Tag: friends

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Where Do You Want to Be

I had my one-on-one meet and greet with Thomas this morning, and it gave me a little bit of insight into what we can expect in the coming years. Shortly after I made it to the high school to help Mike continue imaging, Ben texted to check up on me. I told him it’s already a running joke that I get fired multiple times a day, and he responded that I’m in the top 10% of the department now. It really feels like it’s just a “big three” now, and Thomas basically told me not to take offense when he eventually moves me out of the office next door. I haven’t even had the chance to play him the songs of my people yet.

I made it back to the shop for lunch, and four of us met up at Quiznos. We ran into Jessica, her mom, and Kai there, and I let her know that we had their new student laptops ready to go. The afternoon was more of the same until I got a random text near the end of the day from Brandie just to check in. Then she accidentally called me instead of replying to my text, so we just chatted on the phone while Mike and I finished up with our last round of laptops for the day.

Shortly after getting home, I took the tile samples back to Ridout and gave my contact information to a guy there, who didn’t really seem to want to talk pricing with me, but rather our contractor. I wasn’t sure I liked how that went, but at least I know what tile I’m looking for now. Then I went to the shop and waited for Summer to get off work so we could go to my parents’ house for dinner.

We had spaghetti with Dad, but didn’t stick around too long before heading back home. Summer texted late about some trouble with Autumn, but that seemed to fizzle out before I got out the door. I’m about to start giving her more attention than she can stand.

I guess when you think the ends justify the means, there’s not much you won’t do.

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Quite an Impact

Summer went to work this morning and I went straight home to clean up before heading to my parents’ house. I made a big burger for lunch, and then stopped by Brody’s house to loan him my big impact wrench. He came out and just needed it to loosen the oil drain plug on his new mini truck. If I had realized that’s all it was, I probably would have brought the small impact just because of how heavy the large one was.

On the way home, I stopped by the shop to visit with Summer for a bit. Then I started on laundry once I got back home. While that was going, I piddled around the house just picking up random things. I got hungry late and made a big, grilled, bean burrito, then did my best to wind down for bed as quickly as possible.

$0.002564 per sheet

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Child’s Play

I got up this morning to meet the guys at Taco John’s for lunch. Blake and Robert were already there, both waiting in their cars like a couple of shy guys. When I started to go in, Robert yelled out his window for me to sit in his truck with him, but as soon as I got the door shut, Blake got out of his car because he saw me.

Gary and Grant both showed up eventually, and we went in to get our food. Surprisingly I think most of us were about as unimpressed with that place as I always am. I don’t get the nostalgia, but I was happy to be a part of it anyway. We chatted for hours, or rather mostly listened to Robert as he recounted stories from his steel trap of a mind. It was absolutely awesome getting to catch up, and I wished timing had worked out for Mitch to be there as well.

We wrapped up just in time for me to go home and clean up before the play. Summer got tickets for the two of us plus my parents to see Disney’s Descendants: The Musical. My parents arrived just late enough for it to be awkward to get back to our seats, and the rest of the show went about how I expected. I was glad Summer enjoyed it, but I have absolutely no feelings about school plays at all. I loved Wicked, but this basically took everything I disliked and amplified it. It was difficult to understand some 90% of the dialog, so I relied on context clues to follow the entire plot, which I had already gleaned from the summary of the show. It would have made more sense if we were taking small children.

As soon as we got home, Summer had to take off to get the girls to band camp. I tinkered with some photo backups at home for a while until Summer was ready to eat. Then I took her a new Fitbit I picked up on Prime Day, and warmed up some leftovers for us.

At some point in the evening, I lost connectivity to everything in my house. It wasn’t a power outage, so I assumed my internet had gone out. I checked in again late in the evening, and everything was still broken, so I went home to check on it. Evidently the battery backup for the home entertainment setup had gone worse, and some of my equipment was cycling on and off. I was glad to catch it before it continued on overnight, but frustrated trying to fix it while unable to turn on any of my lights. The convenience of an everyday smart home turned a simple task into an infuriating circus.

Exhausted from all the crawling about behind equipment, and knowing I had to get up for a stupid Catapult health screening in the morning, I just crashed there for the night to save myself the drive in the morning.

LINE!

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Lively Blake

Summer was going to work in Conway today, but ended up getting the day off after all due to a chance of some rain over a carwash. I got up and met Gary at Ridgewood Brothers’ to surprise Blake, who was in town for a couple days and was supposed to pick up a preorder of food for his girlfriend’s family.

Grant chatted with us for a while, but was in a bit of a sleepy haze after working overnight. Eventually he left as Gary and I stuck it out in the heat. The girlfriend’s brother ultimately came for the food, but called Blake to get him out of the house to see us. That’s when I got the idea to hide in the smokehouse and have Robert pretend that we had given up on him and left.

