Tag: friends

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Surrounded by Giants

I got out of the hotel this morning and went to a place called Big Bad Breakfast to eat. They had pretty good reviews, but I didn’t really expect it to be quite so “upscale.” I sat at the bar, turned down a mimosa, and had a Creole omelet with some fresh-squeezed, ruby red grapefruit instead. The juice was a bit more bitter than I expected, but the omelet was delicious. The andouille sausage and shrimp were unusual for breakfast, but great.

After breakfast, I headed to the Embassy and got checked into the conference by Darrel himself. Just after I got through, I caught Gary and Ryan coming in. Then Derrick snuck up behind me and said my name, and I chatted with him for just a moment. He was only there by happenstance, and wasn’t even aware of the conference.

I eventually made my way back to the classroom where we got things started. Brody showed up late, but he didn’t seem terribly interested in most of what they had to say anyway. I really don’t have a clue what he does in Clarksville, but I wish I had his job at that salary. The unbelievable luck of that kid is astounding to me.

Lunch at the hotel was pretty good, but awkwardly placed. They had different stuff for tacos, but it was arranged in a poor order for assembling, so I ended up with a huge plate of mush that I just sort of mixed together and ate with cold, crumbly tortillas.

I thought our session was great, and got a ton of useful information out of it even though we ended a bit early. I even joked that we had paid for the full session, and asked for a refund for the unused time. I caught up with Gary out in the lobby while he was waiting for Ryan, and ended up spending the rest of the evening with them.

We went up to Gary’s room for a little bit and chatted some more there while Brody went to the gym. Then we met him at Genghis Grill for dinner, but he was late to that too. The food was pretty good, but I had forgotten just how expensive that place was. When we got back to the hotel, I used Gary’s key card to get into the garage to charge. Then we hung out in the atrium where they had a band cranked up way too loud for being in the middle of an open area in a hotel with rooms facing inward. We could barely hear ourselves think, much less hear each other without absolutely screaming at each other. We could have easily cut the volume in half and been better off.

I was the last one out, and played on my phone in the car for a little while until I finished charging. Then it was back to the hotel to wind down and sleep before a day of cybersecurity.

No fair.

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This Guy Fawkes

Summer had a race in Conway this morning, and Eaddie had to get to the high school to take a bus to Conway for her orchestra concert. I got up pretty early myself and took a bath before Summer got back home. Then we packed up for a night at Alice’s.

We left Eaddie with the Model Y and took the Murano to Conway, which was awful after living on Autopilot for the past year. My arms were constantly tired, and all of my muscle memories were wrong. Our first stop was the liquor store in Morrilton, and then the China Town buffet in Conway for lunch. We finished up there just in time to make it across town to the Conway High School for Eaddie’s concert.

Both bands were pretty good, but I think my absolute favorite song was Eaddie’s last one. The concert was pretty short with only three songs from each of two bands, and then we headed straight to Alice’s place, only making a brief stop at a Dollar General for some energy drinks.

It was a small party this year. Alice and Josh were there, and Josh had one other friend come by. I took Summer, Alice, and the kids to the guest house to check things out, and then to see her in-laws next door briefly before going back to the house. They had some snacks there, but the girls mostly just chatted in the kitchen while the guys went down to start the fire. By the time we made it down the hill, it had mostly died down.

It was a great night of chatting by the fire though, and then we got to retire to a guest house instead of making the drive home after midnight. The guest house was a really cool, two-level house with everything we could have needed. Summer crashed pretty quickly while watching an episode of Fear Factor, which appeared to be on repeat. I wrapped up pretty quickly myself so I wouldn’t sleep too late.

That’s enough 90s television.

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Artsy Fartsies

I was alone again today, which gave me summertime vibes. It was difficult to pin down any one project, but I didn’t really resolve either of my big two, although I did get started on Jamf. I imagine I’ll have to migrate all of our old devices over to our new server, since I hadn’t touched it since I renewed the license right after I was hired.

Lunch was a sad “barbecue” sandwich, and the afternoon dragged on for what felt like multiple days. Then I went to feed the fish before going home to wait for the girls. Summer picked up Eaddie in Conway from orchestra practice and took her shopping for a nice dress for her concert tomorrow. I ate leftover pizza.

When they finally got to town, I met them at the River Valley Arts Center for Suzanne’s exhibit. The biggest surprise of the night was Rachel coming over to talk, because we didn’t interact a whole lot in high school, and I don’t think I had spoken to her since then, though I’d seen her around town periodically.

The girls went home early since it had been a long day. I stayed behind and chatted with Trent for a while, and then a couple of us went to see the kiln room and got a little bit of a local history lesson. We walked around the property a bit and I got to see the edge of an old pool from like the 30s.

