Tag: friends

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UpToDate

I was phlegmy all day today, which was no fun. I went through two cups of coffee to keep my throat soothed. The office was quiet again, except for when it literally wasn’t. The girls up front were cackling over something, so I had to give them a hard time. I got into a few different things that people sent me, but nothing too difficult.

I wasn’t super hungry until right at lunch time, and someone suggested Western Sizzlin. I probably should have stayed at the shop to eat my leftover chicken mac, but I figured I would feel a little less guilty if I started with a salad.

Just before school let out, I went to Oakland to take care of a couple small things. I ended up staying longer than I originally planned, and left after most of the kids were gone. Everyone had wound down at the shop by then, so I was quickly out by quitting time.

I was supposed to pick up Eaddie from school, but Autumn called just as I was about to leave and offered to pick her up and take her to the football game “so she could hang out with Maleea” instead of going to karate like she had planned. I knew immediately that she was full of shit, but then she asked whether I was going to spend the night with them, and said she would take Eaddie to school early in the morning if I didn’t. I took the opportunity to stay home and spend a bunch of time cleaning up the garage while the weather was nice.

The mosquitos eventually got to me, but I was happy with the dent I had made in all the junk in the garage. I came inside to watch the latest episode of She-Hulk, and then Brandie texted out of the blue to check in. I shared with her our new week of drama, and it sounded like she has a pretty busy rest of the year.

Summer eventually called before going to sleep, and I showed her around the garage. She had called her clinic for an update, but both her doctor and nurse were out, and the neurologist referral apparently wasn’t able to get her an appointment any earlier than mid-December. When we finished talking, I wrapped everything up and did my best to keep from getting distracted from going to sleep myself.

Abomaste

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Not Much for Surprises

I had to go to Oakland a couple times this morning, but the work orders were easy fixes. I don’t think anyone else was super motivated around the office, but I kept fairly busy until lunch time. We went to Taco John’s as usual, and I ran into the Cochrans on their way out. We chatted for a little bit in the entryway about their retirement and my bikes. When everyone else showed up and we sat down to eat, Ben showed up. Evidently he had been around town meeting with some schools, and arranged to meet us for lunch.

I took the afternoon off and went by Superfast to check on Summer. She had a bit of work to do before her MRI, so I went home and waited for her to pick me up. As soon as she got there, we went to Saint Mary’s and filled out paperwork. We had to wait a little bit, but then she went to the back for the MRI while I waited in the lobby. The girls had dentist appointments after that, so we surprised them by showing up to pay their copays. Autumn was in a mood, and Eaddie just rolled her eyes about it. On the way out, Summer got a call about her MRI, which reportedly showed something odd about her frontal lobe. She spent the rest of the day Googling that, which would have been more upsetting if I hadn’t been present when her nurse did almost exactly the same thing.

We went to their house for a minute, but then left the girls to go back to their after-school activities. Then Summer and I headed to Conway for her work meeting. She couldn’t decide where to eat, so I tried the old trick where I told her I had the perfect place that she loved, but made her guess where we were going. She got super excited when she guessed Shark’s Fish and Chicken, but afterward changed her mind to Mexican. She really liked a place right off the highway called Los 3 Potrillos, so we went there. I’m not sure what made my parrillada so expensive, but all of the food was pretty good. The tortillas were so fresh that our server literally had to go make them for us after he brought out our food.

After we ate, we went to the shop and Summer got settled in. I waited around until I could show her how to make a Google Form for a sign-in sheet for the training she was giving. Then I went across town to Target to try and find a deal on some Google Nest mesh routers. They had one in stock that was marked at regular price, but they rang up for $80. I wished they had more than one, but I was happy with my find.

I made a quick run through the rest of the store, but nothing really jumped out at me. On the way out, I texted Ben to see what he was doing. He invited me over to his place, which was way out on the west end of town. It took me forever to get out there, and the neighborhood was a lot more tightly packed than I expected, but it was a nice place. The kids all came out to show out for company, and we eventually made it upstairs so he could show me his urinal and the bar, complete with a soda gun. He wanted to get rid of it, and offered it to me for half of what he might be able to get online. Prices seem to vary pretty wildly, but I figure I’ll probably end up with it eventually.

