Tag: food

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The Day Before I Almost Got Arrested

I started the day off at Oakland, working on a handful of things. The moment that stands out, though, was when I was helping Sheri with some technical issues she was having in a testing room. Erica came by and tapped on the glass and pointed at me, so I came out and was greeted by a uniformed police officer. He informed me that I was parked in a no-parking zone. I corrected him that it was a no-unloading-zone. He said I could finish what I was doing in the testing room before moving my vehicle, so I offered to walk him outside to confirm. He tried getting all tough-guy and said we could do things the hard way if I wanted. He asked to see my ID, but I insisted we should go outside to look first.

When we got outside, John was already there and started telling the officer that maintenance and I park in that area all the time because we are employees that travel and may have to unload equipment or otherwise access areas that are not normally accessed by the public. When we got to my car, I pointed at each word on the sign as I read them aloud slowly. He pointed at the ground behind my vehicle where the old parking spaces had been painted over and re-marked with NO PARKING. I guess he missed the bright yellow school bus that was parked squarely on top of a painted NO PARKING area. He said he was checking all of the schools after complaints about people parking “suspiciously.” Outside of the building I didn’t want to push my luck, so I gave up my ID when he asked again, and then moved to a parking space so he would leave.

Back inside, Mollie said she would make me my own parking space. I insisted it would have to be in the front lawn by the tree, or somewhere else conspicuous and obviously not a parking area. She said that wouldn’t be a problem. After a quick run through Wendy’s for lunch, I ended up at the junior high and told Kevin about my harassment. He knew almost immediately who I was talking to and indicated that he wasn’t a fan of the guy’s attitude either. He even went as far as to tell me I should hang a “TECHNOLOGY PARKING ONLY” sign on top of the no-unloading-zone sign when I park there tomorrow, because he would be on duty again. I think the real problem was that he came into the building without a visitor badge. Office staff should really be trained to take IDs from everyone, even if they’re dressed up like cops. We’ve got to be vigilant with these predators and sexual offenders.

After work, I ran home to tend to the ailing betta. It looked worse off and seemed even less active, but I’ll keep doing what I can. I moved him to a small betta cup with just a little bit of water in it so he wouldn’t have to swim so high to get to the surface for air, but his eyes are clouded over and I’m not sure he’ll eat anything. I’ll feel a lot better if I can get him to eat something.

Summer beat me to my parents’ house for dinner, but they weren’t home anyway. They arrived shortly after I did, and we had dinner and played some more arcade games and foosball. The kids all ate pretty well, and then Summer had to get them home for homework and bedtime. I filled up on gas on the way, and it was pretty much straight to bed since Summer’s neck was out again.

Julie messaged the family late with her own troubles, and I guess all I can really do is hope for the best. Sometimes you’ve just got to make your own fortune.

I’ll give you one guess which one of us has more authority inside this building right now.

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Fortin’ Around

Summer got up and went to the gym this morning while I got showered and ready to go. We got to my parents’ house right before noon, and we all headed to Fort Smith. We dropped Dad off at the library for the magic club meeting, then the three of us went to a coffee shop and had a white people version of Vietnamese French roast coffee without all the drip gear. Mom and Summer ate cinnamon rolls, and then we went across town so they could get their nails done. I had just dropped them off when they called me back because there weren’t any openings, so we went to Sam’s instead.

When Dad’s meeting was over, we went to pick him up, then went to Red Lobster for dinner. Endless shrimp was a little slow, but we all managed to get our fill. Mom was presented with her live lobster before it was cooked for her, and I was left sort of wishing that more restaurants would do that.

After dinner, we hit up a couple of the oriental food stores before driving home. We considered stopping in Clarksville to cram the girls into the car, but the timing didn’t work out. We got back to town, ran by my house to clean up some things, and eventually found our way to bed.

Bye, Pinchy!

