Tag: friends

Uncategorised

Birthday Magic

It was Eaddie’s 12th birthday today, so I tried to treat her a bit. We got up and had cereal for breakfast before I ran home. Leaving my air conditioner on super cold overnight helped the house stay a little cooler today, but it did still get uncomfortably hot after I finished cleaning up. Summer got Noah and had him mow her lawn while I was away.

When I got back, I tried taking everyone out to lunch, but it ended up being a really really late lunch because the girls couldn’t focus on their laundry tasks. We got to Zaxby’s after 3 and split four meals between the five of us. Then we ran by Dairy Queen to get Eaddie a Blizzard treat. I had to run by home and then the junior high to get a spare part for Travis, and then we went back to Summer’s until time to meet up with him.

Boss Monster Games opened a bit earlier than the expected 6:30, so we left to meet Travis and John. We jumped right into a super long free-for-all Magic: The Gathering game that exhausted most of us. When we finally finished, we were all hungry for some dinner, so Summer and I split up between Taco John’s and Little Caesar’s. She beat me back because Little Caesar’s seemed to be really understaffed, but I really didn’t have to wait super long.

Travis was too tired to continue with a new game, so he went home and the six of us paired off for a three-team free-for-all. Eaddie got quite a bit of help from John, and eventually Autumn and Noah got to a point where they were really helping each other with strategy. We didn’t even realize how late it had gotten when they came to let us know they were closing shop. She gave us a binder full of promo cards to pick through, and we headed on home without finding a true winner. I think we’ve probably got a new tradition though.

It was really just nice to have an evening out with other adults.

Uncategorised

Revengers: Endgame

They’ve almost completely filled in the hole they dug to replace our parking lot. I was surprised both at how deep they dug, and how quickly they completed that much work. We had a super small crew today, so Jason took all four of us out to Center Valley to do some moving of equipment. He and Brice rolled together for most of it, while I wandered around with Allen and Amanda. They’re getting a bunch of new cubbies for the kids like most other elementaries have, so there were several rooms with technology that had to be relocated.

It was a pretty solid, yet relaxed day of work. We all went to Old South for lunch on Allen’s suggestion, and the place was absolutely packed. I saw Mr. Mathis walking in, and was a little surprised that he remembered and recognized me, and asked about my sister as well. The service was a bit slow on account of how many people they had crammed into the building, but was otherwise good. My pork chop was unremarkable, but the sweet potato was a good choice.

Daleism: They must not be rich, otherwise they’d have a covered Porchia.

We spent the rest of the afternoon with more of the same until quitting time. Evidently nobody did a walkthrough of the building and gave Allen a work order for it, so Jason and Brice spent the last bit of time there doing that. When I left work, I went home to my hot house and changed before going to Asurion to pick up Josh.

Somehow, Josh had avoided any spoilers from Endgame after all this time, so I was excited to take him to see it. We wanted to eat a little bit of something before the movie, so we went to Chipotle first and split a burrito. Then it was straight to the Cinemark in a perfect amount of time to grab our collectible posters and stow them in the car before finding our seats. We both made it through the entire movie without getting up, and even a little longer since we stayed for the extra scenes at the end. The movie of course was great, but I thought the extra clip was a bit lame. I wish we had gotten the one with Morgan Stark instead.

After the movie, we went to Old Chicago for a proper dinner, and then headed back home. I turned my portable A/C down super low to hopefully cool the house a bit overnight, and then headed up to Summer’s for the evening.

Everybody wants a happy ending, right? But it doesn’t always roll that way.

Uncategorised

Bye Bye LeRoy

It was Dale’s last day of work today, but by the count of our accomplishments, we were all retiring today. Jason tried sending us all on a wild goose chase with phones, but then diverted us upstairs instead. I lead a group of three others in replacing telephones there, and basically did three of the six we found. By the end of it, I had to make Amanda do one herself. Gary split off first, and was followed by Brice soon after.

I had to run to Oakland to look at their fax machine, but made it right back so we could go to lunch. Jason used the scrap metal money we made to buy us all Dale’s choice of Brown’s Catfish. Gary, Amanda, Jason, Dale, and I were all that went, but it was a good time. Then after lunch we went to Sequoyah and dusted more computers until everyone sort of lost momentum again. We did encounter a dumpster scrapper back at the shop, who we invited in to take some old printers and CRT monitors. I’m not sure he’ll get much of anything for them, but at least we don’t have to mess with the junk any more.

We killed the rest of the afternoon at the shop while Dale mumbled about wanting to go home. I’m not sure anyone was really surprised, but we all wondered why he didn’t just leave anyway. When Jason finally did tell us we could leave early, he jumped up faster than I have ever seen anyone jump before. He handed me his keys and I forced a bro-hug on him, and Amanda walked out with him.

Gary and I went by Superfast to check out some cabling and other electronics they wanted to have relocated, and Ben offered to give him a free oil change while he was there. Afterward I went home to change and clean up a bit before running to the junior high for my tools and meeting Gary back at the shop. They had just closed, so Summer finished her stuff and then shut everything down so I could get to work.

