. He refused to go down our street or Tanglewood, but we made it very slowly up Inglewood. I felt so bad, but he needed a run. I had an anxiety attack just as we got to my parents’ house, and it left me pretty dazed for a while. Afterward I felt like I hit a brick wall of exhaustion, but we made it back home, just barely with a dead Onewheel.

Eaddie and Eli watched TV all night, and I tried to finish up quickly. There were still a few fireworks in the distance, but hopefully they quit soon, because I can’t stand seeing Muad’Dib so anxious. He spent a lot of time under the bed again, so I gave him some calming treats and went to bed.

EVERYBODY MOVE

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Forth

Summer had a run in Dardanelle this morning, and I wanted to force myself out of bed to go with her. It started super early, and she had already made it out the door, but wasn’t in the car yet. I quickly got dressed, loaded up the Onewheel, and then we were off. We got to River Front Park with time to spare, so I let Muad’Dib take off on a wild run down the street for a bit. I don’t know if it was just the stimulus of being in a new place, but he ran like crazy.

The race started, and we found a bench up by the gazebo. It got hot and humid fast. Summer finished pretty quickly, but then wanted to wait for what she thought were door prizes. I took Muad’Dib to Shipley’s for some breakfast, and not only did she not warm up my kolaches, but she also gave me the wrong ones. We made it back and rode around for a total of three and a half miles until Summer realized what she saw were actually placement prizes.

We made it home to clean up, and I got some more laundry done. Then we went to my parents’ house to finish up spring rolls and then power wash the pool cover water bags. That took significantly longer than either of us expected, especially after we were interrupted by a pretty intense storm that passed through quickly.

I finally finished up and we went home for a short rest before we decided to go downtown to see the festivities at the train depot. I didn’t want to leave Muad’Dib home for several hours since he was already cowering from the fireworks. I figured I could drop him off back at home before the show started. We picked up Dad, found a spot to park at the mall, and walked to the depot. There was still a lot of room, so I went back for the car and moved it to the end of the block downtown.

We set up our chairs on the sidewalk to watch the band, and then Summer and I wandered briefly to see what food we could find. We ended up getting a load of food from what I later learned was Cecil’s food truck. He gave us one of our meals for free, which was completely unexpected and appreciated. I really never knew the guy in school, so it was a blast from the past to see him twice in short succession.

The band was pretty good, and it felt nice for a while, but it actually got gross and humid as the wind died down later in the evening. Eaddie didn’t want to stay in Clarksville again, so she came by to pick up Muad’Dib from the depot, and we waited for fireworks. Summer had a good time, but I was pretty disappointed in the fireworks show. There really wasn’t that much to do downtown, considering the crowd that showed up. Cecil and his crew ran out of food super fast, and there were really only two other food trucks.

After the show, we hustled to the car to get out, and I curbed the shit out of the rear passenger side wheel. Then we were still stuck in traffic for quite a while before we could get out. Once we did, we dropped Dad off and then went home to go to bed. Eaddie and Eli were watching TV in her room, and Muad’Dib came out from under the bed, happy to see us.

Everything is sticky, and I hate it.

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Gross Kids

Summer had to work today, so I slept in for a while before getting up to make a sandwich for breakfast. Then I cleaned the kitchen, and what should have been a simple task of loading the dishwasher turned into a gross food-dumping exercise with extra scrubbing. Not only were dishes left with food stuck to them, but there was just plain foods left in them. Eaddie eventually got out of bed and asked for some gas money, and I remembered that I didn’t pay her back previously because she failed to write her mileage down like I had required of her.

She left to spend the night in Clarksville, and then Summer made it home and took a bath. I had a stomach ache all morning, but it eventually settled down. I did some laundry and other cleanup until Summer was ready to eat. Then we loaded up and took Muad’Dib to Buffalo Wild Wings. The service and food were surprisingly good, and it’s been fairly consistent lately.

We stopped into Walmart after we ate so I could pick up some vitamins and minerals, because I am old and malnourished, apparently. While we were there, some lady and a bunch of kids came down the aisle. One of the older kids started looking for some iron pills, but was concerned about whether or not they were green. While we were standing there, she proceeded to pop open a bottle, break the tamper seal, and then start to put it back when it didn’t meet her criteria. I immediately got onto her for that, but they likely just moved on and put it down somewhere else.

We made it back home and I took Muad’Dib for a run. There were a few distant fireworks that had him on high alert, so I let him cruise on through the neighborhood at his own rapid, and possibly nervous pace. He skipped a different zig-zag through the neighborhood this time, and we went through the basin. We visited my parents while Mom was watering her plants, and then we rushed home. He kept hiding under the bed from the fireworks outside, so I really don’t want to leave him home alone tomorrow. Summer wants to go see them up close, but I hate the crowds, the weather, and leaving Muad’Dib alone. My pick is to watch from Mt. Nebo where it’ll be much more peaceful.

Isn’t pride kind of like, the first big one on the list?

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Check the Cable

Today was very busy for me. We got to work immediately started prepping the new computer for Heaven. I brought my adjustable power supply to see if it would help, and that was when I learned that Dell power supplies have a data feed to confirm OEM power, otherwise the CPU gets throttled. I eventually remembered there was a bigger power supply on the breakroom computer, so I stole that for the rest of the day.

It was a good thing I had a frozen breakfast sandwich that I could eat late, because it was another long day without leaving for a break. I had a random anxiety attack just before noon, but luckily it passed quickly without any lingering effects. I eventually got the new computer in place in the early afternoon, but then the video would work during POST, but quit before Windows would load. I went back and forth before giving up until after hours.

Then Amanda needed help with the check printer. I fought it with drivers, but it ended up being a loose USB cable on the computer side. We had only checked the printer side, but the cable was hanging off the edge of the desk, which caused enough tension to lose connectivity.

I skipped lunch and had some watermelon that Teisha had cut up and divided out for everyone. I did some more troubleshooting, and then went back downstairs after Heaven left to try and figure things out. An hour and a half later, I figured out it was the video adapter I was using. Apparently it was having trouble negotiating the DiisplayPort signal, which didn’t make sense to me, but I found an adapter that worked.

I finally left, proud to have maybe finally worked longer than Janice. Of course, that wasn’t the case. She and Elizabeth were there much later trying to finish up something else.

I stopped by Harp’s for some beer, and Casey’s for some free slushies. It wasn’t until after I checked out that I realized it wasn’t Friday, and I wouldn’t be getting the slushies for free. I just paid and headed home.

Summer had volunteered to stuff race packet, so I beat her home by a little bit. She took a shower and then we went to New China for dinner. Some of the food was impressively good, but some of it was well below average. While I was getting my first plate, I heard my name from a table behind me. I didn’t recognize him, but it was my old classmate Cecil. If anyone had asked me, I would have said he didn’t even know my name back when we were in school, much less 25 years later. We fist-bumped and carried on.

Muad’Dib had been in the car the whole time we ate, so I took him for a run when we got home. It was dark, but he did great with his headlamp. He ran or jogged swiftly the entire time, almost never slowing down to walk. I let him lead, and he took me on the full route, but skipped the basin on the way to my parents’ house. We visited Dad, then made it home.

Summer went to sleep, Eaddie was out all day and night, and I ended up messaging Dan to ask about his Steam Machine reservation. He had posted earlier that he won the lottery but would probably pass on the purchase. We ended up catching up for a couple hours until I finally had to go to bed, itchy with residual poison ivy oils from something.

POISON!