I left after a little while, knowing that it would take me a bit to get back to the shop. I arrived just as Summer was finishing up, so it was great timing. I was really glad I didn’t wait for her to text. We made it home without any fuss, and then everyone was off to bed.

Life’s less disappointing if you always assume the worst, but then again I am the positive one of the bunch.

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Choice

The Montego didn’t appreciate being started this morning, and the idle bounced around for a bit until I got a “failsafe engine mode” message. I shut it off, gave it a moment, and then started it right back up again without any trouble. I asked Summer if she’d ever encountered that before, and she said sometimes it just happens.

Death trap.

I made it home, but took the Shadow to work again on account of the weather. It was a bit on the cool side, but it didn’t take me long to work up a sweat. I had to walk to the Support Services building a couple times to pick up some old junk, and though the humidity wasn’t reported to be very high, and it wasn’t terribly hot outside, I couldn’t stop sweating.

I had to stop by Transportation for a moment after that, and then I spent the rest of the morning working on things in my office. Lunch time came quickly, and a group of us went to Slim Chickens. Greg had his daughter with him for an appointment in the afternoon, and she was shy at first, but by lunch time she was bouncing all over the place. I had a BOGO deal of questionable value, and took the leftovers back to the shop fridge.

The afternoon was quiet, but I kept pretty busy. I ended the day upstairs with a few new work orders, and then came back to the shop to close up. I had to shoo Tammy out, otherwise she would have kept working late. Autumn had called to ask me to pick up Eaddie because they had a disagreement about who had to do what. Autumn wanted to go mow the lawn at her grandparents’ house, but Eaddie had to finish an assignment for band before she left school. Autumn did a good job of making it sound like Eaddie was the asshole, but of course Eaddie ultimately had other details.

I took my time getting home, wanting to make Eaddie sweat it out a bit since she didn’t pre-arrange for me to pick her up. I stopped for gas at Casey’s, but then changed my mind and went to Shell instead. When I got home, I called Eaddie back and went to pick her up. We stopped back by my house to get some air in the damaged back tire, and then went to Lowe’s to drop off some recycling. As I was walking back to the car, I passed an old guy that had been staring at a riding lawn mower parked behind his trailer since before we pulled in. I stopped to offer a hand, and managed to push it up onto the trailer by myself. He didn’t really have proper straps to tie it down, but I did my best and left the rest to hopes and dreams.

Autumn beat us home with some stuff to bake cookies, but then went out to mow the rest of the back yard. I started grilling some burgers for the girls a little before Summer got home, and then we all ate a mix of a bunch of leftovers. I was astounded by how well the old lettuce and tomato had kept from the last time we grilled burgers, but it all turned out pretty good. I had a slight overflow issue with the deep fryer, but that cleaned up alright.

After we ate, we sat the girls down to talk about how both of them were both right and wrong, and pleaded with them to work on their communication with one another. Then everyone went to bed while I waited up to finish Autumn’s laundry. When I put Summer to bed, she said John invited her to Thanksgiving, but evidently I had done something last year that offended him enough that I wasn’t allowed.

I’m never particularly afraid to offend anyone, but I certainly never go anywhere with that intent. I know I can get into belligerent moods where I say things off the cuff, and then dig in even if things go awry. I don’t think it was really fair to Summer to put her in that predicament, but I’m glad for her that someone chose to be her friend. We both know a lot of people, but I don’t think either of us really have that many that we can call “friends.” I always think that I do, but then when it comes down to it, it’s really just whoever I’m working with most frequently at the time. I try not to feel too sorry for myself because I believe that to be common among humanity. They always joked that if Summer and I broke up, they would keep her over me. I’ll have to apologize, because I never meant to put anyone in a situation that might make them feel the way that any of us feel now. It’s just a sucky situation because of the way that I chose to be.

It always plays better in my head.

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Getting Things Done

Autumn had a Quiz Bowl tournament today. Summer and I got up and had some leftovers, and we mostly left Eaddie alone. After I ate, I went home and started up the grill to season the griddle top. I forgot to open the vents, so it didn’t start as quickly as it could have, but once it got rolling, the seasoning process went really well. I poked around the garage a bit while that cooked off, but I really need to start making big progress. I think tomorrow I’ll need to clean up the back yard so I can move some things out to the shed.