The rat’s nest looked a lot worse than it really was, but it still took me a couple hours to get everything cleaned up and looking nice. There’s still more to do, but they still have some finishing work to do in the lobby first, and then I can come back and finish my part. I struggle a bit on how much to charge them for the work, but it’ll be really nice to make some extra money on the side. It’ll be good to bring a little bit of the hustle back.

When we got back to Summer’s for the evening, I fried some chicken strips and made some great looking salads for the three of us. Then we had dessert and watched an episode of Parks and Rec before bed.

“Highskoo’ Teknicken” and other Daleisms!

Uncategorised

Eight Minute Labs

I slept only a tiny bit better last night, which made it all the more difficult to get out of bed in the morning. It was my last day to present, and I was scheduled for the first breakout session block in the morning. I had plenty of time for breakfast, and decided to go present my session and then return to check out of the hotel before going back for the last session and closing.

Much to my surprise, my lab pretty well filled up and it made me feel a bit better to be a popular topic. Even Thomas showed up with his tech. I was more confident in my ability to present as well, so I assumed things would go about the same as yesterday. I could not have been more wrong. We started chatting casually just a few minutes before time, and as people quit trickling in, I started in on what I had. It took me all of about eight minutes to completely cover what I had. The room was dead silent the whole time, and none of my jokes got even a groan. I wrapped it up just as quickly as I started, and several people took off. I did have a few people come in a little late, which got the conversations going again. We did have more general esports chats going on, and I got to talk to the kid doing the last session I would attend. I ended up staying the whole hour for the conversation, but overall I considered the presentation a flop.

On the way out, I grabbed a big plate of catfish and chicken strips and headed back to the hotel. I packed everything as quickly as I could, then ate while Summer ran her stuff downstairs. Once I was satisfied with the room check, we headed back to the high school to wrap up the conference. Summer went to Planet Fitness while she waited for me. I went to Connor’s presentation where he tried to quickly go through his slides and then switched to open discussion after seeing how the HSTI fatigue had hit my last session.

We wrapped the conference with a comedian that went around the auditorium trying to make jokes about things people did. I wasn’t into it. The door prizes took forever, and I didn’t have the luck I had the first night. I shouldn’t complain, but I had other plans and was ready to leave.

Summer had met up with Amanda and come back to get me. I hadn’t seen her since her time with Brandon, so it was nice to catch up a bit. I was mostly surprised she remembered our comments on her Instagram and reached back out to me right before the conference. We went to a place called Cafe 1217 that had a bunch of what I considered to be “weird” stuff. It was good, but expensive. I was still kind of full from the quick lunch, which didn’t make me feel any better about it. It was a good time though, and I was happy that at least the staff there liked my jokes.

When we finished, we ran Amanda back home before heading toward home ourselves. I think we were both just too tired at that point to do much else. We stopped to fill our water bottles on the way out, and then made it all the way to the Hot Springs Village Walmart where we stopped for a restroom break and to peruse for clearance deals. Summer got a couple things for herself, and I picked up a couple cheap frisbees since I occasionally find myself in need of one. Finally we made the remainder of the trip home in good time, I unpacked and cleaned up a little, and we went back to her house for the evening. She has to work tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll be making a decision on an air conditioner.

I’ve never had a more successful conference, but I need a vacation after that!

Uncategorised

May I Present to You…

We slept in a bit today since I didn’t really plan on seeing the opening keynote speakers. Breakfast had me feeling a bit off though, which made me a couple minutes late, which in turn made it awkward for me to walk into the first class I was thinking of attending. I ended up finding Ben in his booth for ARKSTE and chatted with him for a bit before making a round through the vendors and eventually finding my way to Esports 101 by the presumably unlikely ByteSpeed.

Fortunately that session ended up being wonderful, and in fact, one of the best I’ve ever attended. The guy was a former esports coach at the collegiate level, and you could tell he both really knew his stuff, and also wasn’t necessarily there just to sell us something. He definitely gave me some ideas for practice that I’ll have to use, assuming this thing ever gets off the ground for me.

My presentation was next after a bit of a break. I followed Adrian in the same room we were in before, and setup couldn’t have been easier for what I needed to do. I had a small crowd, including one guy that didn’t even know what esports are. It was small enough to be a little intimate, and my jokes were received well, so overall I thought it was a success. We actually used up the hour, which was my primary concern, and our conversations kind of floated from Discord to esports in general. All I can do is hope that tomorrow’s session will go as well.

I went to one more session before heading out. Summer came back to pick me up a bit early and was waiting outside, so I ran out after retrieving the laptop power supply I had forgotten in the classroom. Then we stopped by Dick’s to try and find something cheap to earn me the last point I needed for another reward certificate. Once we got that, we headed back to the hotel so she could get ready for dinner.

