Tag: friends

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What’s the Dale, Yo?

It rained all day today, so we had to trailer the TVs we were mounting. Dale had us load up four for the high school, but when we got there we decided not to do two of those because they had newer projectors already. Then the two we did hang were in rooms that seemed not to use them at all, so I’m not even sure it was necessary. All of this was really out of the ordinary for Dale, so it really threw us out of whack the rest of the morning.

I offered up a couple places at the junior high where we could mount the last two, and after Zach spent about half an hour trying to back the trailer up to the pad, we got one TV hung. They left the last one in my office, and we met the gang at the shop to go to lunch at Popeye’s.

Way too much food later, I was left to go to the junior high and take care of a few things by myself. I spent a while trying to get sound out of the TV we hung, and then went through a few rooms to check on the quality of some projectors to decide on more replacements. The teachers were all there for SSP night, so I found all of them to discuss the replacements. About half of them were all for TVs, and the other half didn’t want to give up their touch panels. It’s all well enough, I suppose, because I hate getting rid of stuff that still works.

Summer had to stay late for her conferences, so I headed home and played some Rocket League and Overwatch with Johnny and Aaron when they came on. I missed having friends to play with, but I didn’t miss all the whining about why things are the way that they are in the games. I guess you just have to take the good with the bad.

My body is finely tuned, like a microchip.

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Domo Arigato Mister Conky 2000, Ha Ha!

I had to wake up this morning to meet at the robotics tournament around 8, and the place was already pretty packed. Everything went pretty smoothly, and I only worked for about an hour before they cut me loose. I went up to Summer’s to see what they were doing, and she left Eaddie and me there while she went to the gym. I ate the last of the leftover noodles and then played on the Switch for a little bit while Eaddie took a shower. Just after Summer got back, I got a call about some trouble at the tournament, so I had to head back there.

I couldn’t find anything wrong with the wireless other than a slightly higher number of users in the area. I would think the access points could have handled the 30-40 users per device without too much trouble though. I spent a little while fiddling with it to see if I could narrow down the trouble, but in the end the only advice I could offer was to restart their tablets.

When I left, I met Summer and Eaddie at Sumo for lunch. They were super busy and our cook was unusually quiet for the venue. What made it even worse was that our noodles were basically completely inedible due to the amount of salt in them. They burned my mouth as I ate them, so I had to mix them with the rice to make them palatable. Then he forgot Summer’s vegetables and had to scrape enough from the scraps on the table for her. Overall I just felt like they were trying to hide poor quality with tons of sauce and seasoning.

From there, the girls went home so they could go with their father. I ran home to clean up some oil or grease stains on my shirt, and then made it back to the robotics tournament just as they were cleaning up. It went well for the most part, so hopefully the payment situation will be fairly straightforward. If I’m lucky they’ll contribute my extra to retirement as well. I left once most everyone was gone and headed back home to meet Summer.

On the way home, Zach texted and invited us to come play games with him, Sara, Gary, Bryan, and Daspri. We got there just in time to see that it was actually a dinner party they were having. We were still so full from lunch that we just awkwardly stood there and chatted with them while they ate. Apparently that’s a pretty regular thing for them to do though, which was kind of a bummer to learn. I thought we were getting in on something new there, but I ended up feeling like extras. It was still a fun time though once we started playing Unstable Unicorns. We even played by the proper rules this time so we didn’t get stuck in a stalemate for four hours. We wrapped up the evening with a learning game of Bears vs Babies. It went okay.

Enough with the grumblies!

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Coach Cow

It was storming pretty hard this morning, but we got just enough of a break and cared just little enough that we still managed to truck a touch panel to Oakland first thing in the morning. Together, Zach, Gary, and I got the panel hung with only a little unnecessary help from John. It would have helped if we had started with the correct size drill bit, but the important thing is that we got it done.

Afterward, we got the rumor mill going pretty hard, and there were a lot of things left up in the air. Jason’s still going to be out for a while, and apparently they’re letting him use sick bank days for what any reasonable person would feel are seriously inappropriate reasons. I was going to get 50 cent corn dogs with Summer and Ronda, but Ronda backed out, and then Zach wanted to continue our conversation over lunch. The three of us went to Zona K-tracha for lunch, and all ended up getting the same mixed lunch fajitas. The waitress seemed to be new at literally everything she did for us, down to asking if we wanted ice in our waters. The food was good, but inconsistent with our previous experiences. Overall good, but not worth the difference over a closer restaurant to the shop. Previously it had been pretty amazing.

I took care of work orders after lunch, and spent some time setting up an account with PlayVS. Matt and Ben officially gave me the go-ahead to be the coach for the district’s first Esports league team. PlayVS tripled the number of games to three: League of Legends, Rocket League, and Smite. None of us had any real idea how we would start the whole process, so I started by firing off an email to Gabriel, who I had helped pitch Esports to Matt in the first place. My main concern right now is how we will pay to enter the league, and whether we even should for this season with so little time to prepare.