The girls were settled in when I got home. Dad and Julie were trying to organize Thanksgiving for 25, so I counted my turkeys twice. It was nice having my desk set up, but I still didn’t get my computer chair. I need to order a new chair mat for the carpet. So many things to buy. So little time.

Fine. It’s ordered.

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JosWEIGH 2023

Work was quiet, apart from a breakout rendition of the “Happy Birthday” song during lunch at the peak of the elementary kids’ lungs. I wasn’t super motivated, and was still a bit scattered. The kids that clean the trash cans after lunch are getting worse and worse with handling the cans out by my car, so I’ll probably need to park somewhere else if I can find room.

I left as close to four as I could manager, and headed home to charge for a while. Josue texted that he was coming to town, so I fed the fish and ran to the new house to get Summer and pick up some food to grill for an impromptu visit. We picked up some chicken legs and brats at the Neighborhood Market, and had a pretty good dinner and conversation. It wasn’t fancy, but it was nice to have someone over for a bit, and I hadn’t seen Josue since Summer and I went to Hawaii with my family.

After we ate, I showed him around the house. Then we went for a drive in both of the Teslas. Then we walked around the outside of the house to show him the yard and the outhouse. It was a nice visit, and then everyone was off to bed. I dawdled a bit too long and had trouble staying awake to blog. Hopefully this weekend is productive.

Of course. Gotta maintain that ratio!

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If I Had a Nickel

I slept in a little bit today before we got around to organizing the house. Summer mostly did things herself in the spare room, and I finally got the cabinets pulled away from the wall in the laundry room. I got a little hangry after a while, so I showered and we went to Mulan’s, Walmart, and then to my house to pick up a few more things.

I had an idea to mount Eaddie’s bathroom Google Nest Mini on the wall and to make the power cord into some wall art to look like a flower stem with leaves. The Command Strips we picked up weren’t perfect, but I eventually got them to stick, and I thought it looked pretty good.

Summer didn’t feel great, so she cancelled her therapy appointment, took a bath, and settled down pretty quickly. Brody invited me to see The Exorcist: Believer, but I turned him down on account of my being a big sissy. He stopped by to check out the house though, and then I let him take a ride around the block in the Model Y. He seemed to be doing pretty well at Clarksville, and it made me angry again that I didn’t go join him when I had the chance. The pay there really would have been so much better.

Eaddie was out late at an away game, so I was up by myself pretty late. I took apart the dryer because it had been making an awful racket, and I shook a nickel free from the edge of the drum. That seemed to resolve the issue, so I put everything back together and eventually made it to bed.

This sleep schedule is getting out of hand.

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Consoling

After being late yesterday, I was actually really early today. I backtracked to Wendy’s for breakfast this time, and still made it to work several minutes early. I decided early on that I wasn’t going to get any work done, all to focus on moving things out of my office and into the front office with Kim. I started by moving some things around in our storage room, and I think I might have a reasonable plan for how to make the storage more easily accessible.

I skipped out on lunch because ham and cheese wraps sounded awful. I survived on coffee and lemonade and stayed an hour late until I got almost everything out. There was still one set of cabinets with some toner in them, but I don’t even know what they went to, so I figured that can be a problem for Monday.

We decided to keep the television console, so I queued Kevin up again. I thought he was going to be later than he was, so I started to go get some food. He texted me just as I left the house, so I turned around and went to the new house to pick up my straps. As soon as I got there, I realized the girls never took them out of the Murano after they unloaded, so I had to go back to the high school to get them while Eaddie was at a football game. I met Kevin at his place since I was already right by him, and we took his truck to get the console.

The power was already shut off, so we were working in the pitch black. Somehow we managed to get it loaded onto the truck, and I grabbed the lawn mower as well. There were still a few small things to get that Summer didn’t grab, but I figured that would wait until the next day. We got the console and mower to the new house, and then Kevin took me back to my car.

I finally stopped at Arby’s for some dinner, just as it approached bedtime. I’ve been a constant state of exhaustion, and the Big Game Burger I got was kind of a disappointment. Summer was up and mentioned a centipede in the bathroom, but all she did was cover it with a towel and surround it with shoes, hoping it wouldn’t get away. Then she got confused about what kind of bug it was. In fact, it was a centipede, and we were lucky it didn’t crawl away. I dispatched it and then took a shower, taking time to clean a whole bunch of gunk out of the crevices while I was in there. Of course water went everywhere outside of the shower while I did that, so I had to suck that up with the Bissell too. It was super nasty.

Frustrated yet again, I struggled to get to bed for the night. It wasn’t entirely fair, nor was it entirely unfounded. It feels like another week gone by, and not much closer to feeling like home.

