Tag: frustration

Uncategorised

Air and Space Between

I got up early to meet the girls this morning, but didn’t wake Summer up in time to get us both across town. We ended up just meeting the girls at the Museum of American History. I found an exchange that would get us a little closer to the museum, hoping that we could intercept them, but we missed our first train and then exited the station in a rainstorm.

There were a few exhibits I liked, particularly about electricity and engineering, and then travel. I could have passed on most of the rest of it. I had been pretty frustrated for a large part of the morning, so I wandered off by myself with ever-aching legs and feet for a while. We eventually met back up with everyone to have lunch in the cafeteria. The girls had sack lunches for the first time, and Summer and I had some cafeteria food for $17 per pound. I was disappointed when I realized that Summer had accidentally thrown away my cup lid when she took my tray at the end of our meal, but she went back and dug through the trash to find it.

From there, we walked back to the Air and Space Museum, which was much more my speed. About half of it was under construction, but I enjoyed that visit the most. We even took in a couple planetarium shows. We ended up closing the place down, and then walked back to the Metro for the trip back to College Park.

Summer and I left the girls to find their way back to the dorm again, while we headed to the hotel. I was a little hungry, so we tried going to Ikea for some meatballs. They were all out at the mini deli downstairs, so I made Summer walk with me through the rest of the store. There was a full restaurant upstairs, but they had closed an hour early for some maintenance. We ended up picking up some Potbelly from the little shopping center next door, and took it back to the hotel to eat.

I tried to get to bed early since Summer wasn’t going to let me sleep in as I had hoped. We’ll start our journey tomorrow with a low level of sleep, so it may be very optimistic to hope that we’ll make it halfway home.

Now everyone’s tired and cranky. I just had a head start.

Uncategorised

Drive All Day, Sleep No Way

I got to bed really late last night, slept super hard, and then crawled out of bed really early this morning to finish loading up for our trip. I was surprised that we ended up waiting about an hour and a half for Genesis to meet us at Superfast, where we left the Murano in an unused shop bay. She was supposed to be at Summer’s house at seven, but we didn’t leave town until about 8:30.

We hit the road, but then stopped early in Conway so we could wash Summer’s car. I used all of their fancy, foaming chemicals since she had a key to bypass the payment system. The Model Y had never looked so clean, even when it rolled off of the assembly line. We made our way out of the state, skipping the charger in Brinkley, and making it all the way to Memphis to stop and eat.

We had quite a bit of range anxiety since the arrival percentage just kept rapidly dropping, but we made it. The Supercharger was on the outskirts of a parking lot, and then we walked to a place called Kami Ramen Bar for lunch. The food was awesome, and the service was fast, straightforward, and friendly.

Our next stop was Nashville, where we walked through Target while we waited. When we left, I had Summer stop at Sonic so I could get a drink. What I got ended up being mostly ice cream though, so I stayed thirsty the rest of the day.

Our next stop was in Knoxville for dinner. We charged to 100% while we ate at Blaze Pizza. I wasn’t at all impressed with what Summer ordered, so I ordered another custom pizza online and ate that instead.
We powered on through the night, stopping one last time in Atkins at a Supercharger that happened to be in the parking lot of a Comfort Inn. Then Summer finished the last leg of the trip to get us into Roanoke for the night.

When we pulled up to the Best Western, two of the EV spots were ICEd out, with one of those vehicles being an SUV with handicapped tags parked over the line, nearly blocking the last available spot. I contemplated parking behind those two cars and running the charger out to ours, but I didn’t want to risk retaliation. Instead, we risked parking too close to a handicapped beater vehicle with the wheel cocked right into our car. I took pictures of the license plate and handicapped tag just in case we found their paint on our car the next morning.

As we got into the hotel, we were assaulted by a variety of smells that I attributed to body odor and weed. Luckily the room didn’t smell awful, and I was able to drop the temperature way down before we made it to bed. Genesis was the first into the shower, followed by Eaddie. I wrapped up my chores, and then it was off to bed for me.

I would get a ticket for parking in a handicapped spot, so why wouldn’t they get a ticket for parking in an EV spot?

Uncategorised

Sent Packing

Summer had to work a long day today. I slept in a little bit, but had to get home to do some laundry for our trip. Eaddie slept a couple hours later than I wanted her to, but it sprinkled on and off, so she had to mow in the dry periods. I cleaned up a bunch of leftovers, and once she finished the yard, I headed home.

