Tag: food

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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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Köttbullar

We slept in a little this morning without losing much time, thanks to daylight saving time coming to an end. We went downstairs and loaded up on breakfast, and then cleaned up and packed for the return home. We still had a full day planned though, so it was a slow drive across the city to find an Ikea.

I’ve wanted to go to an Ikea for ages, and we never had a chance to stop the last time I saw one in person in St. Louis. There were two to pick from in the Dallas area, so we went to the one up north. Summer thought I was kidding about meatballs, and the look on her face when she saw the sign at the entrance was worth the drive all by itself.

Having never been, we were really impressed with the showrooms as we wandered through the maze. Some of them looked really incredible, and I could really see us building something entirely out of what they had available. As we finished our way through the upstairs showrooms, we entered into the restaurant where even there, you could get a push cart for your trays full of food. Summer got the regular Swedish meatballs, and I tried the salmon meatballs so we could share. Everything was pretty good, and it was a neat break from shopping.

After all of that, we really had to rush through the downstairs area in order to make our movie on time. I wish we could have spent a bit more time there, because there were actually a couple things we wanted to buy, but we ended up grabbing a couple bottles of fruit juice with mulling spices that totally wasn’t real wine, and running out the door.

The drive back to the AMC wasn’t too bad, but parking was a chore. We finally found a parking garage and briskly walked to the theater just in time to get settled in before the show. The theater was incredible, with countless Dolby speakers on practically every surface. As the previews came on, they barely scratched the surface of the experience. The seat shakers felt natural, and brought an additional layer of depth that I loved. I just wished the movie had lent itself more to that kind of theater.

I enjoyed Eternals, though I understood that it wasn’t exactly a blockbuster style action film in the traditional way. I couldn’t see it being rated poorly though. There were some things that probably could have been done better, but overall it had a nice pace for how long it was. It wasn’t like Dune that felt super slow the entire time, and then ended just as things got good.

Once out of the movie, we made the drive home. The GPS took us on our alternate route this time, heading north through Oklahoma. It was a slightly shorter drive by distance, but also shorter in time with the lack of traffic leaving the city. We stopped once for gas and food at a Moe’s inside of a Pilot, where we got surprisingly good service worthy of a tip.

Eaddie was still awake when we got home, but took a shower and went to bed as Summer crashed. I still had my own routine to go through, but then it was off to sleep as well.

Literally hundreds of speakers.

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Over and In and Down and Out

I slept in a little bit today before getting ready for our trip. Summer had to work, but thought she might get off earlier than expected. That ended up falling through, so we left around two and headed toward Little Rock. We stopped at the Splash in Benton for a quick car wash, and then we headed practically straight through to our destination.

We stopped in Rockwall, since it was the first In-N-Out Burger we encountered. I’ve wanted to try it for ages, and we finally had a chance to stop in. Summer got a double-double, and I had to go with the triple-triple. Overall I guess it really was comparatively cheap. The biggest surprise was the poster advertising the pay for new hires. I also wasn’t quite sure how masks would be down here, but only like two people we encountered there were wearing them, and neither were employees.

The last bit of the trip was hectic, even for a night drive. We made it through traffic in the dark in unexplored territory, and nobody died. The hotel was relatively easy to find, and the studio room was pretty cute. Summer pretty much crashed as soon as she hit the bed, so I didn’t dawdle before wrapping it up for the day.

Hopefully COVID doesn’t mess with you guys…

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Lil Pops

Today was another really chill day at work. Kelsea brought a chocolate cake for Gary’s birthday, along with a 3D-printed topper. I eventually made a “candle” out of a stripped piece of Cat 5e cable with the exposed wiring inside making up the flame. I helped with what I could in the morning, and then most of us went to Sumo for lunch for dinner and a show. It was pretty muted with everyone in masks, but the food was alright.

I spent some time at Oakland in the afternoon, and then came back at the end of the day for some cake. My final act was sending out the CPPC minutes, and then I headed home for the long weekend.

It wasn’t long before Summer reminded me that the girls’ father was having a soft-open at his barbecue joint, so eventually she came by to pick me up for that. The girls were already there, but hadn’t really had dinner since they were waiting on us. He had run out of ribs, so I tried the nachos with some brisket. Unfortunately I couldn’t find much of the brisket under the canned nacho cheese. Eaddie’s bologna sandwich looked pretty good though.

After we ate, the girls headed home. Summer dropped me off, and I spent the night prepping for the trip. It got quite cold inside, and I ultimately settled down and watched Shazam! until bed. I’ve really got to find some quality Atmos content.

