Tag: friends

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Let’s Get Weird

We got up a little early this morning so we could get out of town for lunch. Our first stop was Home Depot to pick up some work lights I bought, and then we went to a little diner called Taylors’ Made on the other side of Conway. Summer had breakfast food, and I got the reuben. It was all pretty good, but I didn’t care for the super thin onion rings. I wish we had tried some of the appetizers.

As we got into Little Rock, I decided to go down to the Park Plaza Mall rather than the usual McCain. I figured it would be closer to the hotel, and we could kill enough time there until check-in time at the hotel. Summer was happy to look around but was reluctant to pick up anything. I got an armful of clothing from Dillard’s, which reminded me of how much I hated shopping there with my parents as a child. It was just always so boring, but now I get it. We covered most of the mall by about 3 in the afternoon, and then headed to the Wyndham Riverfront to get our room.

Eventually Amanda messaged me back, and we met her at the Red Lobster for dinner. Sarah decide she didn’t want to go to the concert, so she brought her father along instead. Summer and I got our fix of endless shrimp, and then we headed back for the concert.

We both parked at the hotel and walked the quarter mile or so to the arena. We were early, so we had to stand out in the heat for a little while before we could go in. Once the line started moving, I had trouble getting the TicketMaster app to load the tickets, but fortunately I saved them to Google Pay and that worked to get us in.

The concert was incredible, but I was surprised they didn’t have the upper bowl open. We were in a lower section of removable seating right by the stage, so we could see everything really well. It was awesome having the orchestra there, especially seeing a McLovin lookalike on the French horn. They started off with some Indiana Jones, and we loved the Superman theme song. They took a 20 minute break after the warm up routine, and then Weird Al came out with his crew and performed a huge mix of songs I expected, as well as some I’d never even heard before. Afterward, Summer and I made our way through the merch line to get a couple shirts, and then walked back to the hotel for the evening.

And protect them from the evils of the world, like trigonometry and prime numbers!

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Third Wind

I went to bed early last night but tossed and turned for a couple hours before I finally fell asleep. It wasn’t too much later that I woke up to the sound of the cat retching in the floor, so I had to get out of bed to clean that up. Then I tossed and turned, wide-eyed from about 3am until about 5:45, when I finally jumped out of bed and drove to Waffle House. I sat at the bar by myself with only one other customer in the restaurant, surprised that there weren’t more people there for breakfast. Running on so little sleep, I knew what I had to get. Bacon cheese burger with hash browns scattered all the way with chili and gravy. It was full-on punishment for the betrayal I felt as my body refused to go to sleep. The cook was a rockstar, but accidentally threw some hash browns on the grill for a regular customer that ended up not wanting them. He offered them to me for free, so I mounded them on top of my already sloppy plate and destroyed it all. No mercy.

It was a super fast breakfast with nobody else there, and I made it home just in time to hear my alarm clock start buzzing. It was go-time. Full morning routine and out the door a full 10 minutes early. I made it to school and got up into the building way early and jumped right in. Then I was assaulted by the library when some testing didn’t go as planned. Failures exaggerated, our pseudo hero jumped in to “save the day” and “take the credit.” Gary showed up in the middle of it all and had to go hide in my office for all the screaming.

With that crisis out of the way, Gary and I wandered around vo-tech taking care of phones. The Mac internet issue ended up not being my problem, which was nice. Then it was back up to the office for our second crisis. Just as class let out, one of our internet circuits went out for just a few minutes and I had a line of people out my door wanting to know what we were doing to fix it. Without even having enough time to identify the failure, we had people wanting to know an ETA for a fix so they could plan their next period. Gary rage-quit and went back to his office for good reason, but I was no stranger to dealing with people in a self-induced panic. Boom, more work orders closed.

I continued on with work orders until lunch when Allen invited me to Smackin’ Wings. I met him there, along with Gary, Zach, and Ben. We had entertainingly, lovingly hateful conversations, making sure we made it fully around the department. Then I had to load up a computer lab worth of computers to take to the high school. Allen helped me move them to the dock to load them into my car, and then I cut him loose to do his own things. I got lucky and ran into my intern while looking for a dolly to bring the computers inside, then got a bit of sass from my mohawked maintenance guy for knocking on his dungeon door. I get personal space, but I still felt slighted. I may have to take his internet.

