Tag: frustration

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Last of the Longs

The guys that were working on the air handlers in the shop yesterday had left my thermostat set on 65, so the air wasn’t blowing cold at all, and likely froze up outside. I didn’t want to mess anyone up by turning it off though, just in case they were testing something else. I just had Gary put in a maintenance ticket for it, but if it’s still on tomorrow, I’ll probably turn it off and let it rest over the weekend.

Gary wanted me to run to Central Office to investigate a work order, and then Greg mentioned another one about adjusting a monitor stand, so I took care of all of that before making my way to the junior high to work on imaging with Kyle.

That’s all I did the rest of the day, aside from lunch at Tarascos. The salsa there was good, but the fajitas were a huge disappointment. They looked fresh, having been all plated together with the rice, beans, and vegetables, but the beef was so tough that I couldn’t bite through it, I only got two tortillas, and none of it had any seasoning. The rice and beans had more flavor than the meat and vegetables.

The afternoon dragged on as we wasted time on our phones and finished up most of the laptops. Then I went home for a while before heading up to Summer’s. I picked up a peach milkshake from Chick-fil-A, and then filled up with gas on the way.

Summer was worn out from working sick. Autumn didn’t say much of anything to anyone as she laid on the couch watching YouTube all night. Eaddie never left her room as far as I could tell. It was pretty much straight to bed for everyone. At least this is the last long day of summer hours. I’m finally happy to see a half-day Friday.

Goddamn ants.

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I’ve Got a Yankee Doodle Sweetheart

I slept through an anxiety attack early this morning, and then slept late afterward. We eventually got up and showered before going to Walmart to pick up an online order I had placed the night before. They had a Bodum glass and tea strainer on sale, similar to the glass that Suzanne had accidentally broken when we had them over a while back, so I took the opportunity to re-complete the set. They didn’t offer a way to pick it up inside, but I wanted to take a peek through the clearance section while we were there. Just as we got into the store, they called and asked what stall I was parked in, which seemed to be a mistake in the app setup. I don’t know why they have you check in when you’re just “on the way” if they’re going to assume you’re already there.

I drove over to the pickup section to get my glass, then went back to the garden center to finish shopping and fetch Summer. We were out relatively quickly, and headed on to my parents’ house to start grilling. I was super hungry and was anxious to get the burgers done, but Dad had only just lit off the charcoal. I helped patty the burgers, and then got things cooking as quickly as I could. All total, we had burgers, corn on the cob, shrimp, and finally a rack of ribs to grill. I tried using my smoker tube, but I guess I smothered it with all the smoke from the charcoal. Mom had some beef for kabobs, but I told her to wait until tomorrow since we were out of coals after the ribs anyway.

After we ate, Summer and I went for a swim to cool back off. It was so hot and humid that I could barely walk outside without breaking a sweat. She enjoyed the heat, but I absolutely loathed it. I felt smothered by it. The pool helped, but she still wanted to go to the train depot for the holiday entertainment.

We drove back to my house to wait out the sun a bit, and then went up to her house to check on the cats and set out some pork for dinner later in the week. One of the cats pooped on the shower matt, and it just reminded me how much I hate having pets.

From there, we made our way downtown for the festivities. We actually got decent parking, and some clouds came in to block the sun. There was a light breeze that kept things just barely bearable for me, and I was glad to see some friendly faces in the form of Boundy and her husband, Mike. We chatted for a bit, and then we wandered over to a crêpe food truck. While we were there, something happened to one of the band members, and the singer announced to the crowd that “somebody” should call 911. I don’t know if anyone ever did, but the bicycle cops at the back of the crowd didn’t appear to be in too much of a hurry to get up to the guy. At some point, another band member announced that their keyboardist was also a cardiologist, so I guess things worked out?

Back at the food truck, there appeared to be a pretty long line, but we learned that everyone there was actually just waiting for their food. The line to order was actually very short. I frustrated Summer when I said I didn’t really want to eat much of one in the heat, and she took off back to the car. We went home, talked about it a bit, and I explained my struggles with sticky foods and drippy sweat. We discussed going up to Nebo like I had suggested earlier, and then ultimately decided to go back downtown on the Shadow, since it had cooled off considerably by then, and we could park more flexibly.