The day went by relatively quickly. I got my laundry done and took a shower, but then I had to take Eaddie to Pasta Grill to meet some band friends to celebrate Kim’s retirement. I circled around to my parents’ house from there so I could visit before our trip. I ended up having dinner there, and Dad showed me the landscaping they had done.

I left their house to pick up Eaddie, but she decided she wanted to go to the movies instead. I went home and got caught up in deciding which vehicle to take to D.C. The Murano would be really straightforward, but I kept thinking the Autopilot on the Model Y would make the drive so much less exhausting. We’d have to stop a little more frequently and for longer, but driving for three hours at a time seemed like long enough for me anyway.

Summer stopped by after she finally got home from work, and I cleared up some confusion about the hotel. I couldn’t figure out how she booked the one she did, but it was twice the distance from the University of Maryland as the one that was actually advertised on the National History Day website. I booked the correct hotel and cancelled her reservation, and then we went outside to compare vehicles.

She went on home, but then I followed because Eaddie was on the way home from the movies. We needed to make sure her project would fit in the trunk, and it did, so we loaded it up and then I headed back home to charge and pack.

I didn’t get to bed until a couple hours later than I wanted, but I felt fairly confident that I had packed everything I should need for such a long trip. In reality, I was sure that I still overpacked, but travel makes me highly anxious.

It’s easier to unpack and repack than to do the Tesla Shuffle.

Uncategorised

Good Answer

I felt like I was dead when my alarm went off this morning. I dragged all the way to work, through the Burger King drive-through for some coffee and croissants. As I neared the school, I passed a truck that I guess kicked up a rock somehow, and it sounded like I had gotten shot. I got a thumbnail-sized crack, nearly dead-center in my line of sight.

Once I got to the office, I felt pretty productive all morning. I hardly left my office, but I felt relatively focused compared to my usual days there. I remember fixing my one thing for the day pretty early, but I can’t remember what it was now. I also filed a glass claim with Progressive, and the girl said I qualified for a whole new windshield. I guess I feel better about that than a repair. Hopefully my insurance premiums don’t go up.

I took a break for some soft tacos from the cafeteria, and then the afternoon kind of dragged on. Blake came into my office to ask about spending the rest of some money, and I felt like I had some pretty good answers for him. Then Carla came into the office to look for Kim, who wasn’t working, and I learned of our shared disgust of the lack of accountability with Chromebooks. She seemed excited to help call the list of literally hundreds of parents to try and recover missing devices.

I left work a bit late, and last as usual. I went home to change, and then headed straight up to Summer’s. She and Eaddie had hiked down to the Petit Jean waterfall during the day, so they weren’t up to much when I got to the house. I made a leftover burger, and then struggled to get to bed early because Summer was on a very loud and gossipy work call in bed for what felt like hours.

Seriously, why do I even come here.

Uncategorised

On the Subject of Pedestals

Eaddie has been wanting to go out on a hike, so she and Summer decided today was the day. I suggested Pedestal Rock, a place I hadn’t been there since I was a child, because it seemed like an easy enough hike for someone in my condition. They jumped right out of bed and were ready to go, so I took the opportunity to shower while they went to the store to get lunch materials. Then they brought the Model Y over to charge while we took mine up to Pelsor.

Nobody had eaten yet, and I didn’t want to drive for an hour and then hike for just as long before we could sit down and eat sandwiches, so I stopped at Sonic before we got to Dover. It was a pretty middling experience, made slightly worse by the fact that we then weren’t really hungry enough for lunch on the trail afterward.

We walked the Pedestal Rocks trail, which was longer than Kings Bluff. It wasn’t too incredibly hot or humid out, but the slight changes in elevation got me huffing pretty quickly. Even micro changes wear me down really quickly, so I tried to pace myself. We made it down to the rock formations fairly easily, and I took a short break while the girls wandered around at the bottom of the formations for a bit. The hike back up to the car was much worse for me, but once we leveled out I recovered fairly quickly.

The girls ate some pita chips and hummus, but didn’t get out any of the sandwich stuff. I found a large chunk of something in what was left of our cranberry slush from Sonic. It had broken up a bit in the drink, which led me to believe it was a chunk of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, but nobody was brave enough to taste it.