Ben met us to help set up the computer lab, which ended up taking the rest of the day. We fought the switch configuration a bit, and even had trouble toning out a line, and ended up switching ports in the room for one that was labeled at the switch. All done except for the deployments. Then I closed out a few more things before walking out.

Finally home, I just continued my work streak and cleaned up all of the aquariums. It looks like Murderface has a bit of hole-in-the-head, but I’m not certain. Gotta keep his water changed more often, especially since I never test it. Those snails are messy. Once everything was cleaned up, I headed to my parents’ house to pick up some props for picture day. Then it was off to Summer’s for promised head scratchies to ensure absolute sleep tonight.

All the angles.

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There’s No Good Time

I made it in to work just a little early this morning, still pretty groggy from waking up a few times last night. I made up my own parking space in the grass again, but I can already tell it’s going to be trouble when it rains. I’m not looking forward to it at all, but I guess I’ve got the sick leave to burn if I wanted to just not work every time the weather is bad.

I spent a little time on some stuff in my office, then wandered around the campus for a while to clean up some work orders. Zach stopped in since he was there working on something else, and we went down to the ATCC for a bit to scope out a couple things. Then I left him to go close out a couple things at the multipurpose facility before lunch. Summer wanted to join us for the $5 salad bar, but we had to wait until 1 o’clock for her. I picked Zach up on the way off campus, then we got her from the shop, and made our way to Ruby Tuesday. Our server goofed and Zach got a free meal just because he didn’t want to ring out another guest because of some fraud prevention system. To me that sounded a bit broken, but we tipped him for it.

After dropping everyone off, I headed to the shop for a bit to set up a new laptop and then research some of my more time consuming work orders. Ben eventually came around the shop and asked when we could set up a desktop computer lab, and I just had to tell him there is no good time because I feel like I’m drowning in things to do as it is, so we’d just have to make the time and sacrifice something else. Then we sat down and he showed me the system to create IVR systems in Avaya. It looked really fun, and I can see myself borrowing some of our outbound numbers in the future, assuming I ever find any free time ever again.

I worked a little late to finish making the user accounts for the new vo-tech phone lines, and then went by my parents’ house for just a few minutes. They weren’t really doing much and I wasn’t hungry since we had a big, late lunch, so I sat there for a few minutes before Dad decided we could move the boat onto the paver stones I bought. We couldn’t really push it around by hand, so we actually had to hook it up to my hitch and drive it a couple feet, but it wasn’t too bad. It was hot and humid outside though, so by the time that was over I was ready for bed. I went home and laid down for a while before getting back up to finish my evening routine, then crashing a few hours early.

For Allen Dot Hopgood, press 1.
For Amandy Bolton, press 60,000.net.
Para Pancho, oprima el numero tres.
For Customer Relations, push all of his buttons.

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Catching up with Bae

Summer took the girls to the high school for a 5k color run this morning. I ate a few leftovers there before heading home to clean up. I’m pretty sure I lost one of my ghost shrimp, and I couldn’t ever find any of the berried ghost/amano/whatever shrimp they were. I don’t know if they’ve been hiding, or if they dropped the eggs, or if they perished as well. I didn’t want to disturb the tank too much, but it didn’t get as busy in there as it usually does while I did a water change. I guess I’ll just let it be, since it’s fully established with decent parameters.

Summer dropped the girls off with their friends around lunch time, and we headed toward Conway. We were pretty hungry and decided to stop at Yesterday’s in Morrilton so we wouldn’t be eating too late in Conway. On our approach I was worried it would be more bar than grill, but once we got our food I was convinced. The appetizer sampler with fried green beans, pickles, mushrooms, and cheddar was amazing. Summer’s chicken and grilled vegetables were great. My chicken fried steak was a bit tough but not bad. The loaded mashed potatoes were stellar. Even the toast was delicious. It was a great date that we both needed.

As we came into Conway, Summer arranged for us to get a carwash at the Splash since she wanted to visit her employee that was on loan there and get a tour of the place. It was a pretty cool experience, but odd to see the lube side completely dead. I don’t know if it’s just a bad location or lack of marketing, but there wasn’t a single lube job done while we were there. It was awesome getting the car washed inside and out though. I think I still prefer to maintain it myself, but every now and again this would be nice just to dust out the whole vehicle.