We made it back to the Peter’s lot and parked, marveling that our vacated parking spot from earlier was still available. We wandered back to the music area, decided against waiting in any of the ridiculously-long lines for treats, and walked back to, and across Arkansas to where someone was selling kettle corn. Fortunately there wasn’t a line there at all, so we got a bag of that, when out of nowhere Boundy showed up with a half-eaten bag for us. We took it, and then found a seat at a picnic table right beside them. I ended up running back across the street to bring the bike over so we could have an easier getaway, and it worked splendidly.

Summer enjoyed the show, though it was weird to watch one from so close with absolutely no music or any kind of rhythm to it. The show lasted a bit longer than I expected, and then we took off as soon as it was over. We made it home in record time, and I couldn’t have been more pleased on a night before going back to early days at work. Summer went straight to bed with incredible nerve pain, and I wrapped up my usual deal hunting as quickly as I could.

I DECLARE INDEPENDENCE! I didn’t say it. I declared it!

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Convenience Over Results

Summer made eggs and sausage for breakfast this morning, and then the girls got ready for a long weekend with their father. I showered there before sitting down with the kids to reiterate my role, and the fact that parental decisions would be shared between Summer and myself. I could tell that Autumn had just been playing nice to get permission to drive to Lamar on her own, but Summer wanted a break from shuttling her around everywhere.

Before they left, I went home while Summer went to the gym. I tried setting up an old GPS tracker that I had purchased years ago, but the battery appeared to be completely toast. We met back up at their house to see the girls off, and then we spent the rest of the day laying around.

We watched the original Top Gun, which did not impress me much, in case we wanted to go to the theater to see the new one. Then we went to Colton’s for a steak dinner. By the time we finished there, Summer decided she’d had enough fun for one day and we went back home where we burned the rest of the evening. She watched TV while I laid around not feeling great, and eventually we went to sleep.

So noisy, and nothing’s getting done.

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Thaw in my Side

I thought it was going to rain today, but the forecast went down enough that I felt pretty comfortable taking the Shadow in for our second half-day. We had a brief meeting about moving over our old tickets from Web Help Desk to IncidentIQ, and then I was sent to fix imaging. I still wasn’t sure what broke it in the first place, but it needed to be fixed as quickly as possible.

Everyone else pretty much wandered off, except for Kyle, who stuck around the shop for a while. I was deep in my testing when he came into my office to share some news he had just read online while he was sitting around, and I wasn’t super receptive since I was actually deep in thought. Gary was in and out, but didn’t really have a whole lot for me.

After testing several boot images and even trying to build one from scratch, I finally took a snapshot of the VM and updated the ADK, which ended up fixing our issues. I was stoked, but by that time everyone else had been long gone. Even Thomas left me in the dark downstairs. I went home and just waited for Summer to get off work about an hour late.

I made my way up to the girls, who were all just sitting around the house. Eaddie was still in a bit of a mood, and Autumn was a normal level of cranky. She griped about how there was “nothing” to eat in the house, so in response I asked her why there was zero room in the chest freezer. Summer was in a bath by then, so I just bit my tongue and cooked a quick frozen skillet meal while we waited for Summer to finish cleaning up.

Eaddie went to bed, but the rest of us ate. Then I had Autumn take every single thing out of the freezer and take inventory while I defrosted and cleaned out the inside of it. It took a while, but there was gross chicken blood and juice all over the place that just needed to be melted out. We ended up throwing out eight pounds of chicken thighs that they’d had in the freezer since before I came around.

Everyone went to bed shortly after we finished loading everything back into the freezer. I stayed up to try and update my laptop, but there wasn’t much else I could do.

Hours and hours of cumulative updates…

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Pull It

I got the R1 out for a ride to work today. It was a beautiful ride in the morning, and then a little warm in the afternoon, but still nice at speed. We all ended up going to the middle school to pull a few lines, except for Brody, who misunderstood the assignment and went to the high school by himself.

