Tag: friends

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Go Go Gojira!

I wanted to get up early to help get my sleep schedule back in order and so we could spend more time in Conway, but I slept pretty poorly, and then woke up really early to the sound of a cat barfing, so I ended up sleeping in a while. It didn’t help though, because I still felt so drained all day long. Maybe it was the weird dream I had about going to a conference, seeing Egon Spengler, and then losing Summer in some kind of psychotic, murderous, space-bending maze while trying to find our room in the casino.

When we finally got ready to leave the house, I noticed the house was really warm and discovered my air conditioner had blown the fuse outside again. I wasn’t going to let that hold us back though, so I called Dad and then we skipped town while my house heated up.

Our first stop was Hog Pen BBQ for lunch, and boy was it a treat. I told our waitress that it was our first time, and she brought us each a sample rib and some pork skins. It was some of the best barbecue I had ever had in my life. I got the sampler with ribs, chicken, and sausage, and it was some of the smokiest, most tender meat I’ve ever had. It was a good cut of rib meat without too much bone. The sauce didn’t seem like anything special, but it was really only there to wet the meat a little bit anyway. It definitely wasn’t lacking in flavor. The sausage wasn’t my favorite and had some gristle to it, and the sides left something to be desired mainly in portion size, but you could tell the focus was on the meats, and there was no shortage of that.

Neither of us could finish our plates, so I packed up another meal worth of meats and we headed out to the strip mall. We had never been to a Kohl’s before, so we stopped there first. They had a fair amount of clearance stuff to skim through, and Summer picked out a shirt for me. I’ll have to slim down a bit to fit it properly, but at least I have until winter. Then we went to Shoe Carnival so I could spend my $10 reward coupon. Finally we stopped by Target for a Frappuccino and to kill the last bit of time before the movie. We ran into Courtney and Eston there and chatted for just a second before we went on our way.

We made our way to the Cinemark early for Godzilla: King of the Monsters. I thought the story lacking quite a bit, and I found the characters unrelatable at best. I never felt any kind of emotional investment in any of them, and I didn’t get the feeling that it was because I didn’t see the first movie. The action was larger than life though, and it was a relatively fun, mindless action flick. I still can’t get over Godzilla’s tiny head on his massively fat body though.

On the way home, we stopped in Morrilton for some drinks and I picked up a couple bottles of cocoa cayenne Bird Dog that ended up being super delicious. Amanda invited us over to hang out with some of her furry friends, and we got to hear some interesting stories while Summer tried her first Jell-O shots. Nick took the girls to the house, so we didn’t stay out too late. We did have to stop at Taco Bell for a midnight snack, and we finally crashed at her house for the night.

History shows again and again, how nature points out the folly of man.

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The Junior High Issue

Just as I started to drift off, someone knocked loudly on our door. Summer and I both scrambled to our feet, and I peeked out to see who it was. I only saw one of the girls, but soon found out it was several of them outside our door, shaky with adrenaline. Johnny was there with them, and the first words out of his mouth were that this seemed like a junior high issue, so he would be letting us handle it.

Summer and Hannah jumped right into action, kicking ass and calling parents. I wasn’t sure what my place was, so I just laid back in the room waiting to see if I would be called. I started to doze off a little, but without my CPAP I ended up exhausting myself more. I don’t remember what time Summer finally came back to bed, but it was really late, and I knew that even sleeping a bit later we would still be deprived.

They kicked four kids out for vaping, including some star players, so they knew the rest of the team would suffer for it. It was a bad deal all around, and a part of me felt like maybe it was a bit much drama for some vape pens, but rules are rules, and these kids are used to a system without repercussions. I was glad they stuck to their guns, and had one of the kids out the next morning after having her sister drive all the way down overnight. It’s anybody’s guess whether the parents will actually do anything, but at least they could rest assured they did the right thing here.

I got down to breakfast just before they closed, and then ended up babysitting the three remaining kids with Dylan while the rest went to their game. I was excited to be in control of some punishment, though Dylan got them started with copying newspaper articles. After a while, I added a modifier by having them write with their non-dominant hands. I got the feeling that only one of them was really taking it very hard, but I’m not much for empathy anyway.