From there we went to Andy’s for some frozen custard, and then killed a bunch of time at Kohl’s. I spent forever looking through the clearance sections, but didn’t find much that was marked down enough. I almost picked up a jacket or two, but decided against it after remembering how little I actually go out in the winter for long enough to need one. It was already getting a little late, so we went straight to Sam’s after that and ended up picking up a bunch of bath towels for her.

Hannah and Dylan were slow to respond as usual, but eventually we managed to meet up with them, and we went on to Little Rock for Dave & Buster’s. We did a Jurassic Park VR adventure that was pretty awesome and didn’t cost as much as I expected. It really just made me want a VR setup at home, but I keep hoping an esports budget or stipend will help to fund that. We wandered around the midway until we all ran out of credits, then hit a Wendy’s on the way home since we never really stopped for dinner. We were both exhausted from a long but great day, so it was straight to bed once we got home.

“Let’s build a wall to keep the immigrants from bringing crime into our town!” -the townspeople
“Let’s build a casino in our town!” -also the townspeople

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Geoffrey the Friendly Zombie

When we got up this morning, Summer got the girls ready to leave with their father and I went home to clean up. I messed around with the aquariums a little first though, and I seem to be missing my last big gold mystery snail. I can’t find it in the tank anywhere, and every time this has happened before they’ve ended up dead. I wish I knew why, because this one always seemed quite active.

Once out of the shower, I headed back to get Summer, and we met Travis, John, and Melissa at La Huerta for lunch. It was John’s birthday, so he got to wear the Panchito hat. It was even funnier because his family came in with their kids and sat right behind us. I was surprised to see they made their own fresh tortillas there, so we’ll have to go back more on account of the deliciosity.

We were a bit early for our escape room, so we chatted outside under a pun tree for a while. Once we got in, we suited up with our flag football belts to prepare for the zombie actor experience. I was a little overly worried about moving too quickly through the room after what the hostess said, and I think overall I would have preferred the event without the actor, but it did make for an entertaining visit with the group. Overall it was a really good time, though I felt bad for the guy in the rubber mask. I thought for sure it would be makeup, but no such luck. He ended up helping us on a couple clues, possibly because the hour was just too much for him.

We beat the room with just a few minutes remaining, and then went our separate ways. Summer and I cleaned up a bit at her house and then headed back to my place to practice riding the Grom, but Mom texted with spaghetti and we had dinner instead. I hit a wall of exhaustion while we were there, but woke up enough for a couple chores before bed.

Oh, I only have to clean up everything.

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Hi Schoo Tecknikkin

I actually had a good, solid day of work today, even as scattered as it was. Gary, Allen, and I went to hang a couple TVs at the high school, so I actually got to call the shots. We actually had to relocate a touch panel to another room, and then install a new TV for the new JROTC room where choir used to be back when I was in high school. They wanted to fill in the pit but didn’t get it done in time, so I wanted to make sure to mount the TV super high in order to prevent having to raise it in the future. That required us to climb the ladder, and they had just finished cleaning the carpet, so we saved that soggy room for after lunch.

Moving the heavier InFocus touch panel downstairs proved to be a bit of a challenge, and we ended up getting a couple deep scratches in the screen in the process, but we managed. It’s not a full-time classroom anyway, which makes it matter a little less in my mind. The trouble arrived when we had to drill into the outside concrete wall of an underground part of the building. It was reinforced in a way that made it nearly impossible to drill with our bits. It’s possible that if we had brand new bits it would have worked, but I’m still leaning toward the magic ones we got from the maintenance department that knows what they’re doing. As far as I’m concerned, Jason didn’t buy them, so they were the correct tool for the job.

Somehow Allen and I talked Gary into going to KFC for lunch. Partly because I offered to buy, and partly because he wanted to try the Cheetos sandwich. He thought it was a cheapie sandwich and not some kind of fancy, high-dollar promo, but based on flavor alone it was worth a re-order. I just thought it looked really small for the money.