I rode with Kyle to the building, where he parked in back, a ways away from where we needed to be. Then we had to walk to the front anyway, since we had to help unload the truck and bring everything inside. I kind of got stuck with him on one of the jobs, and though he seemed to be trying, he definitely had some issues climbing the ladders. He said he was terrified of them, but for being so small on such new, sturdy ladders, I just couldn’t see it. I tried not to be too frustrated with him, and definitely tried to nurture him along. I still ended up doing most of the climbing, and an hour job ended up taking us the whole day.

We tried using a couple of old lines that were already in the room, but only one worked. The others we found went back to where an old switch was located. There, we discovered a huge bundle of cables that had just been cut and left in the ceiling. We’ve been struggling to find work all week anyway, so I decided we should clean out all the old cable from the ceiling. We got most of it done before lunch, when Kyle dropped me off back at the shop.

I rode to Taco John’s and met with four of the others for a cheap lunch. I hate when they don’t automatically print receipts, because then I don’t get extra rewards points. The tacos were incredible today though. They were loaded with well-seasoned meat, and were some of the best tacos I’ve ever had from there.

We went back to the middle school to finish in the afternoon, but still had a couple hours to kill before quitting time. I took the old cable to Cunningham for scrap, then stopped at Casey’s for some snacks. When I got back to the shop, they had received one of the Dell dock/port-replicating monitors to test out, and everyone was in Thomas’s office trying to get it to work. I sat in the shop for most of it, since I was completely beat from going up and down ladders all day, plus I stank from the sweat, and I wouldn’t have really added anything to the group that was already working on it. Greg came back and ate some deer, offering me a couple bites, and then shared the top secret location of his cabin. It was neat that he wanted to talk to me about hunting for a bit, because it wasn’t like he was just talking to another hunter about things he had killed.

After work, Gary followed me home to get the weighted blanket I picked up for him. Then I went to my parents’ house to swim for a bit before picking Autumn up from karate. She wasn’t at all happy to see me, but she became nicer once we got home. Summer worked from home and made a corned beef for dinner, so the three of us ate at the dinner table before Autumn got current with Stranger Things.

I had sent Eaddie a picture of the corned beef, and she asked me to bring her some to band camp after nine, so I had her call me once she was ready. My old buddy, Neal, was there delivering some pizzas, so after I got my hug from Eaddie, we stood outside and chatted for quite a while. He always has all kinds of random stuff to talk about, and it was fun catching up a bit.

Everyone was off to bed when I got back to the house, so I tried not to waste any time myself. Hopefully I’ll sleep better after such a long day today.

Add it up.

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This Time, at Band Camp

I slept in a bit today before getting up to take Eaddie to band camp. We all loaded up to take her to Paine Hall and found her dorm room. We didn’t stick around very long, because she was excited to get started. On the way back to the house, we stopped by the Murano to get an old Quiz Bowl buzzer set out of the trunk. I was curious to see if it would work. Summer briefly daydreamed about having a trivia team builder for work. Aside from some broken cable clips, which appeared to just be RJ45 connectors, everything seemed to work fine.

Autumn had been a bit argumentative all morning, but then tried to convince Summer and me to play Monopoly with her. We just kind of stared blankly at her for a moment, since she couldn’t seem to process why we might not be interested in playing board games with someone who says she hates us. She acted like we were only going to ignore her for the week because Eaddie’s gone, but Eaddie has been over her shit for just as long as us.

Summer eventually went to the gym while I tinkered around. I ended up taking a shower, and then the two of us went to New China for lunch when she got back. Autumn spent all day banished to her room, and that’s how she’ll stay as far as I’m concerned. She verbally expressed that she doesn’t want to verbally express anything to us, so I see no need to dance around each other pretending like everything is fine.

Autumn was out of her room making some food when we got back, and it didn’t take long for her to have an attitude with Summer, so she went back to her room for the rest of the evening while Summer and I laid around being super lazy for the rest of the afternoon and evening. We both struggled to stay awake. At one point, I put on School for Scoundrels, and then we watched some standup on Netflix before bed.

Ants everywhere but in my pants.

