Tag: frustration

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Chauffeur

I got up early after very little sleep so I could get breakfast with Summer before she had to go to work. It was super rainy all morning, so I went back up to the room to take a long bath since I didn’t want to go back to sleep. When I loaded up for checkout, they said the elevator had quit working, so I had to take the stairs. I was just glad I didn’t have to go back up three floors since I got everything in one trip.

I went to Splash and loaded up a bucket of cleaner, then took Summer to the Greenbrier lube to drop it off. It was a tiny one-man shop that was down the road from the carwash. We weren’t there long before heading back to Conway to do some shopping for that store.

I decided to take us to the Dave Ward store since I had already spent so long in the other one the night before. Summer picked up what she needed, and I found some salsa on clearance. I tried really hard to convince her that she could find a better chair at an office supply store, but she insisted on getting the crappy, overpriced one from Walmart.

We were both hungry by the time we finished shopping, so we went across town to Chipotle. It was delicious, but I had forgotten how expensive it is. It was just over $30 for both of us, and she didn’t even get a drink. I think next time I’ll ask if they can make me an open-faced burrito, because her bowl appeared to have much more in it, but I love the tortilla.

Back at Splash, I assembled the new chair and tightened bolts on their old ones, which made a huge difference. I stuck around too long and got really tired, but I made it home without incident. Traffic seemed a bit slow, but at least it wasn’t raining heavily by that time. Eaddie called me just as I left Conway and asked if I would pick her up, but she ended up going to her grandmother’s instead.

As soon as I got home, I started a load of laundry. Then I faced the monumental task of cleaning out the refrigerator so they could pick it up the next day. I pulled a bunch of drinks out of the mini fridge and kept as much here as I could, then loaded up my entire trunk with stuff to take to Summer’s house. I went to get Eaddie, but when I got there, she said she was helping with dinner and that Summer was going to get her. Summer didn’t even realize she was there, which lead to compounded aggravation for me. I was already frustrated and hangry last night. Then I had to unload the trunk and move all of that food into Summer’s refrigerator all by myself after letting it thaw out for a drive across town.

I got everything packed into the fridge and waited for Summer to get home super late from Conway. Then I went home and cleaned up all the stuff I had strewn across the kitchen floor. I really wanted to keep some ice, but there’s no real point. Hopefully the new refrigerator won’t take long to arrive, and also won’t fail and leave me needing to contact the dreaded LG warranty support.

What a waste.

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Return to Sender

I made it in to work a little early again today, and was soon asked to cover the phones while the leads had their meeting. The phone didn’t ring a single time, so it was mostly just babysitting for an hour. It was all around pretty uneventful all day. The morning went by quickly, and we found ourselves at Taco John’s for Taco Tuesday. I ate cheaply again, and it felt pretty good.

Sometime in the afternoon, Thomas wandered to the back and set up a video conference with someone about our ticket reporting system. Evidently he’s been asked for data that hasn’t been collected in Web Help Desk, so we’re looking at spending some more money for something a little prettier.

The end of the day dragged on a bit, but eventually I made it home. I got things ready to stay with Summer in Conway, but had to stop at Lowe’s on my way out of town. I scheduled the pickup of the dreadful Whirlpool refrigerator and talked to a couple of guys about our top picks for its replacement. They required payment for the new one up front, and said the refund of the old one had to come back to me in store credit. I opted instead to just wait for the refund before ordering the replacement, so I’ll have to move a bunch of food up to Summer’s place until the new one shows up.

The drive to Conway was quick, without too much traffic. I stopped in Morrilton for some beer, and then hopped onto Discord to chat with Mitch again until I got to Splash. Summer was busy, so I grabbed some popcorn and headed to the hotel to check in.

After unloading, I went across the street to Walmart to kill some time. Easter candy was half off, and I found a few deals on clearance. I had been assuming we would go out for dinner, but Summer got to the hotel super late and just went straight to bed. I considered going home to sleep in my own bed, because I didn’t like the idea of taking off so much unexpectedly for that plus the fridge pickup, but with the promise of lunch in Conway, I decided to stay.

What book are you even reading???

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Capital Punishment

We got up this morning and scrounged for brunch. I found some old leftover pizza they had frozen and finished it up. The girls didn’t really come out of their rooms while I was still there. Eventually I went home so I could clean up and work on my taxes.

Evidently for the year, I was still floating pretty high on capital gains. I’m still sitting on the loss from those gains, but haven’t sold yet, so it just looks like I made way more money than I really did. I guess if I were to sell this year, it would balance out, but I’d rather try and reduce my taxable income for last year.

When Summer finished at the gym, I met her at Walmart to pick up dinner. We grabbed a couple more ice scrapers for cheap, and even found an open-box Rocketbook that was marked down a bit. The place was packed for Easter, but we managed to make it out without incident.