After lunch we got the JROTC TV hung by having the other two lift it over their heads, and then I moved the ladder up behind them and lifted it up the rest of the way. Without power, speakers, or even a properly positioned desk, we skipped the test phase and moved back downstairs to finish running cable for the touch panel. The ceiling tiles looked really gross, but surprisingly there was a ton of room in the ceiling. It was wide open without insulation. I did all the climbing around, but the guys were helpful and entertaining in their own ways, which made the hard day’s work more satisfying.

I ran home to change after work, then went to pick Eaddie up to mow my parents’ lawn. She was in the middle of warming up a bowl of ramen noodles though, so I let her eat them while we watched an episode of Jessica Jones. Summer came home after taking a spill in the pit at work, so I left her to clean up while Eaddie and I went to take care of the lawn. Summer came over when she could, and then I swam with Eaddie for a bit before heading home to clean out the laundry room well enough to get to my appliances and start a load of laundry.

They came along eventually to stay the night, but didn’t get here early enough for us to watch more Netflix, so Summer went straight to bed while I waited for my socks to dry with Eaddie.

I don’t care if you break it in the process of learning how to fix it yourself.

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The Time I Almost Stole Dinner

We didn’t get to finish up the 1:1 laptops today. Instead, Jason took a crew to get a bunch of bottled water for the shop while the rest of us enrolled Chromebooks in the graveyard. When they got back, I was upset to see a literal pallet of water bottles. I don’t even drink the bottles, and it aggravates me that everyone else does. We don’t live in a third world country. We don’t live in Mexico. We don’t even live in Flint, Michigan. Paying thousands of dollars every year for water that comes with its own trash just seems insane to me, and nobody is even a little bit sympathetic, or even appears understanding to the idea that this is just terrible.

Once we got the pallet unloaded, we took two trucks worth of stuff to vo-tech to run a bunch of network cable. I don’t have a ton of experience running lines out there, but I know enough to know that it’s terrible. We encountered a wall without visible penetration, so we didn’t get our WAP lines run. We did at least manage to find existing cabling where most of the phones were going, which was a great relief.

We all went to Stoby’s for lunch and crammed us three fatties, Allen, and Gary into a booth. When we got back, we reminded everyone that Gary and I didn’t leave early in the middle of the week like everyone else, and that we would be leaving early today. We wrapped up a couple lines and then left at 1:30. I dropped Gary off back at the shop and then went home and took a nap because I felt completely exhausted.

When I woke up, I got my things together and headed to Walmart for groceries. Ronda, Steven, and Maleea were coming over for dinner, and I wanted to make Instant Pot chicken tacos. I was a bit impatient while checking out with Walmart Pay, and forgot that I had received a new Discover Card number after discovering an unauthorized charge. My payment didn’t go through, so I had to run back to the register and apologize for looking like a thief and/or a fool. They had printed a receipt with all my groceries just as I showed up, and with a quick scan of a single barcode, it loaded up my entire purchase again so I could process my payment the old fashioned way.

The girls did a pretty good job of cleaning the place up, and dinner went together pretty well. I completely forgot the slaw mix and punch in the refrigerator, which was super disappointing. Nobody really seemed to notice though, because we had so much other stuff to put on the tacos. Now I’ve got to figure out what else to do with the stuff though, since no one else ever seems interested in eating it.

The girls hung out and played and did whatever kids do in 2019 while we sat at the table and chatted. After the others left, Summer crashed and Eaddie and I watched some Daredevil, though she evidently watched quite a bit without me. I guess that’s how it us during boring old summer vacation.

There are no heroes, no villains. Just people with different agendas.

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Friends and Stuff

Gary and I spent all day imaging laptops again. Ben bought lunch for Melinda’s first day, and everyone walked next door to Smackin’ Wings and Things. They had a 20-piece wing special that cost as much as a larger meal, so I just ate that. The Cyclone Fever sauce was a pretty good mix of hot honey mustard and sweet honey barbecue.

In the afternoon, Melissa dispatched someone to check out my air conditioner, so I had to do a bit of juggling to get Dad over to the house, and get Summer to open the garage since my app still doesn’t work with the Android beta. Fortunately I’m not completely crazy and he did find the unit a little low on refrigerant. He said he’d come by again next week to check again, so I’ll have to spend some time there in the afternoons to see if it cools any faster.