After a shower, I picked Summer up and we headed up to Justin’s baby shower. I didn’t really know anyone, but eventually some other guys from Superfast showed up so I wasn’t quite as outnumbered by the girls. They had a pretty great spread of finger foods, and it was actually enough that we didn’t eat for the rest of the day.

We left the shower and went straight to my parents’ house to help cover the pool for the year. Then we stopped by my office to get the leftover gravy for breakfast tomorrow. When we got back to the house, Eaddie was about ready to go to the fair. I watched Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog with Summer, and when she was ready, I dropped Eaddie off at the fairgrounds.

The rest of the evening was pretty quiet. Autumn was home when I got back, but she had plans to go to the fair and would bring Eaddie back at the end of it all. They came back a couple hours earlier than they planned, but I guess they didn’t have quite as many friends turn up as they expected.

Stop dawdling.

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Cog no sEnce

As soon as I walked into my office this morning, I got called over to Oakland, because they didn’t test the sound system in the room they wanted to use before they invited a guest speaker. I took care of that and a couple other things quickly, and then went back to the shop to dig into my Cognos reports. That’s all I did for the rest of the day.

Gary took Zach, Thomas, and me to Zaxby’s for lunch, where we met Brody and then had a surprise visit from Wesley. He told us that Cindy planned to retire at the end of the month, which was a bit of a surprise to me at least.

The afternoon was quiet and slow. Dad wanted to borrow my electric mower when his wouldn’t work. Then Eaddie wanted me to get her after school, but decided to walk to the house instead. When I got home after work, she wanted to go home immediately, so I dropped her off and then came back home where Dad had beaten me to return the mower.

I was chomping at the bit to get my new grill assembled and out of the way, so Dad helped me with that. It took us quite a bit longer than I originally expected, and we were surrounded by a cloud of mosquitos the entire time, but it felt good to have that done. We came up with an extra screw somehow though, so I’ll have to go back over the instructions later to make sure we didn’t miss anything. I’m super excited to cook on it though.

I was completely drenched in sweat by the end of that, so I decided to take a shower and then ran a hot straightening brush through my hair really slowly to try and burn off anything that might have taken up residence up there. I was super sore and exhausted after all the bending around the grill, so I doped up and wrapped up my evening as quickly as I could.

It’s teppanyaki time!

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Hanky Panky

I was sent on a surprise quest upstairs today to finish up what Greg had started yesterday. I didn’t get anywhere close to finishing, because most of the desktops were missing USB drivers and were therefore unusable until I remoted into each one to install them. Messing with that got me to lunch, and six of us met up at Brangus, where Thomas was already having lunch with a couple of his boys. He ended up paying for all of ours except Brody, who showed up late and had to order as we were getting our food.

I got caught up in the afternoon fighting SCCM and imaging a couple old Lenovo student laptops for Zach, for Gary. I got one of them to work finally, but I’ll need to go back and modify a script that isn’t naming them correctly.

As soon as I left work, I went home to change so I could run to Conway and pick up Summer. She had tickets to see Hank Williams Jr. with Ashlen in Little Rock, but Ashlen wouldn’t be passing through for them to ride together. She didn’t want to eat either, which was fine on account of how much I had for lunch. I picked her up at the Conway Splash and then dropped her off at the arena.

For nearly six hours, I wandered around Little Rock. My first stop was Walmart on McCain. I actually found one of the grills I had been looking for, but wasn’t sure it would even fit in the car. I think I’d really rather get the larger one anyway. I killed quite a bit of time wandering through the whole store until I decided to get some food.

It took me a while to decide where to eat, but I ultimately landed on Rally’s, which was right in the same lot. When I walked up to the window, an old guy seemed to be having trouble communicating his burger customizations to the employee. Then she stuck her head out the window and started dropping F-bombs and telling the guy he didn’t have to talk to her like she was stupid. I definitely did not witness the same interaction that she did, and I probably should have turned around and left then. She continued to be loud and crude the entire time I was there, but astoundingly the food was actually pretty good.

After I ate, I went across the street to Home Depot to kill some more time. There, I actually found an assembled version of the larger grill, which looked pretty awesome. It would be great for the amount of food we normally end up grilling, and I’d love to be able to use it for smoking. I nearly closed that place down, but decided to move on to a McDonald’s that showed to be open until 10.