When the team finished, we walked to the Riverwalk for lunch. We didn’t really have time to do anything but eat, and I was still full from lunch. My ciabatta was pretty terrible, and I was just overall disappointed to be eating food court food in New Orleans anyway. Without time to shop the mall, we headed back so they could continue their day of games. It was so hot and humid that I was excited just to be back inside.

Once those games were over, we went back to the Riverwalk to let the kids shop for a few minutes before eating. Unfortunately we found out they would only be open for about another hour, so Summer, Hannah, Dylan, and I went to the opposite end of the mall for some frozen slushed wine first. Summer and Hannah had to go back to the hotel immediately after we got them though, because a second player’s parents were coming to pick him up. Johnny had also screwed up their plan to pay for dinner, but I was able to get everyone fed with my own card.

Dylan and I carried food back for the girls, and lead what was left of the group back to the hotel safely. We ended the evening with some more Mario Kart in our room, but we kept getting interrupted by kids knocking on the door. The delinquents continued being shunned for the most part, while the rest had a little get-together party in one of their rooms. We had to shut it down early too, partly because they were being loud, but also because the adults were too tired to exist any longer.

I’ve never seen a group of coworkers so divided before.

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Live Music Everywhere

We got up a bit earlier than usual so we could get breakfast in the lobby before heading down to the French Quarter. As soon as Aimee dropped us off, we went up some stairs to an overlook for a group photo. I was immediately caught by a street shoe shiner, much to the entertainment of Summer and Hannah. I narrowly escaped with my fabric shoes and my life, trading my pocket banana from breakfast for safe passage.

From there, we split up and wandered around downtown. We walked around with Hannah and Dylan for a while, making our way through the half set-up open market. People were still setting up their wares for the day, and it all seemed like very typical street market stuff, probably all made in the same place in China.

We did stop at a tiny Jazz “museum” state park, and almost returned for jazz yoga, but I guess we forgot. Instead, we wandered further down the square and into a toy shop where I picked up a little moo can. I had seen them before and always kind of wanted one, but I finally decided to bite the bullet. Then we made our way down to the cathedral where a weird looking guy with an unexpectedly higher-pitched voice offered a “special” on palm readings. I told him we were trying to avoid the dark arts, to which he seemed to quietly and incredulously respond that it wasn’t “dark arts.” That was about the time we got called back to some students trying to get into a different jazz museum.

Summer and I left Hannah and Dylan at the cathedral to let the kids into the jazz museum. She and I looked through the mint museum on the bottom floor first, which was pretty cool. The old building was neat by itself, but seeing the old coin minting equipment was even cooler.

When we finished there, we had the kids all meet us just outside the flea market at Market Cafe for lunch. The guy there was so nice it was almost creepy, but he really grew on me. I had an appetizer sampler as well as a New Orleans sampler, both of which were excellent. I didn’t love the fried gator so much from the appetizer sampler, but I had some better stuff at dinner.

Once we got back to the convention center, the kids all went to shower and change for their first game. The first game was against Russellville, AL, which was funny to us, but nobody seemed to really outwardly care while we were there. We were behind most of the game, caught up to lead, and then lost on the very last question by 15 points. Then we dominated the second game before calling it a day.

Hannah got Autumn a piñata for her birthday, so we went out to the little courtyard field to hang it. Luckily one of the kids had a baseball bat, and Autumn made quick work of it. Then we waited outside for just a bit loner before heading up the street for dinner at Mulate’s.

I had a fried seafood platter that was good, but overall relatively unremarkable. I found myself wishing I had gotten something like jambalaya, or an étouffée, but it was alright. A couple of the kids ordered gator there and didn’t care for it, but I liked it quite a bit.

Back at the hotel, Summer, Hannah, Dylan, and I got some drinks and went back to our room to play some Mario Kart. Dylan proved to be a consistent threat, and even Summer finished in first for the first time ever. I’m really glad we get to sleep in tomorrow.

If you’re advertising a discount higher than 10%, then it’s not really discounted at all.

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The City that Drowned

We finally made it to Quiz Bowl nationals trip day. Summer and Autumn went to pick up Burger King for breakfast while I got ready, and we made it to the high school to load everyone onto the bus. I ran into Ben outside the high school and told him my sick day was to meet a witch doctor from the south. We barely had room for everything and everyone, but I think they may have overpacked some supplies on the way out.