It’s just not my year.

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You Don’t Have to Go Home

Somehow I lost track of time this morning after staying at the new house, so I was 15 minutes late to work today. I didn’t really accomplish anything again, because I was preoccupied with moving stuff out of my office. I still can’t believe they’re just fine with cutting my space in half. It would be a résumé-generating event if I hadn’t just updated it already.

Overall the day went by pretty quickly, especially the morning. There’s still a lot to move tomorrow, and if nothing else gets done, oh well. I messaged Kevin on the way home to see if he would be up for helping me move the last of the big stuff from Summer’s old house, and he said he could later in the evening.

I stopped at Casey’s for some free M&Ms before going home for a little while to charge. Then I stopped by my parents’ house for some phở for dinner before going to the new house to find Summer ready to settle in for the night. I motivated her to go to the old house with me so we could prep for Kevin, and Eaddie went to a Tech band concert.

We finally got Summer’s bed apart after taking out way more screws than were required. I honestly don’t even know if we’ll be able to put it back together properly. It’s going to be well and truly rigged at this point. The whole thing was really just supposed to slide apart.

Kevin showed up and helped me take two loads to the new house. We got the washer, dryer, and bed the first trip. Then Summer stayed home while Kevin and I got the deep freeze, kitchen table, and a couple other random things. Summer will have to go back for a little more, but unless we decide we want to bring a couple more cabinets home, we’re done. I just wish she had listed them for free so they could go somewhere useful.

After Kevin left, I hopped in to try the shower to get some of the sweat off of me, and I’m pretty sure it took a couple layers of skin. It felt like I was drowning the entire time, and there was no way to adjust the water pressure down. It was so high-pressure that it was difficult to change the spray pattern.

Eaddie and I chatted for a little bit while I did my stuff on the computer, and then I did my best to squeak into bed by midnight.

But you can’t stay here.

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But You, You Were My Favorite

Today was a full day. The roads were clear and I made it to work really early. I spent nearly all morning reading documentation on an Aruba switch. I felt good about it, but didn’t learn what I was needing to know. I finally asked Gary, and he explained it perfectly, and I knew exactly what I was missing in my new life.

The school got everyone Taco Villa for lunch, so everyone gathered in the cafeteria to eat, and then Harry gave a short speech to end the year. I stuck around for a while just to make sure everyone else was gone, and then left very near to last. I had to get charged back up so Eaddie and I could make it to Rogers.

Once I was back up to 90%, I stopped by Superfast to see Summer, and then I picked Eaddie up. We hit the road and ran into really heavy traffic all the way to Alma. We knew we wanted to stop somewhere for dinner, but didn’t know what we wanted. Eaddie finally found a place called La Sirenita in Springdale that caught her eye, so we found that little hole in the wall where we were greeted in Spanish. It was at that point I knew the food would be good. The gorditas weren’t anything like I was expecting because they weren’t really crispy enough, but it was good food and friendly service.

From there, we made it to the Walmart AMP just in time for the gates to open. We parked in an EV charger spot, but the ChargePoint charger didn’t seem to work. It looked dusty and non-functioning to begin with, but the charger wouldn’t even come out of the socket. We stayed parked there and walked down to the line of people, got through the gates, and then found a short, fast, hidden merch line.

Once we had a couple shirts, we found a place on the lawn and I waited for Brandon and Diana to show up. Brandon said they had tickets to the show, but I didn’t ask them early enough to plan dinner. Eaddie and I moved around a bit, and she sat on the other side of some people for a while, but eventually joined us when Brandon and Diana found me. They got a couple seats, but I still didn’t really think they were worth the extra $10.

Coheed and Cambria were an awesome opening act, and I enjoyed them every bit as much as Incubus. Both of the frontmen were incredibly talented with how well they belted their lyrics all night. The crowd definitely got more excited for the headlining group though. Brandon and Diana left early, so Eaddie and I took over their lawn chairs until after they played the last song. Then we made it back to the car and fought stupid traffic for the first time there. For some reason they wouldn’t let us go left out of the parking garage, so we had to fight our way around a street with a median, and then through a roundabout that had no traffic control.

We stopped in Lowell for a quick charge and a drink, and then we headed home as quickly as we could. I got the car down to 8%, which was half the estimated charge the navigation said I would have when we started, but it was fine. We dropped it off at my house around 1:30 to charge back up, and then headed up to Summer’s where everyone was fast asleep.

The sky resembles a backlit canopy with holes punched in it.

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Day 4 of Travel

I got up this morning and immediately started getting ready for my fourth day of travel. I stopped by the election commission headquarters on the way home and voted in the school board election. Then I continued home to get ready for my interview in Maumelle. I made it down the interstate fast enough that I got off early and drove through town to save a little bit of range. Of course the navigation was faulty, so I had to make a block, but I got there with plenty of time.