We met Ben in the lobby and had a few minutes to kill over beer, wine, burgers, and brats. I hadn’t eaten lunch and was pretty hungry, but I didn’t want to kill my appetite right before dinner, but I also didn’t want to be super hungry in case we ended up waiting for another couple hours to get our food in such a big group.

Dinner was at the same Back Porch Grill as last night, so we were welcomed back with open arms. I had the red fish this time, which was excellent. After trying Summers Cajun ribeye, I did have a taste for steak, but I still left satisfied. Summer did some work on some wine and wanted to go back to the room, so we dropped her off before heading to The Porterhouse for the ARKSTE party. I stuck to tea, and we spent most of the time chatting with a couple techs from Conway. The karaoke room was too loud, and the dining room was too old, so we stood by the bar like hip young men and got in the way of servers and ladies wishing to visit the loo.

None of us in our group won a door prize, and then they shut the thing down and we went out the back door. It was a quick trip back across town, and off to bed for one last day. I present early, and I need my beauty rest after today.

The eagle has landed.

Uncategorised

Winner, Winner, HSTI Dinner!

I had an absolutely terrible fit trying to sleep last night. I climbed up into the window to try and mask the street light right outside our window, and only just barely got it too dark to read inside. My heart raced, and I had all kinds of anxiety about waking up early enough to get to my preconference meeting. After what felt like no sleep at all, I got up and ready, woke Summer up, and we went down for breakfast.

Ultimately I made it in plenty of time. Breakfast was fast, traffic wasn’t bad, and even parking that early for a preconference day was easy. The class was pretty good, but I think the biggest thing I got out of it was seeing the number of schools that were not only competing, but already had fully funded labs. It’s frustrating still waiting to see if I’ll even get paid for it in the future, since I’ve already volunteered all of last semester.

Lunch was cold, cold burgers and surprisingly good hot dogs in the cafeteria where I sat alone until another group of people spilled over into the seats by me. I have always, and still struggle getting to know individuals, so I didn’t actually talk to any particular person long enough to hunt them down for a lunch buddy. It wasn’t bad, and may have even been better since I kept getting mustard in weird places like some kind of man child that had never eaten food before.

We finished up early in the afternoon, so I headed back to the hotel and caught Summer exploring outside. We went up to the room so I could change, then went for a walk down the street, marveling at the near-million-dollar homes along the water. It really is the best of both worlds, being close to nature, but still having access to broadband internet.

Back in the room, we watched the end of The Amazing Spider-Man and the beginning of the new, dark Fantastic Four before leaving for dinner with Next Step. We went into The Back Porch Grill as relative strangers, but ended up sitting with a pretty good, chummy group of folks. It was a good time, and the conversation was casual and topical enough that Summer had plenty to talk about as well. I’d hate to even see the bill, but needless to say we all left with full bellies.

Charlie hitched a ride with us to Woody’s Big Party at Terry Martin’s bar, where things got a bit crazier than I’ve seen at other conferences. Summer had never seen anything like it, so it was a good experience for her to have, even if it was only educational. The craziest thing to happen was with the door prizes though. Those guys running the show were rowdy, and drew the whole thing out forever. Summer and I both had winning, sequential tickets. First I got up for a tiny Bluetooth JBL speaker and wall power splitter. Then at the end we won the grand prize, which was a new Lenovo Chromebook.

We split after that, heading straight back to the hotel and to bed to hopefully get a good night’s sleep before the regular conference starts tomorrow.

FREE STUFF!!!!!

Uncategorised

The Good Househusband

Summer had to work today, so I got up and started trying to make myself useful. I cleaned out her refrigerator and threw away a bunch of food that had gone bad while I cleaned up the last of the chicken tacos we had that one time forever ago. Then I made her a huge salad with everything I could find. Radishes? You bet. Strawberries and mango? Bring it on! Just a dusting of coleslaw mix? Crunch it up! I fried some chicken strips at the last minute so they’d be hot, and took it to her on my way home.

I stayed pretty scattered once I got there, but I still managed to get a lot done. I cleaned up the laundry room, did dishes, got my work shirts washed and put away, and even spent some time going through some old stacks of receipts and paperwork. It got pretty uncomfortably hot, so I took a cold shower and then met Summer at Walmart to shop for dinner. She invited Alex over for dinner, so we picked up some ribeyes, fries, corn, and even a big cake that was marked down.

We had a little time to relax before Alex would be over, so I let the steaks sit with their seasonings for a while. About 30 minutes before he got there, I started getting everything going. The steaks and corn turned out really good for being cooked over a gas grill. The fries fried up nicely, though I did get a bit of a burn due to a lack of a fry basket or metal scoop to lower them down into the oil. Even the cake was moist and delicious.

Summer and Alex went back and forth with stories about work while I just kind of sat there looking pretty. I was pleased with how all of the day’s food was presented. Now the trick is to clean out as much of the food in the refrigerator as we can before we leave for the week.

Bare-foot with a big, round belly.

Uncategorised

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.

Uncategorised

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.

Uncategorised

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.