I filled up on gas and then headed up to their house, where Noah had come to visit. Summer made chicken alfredo with spaghetti noodles, and then the kids wanted to go out to the park. Summer and I went back to my house to try and clean up the old refrigerator. We thought we could use Noah’s truck to move it, but his tailgate was broken and we didn’t feel confident in lifting the refrigerator up and over it to get into the bed.

Cleaning the other half of the fridge, and especially the top, turned out to be quite a chore. Teamwork persevered, and Summer even vacuumed out the underside. I threw door bins into the dishwasher, but the shelves should be pretty easy to clean by hand. Brody offered his truck once they got back into town, but we decided to wait for daylight. As we were winding down, Michael called with questions about taxes on crypto. He had been playing with multiple exchanges though, which complicated his beyond anything I was dealing with. At least Robinhood had the paperwork I needed.

We made it back up to Summer’s house, and Summer headed off to watch TV in bed. Noah and Eaddie were watching TV until he left, and then everyone was off to sleep.

Should have sold, or at least not bought back.

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Two Cool for School

Just as I was about to walk out the door this morning, I got a call from the Lowe’s delivery Hispanics saying they would be at my house in 30 to 45 minutes. It took them a little longer than that, but it gave me plenty of time to clear a path since Summer didn’t show up until they were waddling the thing through the front door. The whole process went through without incident, though they wouldn’t hook up my water line for me, so I just had to leave my unstoppable, dripping line hanging over a bucket until I could look at it after work. Summer went back to work, and I quickly wiped down the inside surfaces before going to work myself.

It was quiet downstairs, but Jacob came into my office as soon as I got there and needed help stopping his junior high kids from downloading Roblox from the Microsoft Store. I got that figured out, but accidentally broke the calculator and other Windows apps in the process.

I kind of worked through lunch, though most everyone ate there anyway, which made me feel a little guilty for not actually taking time off for showing up late. I brought the leftover breakfast sandwich and snacked on apples throughout the afternoon. I figure I still had days worth of comp time that I never cashed in anyway, so it’ll all come out in the wash.

I had to go by Oakland a couple of times, but otherwise it really was quiet. I ended the day there, and took Eaddie home with me at quitting time. She didn’t stay long though, because she wanted to go to a dinner gathering with the tennis team. Summer picked her up and left me to finish setting up the new refrigerator. Dad came to the rescue with some parts to help me hook up the water line, since I couldn’t get it to quit leaking.

Doug came knocking on the door a little while later and wanted me to come next door to work on Bác Vân’s sewing machine. I had concerns about how much time it would take, and I wasn’t wrong. In the end, I got the new gear in place, but couldn’t get the timing right so the needle would pick up the bobbin on the downswing. I might be able to figure it out with some research time, but she seemed to be in enough of a rush to get a professional on the task.

I ended the night moving some food around, and got the freezer and the door of the refrigerator loaded up. The main body of the refrigerator is mostly full of junk, so that will take some sorting tomorrow. For now, I just hope it keeps everything properly frozen. Then as soon as it stops raining this week, we’ll get the old fridge up to Summer’s house.

Here’s hoping for heavy sleep.

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Scheduled for 2022

I got up this morning and got the okay to make breakfast, so I got the grill out and started heating up the griddle. I’ve been wanting to cook breakfast on it for so long just to try cooking on a flat-top to see how I would like it. The cast iron was a new adventure too, but I thought it turned out pretty well. I had some garlic and herb French bread in the freezer that I threw onto the top rack to heat up while I cooked a bunch of bacon. The bacon cooked a bit slower than I expected, but I think bacon always does. I’m so used to just cooking an entire package in a pot now that I forget what it’s like cooking a single layer. After that was done, I could set it on the grill grate to drain, and then fry up some eggs.

Summer enjoyed her sandwich, but Eaddie took one bite of hers and complained that the bread was too hard, and then said she was leaving to go out to eat with her father. He showed up moments later to pick her up, so I just sat in a computer chair with my ghetto fan box as a table, and ate by myself after Summer ate in bed.

We laid around for a while, and I kept trying to drift back to sleep, but couldn’t without my CPAP. I finally got up with a pretty bad headache when it was time for Summer to leave for her employee’s baby shower. I got around to clean up a bit, and missed a delivery confirmation call from Lowe’s while I was in the shower. We’ll finally get our new refrigerator tomorrow.

Summer and Eaddie came back over in the evening so we could go to my parents’ house for Mom’s birthday. I loaded up my old Denon receiver to set up for them since they haven’t been able to use the speakers I brought them after their receiver blew a component. On the drive over, I got another call from Lowe’s. This time it was an automated call confirming my delivery was scheduled for between 10AM and 2PM on Monday, April 11th, 2022. At this point I was just glad it wasn’t going to be 2023.

