Newtonian Roast

Dale and I delivered a couple of oversized televisions to James and Robin this morning, which felt ridiculous. I’m mostly concerned about setting the precedent. When we got back, we all spent the rest of the morning building more Chromebook carts while Brice rearranged the graveyard. I think we all basically took turns telling him how pointless that is, and then I spent a bunch of time sifting through stuff that was going out in the garbage. I don’t think we even broke $200 in scrap metal, which I expected. We would have made more by selling the miscellaneous power adapters by themselves, let alone all the other good electronics.

Allen wanted to try Newton’s Pharmacy for lunch, so he, Jason, Dale, and I went there and had the roast beef special. It was pretty good, but I thought my Oreo milkshake wasn’t quite cold or thick enough. At least it was relatively cheap and fast. Then Dale and I went to the high school after lunch to try and go over a last few things before he leaves for good in a couple of days.

After work, I stopped by Sonic to get a drink and free corn dog to surprise Summer at work. At first I thought the drive-through speaker volume was messed up, but then it became apparent that it was probably the girl on the headset that was speaking so quietly. It was also disturbing to see how many of the guys inside were looking to revive the grunge look. I think only two of the five or so people I saw looked like they had washed their hair this week.

I hung out in Summer’s office for just a few minutes before heading home for a while. It’s looking like I won’t have working air conditioning for another couple weeks, but this week has been cooler and more bearable anyway. Hopefully the sun chills out for a bit until my house is back online again.

Once Summer and Eaddie got home with some leftover pizza from her work meeting, I headed up for dinner. Then we watched an episode of Parks and Rec before bed.

Only the dirtiest of copper.

Angry Turds

It was a peculiarly small crowd at work this morning. Gary was on a tear about having to come in over the weekend to replace door batteries every four hours because power was still out since yesterday, and the doors couldn’t lock without them. Jason came back in from somewhere and was in a pretty foul mood himself, presumably because he felt he was doing the lion’s share of the work and that this wasn’t fair.

We started out in the morning moving crap around in the warehouse for seemingly no purpose. “The shell game” is a phrase I keep hearing lately, and it’s ever so relevant. We moved things from boxes to other boxes. We unnecessarily cut cords off of power bricks to scrap the dirty copper and throw out the actual useful parts. We moved Chromebooks off of pallets and into another room, and were scolded for it without genuine cause. It was overall just a very aggravating morning.

Allen and Dale wanted to go to BFD for lunch again, so I drove us down there to eat. I ate way too much there, and the service was slow again. I still haven’t completely figured out their menu pricing, which is weird because of how electronic it is. The food was good though.

After lunch, Jason sent me with Dale and Amanda to re-mount a bunch of TVs in the halls of her middle school campus. The painters patched our holes, which made it difficult to re-mount them in the same place. We made it work though, in spite of the arm cramps I started getting. When we got back to the shop, we finished the day by wiring carts in the cafeteria, which at least had air conditioning.

When I got home, I cleaned up the bettas and fed them some mosquito larvae. I found a larger container to replace the smallest, so hopefully they’ll be a little happier. Then I spent most of the evening testing inCharge cables. I had a pretty bad ratio of 2:1 cables that wouldn’t charge my phone, which was stupid and aggravating, but it seems like they’ll warranty them without too much trouble.

Finally at Summer’s for the evening, I fancied-up her work email signature and pointed out the obvious flaws of publicizing her personal cell phone number. I can’t even believe nobody considered that.

Intelligence can be such a burden.

Ridin’ the Storm Out

We woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of some pretty heavy storms. Power even went out for a little bit, but came on super quickly. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a short, full outage before. When the power came back up, I went back to sleep and slept in for a while. Eventually Summer got up and made pancakes and eggs for breakfast. She cut up some brats and fried them in a pan, but I didn’t much care for their flavor for breakfast.

Besides Summer going to the gym, none of us really accomplished much today. The girls and I pretty much sat around all day, and ended up exhausting ourselves in boredom. Eaddie tried to mow while Summer went to the gym, but the wind started whipping trees around and it started to rain again.

When Summer got back in the evening, I cut up some potatoes for fries and fried some chicken to put in sandwiches. Everyone seemed to like them pretty well. I was mostly annoyed at how messy mine was. Then Eaddie and I had A&W root beer floats.

I ended the evening playing some Overwatch just long enough to earn a limited edition skin for Baptiste. I don’t ever really play him, but that made it all that much nicer to have a secondary skin for him.

There’s no telling what Monday will bring.