When I got to McDonald’s, the sign confirmed the hours posted on Google Maps, but the door was locked. I didn’t bother to ring the doorbell, but another girl came up after me and actually rang it. A guy appeared from around the corner and made a big C with his hand through the window. The girl seemed a bit confused, and the guy ultimately let her in so her baby girl could use the restroom.

Just about then, Blake texted and said he was done with his date and invited me over to his place. He was about four miles on the other side of the arena, so I met up with him at the apartments. We visited with rapid-fire questions back and forth until Summer texted that she was walking out of the concert.

I drove back to the arena, but my instructions weren’t clear enough and I still got stuck in traffic. It wasn’t too incredibly bad, but the construction on the interstate made things much worse. We made it back to Conway for her car, and then on home as quickly as we could. The girls were already asleep, and we weren’t far behind.

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Swim&Ms

Summer scrambled some ham, cheese, and eggs together for breakfast this morning. Eaddie didn’t want to come out of her room much, but she at least ate with everyone else. Autumn actually wanted to come swim with Summer and me, which was a bit of a surprise. It didn’t take long for her to start acting a bit cranky though. We eventually made it to my parents’ house, and Dad came out to join us while Mom slept in.

After we finished swimming in the midday sun, they dropped me off at my house so I could clean up before our double date with Melinda and Matt. I tinkered a bit, but didn’t get up to a whole lot. I watched a little bit of Ms. Marvel just to see if I thought Eaddie might be interested in watching it with me. I’m not sure she’ll care much about the characters, but some of the effects are pretty neat.

Summer eventually made it back down to pick me up, and we headed to Cagle’s Mill for dinner with my old workmate and her husband. I really didn’t have much to say, and Summer spent quite a while just talking about work, so I think it was a little more awkward for Matt and me than anything. The girls enjoyed their drinks though, and all of their food looked pretty good. My ribeye looked awful, but tasted alright. After Summer’s work talk, Melinda kept the small talk going until we decided it was time to head home.

The girls were watching the last episode of Stranger Things, so Summer and I went to the bedroom for some quiet. Then everyone made it to sleep relatively early.

Puff!

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Freeze!

I spent most of this morning very slowly trying to replace the cafeteria computers at Oakland. While I waited for them to boot up and update, I ended up exploring the walk-in cooler, as well as the freezer section located through a second doorway inside the refrigerator. I panicked a little bit as the button to open the door from the inside had frozen stuck for a moment, but I escaped. After that, I tinkered around until lunch time when a group of us went to Freddy’s.

I misspoke and got my burger without all the veggies, which was detrimental to its flavor. I also still wonder what a sport pepper is, since they didn’t have any. I was the only one to end my meal with any custard, but I had earned a free concrete in the form of a key lime pie. It was delicious, but I only had a few bites before we headed back to the shop.

I spent most of the afternoon helping Zach and Greg run a couple lines at Central Office. It was frustrating to see all of the renovations there, while we can’t even drink the tap water downstairs. I got a little itchy from the insulation in the ceiling, but fortunately it was a short run. I spent more time terminating than actually running the cable.

I walked across to the Transportation office for the last bit of the day, and ended up talking to Kayla well past quitting time. We shared our gossip, and she tried to offer any advice she could for our situation with Autumn. Summer texted that they were home and ready to cook dinner, so I had to run home and change before stopping by Walmart for a few last-minute ingredients.

When I got there, Summer and Autumn were both in the kitchen, dancing around each other. Summer made a sort of stir-fry while Autumn baked snickerdoodles. We had a good dinner, everyone got along, and then Summer did some stuff for work before heading off to bed. Autumn ended up sleeping on the couch while I documented our troubles with her for our FINS petition. I stayed up later than I wanted, but I think I got most everything written down.

It’s important to be historically accurate!

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The Legend of the Space Viking

I slept in pretty late today after staying up way too late last night. Summer got up and went to the gym with Autumn and returned home around the time I was getting ready for a shower. We didn’t waste any time getting out of the house and headed to Conway for lunch. Eaddie had mentioned Big Orange, so we went for Red Robin instead so we could eat earlier in the day. The restaurant was pretty quiet, but service was incredibly slow. Our server brought out our “endless” fries in tiny baskets that had barely enough fries for one person, and then one cup of the campfire sauce for all four of us to share. Then when the food finally showed up, Summer’s salad was the best looking meal on the table.