The first stop was Quiznos to pick up lunch to take with us. I guess it was easier than stopping somewhere along the way, and certainly expedited that process. I’m not really sure how we ended up with a full bag of extra sandwiches, but hopefully they keep until the ride home. I certainly would rather experience unique cuisine while I’m here.

Around three hours into the trip, we stopped at Lake Village behind a gas station, got snacks and took a bathroom break, and then walked over to a park to eat. Luckily it wasn’t too terribly hot out, but I did sweat a bit. It definitely took the bus a bit to cool back down after that.

Summer and I watched the first episode of Firefly after I did some finagling on my devices. I was upset to learn the iPad Plex app wouldn’t stream without a Plex Pass. I’ve never had that issue with my Android app for some reason. Not too long later we made it to a Walmart in Crystal Springs. I didn’t really need any snacks, so I wandered to electronics and picked up a couple clearanced smart light switches and a physical copy of Diablo III. It was all just so cheap.

The last leg of the trip was short, but took us through a bunch of traffic on what felt like the world’s longest bridge. It was interesting to see the water rushing out of the Mississippi River and just spreading out across what was once land. The water was high, and flooding has been expected all over, but here it just seemed a part of life.

We got to the Hampton in an old part of town, but really I think all of this area is old town. It’s been remodeled with new world commodities, but the outside shells of buildings seem to be left alone. We didn’t have any time to look around or do anything but eat, but I really didn’t want to eat the Domino’s pizza after overhearing the three telephone conversations it took to place the order. Instead, I opted to use Uber Eats to order some food from a nearby place called Magasin Kitchen. I got some grilled shrimp spring rolls and something called a bibimbap rice bowl that I didn’t dislike, but didn’t super care for either. It was decent food, but just not quite what I was looking for.

Summer passed out early for me, but it was really probably kind of late for her. I’m really glad I’m taking next week off after having to wake up early all weekend for this.

Love that chicken from Popeye’s!

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Basskitball

Crawford and Oakland had their staff basketball game this morning. I thought it was after school, but they reminded me that nobody would show up if it was after hours. They all bussed all of their kids to the high school arena, and had a rowdy game with an eagle mascot, and cheerleaders, and everything. Ben was playing for Oakland, so I tried to get the others to join me, but nobody cared enough. I noticed pretty quickly that nobody was around taking pictures up close, so I jumped right into the photographer role again. All I had was my phone, which was pretty terrible at catching the fast motion of the game, but I did what I could. I should have tried turning off HDR to see if it improved, but it’s too late now. The game went into double overtime and ultimately they agreed to end it in a tie where nobody went home a loser. It felt like the perfect analogy for public school.

After the game, I went to the junior high for a while and took care of some things. Summer and Autumn were going to leave for lunch, but I got stuck working on a phone issue and then got frustrated with some whining, so I just skipped lunch and went by Oakland, and then to the high school to work on keyboard bezels with Dale. He got some news that Ryan accepted a job with Thomas in Bentonville and sent a video of me working on laptops. Ryan replied with something about a timer and I had been curious for a little while, so I checked myself in at about six and a half minutes.

I left there a bit early and went to the shop to drop off a Chromebook. When Jason left, Ben, Gary, and I went upstairs to check out the refurbished auditorium. It looked better, but not great. The reverb on stage was too much to handle, and made basically everything incomprehensible. From there, I went to my parents’ house and had some leftovers before coming home to get ready and pack for New Orleans. Travel anxiety is always worse with other people involved, but having a checklist premade from previous trips made it easier.

Traveling on a bus for this long is going to be a challenge.

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Stress Ball

I started this morning at the high school, repeating three different data entry tasks in a meticulously crafted beast machine of over-documentation. Dale seems to have accepted that things will probably change pretty quickly after he’s gone, but more importantly it seems like I’m going to have to be demanding some additional buy-in from certain people. At least I feel efficient with the way that I perform his processes.

I could have worked through lunch, but he clocked out and ate some leftovers. I didn’t really feel like doing anything, so I went home and warmed up a frozen chicken slider that was pretty gross. Afterward, I came back a bit early to perform some intake and output of replacement parts and serviced laptops. I’ll have to do some more of that I think, before I really grasp the full process. The most aggravating part about any of that is the physical paperwork. Needless to say, 2019 is going paperless.