Bring the Heat

We got up early this morning after a pretty good night of sleep. Summer went to pick up Autumn and get Eaddie ready for her concert. Dependable Air Conditioning made it out to fix her A/C, and just finished right as I got there after my own shower. We had just enough time to get to Tech to attend Eaddie’s band camp concert, which was held at the Doc Bryan lecture hall since Witherspoon was closed for renovations.

Eaddie made second chair in the symphonic band, so I think they were the last to play. It was a little crazy coming in, but by the end, I walked out of the room and out of the building without anyone else around. It was probably a bit chaotic once the kids got outside with their parents, but I was happy to wait patiently in the car. Once everyone came out, we took the girls to The 3D Cafe in the old Dixie Cafe building. The fries were weird, thick curls of potato that seemed to be fried from a frozen package. We got some chili cheese fries as an appetizer, and then I had a fish and shrimp basket, Summer had a deli sandwich, Autumn had a burger, and Eaddie had a moist grilled chicken sandwich. Everything was delicious, but I thought the portions were a bit small.

When we got back to the house, it had cooled down nicely. Summer had Eaddie start cleaning the house while she mowed the lawn and Autumn and I went to get groceries for dinner. On the way, I remembered that PetSmart was having a Reptile Roundup with coupons and a free mini “habitat” that was a derpy looking cardboard lizard in a plastic tub with some sand in it. We were there right at the end of the event, but still nobody was around the table at all. I stood there until one of the guys came by, and I asked to make one. Autumn was only focused on a kitten and refused to make one. I loved it though.

Finally we went to Walmart to get what we needed for dinner. I didn’t stray from the list too much, but I did choose to run home for some Gatorade instead of buying more powder there. Travis had to cancel coming over for Catan, so on the way back to Summer’s, I picked up some more zucchinis so we could feed my parents instead. Summer made little canoe-shaped boats out of the zucchinis that were cut the long way, and then cooked up some ground beef into meat balls. I boiled the potatoes for mashing, and we took everything to my parents’ house to assemble.

When we got there, Summer loaded the meatballs and I covered them all with pizza sauce and cheese before sticking them all in the oven. They turned out really well, and everyone seemed to really like them. I had trouble with the concept at first, which was difficult to wrap my own head around since I really liked all of the individual components of the meal. I just didn’t care much for the combination. After I finished one, I had gotten a taste for it though, so I had another before I went out with Summer and Autumn to swim.

It eventually started to look like lightning was coming in, so we dried off and came back inside. It started to rain quite a bit before we could get out, but after a few more minutes of waiting, we made it home. Everyone was completely exhausted, so everyone made it to their bedrooms pretty quickly.

That’s one derpy lizard. I love him.

Big Fuggin Dessert

We lacked any real leadership today, so those of us that were left mostly finished the task of collecting Chromebooks. We got a ton at Sequoyah before lunch, but ran out of chargers part of the way through. It took us a while to get an answer for what to do from there, but eventually we were told to just send them on without chargers. I figure we can find most of the chargers we need to ship back, but some will come out at the end of these leases.

Gary, Dale, and I went to Bocadillo’s Frozen Desserts for lunch, and it was both amazing and expensive. The lunch specials seem pretty great, so I’ll have to leverage that next time. Otherwise, we could feed the family with the CheatMeal for a day or two. To cap off my assortment of tacos, I had a mangonada that was to die for. It was truly perfect.

After lunch, we finished up with Oakland, where I had to weave around through the cramped aisles where all the rooms had been gutted for carpet cleaning. We ended up missing about 50 Chromebooks somewhere, but some of the guys think they forgot to check the Upper Elementary 5th Grade library.

When I finally left work, I ran home to take care of the fish before heading to my parents’ house for a swim. I wasn’t super hungry, but by the time Summer got there and swam around a bit, we had enough room for some spaghetti. On the way out, we got to see a skunk in the cat food. It didn’t seem too bothered, or even aware that I had come outside, but I was too chicken to get very close. Maybe next time.

Anyone that knows me would know it doesn’t matter if I have a use for it.

 

1:1 Practice

It was a little drizzly this morning, but we decided to continue on with our great Chromebook hunt. We ended up getting just over 500 more Chromebooks to the UPS store by the end of the day, with only a short lunch break with Allen to Wind Taste. It really felt to me like a trial run of returning the high school laptops. I was hot, sweaty, and sticky by the time we left, so I ran home to change before meeting Summer at my parents’ house for dinner.