Disappointed, we made our way to Little Rock and went straight to Goodwill. The girls really wanted to shop for some clothes, which was a little surprising to me. I figured by now they would be used to buying enough stuff new that they wouldn’t have any interest in thrifting. The store was a bit warm, and all the employees seemed to hate their lives. They were super busy, and the checkout line stretched halfway across the store. I found a cow butter dish, and we got a couple arms full of clothes for the girls by the time we left.

From there, we went on to the Promenade and got Eaddie some ice cream from MaggieMoo’s. It was Summer’s idea, but by the time we got there, she wasn’t feeling up to eating any, so Eaddie was the only one that got anything. I helped her with her cone, and then we crossed the street to get to the theater.

We all just wanted to cool off more than anything. The sun was incredibly hot outside, and the air conditioning in the IMAX couldn’t keep up. John and Melissa showed up just before the show, and then we all sat down for Thor: Love and Thunder. I thought it was a great movie, and it was nice that none of the previews really gave anything away. It really did kind of jump all over the place.

After the movie, we all went to Chuy’s for dinner. The service there wasn’t a whole lot better. They also seemed understaffed, and our waitress struggled to keep chips and salsa on the table. Summer and Eaddie weren’t super hungry, so I just shared a double order of fajitas with them.

We visited for a while and then hit the road for an uneventful ride home. Eaddie went through all of her clothes from Goodwill to show us, and then everyone was off to bed.

What a classic Thor adventure!

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Pull It

I got the R1 out for a ride to work today. It was a beautiful ride in the morning, and then a little warm in the afternoon, but still nice at speed. We all ended up going to the middle school to pull a few lines, except for Brody, who misunderstood the assignment and went to the high school by himself.

I rode with Kyle to the building, where he parked in back, a ways away from where we needed to be. Then we had to walk to the front anyway, since we had to help unload the truck and bring everything inside. I kind of got stuck with him on one of the jobs, and though he seemed to be trying, he definitely had some issues climbing the ladders. He said he was terrified of them, but for being so small on such new, sturdy ladders, I just couldn’t see it. I tried not to be too frustrated with him, and definitely tried to nurture him along. I still ended up doing most of the climbing, and an hour job ended up taking us the whole day.

We tried using a couple of old lines that were already in the room, but only one worked. The others we found went back to where an old switch was located. There, we discovered a huge bundle of cables that had just been cut and left in the ceiling. We’ve been struggling to find work all week anyway, so I decided we should clean out all the old cable from the ceiling. We got most of it done before lunch, when Kyle dropped me off back at the shop.

I rode to Taco John’s and met with four of the others for a cheap lunch. I hate when they don’t automatically print receipts, because then I don’t get extra rewards points. The tacos were incredible today though. They were loaded with well-seasoned meat, and were some of the best tacos I’ve ever had from there.

We went back to the middle school to finish in the afternoon, but still had a couple hours to kill before quitting time. I took the old cable to Cunningham for scrap, then stopped at Casey’s for some snacks. When I got back to the shop, they had received one of the Dell dock/port-replicating monitors to test out, and everyone was in Thomas’s office trying to get it to work. I sat in the shop for most of it, since I was completely beat from going up and down ladders all day, plus I stank from the sweat, and I wouldn’t have really added anything to the group that was already working on it. Greg came back and ate some deer, offering me a couple bites, and then shared the top secret location of his cabin. It was neat that he wanted to talk to me about hunting for a bit, because it wasn’t like he was just talking to another hunter about things he had killed.

After work, Gary followed me home to get the weighted blanket I picked up for him. Then I went to my parents’ house to swim for a bit before picking Autumn up from karate. She wasn’t at all happy to see me, but she became nicer once we got home. Summer worked from home and made a corned beef for dinner, so the three of us ate at the dinner table before Autumn got current with Stranger Things.

I had sent Eaddie a picture of the corned beef, and she asked me to bring her some to band camp after nine, so I had her call me once she was ready. My old buddy, Neal, was there delivering some pizzas, so after I got my hug from Eaddie, we stood outside and chatted for quite a while. He always has all kinds of random stuff to talk about, and it was fun catching up a bit.

Everyone was off to bed when I got back to the house, so I tried not to waste any time myself. Hopefully I’ll sleep better after such a long day today.

Add it up.