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Dinner and a Shower

The girls went home this morning to clean house while I sat around the house with my head cold. Summer brought some potatoes back for me to bake for dinner, and once they were finished, I went to pick them all up and head to my parents’ house. We went for a swim until the charcoal was hot enough to start cooking, and I grilled some steaks, hot dogs, and Polish sausage. I thought that was it, so I jumped back into the pool, but then Mom brought some squash and shrimp out to grill too.

We decided to eat outside, so Mom brought everything out to set the table, and then we had to battle the flies. It would have been much easier to build our plates inside. We mostly finished without incident though, and fortunately everyone had just finished eating by the time we got a little shower of rain. It didn’t rain too long, but everyone was ready to come inside for dessert anyway.

When we got back home, we watched Tag to much delight, then went to bed.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

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On Frugality

I tried not to sleep in too late today, and got up to clean the kitchen before Summer got up to cook breakfast. She made little ham, egg, and cheese pucks that tasted really good, but I think made better sense for a weekly meal prep. It’s super convenient to grab and go during the work week, but on a lazy weekend, for not much more work and an easier dish to clean, I’d rather have custom individually fried or scrambled eggs in a pan.

The girls wanted to watch the last bit of Split from the point Eaddie fell asleep, so we did that through breakfast/lunch until they wanted to go pick Noah up for his 16th birthday. I had fleeting moments of frustration with how wasteful the girls can be, or how they’re unnecessarily messy, or how they can’t seem to correctly put a single fucking lid back on any goddamn thing. It was nice to start and end with a clean kitchen though, so I guess I have their messiness to thank for that. This lid thing is seriously going to awaken the beast pretty soon, though.

After I got my shower, Noah’s pick for a birthday dinner was CiCi’s, so they all came back to pick me up. To contrast how money/waste conscious I am, I had us split into two groups to pay so we could double up on coupons. Everyone got their fill, and then I ran the circuit of dropping everyone off at home for the evening.

This is going to require everyone’s buy-in.

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Meet the Girls

Summer got up and out this morning to pick up Autumn. Eaddie slept all morning until they got back to the house. Jesica texted and said she would be in town, so we decided to meet up for a quick lunch and then some shopping for dinner.

Summer, Eaddie, and I went next door when Bác Vân called with some mashed melon. It was strange and tasteless, but the sugar made it better. Jesica got there and met Autumn before we made it back inside, which I have to assume was awkward and hilarious. From there we went to Burger King for a quick lunch, and then to Walmart for groceries.

We ran into Brandie on our way to pick up kabob skewers, but Summer and Jesica just kept on walking like a pair of awkward children when adults start having a conversation. Eventually they made their way back around so I could introduce them. I think they were mostly shocked that Brandie already knew who they were from my talking about them.

We rounded the girls up and made our way out to start prepping the shish kabobs. We decided to grill at Summer’s house so the girls could get a couple good nights of sleep at home before school starts on Monday. Summer and Jesica had some wine and chatted while I prepped the food. It was a good way for them to get to know each other, and it gave us plenty of time to get hungry again after such a late lunch.

The kabobs turned out pretty great, and the girls all ate over Dinner for Schmucks. Autumn couldn’t finish the movie before passing out as usual. Eaddie had to be told when to go to bed. Jesica was ready to pass out by the time the movie was over, so we let her sleep on the couch. I guess it’s leftovers the rest of the week.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not.

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Every Tech for Himself

It’s the last week before school starts, and we’re still occupied with summer projects. I spent most of the morning delivering Chromebook carts with Dale and Amanda. It was a bit aggravating to fully indispose three people for such a task, but such is life in the district. I’d had enough when it came time to deliver a single tech tub with five Chromebooks to my elementary campus while towing a trailer and two extra bodies, so I had them drop me off at my car.

I was just in time to help unload a short pallet of laptops for Jason. I would have thought we would finish imaging mine before he started unboxing his, but the moment I touched my boxes, he had Allen help him unbox all of his and stack them up under one another in all of the imaging stations in the shop. I managed to squeak four extra lines in and ran power so I could continue imaging my own, but it was super frustrating that he had come along and disconnected mine when I was already two thirds done.