Eaddie was pretty anxious to get back home by that time, so we left. As we got back into town and service, Summer noticed that Autumn had stopped by Adam’s house on the way home from Clarksville, where she had been overnight. It was clear they had spent the night together at her father’s house. Autumn’s lies about their plans pretty well sealed her fate.

We swapped vehicles at my house and then went inside to chat for a bit before deciding to go to Summer’s parents’ house to talk to them first. We felt we owed them the courtesy, but that turned toxic absolutely instantly. We had barely pulled up when Autumn called Summer wanting to know if we were there to talk them out of paying for her band camp trip. It was a short conversation before Autumn hung up on her mother, and then Summer had to talk JoAnn into coming out to talk to the three of us.

Everyone seemed to be concerned about band camp, because that’s what Autumn called them about. Gerald stomped out, white as a ghost, a few moments later and banged his fist in anger. Summer told him we were kicking Autumn out, and he said, “Good! You don’t deserve her!” I think we all felt a brief feeling of relief until he pulled the rug out from beneath us and said she could come live with him. Then he tried bringing up Summer’s past when she moved out of their house, as though that made any kind of point at all. He cast Summer away and told her not to come back. She and Eaddie went back to the car while I stood there in shock.

I tried to calmly explain the situation, but it was clear he wasn’t going to listen. He was locked into blind support of Autumn’s parasitic lifestyle, and she’ll only suffer for it. I told him that I knew they loved the girls, and for some reason his only response was that he didn’t love Eaddie. That just seemed like a cruel and pointless thing to say, and I had absolutely no response loaded for that. We headed to the house to confront Autumn, but of course they had already told her she was being kicked out, so she was packing by the time we got there.

Autumn tried ignoring us at first, but finally came out long enough for Summer to talk to her. After over a year of hearing her say she hates it with us, she said she wasn’t ready to move out, and then turned to me to ask if I was “okay with this.” I don’t know what kind of answer she expected from me after she tried to send me to jail with false accusations. Summer did a great job of laying out the expectations and where Autumn failed to meet them. We gave her twice the amount of time we told her, and then sent her off with her car title and birth certificate. We’ve wasted enough time afraid for our own safety with her around. She can mooch off of someone else from now on.

I think Summer and Eaddie handled it relatively well, but it was hard. I didn’t really expect to tear up myself, but I did while giving my parting words. They took a moment to breathe, and then Summer took me home to get the Murano. While we were there, she called Nick to explain the situation. He played dumb enough that I didn’t even think to be angry at him, since he was the one that allowed Autumn to stay the night with her 15 year old boyfriend. What an absolute putz.

Summer spent a while on the phone in her car when we got back to the house. Eaddie had taken a shower, and we were trying to decide what to do for dinner. When Summer finally came in, I suggested pizza and both of their eyes lit up like it was Christmas morning and they had just found all of the surprise presents under the tree. I ordered some Little Caesars, and spent the next 20 minutes waiting for it.

When I got back to the house, we watched Modern Family while we ate. Then the girls went to bed. New challenges await us tomorrow, but at least for now, we can breathe a sigh of relief.

If it were up to me, we would have given her car to her in cube-form.

Uncategorised

Old Tomato

Things were tense with Summer every time I saw her today. She and I both slept in a bit. She tried to wake Autumn up before she left for work, and of course I could hear mild yelling from the bedroom. Once she left, I had a bagel and then quietly went home myself for the day. I wanted to read up on some Ubiquiti networking documentation, but I could never get myself into it. The best I could do was complete a load of laundry.

I thought Mom was working, but she texted around lunch time and it looked like she was at home. I thought I’d visit her, but I didn’t get out until after my laundry was done. I had to go by Walgreens first for my medication, but that was a failed trip and a phone call to my benefits line, because apparently my insurance paperwork hasn’t made it in yet. I decided not to pay full price and just ride out some higher blood pressure for a few weeks to see what happens.

From there, I stopped to wash my car before heading to see Mom. By the time I got there, I saw the garage was empty and it looked like she was at work. Confused, I headed back home. Summer was home by then, but the girls had been out shopping all day. By the time I got to her house, she said they had left again for the art walk downtown. Things were still tense, and I likened the situation to beating a dog for peeing on the carpet the day before. I told her I was sick of nothing being done. There’s been no accountability. Autumn simply doesn’t understand the difference between not being a shitty person and working to earn something. I’m not going to keep my mouth shut any longer.