It was great catching up, even if he wasn’t as close to me as the rest of that group. I got to hear reminiscent stories about Mitch’s Hypotonic, which I vaguely remember. Since Grant didn’t get to see Blake that morning, we decided to meet at Taco John’s for lunch tomorrow before parting ways. Gary and I got some food on the way out, and I went back home to eat.

I picked up some Sonic on the way home, which went great with my Bronco. They had a new “Texas” barbecue sauce that I think I actually liked better than their original. With all the time in the sun, I had developed a headache and ended up sleeping for several hours into the evening.

Meanwhile, Summer was back home cooking a roast for dinner, along with some banana pudding and even an apple pie. I made it up for the evening and groggily ate, only because I felt less than good after my nap. The food was all super good, and even the apple pie was some of the better that I’ve had. The girls were getting ready for band camp, and I just sat around for the rest of the evening trying to recover from my nap.

Why are there thousands of songs about love and heartbreak, but only one song about the boys being back in town?

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Taco Fury

I woke up to breakfast after sleeping in today. Autumn went in for an “interview” at Tropical Smoothie, and was basically hired on the spot by a friend of her father’s. Summer went to the gym while I went home to clean up for a partially planned day.

We never made it out of town to do anything with the bathroom tile, but I did finally go to the DMV to get the Shadow title transferred. Not only that, but after five years, I got the boat re-registered with its new hull identification number. I lucked out and didn’t have to wait in line at all, and the girl that helped me was super happy to be there.

As soon as I finished, I picked up Summer and we went to Walmart for some materials for taco night at John and Melissa’s. We prepped as much as we could at home first, then carried everything over at 6.

Travis was already there, so I started cooking the taco meat while everyone chatted. I thought the food turned out awesome, but crunchy tacos are pretty addicting for me. I think John and I simultaneously had the idea to use Melissa’s bean dip as a layer between a flour tortilla and the crunchy taco shell. Then all the fixings went inside for a loaded, crunchy treat.

After we finished eating, John got out a card game called Ramen Fury that initially started out pretty confusing, but turned out to be pretty simple after going through the motions of one throw-out game. I think we all enjoyed it well enough to play again.

We didn’t stick around too long after Travis left, and packed up some of the food to take home. Autumn stayed with her grandparents, so Eaddie and I watched some House after Summer went to bed.

No one’s yelled “son of a bitch” yet!

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Feltnerds Water-Burger

We continued with inventory this morning, with most of us going to the junior high to split up. I walked the building with Kyle and covered most everything. It even ate into lunch by a few minutes just because we lost rack of time. I ran across town to meet the others at Morelos.

When we got back, Zach had me go to the middle school with him to pack up some sample devices to take to The UPS Store to get a quote. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon at the shop just sort of piddling on things.

A little while after work, I met up with Gary and Mitch again at Whatta-Burger. They beat me there by several minutes, and then it took them a really long time to get our food out to us. It really didn’t make sense that it took so long. We had great conversation though, which was good because we may not have any more for a while again.

When we finished up, I headed up to Summer’s where we watched an episode of Glee before Summer went to bed. Then Eaddie and I stayed up and watched some House until I was ready to pass out.

Fun résumé is going to be the talk of the town.

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#ForTheGraham

We had a pretty small crew this morning, so we all just did our own things until lunch time. Gary made it back to the office, and the two of us went to Colton’s for some steak. Then Gary had us all back at the high school to continue hanging wireless access points for the rest of the day. At the very end of it all, he, Kyle, and I wrapped up by finishing up some inventory in all the out buildings.

I loaded up an armful of old stuff to bring home from my old office, and waited there until dinner time. Mitch came to town and crashed on Gary’s couch for a couple days so he could train on how to manage a mattress store. He evidently doesn’t own a car, so Gary’s having to chauffeur him around. They decided on Daddy’s Smackin’ Wings for dinner, so I met them and Grant there after dropping a few things off at my office.

We had a great time catching up, and waxed poetic about the old days of video games. Robert picked the wrong time to get his tonsils out, so all I could do was send him a picture. Hopefully we’ll have a couple more days to get together before Mitch leaves again.

When I finally got back home for the evening, I spent a while cleaning up email. I constantly feel like I’m forgetting something important these days. I need to pay the bills I have, and then make a real effort to clean up and unsubscribe from unimportant, attention-seeking companies.

Correct.

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Blast from the Past

Summer and I got up and out as quickly as we could this morning. I had to run to the house to swap shoes for comfort, then to my parents’ for some meds, and we were almost ready to leave town. Too hungry to wait, we stopped at Sonic to split a chili cheese coney. Then it was off to Fayetteville. Rogers, more specifically, to meet up with Josue. I hadn’t seen him in so long, so we picked him up for a day around town.