As the day ended, Summer and I were going to meet at my place over some corn dogs while the girls were in karate. Kevin was still in his office working super late, so I thought I’d swing by and bring him a couple, but he had disappeared by the time I got there. I headed home and ate with Summer, then finally ran by the junior high basketball game to feed him there. He was super duper appreciative of that, and we chatted for a while before I headed out. I talked to Ronda and Jennifer at the concession stand for a little bit and ran into Charlie there because his daughter wanted to watch the game. I guess it’s something social to do. I didn’t used to see the appeal, but at least it looked better than an outdoor sport.

When I got back home, I spent some time in the living room with Grey. I think her tumors are getting worse pretty quickly, but she’s not acting totally worthless, so it’s going to be hard deciding when to end it. We’ll just have to take it day by day. Johnny and Aaron got online after a little while and I chatted with Johnny until bedtime.

Blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol.

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Don’t Get Testy

This morning was really warm, so I rode the bike in to work. Oakland started ACT Aspire today, so I was stuck there all morning. I was able to use their loaner laptop while I was in the office though, so I kept pretty busy just catching up on old emails. I sat there until a little after noon before ordering some Subway online, and then I picked that up and went to the shop.

I ate there and chatted with Gary for a while. It wasn’t too long after lunch until I had to go back to Oakland to meet with the guys that are running the robotics tournament this weekend. I had to find out what they needed from me, and luckily it sounded like a couple people from Tech should be around to help as well so we won’t all be completely without guidance.

By the time we finished there, school had let out, so I spent the rest of the afternoon at the shop just kind of vaguely working. When I got home, Bác Vân was sitting out back resting, so I chatted with her for a while until Julie got home so I could swing by to get the apple pie moonshine she didn’t want. We ended up talking for a little while too, but the sun was setting and I didn’t want to be out too late on the bike, so I headed to Gary’s place to give him the moonshine. I went in just because I had never seen his place before, and we chatted for just a few minutes before the girls blew up my phone.

I ran home to get the car and went to Walmart to look at some sandpaper for Autumn’s project. While I was there, I picked up a new bulb for the lamp to put over the shrimp bowl. I did a little Googling and decided that sandpaper wouldn’t work well for the papier-mâché, and left with just my bulbs. Autumn was making some slow but steady progress on her Challenger rockets. I had a little bite of what Eaddie didn’t finish for dinner, and then I had to run back home to test some aquarium water.

Earlier when I had checked on the shrimp bowl, the little baby fish was having trouble swimming. He seemed fine this morning, but couldn’t stay upright or swim straight in the evening. I wanted to test the water and try to fix it, but by the time I got home it was already dead. One of the shrimp even started to pick at it a little bit, so I just left it in the bowl. For some reason, the water was really alkaline in the bowl, but both of my big tanks have been really heavily acidic. I didn’t test the water in the 35 gallon since it’s just been sitting stagnant for years, but I’ll probably do that sometime soon. It definitely doesn’t look very good. In the end, I added a small piece of driftwood to try and bring the pH down a little bit, and got my new lamp set up on the timer.

WHATTUP FISH TANK PEOPLE

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Sunday Pickins

We slept in a little today after a good, long night of sleep. I started to clean up around the bedroom just a little bit, but it ended up being more like picking through a time capsule than a true cleaning day. Eventually Summer took off to go to the gym and shop for dinner stuffs. I ended up playing a little bit of Overwatch with Clint to pick up the last of my bonus loot boxes for the week. Then I got a shower and headed to Summer’s for dinner.

The girls had other food sorted and went to bed pretty soon after that. Summer made a really great pasta out of some of the leftover pulled pork, and I transferred her big tray of leftover baked beans to smaller containers for freezing. Then Summer and I watched an episode of Parks and Rec before I headed home to do one last load of laundry for the weekend. Clint and I ended the night with a few more rounds of Overwatch while my towels dried.

Baked beans, the plentiful legume.
The more you get, the more you entomb.
The more you entomb, the cheaper you eat,
So freeze beans from every quiz bowl meet!

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Ye Olde Frands

The junior high was testing this morning, so I spent most of the day trying to stay busy there. I actually got a few things taken care of, and there wasn’t a single testing issue, so it was a pretty stress-free day. Ben and Gary came over around 9 to meet with some kid from Tech about the robotics tournaments and what they needed from us to make their equipment work. Unsurprisingly, Gary was the smartest person in the room by a longshot. It was almost impressive how quickly everyone else’s eyes glazed over, and I was proud to have mostly kept up.

Dale called for lunch, so I met him and Bryce at Wendy’s. One of the maintenance guys walked in and spun some more tall tales for us as well. It felt like a really short lunch, but it was good as usual. Then it was back to the junior high until school let out. Then I ran by Oakland on the way home to replace a projector lamp.

I had to get gas when I finally left work, since I’d been skirting empty for the better part of a week. On the way back home, I stopped by AT&T to chat with the guys there. They were super dead and overstaffed, but still joked about me coming back. It’s definitely tempting, but I really would like to start out at a higher hourly rate. I left just as an area manager pulled up so as not to disturb anyone. Then it was home to start some laundry.