Time to find out who really shot J.R.

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Mouse Toss

It was a little warmer today, but still cool out. It made for a really great day to be moving stuff around outside, which we did. We ordered several hundreds of computer mice and headphones, and split them up for delivery to every campus. Even Thomas came out to help us toss mice into the trucks, which ended up being super fun. I had some sort of back pain going on all day, but it started before we did any of that, and I never felt much worse throughout the day.

They ended up going to lunch about half an hour early, but I made the mistake of meeting them at Fat Daddy’s in London. I’ve just never ever been impressed with their food there, but for some reason the others like it. The problem today was that they tried to meet Brody at Dwight, but Brody showed up at Crawford on accident. I just waited outside the gas station/restaurant until they showed up, and then ordered a sloppy, overpriced, uninspired plate of nachos.

It was a relatively quiet afternoon, and I didn’t get too deep into much of anything. We put a couple metal shelves together for our storage room. Then near the end of the day, Gary brought me a basket of hotspots he found and asked me to test them. All but one appeared to work normally.

When I left work, I stopped by the shop to find that Summer had already left. From there, I had to wait for a train, then made my way home to set up the storage stuff I had ordered from Kohl’s. Summer and Eaddie came by to Eaddie could try on an old Papa John’s uniform as a Halloween costume. Then they left so Eaddie could go to her boyfriend’s birthday party for the evening.

Eventually the kids made it back to town, and I picked Eaddie up at Zane’s house. Summer was still awake when we got there, but we closed her up in the bedroom while we watched an episode of House before bed.

Beanelephant

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to the

I woke up absolutely dreading getting out of bed this morning. I was absolutely beat, and needed another several hours of sleep, but I willed myself up and into the shower. It was pretty quiet at work, but I still spent most of my time working on other peoples’ issues. I finally got the CPPC minutes sent out to the applicable email groups, and immediately afterward, Thomas asked me to remove the “Assistant to the Director of Information Systems” line in my email signature. I wasn’t particularly surprised, but it still kind of made me feel uneasy about my life there. It all started when Ben moved me into the office to the right of his, literally making me his right-hand man. We joked about how people in the district just made up their titles with seemingly nothing to back them up, and went with the Dwight Schrute “to the” moniker.

I worked through lunch since nobody said anything to me about it other than Brody, who actually took lunch about half an hour late. By that time, I was two minutes away from the Pixel 6 launch announcement, so I just stayed and watched that in my office. Then after lunch, I eventually made my way to Oakland and finished out my day.

When I left work, I went straight to the high school to pick Eaddie up for karate. We went to my house for just a bit before deciding to meet Summer at a taco truck for dinner. Eaddie really wants to quit karate, so we didn’t make her go, and I think Summer will finally let both girls drop out. Eaddie, particularly, will still have ways to be active. Autumn needs more encouragement, so I’m not sure whether we’ll let her drop out, but for now at least, she has plenty of afterschool activities that keep her occupied.

Summer couldn’t stay until we got our food, so Eaddie and I ate on a bench there and had what were probably very funny and awkwardly inappropriate conversations in front of other patrons as they came through. Then we took Summer’s food back home and waited for her to get off of work.

I finally got my missing grill parts in from China, so I put that together while we waited. Then a little while later, Summer called to say she didn’t realize we were going to my house to wait for her, and that she had gone to her house instead. Autumn came over instead, and picked Eaddie up to go home. I stayed behind and watched a Pixel Superfans stream, which didn’t really provide me any more insight into the device. The price for the smaller device was lower than I expected, but the Pro is about where I thought it would be for the storage size I wanted. I’ll have to wait and see if Google Fi has any deals around Thanksgiving time.

Black Friday will finally look right in photos on the Pixel 6!

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Three Meals a Day

I got up a little bit early this morning so I could go by McDonald’s for a free “Thank You” meal for working in education. Even being out of the house early, the line at the drive-through was slow enough to make me a few minutes late to work. The morning was otherwise pretty quiet as I worked on a couple different projects.

Suzanne came by the shop a little bit before lunch just so she could see my office, and then we went to Linh’s to eat. It was nice catching up a little more since this was really only the second time we’ve talked in several years. After that, I spent the rest of the school day at Oakland taking care of some work there.

Just as school let out, I went to the high school to talk to Ethan and one of his kids that was wanting to compile some C++ code but couldn’t run the executables due to our security restrictions. We discussed some workarounds and basically settled on having a couple unrestricted computers for his overachieving students to use.