I only had to wait a couple minutes for them to come interview me. I talked to Tim and Ryan to first determine whether I could talk to humans, and then whether I could talk to computers. After Tim left, I felt much less confident in my answers, simply because Ryan was really looking for specific examples of projects I had completed. The work I’ve done for the past several years has been so sporadic that I really didn’t have any good solo examples. After we finished talking, he left me with a paper test and a pen, and I had to write out answers to the best of my ability. Once I finished that, I had to place it on the receptionist’s desk and basically walked out waving to the guys that were in their offices with headsets on.

Mitch was at Blake’s apartment, so I went there next to change and then take Mitch to a late lunch. As we did that, he told me that I was invited to dinner with Blake, but I didn’t realize it was at his girlfriend’s house and that she was cooking. We had lunch at The Fold, which had some killer fancy tacos which were a bit pricy, but the guacamole and cheese dip plate seemed really reasonable in comparison. Both the food and service were excellent.

We struggled to come up with a solid plan after that, so we went to Franklin’s Charging Station after that to get a little bit of free juice while we waited to go to dinner. I showed Mitch my Steam Deck while we sat in the air conditioning. After a while, I decided we would head on over to Justina’s house since I wasn’t sure how traffic would be. We actually arrived before either of them, but then she pulled in right behind us. Her two boys and their dog were all over the place while she started cooking dinner. Blake eventually showed up and we took turns playing Mario Party with one of the boys.

After dinner, we played a tiny game of Uno, and then another game called Forbidden Island. It was a cooperative game with tiles that were spaced out randomly. It was a little scattered at times, but eventually I had a fair grasp of how to strategize. We just barely won, but I thought it was a lot of fun.

As the kids went to bed, we parted ways. I took Mitch to another friend’s ritzy apartment complex with agate code and literal fire on the road sign. The amenities sounded pretty intense as well. We said our goodbyes, and I made the lone trip home in the dark. Just past Conway, I could barely make out a black tire in the middle of the black road. It appeared to be a whole tire, so I called 911 after failing to reach the state police using the short code on the road signs. They connected me to the state police, and I let the officer there know what I had seen so they could try and get it out of the road before someone got hurt.

I made it home safely, swapped cars, and then headed up to Summer’s for bedtime. Everyone was long asleep, so I finished up quickly and went to bed.

I just want my job back.

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Surpies!

I had to force some productivity this morning, and finally got loan applications done for Arvest and Centennial. Not having work yet has me worried that we won’t get approved, but it won’t be the end of the world. After that was done, Summer went to the gym and I did an online personality test for a prospective employer. It would be a long commute, but at least it would get some money flowing. At this point, it may not suit me to be so picky.

With all of that out of the way, I made it home to shower so I could head back to Little Rock for Blake’s surprise birthday party. As soon as I turned onto the onramp, I realized traffic was at a standstill. Luckily I had only barely turned, so I had enough room to back up and turn around. I took Highway 64 to Atkins, and from there traffic had gotten up to around 60 or 70. When I got into Little Rock, I got a little bit lost trying to take the Cantrell exit and wound up going through some really cute neighborhoods. Once I got back onto the main strip, I saw some pretty wicked tornado damage.

I arrived at Damgoode Pies fairly early and wasn’t sure I’d know anyone there, so I waited in the car for a while before going in. To my surprise, we had most of the building occupied for the party. There were a ton of people there, and I didn’t know a single one. Luckily Mitch showed up with an old bartending buddy of his, and he and his girlfriend joined me at my crowded table. Robert and Karen showed up shortly after that and sat at another table in the middle of the dining room. Then Mitch hid in the restroom until Blake and his girlfriend showed up.

It was an awesome surprise, and Blake spent most of the evening just floating from table to table. It definitely blew his mind. My “Underdog Stuffie” was pretty delicious, with a crispy double crust and thick bite of cheese inside. Robert spotted it and wanted to trade a slice for their Supreme, which was also pretty good. I mostly sat in awkward silence while everyone else socialized, and as people started to filter out, I convinced Mitch to go to the hospital with me to see Gary.

It rained a bit, but it wasn’t too bad. The drive to the hospital was surprisingly short, and it was a good surprise for Gary as well. Mitch had some other socializing that he wanted to do, so we didn’t stay super long before I had to take him back to Daniel’s place. Then I headed straight home in the black of the night.

It was a long and boring drive, but I made it home without incident. I dropped my car off to charge, and then it was off to Summer’s where everyone was fast asleep. I tried not to stay up too late, and made it to bed shortly after Midnight.

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