Summer brought all the kids over after a little while to help with the leftover barbecue from last weekend. They watched an episode of Emogenius before heading home for the night. I cleaned up and got on the computer where I saw Jack sitting online. It wasn’t much longer until Johnny showed up as well. I was a little annoyed that there wasn’t ever any chat about playing tonight, but it is what it is. We played some Overwatch until one by one they left.

Get up off my feet and stop making tired excuses.

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Short Notice

Summer and Autumn left early this morning for a quiz bowl tournament. I slept in for a little while, but tried not to sleep all morning and got up to watch some Caprica in my boredom. There were still some leftover biscuits with gravy, so breakfast by myself was easy enough. A couple episodes in, Clint sent a message saying he was in town and wanted to know if anyone wanted to meet him for lunch.

I woke Eaddie up and we both jumped into some clean clothes and ran across town to Linh to meet Clint. He was in town to get Landon after an archery tournament. It was nice to catch up a bit, though Eaddie took a while to really wake up. Clint didn’t have time to socialize after we ate, so Eaddie and I came back to their house to shower and clean up for the day.

Eventually Summer and Autumn made it back in to town, and Summer had a really bad head cold. I ran to La Villa to pick up a chicken parmesan for them to split. Eaddie made her bowl of ramen she got from the Oriental food store, and I scraped the bottom of Summer’s plate when she finished. We tried watching an episode of Battlestar, but I had some trouble getting it to play the correct episode. Instead, we watched an episode of Parks and Rec, then I put Summer to bed. Eaddie stayed up watching Home Movies, and then Legends of Tomorrow once I was ready for bed.

Cold, rainy days are sleepy enough without also being travel-lagged and sick.

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Too Many Pandacorns

I slept in too late today to take Summer some lunch while she was working at the shop, so I spent the day cleaning up after the cats and fish. I moved more snails over to the 55-gallon tank too, but I’ll need to bring the PH up so the acidity doesn’t eat away at their shells. I let myself get sucked down the rabbit hole for a while on that one.

After a while, I loaded up Breath of the Wild on the TV and played until I had to get ready for dinner. Summer came over after a workout and a shower, we picked the girls up, and we went to my parents’ house for some leftovers. Zach invited us up to play a card game they got called Unstable Unicorns, so we picked Gary up as well and headed to Doverland.

The seven of us played for nearly four hours before Eaddie finally won. We were pretty severely gimped because Zach and Sara insisted that you couldn’t play an upgrade card unless you had a basic unicorn card in your stable, and then all of my unicorns were turned into pandas for the entire game. I very nearly won though, and I feel like I did win in spirit even if it was only because I had a proper understanding of the rules.

Past midnight, we headed back to town in the pouring rain, dropped Gary off, then made it back to my house to go to sleep. All the girls passed right out, and I joined them after a couple more hours.

You think the hard way is your ally, but you merely adopted the challenge!

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Harry Peter

Jesica came over today with shrimp bread and twice baked potato casserole. I almost didn’t wake up early enough, but I managed to squeeze a shower in just in time. When she got here, the three of us went to Walmart to find something for us to cook. We landed on brats that I cooked on the George Foreman Grill, and we started the day on year three with the Prisoner of Azkaban. We made it all the way through to The Half-Blood Prince before Nick returned the girls. Eaddie got Autumn’s old phone, so she was on it for a while. Then Noah wanted to come over too, so I picked him up and we finished the movie.

Once it was over, Jesica gave up on the last two movies and headed out. I ended the night playing a couple episodes of Con Man until Summer was ready for bed. I had a bunch of coffee earlier, and kept eating the same stuff over and over again, so I felt a little weird and sleep deprived by the time everyone else went to bed. Tomorrow should be quite a bit different.

Binge all the things!

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It’s Magic!

We all got up and ready to go to Fort Smith for the magic club’s annual holiday potluck and show. We got to my parents’ house pretty close to when we planned, but Summer didn’t feel well by the time we left and we had to swing by Walgreens on the way out of town for some meds. The rest of the trip went pretty well though. If I had realized Mom’s car had both HDMI and an AC power outlet, I would have brought a Switch dock so we could all play. Instead, we all split up and took turns, which still turned out really well. It definitely made the trip feel shorter.

The party was at a new place, with plenty of room for eating and a large raised platform for a stage. There didn’t seem to be quite the variety of food we usually see, but at least we had plenty to eat. The girls seemed to really enjoy the show, but I really think Summer was the most excited of the three of them. Most of the performances seemed shorter than usual as well, but it was a good time.

We stopped by a couple Oriental food stores on the way home, and the girls actually really enjoyed looking at all the snacks and different things they aren’t used to seeing. Dad bought them each some snacks, and we headed home. Edna and I played some more INVERSUS to unlock some more maps. She got pretty good after a few games, so it was really fun to play a little competitively until it degraded to us trolling each other.

Once we got home, the girls went back to their house and I started cleaning up a bit. I had to fish three frogs out of the tadpole tank, which meant I had to find and clean another tank for them. The betta seems to be getting worse, and I don’t know what else I can do to help her. In cases like this, it seems way easier to care for them when you have a whole school of them rather than just one solo sick species. I gave her some more meds, but I think I need to find my aquarium salt as well. I really thought I used to have some somewhere.