As I left work for the day, I realized that Summer was at the high school as well for a marching competition. I went on home to clean up, and then met her at Chili’s for a date night while the girls were both at the competition.

When I got back home, I got right to cleaning carpets again. The water still isn’t coming up clear, but it wasn’t crispy either. Hopefully I can be done for a while after today, but if it’s still bad, I have some ideas for tomorrow’s cleaning session.

Heck, it took 30 years to make it. It’s not coming out overnight.

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What’s Cookin’

Summer got up and made breakfast this morning. I got super stiff last night in bed, which I felt the numerous times I got up in the middle of the night. It really made it hard to move around for a while, but I never got up to much of anything anyway. We did finally play UNO Flip, which was a great twist on the classic game. Then we watched The Princess Bride while Eaddie did something else.

Eventually dinner time came around and Summer wanted to cook up some stir fry with the leftovers we had. She dug out some frozen veggies and cut some extras up, and then I threw in the leftover steak and sausage, filling up the wok nearly to the top, once the rice and everything else was in it.

Eaddie really approved of dinner, and then Summer made some pumpkin bread for dessert. We made Eaddie play a game of UNO Flip with us, and then everyone filtered off to bed.

I just want you to feel you’re doing well. I hate for people to die embarrassed.

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Two by Four

Summer and Eaddie ran a 5k this morning while Autumn and I slept. I didn’t really sleep in much, but I laid awake with a cat laying across my neck until the other two got back home. Then I sat around for a little while before going home to do some work.

It was really nice outside when I got there, so I decided to hang the rest of the bicycles in the garage. I got one done pretty quickly, but the next two had me sweating as the outside temperature continued to rise. Bác Vân stopped in to chat for a little bit as I finished up. Then I went inside to shower.

Eventually I met Summer and Autumn at Walmart to pick up some dinner. We picked up a bunch of stuff from clearance, then got steaks for dinner. I went back in to get a bunch more Kool-Aid because it was only 15 cents, and then I met the girls back at their house.

Summer prepped stuff for salads and mashed potatoes inside while I grilled some New York strips and hot dogs. The steaks actually cooked to a nice doneness, but they were still tough for some reason. Autumn’s cheeks were still swollen pretty badly from having her wisdom teeth out, so she just ate hot dogs and mashed peas on a plate without any buns.

After we ate, Autumn went to bed and the rest of us watched an episode of House. Then Summer went to bed and Eaddie and I watched one more episode before bed.

I’m forgetting something.

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The Grill of My Dreams

I got up this morning and had some more leftovers for breakfast. I thought we might get out to teach Eaddie to ride the Grom after learning that Arkansas raised the engine size limit for 14-15 year old riders, but she didn’t want to get out of bed. Summer and I ended up going to town to do a little deal and grocery shopping for dinner.

I’d been seeing seasonal deals on grills and outdoor stuff, so I really wanted to look around for a new grill. Summer’s propane grill has seen better days, and Mom and Dad have one like my old one that’s missing the right table side of it. We ended up finding a dual-fuel propane/charcoal one with a griddle insert for $150. Then Summer ran into a couple guys she knew from Autozone that marked one down to $100 for us since it was missing the charcoal door handle. I figured I couldn’t beat that, so we took a price tag, picked up our groceries, and checked out. All that was left was to find someone with a truck to haul it home for me.

I dropped Summer off at her house and then went home to clean up. Brody said he could help me with the grill, so I waited around for him to get back with me. I didn’t realize he was out of town, but eventually he came through. When I got back to Walmart, they had closed the garden center door, so I had to find an employee to help me walk the grill through the store and out the front door. Brody got there just after we got outside, so timing was just about perfect. When we got to my house, he took the turn into my street just a bit too fast and tipped the grill over on its front side, but it didn’t look like there was any damage. We got it down and into the garage, and then I was off to Summer’s for dinner.

Summer made chicken and dumplings, and it turned out really great. I ate way too much though, and the heartburn ate away at me the rest of the night. We watched a couple episodes of Modern Family, and then she went to bed and Eaddie and I watched an episode of House to finish up the fifth season. She still can’t believe the show is still so good this many seasons in, and I keep telling her it gets better. It’s one of the few shows I think they did an excellent job of ending without fizzling out.

After that, I headed back home for the evening to rearrange in the garage a bit. I made just enough room to squeeze past the grill until I can find a cover for it to put it under the porch. I guess now I’ll have to find a way to get my old one to my parents’ house, but that shouldn’t be too bad. The new one is huge though. I can’t wait to try it.

Went looking for a hot deal on a grill, and found a grate one. Job well-done.