Everyone expected to have to go to a presentation with Ben in the afternoon to learn how we would work with non-touch displays in the classroom, but I opted out since all of my teachers were good with the change. Dale, Allen, and I went to Subway for lunch early though, so the two of them could go. When I got back, I continued imaging all of the laptops, both mine and Jason’s, so he could take Amanda to do something else.

Zach insists it’s like this every year, but I maintain my belief that this is worse than last year. He says everyone always stresses out and hates each other, and that I was just working with the rose-colored glasses of being newly hired. Maybe that’s true in that last year I was more willing to just follow orders, but this year I’m really feeling the burn of my coworkers’ knack for slack.

After work, I stopped by the house briefly before heading to my parents’ to grill hamburgers. Dad already had everything ready to go, so I just had to patty the meat and throw it on the grill. Summer got there just as I finished grilling everything. I was pretty happy with how they turned out, though the buns could have been bigger, or else the patties smaller.

When we finished eating, we ran by JCPenney to spend some rewards cash that was due to expire soon, then headed home for bed.

P for Pie is somehow disappointing.

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Easy Overtime

I spent all day working at the high school handout today. It was probably the best day I’ve had at work in a long time. Even when it was busy, things went smoothly and correctly. They’ve done a really good job of making the whole process pretty efficient.

Summer brought Noah in to get his laptop in the afternoon, and we were all done by 3:30. Central Office dismissed us at three, but I still had work to do at the junior high, so I stayed until nearly five.

After that, I went home to get some things and then went to Summer’s for the evening. She made sloppy joes with mashed potatoes and some asparagus that all turned out pretty awesome. Eaddie made cupcakes for dessert, and we played a game of Uno before the kids started watching The Fellowship of the Ring. I played a bit of Limbo before settling down for bed.

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Work Hard, Not Smart

I feel like the new school year is coming faster than I’m prepared for. I still have two labs worth of laptops to take care of on top of the usual setting everyone’s computer back up so they can get back to work. I was excited that I’d get the morning to take care of my own things. That’s about the time Allen asked for help mounting panduit on the walls at his campus. He loaded the entire toolbox into the truck to do this. I had to run to the junior high pretty immediately to take care of a surprise-fried computer, but I called him as soon as I was done. He was sitting in the truck waiting for me to help him unload the toolbox, even though all he really needed was a hacksaw. When I got there, he was parked on the wrong side of the building at the far end of the parking lot. Him saying it wouldn’t hurt me to walk just about set the tone for the rest of the day. No rest for my possibly-fractured foot today.

We spent most of the morning taking care of two panduit runs and then one internal wall run where he cut the pull line I was planning to leave in place for the future. It just kept getting dumber from there, and it was immensely frustrating, but I had to just laugh it off. To care too much there is to drive oneself mad. I spent what little time I had left before lunch at Oakland and tried to take care of a couple work orders. I got tied up with the librarian there, so I didn’t even get to leave lunch until 10 minutes late, so I ended up just going home for a couple slices of leftover pizza.

When I got back to work, we went upstairs to build a few laptop carts, not quite certain how many we needed to build and with what quantity of laptops in each. It mostly didn’t matter, though, because the cables were tied directly to a circuit board, and we maxed out the connections. When we finished, we loaded up two trucks worth of TVs, again for the middle school, and headed to start mounting them. Jason made a comment about mounting them tomorrow, and I scolded him into admitting that we could “probably get one” done before quitting time.

We had to wait at the front door with our load until Dale, Ryan, and Amanda finished unloading theirs and brought us the dolly. While we waited, I started to unload the truck, and Jason made a comment about not wanting to have to lift all the boxes twice in order to get them inside, even though I really didn’t add any extra steps. He was content to lean against the truck and watch me work, so I told him to run inside and find Allen, who was still trying to get two dual monitors working since I left him before lunch. I was finally afforded the silence to unload the entire truck by myself. Once we got everything inside, we managed to mount four TVs before heading back to the shop. On the way to the dumpster, I lost a box in the road, which just frustrated me more after I was made fun of for packing trash the way I do.