When we finished with that stuff, I left for the junior high to deal with needy esports kids. I gave two more PCs to the library for distribution, but I wish I had some face time with the parents at least to explain what it is that I’m doing. Summer had most of her room packed up, and then left with the kids so Nick could take them all to dinner. She ended up wanting CiCi’s too, so I met her there and stuffed myself to make up for the particularly terrible lunch. I ran into David and his tiny baby family there, and it was really great to see them. It pleased me that they seemed to be doing so well as such a young couple.

After dinner, I went to my parents’ house to pick up some mosquito larvae for my fish and banana trees for Tammy. I dropped them off at Oakland on the way home so I could check my blood pressure. It was surprisingly only “normally” high, but I did give myself a really long period of time to rest first. Then it was home to fight with a ridiculous cat box. I can’t be done with that nonsense soon enough.

It’s aight.

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So Long Haired Dale

I had a pretty slow morning again, mostly due to lack of desire to accomplish much. I ended up at the shop for a while before lunch, where they had a lockdown just before I arrived. For a while, it was the safest basement in all the land, with at least four cops and two of our security guys. I legitimately lost count.

Ronda and Jessica wanted to take the time to go out for lunch with me, so we went to Ruby Tuesday for $5 salads. It was delicious and green, but most notably the peaches were amazing. I don’t know why I don’t get more peach things more often.

After lunch I had to go to the high school to help with keyboard bezels. We got pulled away twice to go to the safe room due to some storms that rolled through. The second time, I brought some bezels along with me just in case we got stuck there for a while. I only had time to do one replacement, but it felt good all the same. We finished a big stack of them just in time to go to the library for Dale’s retirement shindig.

It really seemed like we crammed more people in that library than Alene had at the Center for her retirement, and it felt good. I’ve never made it to the very first part of anyone’s retirement party, so I assume it’s at least a little customary to say some words. Regardless of what normally happens, it wasn’t unlike Dale to have a story. He recalled starting his adult life in the high school library where he spoke with a recruiter that got him into the Marines. Eventually he retired from that and came back to the school district, where he had a retirement party in the same library. It seemed as though he might have started to choke up a bit, and it was sweet. I’ll really miss him.

Hannah had agreed to babysit my esports kids until I could get back to the junior high, so after the party I ran over there for just the tail end of practice. It was a pretty small crowd there, since most had been checked out early, or didn’t even have to come at all after being exempted from finals. I wish I had prepared for the end of the year, and the last week of practice better. I gave the district magazine to those that wanted it for the article about us. Then we took a trip to my office where I handed out a couple old computers so they could practice at home. I should have prepared for that better too. Having to move to high school has me all kinds of messed up.

I worked super late, but finally made it over to my parents’ house for some leftover mango soup. Then I helped Dad fix his smart garage door opener I had gotten them. I guess he misread the directions and wired it up incorrectly, so we fixed it without too much trouble. From there, I headed home to try and clean up, but half got distracted by email, and spent a large portion of the remainder of my evening unsubscribing from several of the overly talkative newsletters. Tomorrow morning it’s back to the high school to learn more web forms for submitting these tickets. I’m going to hate that so much.

Who’s that???

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Picnicin

There weren’t any projects to be done today, and I got called to Oakland first thing, so I just spent all day there working on a printer issue. They were having their field day, which seemed like lots of fun, but I didn’t really make it outside to see what they had going on. I did eat a lot of popcorn though.

Brice called for Brangus for lunch, and then Dale ended up buying for all seven of us with his bonus employee of the year check. I was pretty proud of eating only half of my smaller-than-usual spud, which is starting to sound pretty good right about now.

Jason let us leave early, but Zach, Gary, and I sat around chatting for a while after, and ended up leaving around the regular time. I headed home and waited for the girls to come over so we could go to the spring picnic at the marina.

We stopped by the Neighborhood Market to grab some snacks along the way, and then headed out to the park. It was a pretty small turnout for as loud as they had the music cranked up. The weather was pretty nice though. The skies were clear, there was a bit of a breeze at first, and it didn’t really feel hot until I got moving around a bit. I ran into three people that I knew in the band alone. I didn’t even recognize Dylan for his huge beard and all the weight he had lost. Nathan looked about the same as I last saw him at AT&T. I actually didn’t really know David, but he was a friend of Julie’s evidently. Aaron was there grilling hot dogs for Arvest.