I ate some leftovers, and Summer went straight to bed. I just sat there wishing I was at home all night long. What a waste.

First fireflies of the year.

Uncategorised

Poor Test

I was pretty sleepy last night, and slept in a fair amount today, partially because my phone never finished charging overnight with a faulty cable, and I wanted to run a full charge cycle for testing purposes. Summer forgot it was Memorial Day and scheduled herself to work in Greenbrier. Autumn had plans to spend the day out, mostly with Adam, so Eaddie and I had the day to ourselves.

I started with a bowl of cereal while I shopped for a sunshade for my car. Mom called to offer leftovers for lunch, so I woke Eaddie up and we eventually made our way to their house to eat. Then she wanted to go play her flute with a friend, so we had to run back to the house for her instrument, and then I dropped her off and headed to my house for the day.

The first thing I did was poke around the logs some more to get them burning down some more. Then I went inside and had a bit of an anxiety/dizziness attack that gave me a little bit of a dull headache for a while. Eventually I got around to doing my practice testing for Entergy, but evidently I did the wrong collection of tests. I thought I had to do all of them, but it was just four specific categories.

As it got later, I went back to get Eaddie, and we made it home just after Summer. They watched The Office while I argued with Julie about the practice test answers. I just couldn’t see how they came to some of their conclusions, but hopefully they were just poor examples of test questions. It won’t be the end of the world if I don’t make it anyway.

I ended the night with even more frustration, trying to re-pair Summer’s Fitbit Aria to her new router. I forgot to update it when I replaced the router, and apparently Fitbit has abandoned the setup process, and it will no longer work. I wish I could just no longer work.

Money

Uncategorised

Opportunities Rebound

I didn’t sleep great last night, but my biggest struggle was slow traffic and feeling hungry on the drive in to work. I parked by the loading dock for the second time, assuming kids were only out there yesterday due to the staff softball game they had, but evidently that’s just what they do every day after lunch. Some of them were playing basketball nearby, and the ball hit my car and set off the alarm. What surprised me the most was that I didn’t even notice the notification because it wasn’t a special sound. It was just a regular notification that didn’t draw any special attention. One of the maintenance guys had to come in to get me when the alarm was going off. Unfortunately I didn’t even catch the event on sentry mode, beyond seeing a basketball bounce away from my car, and then be caught by a girl that looked like a deer in headlights.

The best part of the day was the “taco Tuesday” nachos, which was a big, ugly glob of meat and cheese with a heap of vegetables on top from the salad bar. I’ve actually been overall pretty happy with the lunch there. Otherwise I spent most of my day writing up thoughts on our device deployment, and trying to come up with compelling ideas for administration to limit damage and loss.

The second best part of the day was the confidence boost of getting a job offer from Compsys, and then later a request for an interview at Green Bay Packaging. The former wasn’t going to pay well enough for the commute, but the second would be worth the sudden jump. I’ve really liked the people at Two Rivers so far, but it is a lot of work for very little compensation, comparatively. It’s a bit like when I started at Russellville, making way too little for an ever-increasing workload.

I made it home through some more slow traffic, but Summer was charging in the garage, so I changed clothes and took my car for a wash. Then I came back home to do some laundry. Once it was in the dryer, I left to visit my parents, but they were out at Lelan’s shop getting Mom’s hair cut. I turned back around and waited out the laundry, and then headed up to Summer’s for the evening.

Summer was already in bed and wanted me to sit with her for a bit. Autumn started watching TV at an obnoxious volume in the living room, but fortunately left around the time I was getting ready for bed. Eaddie decided she didn’t want to go to work with me, but then came out fussing that she didn’t have a source to stream The Office. First world problems.

Don’t blow it.

Uncategorised

Congraduations.

I slept in a little bit today by comparison with my earlier time to rise with commute. I needed it. I heard Autumn talking to Summer in the living room, so I just stayed in bed for a while. By the time I came out, Summer started to rush me home to get ready. She wanted to get there before the doors opened, so she ran me off to go home and shower. Then she picked me up late to meet her parents as they were coming out of the elevator at the arena. It was kismet.

Wesley and Cindy showed up and sat a couple rows down from us, so I talked with them once my parents got seated. By then it wasn’t too much longer before they filed everyone in and the ceremony started. We had good seats to see Eaddie in the first chair position in the band, as well as the stage as the seniors walked up.