After work, I came home and waited for a long-winded Summer to get there so we could go to my parents’ house for dinner. We had a nice talk, then went to eat some bún thịt nướng. She did really great with the chopsticks. We killed a bit of time while a small storm rolled through, then went to the shop to pick up some scrap that I wanted to play with before it was sent to recycling. I feel like a crazy person, and most at work would probably agree, but this type of equipment still has a lot of novelty to me.

Break out the red ink.

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Sous Apprécié

We slept in a bit this morning, but not too much considering when I went to bed. Summer made a few pancakes for breakfast before we headed to Walmart to pick up the things for my first attempt at some sous-vide ribeyes. Autumn wanted to go to her grandparents’ house, so Summer dropped her off while I got the potatoes baking.

Once I had that started, we packed everything up and headed to my parents’ house to re-learn how to cook a steak. Mom started fussing over cooking things differently, so I left a couple steaks out for her to grill traditionally. The rest were salt and peppered, then vacuum sealed with some shallots, garlic, rosemary, and thyme. I had never used my vacuum sealer before either, so that was a little bit of a learning process. Overall everything went pretty well, though. As soon as I finished sealing everything and dropping it into the water, it was time to go home and get the baked potatoes.

I brought the potatoes back to my parents’ house and gutted them for twice-baked potatoes. They turned out really great, but the steaks were the real belle of the ball. After two hours at 138ºF, I pulled the steaks out and finished two of them on a hot cast-iron griddle in the kitchen. The high heat and butter smoked up the whole house almost instantly, so I moved that step outside to the charcoal grill instead. It didn’t finish them quite as perfectly, but it worked and I didn’t have to worry about airing out the house or burning my lungs with all the smoke. Next time I think I’ll cook the steaks at a slightly lower temperature, but these turned out pretty great. I definitely need to season them earlier, and probably with more seasoning next time, but overall I think it was an excellent first try. I can’t wait to try it again to see how I can improve.

After dinner, I took the girls home to pack some things, then met them back to my place for the evening.

Now if I could just figure out where the rest of my weekend went, I’d be in good shape.

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Do you even lift, bro?

We split into uneven groups at work today. I, as usual, was on the heavy-lifting crew with Dale and Ryan. We spent all morning removing SMART boards and projectors from the middle school. We ended up taking down one we weren’t supposed to, but that’s just another day in the hood. While we were there, I ran into – or rather was trailed by – an old classmate, Mark. He stopped me to say hello and let me know he had just moved to the district. It was quite the blast from the past.

My foot had been bothering me quite a bit, so when we took a break for lunch and everyone went out, I decided to stay in and have some leftover pizza from yesterday. After lunch, the three of us went to the junior high to do more of the same. The difference there was that I knew my building and stopped us from doing the three extra rooms that weren’t supposed to be done. We even had some extra time to hang one TV because we didn’t have to wait for painters. Once we got back to the shop, I got to hear Jason complain about how heavy the one sever battery was that they lifted. I was quick to let him know that we lifted every single one of them when we unloaded them from the truck, moved the pallets to the correct building, and then unloaded everything into the server room by hand.

I left work and went to Summer’s as she got some things packed for the evening. I picked Eaddie up at karate and was recognized by an old acquaintance, Kyle, that was an instructor there. He was missing all the hair I knew him by, though. From there, we went to my parents’ house to swim for a while. Summer met us there and swam until it was time to eat. Mom made bún bò Huế, which I guess isn’t really atypical for their anniversary. It is summertime, after all, and there’s mint to be eaten. I wrecked Eaddie’s face in some foosball before we headed back home for bed.

It’s a tough job, but the chairs aren’t just going to sit in themselves.