Our first stop was the Rogers Splash for a free wash and detail of the Murano, as a fringe benefit of dating company management. Summer had a blast wandering around and chatting with the employees to see how they did things.

Once we were done there, we drove back to Fayetteville to eat at Sassy’s Red House. The food was decent, but for as much as we ordered, I didn’t really feel overstuffed. From there, it was just a quick jaunt down the road to get to Arcadia Retrocade. Neither of them had ever been, and it had been quite a while since I had gone. We only had a couple hours left before they closed, but it was still well worth the fiver just to wander around through the relics.

Summer probably played the most games, bouncing all around the rooms. Yes, rooms. They expanded to the next room over, approximately doubling their size. They had so many more machines down the long ramp, though not much I recognized. It’s incredible just how many arcade machines were made back in the day. The highlight was probably watching Summer blow out an Atari cartridge so she could kick back with a joystick and play some Pac-Man.

We nearly closed that place down to take Josue back home. Then it was a relatively short drive to wrap up the day. We did stop at Braum’s to share a sundae. It was tough winding down early, but we’ve got a loooooong day ahead of us.

But the dawn is breakin’, it’s early morn’.

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Lunch with the Paddler

I got up and took my shower at Summer’s this morning so I could get the kids to school and still have time to get to work myself. It actually worked reasonably well, but I still struggle with the water pressure. I jumped right in to the work orders that had been assigned to me over the past few days, but had trouble completing much of anything. I mostly bounced between Impero and CPPC stuff.

Janie called me to fuss about the policy we were voting for or against removing, and she seemed unwilling to vote for anything other than something that will directly impact those that have been screwed in the past. I hope she wins that fight, but I don’t want that to hold me back from removing redundant or uselessly complicated policies.

I called Allen and planned lunch at Sam’s, and I should have called Dale as well since we saw him at Taco Villa on the way. We had a good size group and had a good time. It was nice to see Allen in public and not looking too scruffy. Retirement looks good on him. While we were there, evidently Brice was sitting across the room and came over to chat, or leer. Or at the very least, awkwardly hover. I really hope they don’t consider him for the job, if only because I don’t want to have to be around to rebuild the entire department when they quit because of it.

We found the bus that would bring Eaddie to my office, so she came over after school and we picked up Autumn after her color guard practice. Autumn really wanted to go to karate but had to go to her band awards ceremony for a grade, and tried weaseling into being toted back and forth across the complete opposite ends of town. We shut her down, and left her at my house so I could get my own chores done.

I dropped Eaddie off at karate, got Summer’s last prescriptions, and then did some work with Mark for about an hour. I had about 10 minutes to chat with Nate across the street before I had to pick her back up, and then we went to get Autumn.

On the way up to Summer, we stopped for some Burger King and had a late dinner. I tried to start on my taxes, but didn’t really get anywhere before I had to get to bed.

The problem with going to the moon is that there is no “up” in space.

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And They Act Like They Forgot About Drapes

I rode the Shadow to work today, and it paid off with a beautiful afternoon. I had to go by Dwight first thing to babysit testing, but of course nothing happened that required anything of me. Karen was right behind me in the office, and had to run to a meeting. When she got back, she said we were having a Classified Personnel Policy Committee meeting next Monday about the salary schedules.

I got back to the shop just in time for lunch, and I met Gary, Zach, Josh, and Brody at Taco Villa. They were busy inside, but we got a perfect table outside for everyone. It actually ended up being a way faster lunch than we usually take, so I stopped by the shop to see Summer before going back to work.

I spent the afternoon helping Josh a bit, and then we went poking around the other dungeon/basement area with Gary, Greg, and Kyle. At the end of the day, I sat in with Ben for a while and chatted. He confirmed the beaded curtain was still in the closet where he originally hid it, so I went back in there and almost immediately found it. I knew it had to be in the box of ceiling tiles, but it just didn’t feel heavy enough and the curtain had fallen down to the bottom of the box. I didn’t notice until I flipped the whole thing upside down and saw a couple beads poking out the bottom.

When I got home, I fixed a webcam for Summer so she could take it to work. Then I went into denial about how hungry I was and dawdled around until I finally broke down and warmed up a can of soup and made some popcorn. It didn’t really satisfy me, but it made me not hungry. In fact, I probably got too full from it all by the time I finished everything.

To wrap up the evening, I finished some laundry while watching the first episode of Superman & Lois. I really just wanted to see how good it was, and it landed about where I expected, if not a little cheesier. It might be a fun watch though, since this was just the pilot.

Just a bunch of gibberish.