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Cooling Issue

We got up and made Autumn mow the back yard today, and then Summer scrambled some eggs with some sliced up sausages from last night. Everyone else got a pretty slow start to the morning. The girls didn’t want to go to the Clarksville Aquatic Center like Summer had been planning all week, but she did convince them to go to a craft fair at the fairgrounds. I went home to clean up first, but was already unsure about joining them if it was held out in the heat. I ended up bathing for a bit, and then sitting it out.

When they finished at the fair, I met them at Walmart so Eaddie could get some things for band camp. My parents were on that side of town as well, having dropped off Mom’s car to have a couple tires replaced after ripping off a part of one of the sidewalls. I picked up some Stranger Things themed goodies on clearance, as well as some banana Soylents and a weighted blanket for Gary.

The girls were hungry when we finished, and my parents had mentioned food before we all met up at Walmart, so we all met back up at Zaxby’s. Summer and I shared a Zalad and a Wings & Things meal, which was a good mix. I ended up having to take off before everyone else, and went home for a bit before going to Wesley’s house to help with a WiFi issue.

Mister Wesley was outside working on an addition to the house, which I thought was just incredible. I didn’t realize how much he had built onto the property, but it was all really well done. The wireless issue was just due to some equipment removal after they dropped cable, and I had to give them their new wireless SSID and password. The rest of the time we just chatted about what he had built around the house, work, and anything else that came up.

On the way back up to Summer’s, I took the turn at Whatta-Burger at my usual speed, and the Murano sputtered. The engine service light came on, and the temperature was on the under-intimidating “H” so I kept driving, hoping to make it to the house. I got right up to G-Ray’s, and it sputtered enough that I decided to pull over rather than risk dying at the end of the driveway. Summer left the gym and went to my house to pick up a jug of water, but it didn’t suck it into the radiator from the overflow like we expected. She had me start the car and rev it a bit, but we never had any luck.

She dropped me off at her house, and then took Autumn with her to the gym while we waited for the car to cool in the shade. Afterward, we went back and added water directly to the radiator, but it appeared to pour right back out from wherever it was leaking. We went back home, and I messaged my old coworker, Marlena, to see if her husband might want a tow job on the side. That was about the time I realized that it was actually his father’s family business, so I felt incredibly stupid. It took her a while to respond, but she said he wasn’t on call this weekend. Dad and I decided to try and ghetto-tow it in the middle of the night.

The girls eventually dug out the Stranger Things brownies that we bought, and started to bake them. Eaddie had fun cutting out all of the accessories for that, as well as the drink mix. Autumn had apparently come back from the gym with some attitude about me, so I pried at that for a bit until she clammed up and we sent her to her room forever. Eaddie just wants to survive the year and be done with her too, but I’m hoping they can keep the pressure on her.

Dad came over after everyone had wandered off either to bed or to prepare for bed. On the first trip, we discovered my battery had died, and I guessed I must have left the power on. We came back to the house for some sockets to remove the battery and prevent an even deeper drain overnight, but those didn’t work. Fortunately(?), the positive cable was barely snug and I was able to wiggle the cable up and off of the post before giving up for the evening. After this evening and the rest of everything that’s come at me recently, I’m basically expecting the engine to be toast.

No execution. That’s the problem here. I need more executions.

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Half Bad

I got to sleep in a half hour later today, since it was our first half-day Friday. I absolutely felt more tired and worthless all day because of it. Zach was back, but just sent everyone to go hide in their own buildings. I think only Brody actually had anything to do, by the way of imaging with Jacob. Zach had to do badges all day, and it wasn’t very long before I had to run outside to help the eSCO guys. He brought someone new with him today, and neither of them were particularly helpful when picking things up. Thomas came out to help, and then a few of the other guys eventually showed up as well.

The rest of the morning went by pretty slowly, and I ended the day by breaking network imaging. I almost wish I had just stayed to fix it, but Thomas came back to kick everyone out and left me in the dark. I went home for a little bit before heading up to get Eaddie for her flute lesson. She and Autumn were watching TV and being lazy. I dressed up some leftovers for lunch before we left.