Mom warmed up the leftover phở for the four of us, and then we headed back to Summer’s for the evening. The turtle tank was looking pretty rough, and I had a lapse in memory where I imagined Autumn was away at band camp and not just choosing to exist somewhere else for the evening, so I cleaned it out myself. If I had remembered she could have been here, I would have made her come home to clean it herself.

lOl

The A Team

It saddens me to say that today was an unusually good day at work. Jason had us all go start collecting old leased Chromebooks, so we took both trucks, loaded up with dollies and empty retail boxes, and visited four elementary campuses to collect the equipment. Of course he didn’t really have much of a plan to do any of it, and he even had to leave for half of the day to work on something else while we did the grunt work. Regardless, we pulled together and got into a groove that really worked for us. Everyone participated, and nobody ever got upset with anyone else. It was really quite the sight.

Four of us went to Taco John’s for lunch, where I ended up eating too much because I craved Potato Olés, and then Gary ended up hardly touching his. I still consider it a good choice for the day though, because they were probably the hottest and freshest I had ever had, and they were seasoned and crisped perfectly. The tacos were a bit stale, but after the fried potato bliss, I wasn’t in any shape to argue.

We continued with more of the same in the afternoon, touching just over 300 Chromebooks for the day. Jason even let us go an hour early for our efforts, but Gary and I ended up going to the junior high to take care of some things for James in his new office. Then we chatted for a bit after we walked out, and finally left just before 5.

Summer went to the gym, so I had a little time to kill. I was hot and sticky from sweating all day, so I ran home to change and clean up a little, then stopped by Walgreens on the way up to her house so I could get my new prescription. Hopefully splitting it up in the morning and evening will help, but I’m still annoyed that I’m having to keep up with all of that. I guess I really do need to just purchase a blood pressure cuff for home.

When I got Summer, we went to my parents’ house for spaghetti dinner. I wanted to swim from being so overheated, but it was dark and cold by the time we finished, and we figured it’d be best to head back home to bed.

Every Other Week

It was back to work today after another week away. I’ve really gotten used to not being around over the summer, and it’s been great avoiding so much of the negativity. I feel like summer is slipping away, and we’ve still got so much work to do. That doesn’t even include me figuring out what the hell I’m doing at the high school.

Ben was out and Jason didn’t have any direction for us, so everyone split up to do their own things. I played a bit of catch up myself before taking Brice and Allen to Chick-fil-A to meet Dale and Gary for lunch. They had their peach milkshakes, which made the whole visit worthwhile. Then I met Heather at the junior high to take a look at the outside signs. We appeared to have a bad hard drive in one, so we pulled it and took it back to the shop for Jason.

I had another nurse checkup where they fussed that my blood pressure was still high. Instead of upping my dosage again, she added a third prescription. To complicate things further, she wants me to take them at different times. She wasn’t as pumped about my tracking spreadsheet either, since I couldn’t limit the data to only include readings taken a couple hours after taking my meds. It’s beyond annoying dealing with it, and at times it doesn’t even feel worth the frustration.

After blowing an hour there, I went back to the shop where I teamed up with Brice to check out all the work orders I’ve been ignoring for Oakland. We got a few things done, and it was nice to have the help. A lot of the cleanup stuff will have to wait until the beginning of the school year since teachers will move things around again.

I headed home and spent some time cleaning up after the pets before rummaging around for a wireless charger to use in Summer’s charging picture frame. I didn’t have a lot of room to work, but eventually I got it soldered and working. With any luck, it won’t catch on fire. Mom texted that she made phở, so I stopped for gas, got Summer, and headed to their house for dinner. Summer was exhausted from work, so we headed straight home after that and went to bed.

The heat was hot.

But It’s Hot

We got up this morning and Summer took the girls out to run Father’s Day errands. I cleaned up some leftovers before heading back to my house to take care of things there. I got two loads of laundry done, messed with the fish, took a shower, and parsed through my air conditioner quotes.

Dad wanted Western Sizzlin’ for dinner, so we all met back up there to eat. Autumn ate lunch meat and Eaddie tried to eat a huge plate full of desserts. It really made me want to put them on an original Soylent diet as punishment. After we ate, Summer took Autumn to stay with her parents while I went home and went over the air conditioner quotes with Dad. Then Mom came in and escalated things the way that she does.

Back at Summer’s, the three of us settled in for a couple episodes of Parks and Rec before bed.

Steps are for climbing.

HSTI Fatigue

I slept in for as long as I could today, and I was still exhausted all day. I spent a while at Summer’s just checking email and catching up on the computer. I cleaned up some salad for lunch before heading home to clean up there.

On the way to my parents’ house, I stopped by Walgreens for a refill on my blood pressure meds. Then I sat and chatted with Dad for a while about the air conditioning quotes he got.

I still didn’t make a final decision though, and headed back to Summer’s for the evening once she got home from work and the gym. We warmed up the last steak to cut up over salads, and then watched a little Battlestar Galactica before bed. She passed out a little early, so I played the last half of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before passing out myself.

That ending was actually pretty gruesome…