Summer took the day off and spent some time with the kids at the Clarksville water park, and then came home to grill steaks and burgers for us. She invited Gary over for dinner, and luckily I got there right as he was turning around to make another pass by her house. We played a couple games of Magic, ate, had a couple beers outside on the fancy new lawn furniture, and then came in to play Stuff Happens with the kids.

Eaddie begged to watch Parks and Rec after Gary left, and after a couple episodes of that everyone headed on to bed.

Better dreams this time.

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Grom

We got up this morning and finished putting together the patio furniture and fire pit. It drizzled on and off, so we actually assembled the fire pit inside while the girls did a few chores. Just as we finished moving all of that stuff around outside, I saw Chase post on Instagram that they were selling his wife’s 2019 Honda Grom with next to no miles on it. On a complete whim, I hit him up and we arranged to go pick it up at his place. I stopped by Arvest on the way home, but my debit card was expired. He didn’t mind PayPal though, so as soon as Summer got to my house, we headed on out to London. We stopped for gas at Kroger and ran into Ronda just briefly. We only stopped to chat long enough to pump our gas, and then we were on our way.

The bike was so much tinier than I had imagined. It will be a great learner bike though, and perfect for riding around in town. While we were looking around, his pet pig kept trying to get into the garage, which just tickled me so. It kept threatening rain, so we didn’t stick around for super long. We made our way back to town, and I managed to get the bike up to 60mph, tucked and coming down a bit of a hill. Screaming along that fast and sitting so high and forward didn’t feel great, but I figure it’ll still be perfect if the girls want to learn to ride too. I bet Eaddie will want to learn, and I could see her riding to high school on it eventually. I stopped by Walgreens to pick up my medication, and then ran by Allen’s place to show him. He was absolutely thrilled about it. Then I finally took it home so I could shower and clean up a bit.

I was going to go back up to Summer’s for dinner, but I first got distracted by a fraud alert email from Discover. Evidently they stopped a $503.44 charge at Nordstrom from going through. I had to call and talk to someone, and they closed my account and created a new one. Unfortunately that also meant my memorized credit card information was no longer useful. In the middle of all of that, the doorbell rang. Michael stopped by, so I stepped out to chat with him. They had some kind of party and had some leftover food, but the friend he was going to deliver them to wasn’t home. Their loss was our gain. We chatted for a bit about some of his conspiracies, the Fiero, the Grom, and his van. I never realized he had it outfitted for living. I always imagined him roughing it out in the woods, but at least some of the time he’s just been sleeping in the van.

Finally, I made it back up to Summer’s for the evening. The girls had gone with their father for the evening, so we ate some of Michael’s leftover barbecue along with some sweet potato fries, and then went to bed with some Sealab 2021. It was definitely funnier in my 20s.

 

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Pudding can’t fill the emptiness inside me!!!
But it’ll help….

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Quality Time

Summer had to work this morning. I got up after she left and went home to clean up before going to check Autumn out of band camp. Luckily I went up the right flight of stairs and ran right into her, so checkout was painless. I signed a piece of paper “Adult” and nobody cared who I was, but I completed the job.

From there, I went to get Eaddie and Summer, and we came back for Autumn’s concert. Dad texted me just after we sat down, so I had him meet us there as well. Autumn made the first band and even had a song introduction, but she struggled really badly between the anxiety and some of the words. The band was otherwise pretty good though, and afterward I took Summer back to work and the girls to Cicis for lunch.

We ate a bunch, then went to my parents’ house to swim for a while until Summer got out of work. Then we ran by Walmart for a couple things, and I scoped out a deal on a patio furniture set. We headed back up to their house and relaxed there for a bit before Autumn and I went back to Walmart for some hot dogs, and I went ahead and picked up one of the furniture sets.

I broke a pretty good sweat trying to fit the thing into the back of the Murano, and even more of a sweat outside trying to get the thing out of the box. Sylvia came over for dinner and to chat with Summer for a bit. I got two chairs built, but not before both of them decided to come inside away from the bugs. She didn’t stick around for very long though, and the others started crashing pretty quickly after she left. Eaddie and I stayed up watching Daredevil again, and we started getting into some of the cliffhanger episodes. Eventually I started falling asleep on the couch though, so I had to call it quits.

Knot what I was trying to do, but it did the trick.