When we got to my parents’ house, we chatted for a while about housing. I explained my plan to build a workshop to house everything while we renovate, and finally got some traction. For some reason, Mom still thinks it’ll be cheaper to buy land and build somewhere, but that just sounds like too much for me. I would literally spend the rest of my entire life trying to plan out the perfect layout, and would never build anything. I can handle a simple workshop. What I can’t handle is my need to over-design and wire a custom home with too many custom rooms with a fully climate-controlled data closet, solar, house batteries, home theater wiring, storage, and anything else I think up along the way.

Autumn got off work a little late, and we had her pick up some Pizza Hut on the way over. We ate, and then she took Eaddie home. Summer was stuck with me while I set up the home theater receiver again. The power and input controls never work like I want them to, but I think I got it set up well enough for Mom to figure out. We headed back to my house after that, and Summer helped me move some stuff before she left. Then I did some last minute cleaning before the big delivery day.

Taxes, taxes, taxes. Taxes are next.

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Market Price

I was out of step again this morning, and a few minutes late into work. I felt like I was on track, so I guess it’s just that time of year when I need to roll my alarm back a bit. I had a CPPC meeting pretty early, so I didn’t get up to a whole lot before that. I also didn’t have a whole lot planned for the meeting, so it was a relatively short one.

Without any donuts at the meeting, it was a struggle to make it to lunch. I forgot to bring any apples to snack on, and everyone else brought food, so I just went home and ate the last hamburger from the other night. On the way back, I stopped by Oakland for a little while. Then I was at the shop for the rest of the afternoon to work on my meeting minutes.

Immediately after work, Summer and Eaddie came by to pick me up, and we went to look at a house. Alisha and another lady met us there, and my parents showed up shortly thereafter. Parts of it were really cute, and other parts were really old. It ticked a lot of boxes for us, but ultimately the high price and a fear of the cost of upkeep were predictably too much for us to be serious about it. It looked like it might have been Judy’s parents or grandparents that lived there though, because there were pictures of her family on every single flat surface in the place.

Summer dropped me back off at my car and I headed home. After looking at a new place, I found a familiar comfort pulling back into my own driveway where I’ve lived for nearly two decades. It’s not perfect, but I think I can make it better. I finished up the corned beef for dinner, but my head continued to feel a little bit worse, hour by hour, as the night carried on. I was up late last night, so I figure I’m due for an early bedtime.

You’re not listening.

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Waiting for Nothing

Though I wanted to sleep in today, I knew that doing so would keep me up way too late tonight. I got around and made a chicken wrap with the leftovers that were successfully kept fresh by the cold weather outside. After a little while, I headed home to decompress and clean up before the refrigerator showed up.

Sandy got a hold of Summer and wanted me to hook up a computer for her, so once Summer showed up after her workout, we headed out of town to meet her. She chatted with Summer for a bit while I poked around under her enormous desk and got her computer replaced. Then we went back to my house to wait for our delivery.

Getting impatient, I called the Lowe’s customer service number as well as the local store number. After about four tries, I got through to someone in a call center that said the order was delayed by a week. This was particularly upsetting because we’d basically built our spring break vacation around this expected delivery schedule.

With the day basically completely wasted, Summer and I decided to go to La Huerta for dinner without the kids. When we got back to the house, she checked the coolant level in the Murano and found it to be low. I had a little bit of fluid at home, but we ended up going to Superfast to fill up with some more. We don’t know how low it really was, but we’ll have to check it again tomorrow before we leave.

Summer continued home while I went back to my house to pack. I caught up on some email and hung out for a while before loading up and heading to their house for the evening. Everyone was in their own rooms, so I wrapped things up and went to sleep as soon as possible.

No plan like dog’s plan.

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Crystal Clear

I was in and out of bed all night, but managed to get up in time for some breakfast with Summer before the girls got up. Then she went down with Autumn while I started getting ready for the day. Eaddie was the last one out of bed, and then we loaded everything up to head home.

Autumn wanted to stop at a crystal shop on the way home, so we went to Miller’s Rock Shop. They had a couple anoles in a sunlit window, and evidently they just hang out loose there, and they put food and water out for them. Autumn picked up a slice of rock, and then we continued to Iron Springs.

The girls were less enthusiastic about the thought of hiking, but Summer coaxed them across the wooden bridge and just off the path to dig in the dirt a little bit. Summer found a decent sized crystal, and then we continued home. She took the girls home as soon as we got to my house, and I got unpacked.

My parents were at Burger King before their trip to Eureka Springs, so I ran around the block to see them. Then I loaded up some leftover chicken strips and went to Walmart for salad to take to the girls.