We stuck pretty close to Ronda and Steven most of the evening. The girls wandered off and kind of did their own thing for a while. I took the opportunity to jump up and take a bunch of photos that seemed really good on my phone, but looking at them on a computer screen left me a little disappointed. All of the official funsquad members were content wandering around on their phones recording poor vertical videos, or streaming live to the internet. I had to try and show them up by getting into the action a little bit, and even took a few photos from behind the band. I got at least one pretty decent picture of Mark up on stage playing with the band too.

After that wound down, we came back to my house for a bit to clean up, and then went to Summer’s for the evening. Eaddie stayed up and watched several episodes of Parks and Rec with us until Summer was ready to pass out.

Would have been a nice evening to sail.

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Friar Cluck

Summer started off super early to get the car show going. I got out as quickly as I could, feeling much better after sleep. I had to go by her place to get some cakes she forgot, then made it in at least before it started.

I didn’t feel confident in running more than one deep fryer because of the lack of outlets, but I managed with just one pretty well. The show had a great turnout, and people seemed to have a really good time. Nick sold out of pulled pork peculiarly fast, but we had chicken strips for days. I just kept churning them through the fry baskets, using the timer on my Pebble to keep them going. While I was there, I had a few esports kids come in to play, but they were just left to their own devices since I was busy elsewhere.

Dad came by to check it out and hung out with the Model T guys for most of the day. I pulled him away for just a bit to climb up to the roof for some photos. The trees were a bit in the way, but I got a decent panorama out of the deal.

I was absolutely beat by the time we got everything wrapped up, but I had to go to my parents’ to clean up their fryer, and then to the shop to drop off the borrowed extension cords. Somehow Summer had the energy for some gym time. I went home to clean up just a little bit, then made my way to her place to pick her up for the Magic: The Gathering open house. Travis met us there, but John and Melissa had something else going on. We ended up wishing we had brought the kids, but they were tired and moody anyway.

We played a couple games, first for Summer to watch and learn, and then again with all three of us in a free-for-all. Summer won that game, and seemed to really enjoy it, so I’m sure we’ll be back for the next open house. One of the esports kids that didn’t show up to the car show today was there learning how to DM a game of D&D, which I thought was pretty neat. They really did a lot with a small amount of space.

Once Travis had had enough, we headed home and I fried up some rice and egg for dinner. We watched a couple episodes of Parks and Rec, and then crashed.

Oh, oh, it’s Magic!

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Taking Things Without Asking

Heather came to the junior high early this morning, and I tried to show her around a bit while we picked up some more computers that were going out for auction. Matt came along and said they were probably going to move technology out of my office and into a closet so James and his people could have the space, which got me really riled up. It was at that point that I decided it was okay to go gut a teacher’s classroom of student devices without asking.

I forgot my medication yesterday, but was back on it today. A big group of us met at Old South for a very slow lunch. I tried the taco salad with their Old South dressing, which seemed like it was all mayonnaise and garlic powder. The waitress even had a little spiel about how she couldn’t tell me all the ingredients because then it would be “everybody’s” dressing, and that it would ward off vampires, boyfriends, etc. It was a little surreal getting all of that considering how busy they were. The taco salad was good though, even with the weird mayo dressing. I felt like it was more taco than salad, but I’d never complain about it because then they would just give less meat.

After lunch, I had to go to Oakland to help with a National Board video conversion. Erica stopped me cold in my tracks and said Ben told them he was moving me to the high school. It was a bad day for everyone.

When school let out, I went back to the shop to chat with Ben until we went to Alene’s retirement shindig. They really do it up big for those at the top of the food chain. Dale gets his party in the library. I imagine mine will be in a bathroom somewhere, assuming I don’t die from it first.

When I got home, I started some laundry and then tried out Breath of the Wild in 3D. The pictures on the TV were way too diverged, and I think it gave me a pretty good, lingering headache. For a bit I thought it might even be the blood pressure, but I went by Oakland to check, and it wasn’t any worse than usual. I stopped by the shop to get the blood pressure cuff from Jason’s office so I could watch it over the weekend, then went to my parents’ to borrow the deep fryers for the car show. There, I found out that Alene was actually the travel agent for my parents’ honeymoon. If I hadn’t been born two years later, I might have been concerned that I owed the woman my life.

On the way home, I stopped by the shop again for some extension cords because I forgot them the first time. Then it was home for the evening to try and relax and sleep before the big day tomorrow.

Space Cadet.