It was hot outside, but I didn’t have anything else to do, so I just waited in the car for Eaddie to finish. Then we stopped by The UPS Store to ship an Amazon return before going back to their house. Summer eventually made it home, and after watching some TV, wanted me to grill some frozen jalapeño cheddar sausages for their dinner.

Autumn had asked me to play Monopoly earlier, and set up the game board while I grilled. I threw a wrench in that by asking her to tell me something she appreciated about me. Her mood immediately changed, and she got angry and bitter before putting the game away. I’m not content to ignore her issues like everyone else, so I’m relegated to irritating her into a constant state of annoyance as punishment.

I ended up having to take Summer to the bedroom to talk about it, but it wasn’t long before she fell asleep. Autumn brought her mattress into the living room and went to sleep in front of the TV, because she’s still not being punished. I guess we’ve just accepted this as our life, so we’re stuck like this for another year.

Snorey McBorey

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The Parent Trap

Today was our first day of our three week “summer hours” nonsense, and it turned out worse than it had any right to be. I actually went to bed super early, so I didn’t have much trouble getting out of bed. It was cool outside for the drive in, but I knew it was going to heat up to an uncomfortable high on the bike. I kind of assumed I would be left alone again, but instead I was sent with a group to the high school. We had to possibly relocate some network lines to move the student computers in the library, and then remove the old journalism computers from the lab. Beyond that, we had to start inventory at that building, and there’s no mistaking how I felt about that.

Kyle and I rode with Brody, and I convinced them to work on inventory while I did all the network and computer pulling by myself. We ran into Al on his last day there, and I chatted with him for a minute before we started. From that point, the morning actually went really well by myself. Lunch time was an about-face.

Brody and Kyle were slow coming up to the office, and Kyle didn’t want La Chiquita, so I took the opportunity to skip as well while Brody caught up with the others. Instead, I ate an apple and chatted with Tammy at the shop until people started showing back up. Gary was the only one to ever come back, and it took me a while to find anyone else. I had to go back to the high school anyway, so I could unload the old computers from the cart I borrowed.

I finally found Brody, Jacob, and Kyle trying to pull a bunch of network lines to the old journalism room, and I caught them just as they discovered that three of their eight boxes of cable were not long enough for the run. The excuse was that they checked the length of available cable in the boxes, but not the actual length of the physical run. Frustration mounted as we finished that run, and then tried to wrangle up more boxes of cable to make another run. In the end, we decided to wait for a new delivery of cable, and I sent everyone to work on inventory for the rest of the day.

I went back to the shop and just announced very loudly outside the offices of the holy trinity that I needed a safe space where the republicans couldn’t get to me. Thomas jokingly called out to me, and I took his leave to cry exasperatedly at him about my experience with the crew. Zach came around the corner and joined in on the conversation, and we set forth a plan to grow from the experience. I spent the rest of the day hooking up a new-to-me desktop in place of my frustrating laptop.

Summer said Autumn was cooking dinner, so I went home to change before heading up. I was already emotional from the day, on top of being ignored as a parental figure yesterday, so I fell apart once I got there. I took Summer aside to talk to her, and found no comfort. I finally came out to the dinner table and started the uncomfortable conversation about whether I improved any of their lives. I knew what Autumn’s answer would be, but as usual she fell silent when confronted. Eaddie wasn’t any comfort either, but at least backed me up when I called them out for bad vibes. It took a couple of hours of talking, but we finally dug deep enough to find the root of some of the issues, and hopefully the growing and learning will continue with some action.

Obvious Protip: Don’t vent to the children.

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Sitting

I was surprised that I woke up at 7:30 this morning after going to sleep around three. I walked around a bit, but then went back to bed for a couple more hours before getting up and taking a shower. When I finished, I got Eaddie up and we ended up watching the last episode of Stranger Things from the beginning. Summer left work early, so we headed up to their house after our episode was done, and cleaned up some leftovers for lunch or an early dinner.

Hannah wanted someone to dog and housesit for a night, so Summer took both girls across town to do that. When she got back, she spent the entire night in front of one of the TVs. I burned an old frozen peach pie in the microwave, and then made another mostly edible one in the toaster oven. Then we wound down for an early bedtime.

Running up that hill with no problems.