The chicken lost a lot of its water to ice crystals, which caused some trouble as I tried to split it up into smaller bags and then fry. I ended up having to take the deep fryer outside, and also melt the ice in the toaster oven before frying the chicken. I eventually had a decent system, but it was a huge pain in the ass, and in the end none of the girls were really hungry. I made Summer and myself salads, but was frustrated that they watched me spend a lot of time making a lot of food for everyone, knowing that they didn’t have a refrigerator to keep any leftovers.

After Summer and I ate, they wanted to play a game of Uno Flip. Eaddie gave up after Summer won first place, and then Summer won again finishing Eaddie’s hand before Autumn gave up. Then the girls went to their rooms for the night, but stayed up either tinkering or moving and cleaning up their rooms. Summer went to sleep really quickly, and I was tired enough that I didn’t stay up much longer.

I can’t like anything out loud any more.

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Not Cool

Summer discovered her refrigerator had quit working this morning, and evidently it had been warming for quite some time because everything in the freezer had already completely thawed out. I picked Gary up for work, did a little research for an appliance repair person, then headed up to her place to move any good food to my house.

The whole process took about an hour and a half, and I managed to fit everything we saved into my refrigerator. Then I headed back in to work. As I was walking in, Gary was walking out to go to Central Office to look at Judy’s new office. Evidently the new superintendent wanted to take Judy’s current office because it was bigger and wasn’t visible directly from the front door. We did that, replaced a printer for Cindy, and then went back to the office until lunch time.

I guess Gary was really craving pizza, because he chose CiCi’s after finding out that Pizza Hut no longer had a buffet or salad bar. Thomas even joined us, because he thought it was hilarious that Brody wasn’t there to join us. As soon as we got seated, I took a picture and sent it to the group chat. It probably wasn’t five minutes later, and up walked Brody. He was looking at trucks, but bailed as soon as he saw us there.

After lunch, I tried to focus on the CPPC minutes. It was pretty quiet downstairs, so I managed to get it sent by the end of the day. I dropped Gary off at home, then went home to change before going up to Summer’s for dinner. She cooked the big bag of chicken that we decided to keep, and made a big chicken and rice casserole out of it. The girls had karate, but ate when they got home.

I spent most of my time trying to troubleshoot the refrigerator. I cleaned out a nest of mice, but couldn’t really get to the two dead ones I found. The fans all seemed to be working, but the compressor was just cycling on for about five seconds every minute and a half. It was definitely not cooling, so it’ll be up to the pros tomorrow.

Just relax.

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Cheesin Crackas

We got to start an hour late today because of the little ice that remained. I took my cheese, crackers, and salami in to work, but Brody and Zach were the only two that really ate any. Greg tried one, and the girls came and had a couple later, but it wasn’t until the end of the day that they really got popular.

Brody and I went along with Zach and Greg to hang a TV in Dwight’s saferoom. I discovered a photo opportunity with a little trampoline, since we had to hang the TV so high. Greg and Brody just kept playing basketball, but we got the job done.

It was nearly lunch time by the time we got back. We sat around a bit, and then Greg and I decided to chase after Brody to Umami, since it was just the three of us going to lunch for the day. I was surprised at how many people they could pack in there now, but the service was super slow. We didn’t even get our order in for the first half hour. When the food finally arrived, I wasn’t at all impressed with any of the flavors of either the food or the sauces they gave me. I saw Josh walk in and snapped a candid photo to send to the group chat, which turned out to be the highlight of my lunch hour.

When we got back to the shop, Zach had everyone go outside to move some stuff in the graveyard again. We cleaned out the kitchen area and put a bunch of stuff on shelves. As we finished, Brody and Jacob mentioned that they had never seen the murder-basement, so I took them across campus to see that. It was even grosser with all the ice and water.

From then, we didn’t have a whole lot longer until our hour-early quitting time. Ben texted that he was at the arts center helping set up for a church gig, so I went over there and made a cable for them. I thought we’d get more time to visit, but he spent most of his time actually working to get things set up. I spent more time talking to Dustin than anyone else. They did seem to really enjoy the cheese and crackers there, and ate nearly half of what was left.

I went by the shop to see Summer on the way home from there. She was just finishing up and wanted to go to the gym, so I was charged with taking the girls home. They were packed and waiting for her when I arrived, so I didn’t even have a moment to breathe before they started fussing for me to take them home. I got some gas on the way, and then warmed up some old leftover shrimp and salmon to clean out their fridge until Summer got home.

The girls kept busy all night, so Summer and I watched some Modern Family until she was ready for bed. I tried not to stay up too late past that, but still ended up losing a fair amount of time hunting for the perfect phone case/mount/charger combination.

It’ll take just a Moment to find a case with Peak Design for this new phone.