Ginni’s speech was incredibly robotic. It was as if she prompted ChatGPT to write her a graduation speech that included things for which people normally have feelings, but which she as an interstellar alien, had absolutely no understanding. It was dry, emotionless, and sounded unrehearsed. I don’t think I’d feel any differently if I weren’t bitter, because all of the other speeches were pretty great, and at least seemed heartfelt.

Having graduation split into two groups made this one much more bearable. Sitting for the entire class would have sucked, not just because it would have taken twice as long for everyone to walk, but because of how many people would be there. I suggest a hard limit of two guests per student.

Afterward, we all met outside and waited for Autumn to get some pictures. Summer’s parents left after saying they would have lunch with us. My parents would join us, but made it out before we did. Summer replaced the traffic cones I moved out of the way, so traffic backed up behind us. The girl that parked next to us was having an absolute fit and had who I presumed was her mother stand out in the parking lot behind her to block traffic. I didn’t see it, but evidently she was flipping people off and screaming about it, so I just made us wait until all the traffic was done before we left.

We had both of the girls and Adam with us, and we had a shrinking window of time to take everyone out to eat, so we met my parents at Burger King for Autumn’s favorite food group. I knew there was no way in hell we’d make it in and out of Brick Oven, and by the time we got out of the parking lot, nobody thought we’d even make it across town and back from Autumn’s favorite restaurant. I ordered some food ahead to try and speed things along and maybe save a buck, but I think I really ended up just wasting even more money because Eaddie wanted a Spider-Verse Whopper that came with a couple chicken sandwiches and chicken fries that nobody really wanted. Summer ordered her own meal, my parents ordered their own meals, and Autumn got the one meal I ordered on the drive over.

From there, we rushed Adam back to the band room and Autumn left to go with him. We took Eaddie to Old Post to hang out with some friends, and Summer took me home so she could go work out, or mow, or do whatever else. I did a couple loads of laundry and then mowed my own yard, which got me much sweatier than I anticipated. The back yard is frustratingly overgrown again, and no matter how much I plead, I can’t get a hand with it. It made me seriously contemplate staying home out of frustration so that I could just tackle it on my other day off instead of wasting that with the girls too.

I did finally make it up to Summer’s for the evening, where she was nearly asleep from watching George of the Jungle, and Eaddie was up practicing her flute. Summer woke up once I got there, and was up for a while until after Autumn finally got home. I was cold and tired, yet clammy from mowing, so I didn’t stay up very long.

Your place.

Uncategorised

Fix One Thing

I was a little less scattered at work today, and finally managed to resolve one issue that nobody was really talking about. Evidently one of our domain controllers had some major updates pending, and I don’t know if that was the cause, but Google Password Sync wasn’t working for Workspace for any changes to that controller. Once I fixed that, I was able to sign into my new email account with the password I set in Active Directory.

I followed Kim through the lunch line again for a lunch break, and afterward we went down to the gym to check out the sound system while the elementary kids practiced their musical before the big show in the evening. She said she had to go to the evening show and press “play” for each of the songs they would sing, because evidently that was too much work for whatever teacher would already be there adjusting the volume.

I ended up leaving a little bit early since I stayed late yesterday and basically worked through lunch both days. They had the construction lights going at the two bridges I crossed, so traffic was quite a bit slower coming home today. I stopped by Superfast once I got into town, to check on Summer and get some pictures of the paint defects on her car to send to the service team.

Autumn was running all around town for some reason, but Eaddie found a ride home. I went home for a little bit and Ben called to check up on the new job. We talked for a little while, and he offered to come visit since I guess we’re paying members of the APSRC. Finally I headed up to Summer’s house once she was off work. I stopped for some tacos and a car wash along the way, but had to backtrack when I saw both a train and emergency vehicles parked all over the road on Elmira.

When I got to the house, Eaddie was trying to figure out their History Day trip. They couldn’t figure out how to get everyone up there, so I finally said we could still chaperone if we needed to. Having a job again made me a little more comfortable with how much money the trip would cost.

The girls all went to their rooms early, but somehow I still ended up awake pretty late. I just kept coming up with weird Monopoly-esque offers in my mind for the house we liked on Ouita. I guess that’s more thought for the commute.

Then onto the next.