Tag: health

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Beats per Second

I got up early again this morning and picked Amanda up for our training day at Arch Ford. She said she was pretty hungover and couldn’t eat her Tornado from Love’s, so she gave the rest to me. Then I loaded up on Pop-Tarts and a Rice Krispies Treat. I really enjoyed learning and playing around in the lab again, so I was a bit upset that we had to leave at lunch time. I guess we really could have gotten away with not coming back, but Amanda was already begging to leave an hour earlier than we did. I didn’t feel too sympathetic since it was self-inflicted, but I did want to be back in time for the end of the year retirement assembly.

My anxiety was already pretty high, and I stopped by Oakland to see that my blood pressure was also really high. Then my anxiety shot through the roof once I got to the Center. I hadn’t eaten lunch either, and my hand started shaking while I was getting some punch, and I almost lost it. After we finally made our way in and sat down, my heart rate shot up to about 127 BPM and stayed about that high for the entire assembly. Nothing I did could calm it down, and I was left wishing I had brought my last Xanax. I guess I’ll need to ask to renew that for emergencies the next time I go in to the clinic.

Ben had a pretty decent speech for Dale’s retirement, but I think more than anything we were surprised to see anyone actually retire from our department. Mark’s closing statement to “trust him” regarding pay scales left some pretty bitter I think, but what do you do? When they won’t even let someone retire with their original letter and make them rewrite it to be more friendly, what kind of environment are we really fostering?

I went home for the evening feeling worn out from my body’s inability to properly human today. Summer had to pick Autumn up after she injured her knee somehow, and wants to schedule an X-ray now. I’m just ready for any kind of break.

I just want a field day like everybody else.

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In the Unlikely Event

Amanda actually volunteered to drive to Plumerville today. She even picked me up at my house. There was a box turtle in the driveway right next to the garage door, so I put it inside the fence for safe keeping. We made the trip in good time, and even stopped at Love’s in Morrilton for meat breakfast tornados. Mine tasted about as good as one would expect. I probably should have stuck with the Soylent.

One of the guys from Arch Ford had a Model 3 there, so I got to see it up close. Not as close as I wanted, but it was still neat. I tried to hint that I wanted to ride with him to lunch, but he had other plans that didn’t involve driving a complete stranger around. Amanda and I went to Wendy’s, and I had a really good, quick salad.

The afternoon went by quickly as well, and I only got dizzy for a few seconds from what I assume was my new medication. It probably didn’t help that I had been sitting all day and had absolutely no stress at all to raise my blood pressure. I wish I could have measured it. It was a really good day of learning and playing around in the virtual lab environment. Everyone likes to complain about going to Arch Ford, but they just don’t get to do what I do.

When we got back home, I found a second snail had died in the kitchen aquarium, so I moved the other one back to the bathroom and cleaned a couple of the tanks up a bit. I think I’m most excited about moving to the high school so I can set up an aquarium in the office. I’m pretty sure every other aspect of the move still just gives me anxiety.

Eventually I went to get Eaddie from her grandparents’ house, and I took the old FryDaddy up to their house to start dinner. It worked perfectly to fry up a bunch of chicken strips for the dinner salads. I still ate way too many chicken strips, but they were just so delicious. I wish I had more right now with some of that spicy ketchup.

Ultimately I had to make my way back home for an early bedtime again. We’ll have to leave training early tomorrow to make it back to our mandatory end-of-year assembly, unless I can convince Ben to let us finish our training day, since central office has already approved our leave some time ago.

I’m not a cat. I don’t say, “meow.”

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Pickup Lines

I rode to the high school early this morning to help with the laptop pickup. As I was walking into the building, Al stopped me to ask about esports, and wanted to know if we could do it during their advisory half hour. I kind of laughed, half-heartedly at the thought. At least his gut reaction to my response was that I shouldn’t be doing it for free. I’d just like to see some kind of number from someone that actually makes decisions.

The laptop pickup went just as it should have, I suppose. I was upset because we didn’t have the student help desk kids to help with power adapters. They were all seniors, and have basically all finished school already, so it’s all on us now. I’m not sure who I’m going to have to pester to fix that, but I know I don’t want to be touching 1300+ devices any more than I absolutely must.

Dale and I went to an early lunch at Taco John’s, where I had a steak and shrimp burrito that was just excellent. Doubly so, because it was free after filling out my punch card. We thought Allen was coming too, but he had suggested KFC, and probably ended up at McDonald’s.

I stuck around the high school until their last pickup, when I had to leave for esports. I stopped by on my way out to check my blood pressure, and came in averagely high. Then I rushed by Oakland and had to do some work there that got me a little frustrated, so on my way out of there I measured frustratingly high, and I could feel it on my skin.

Finally at the junior high, I ran across the building to check it again, knowing I didn’t have a proper rest period. I thought for sure I was going to stroke out during esports. I made it to the lab a bit late, so the kids were already rowdy. I had to yell at them at one point because of a usual yeller in the class. Some of them just get too excited, and haven’t been scolded for it enough I suppose. It makes the experience worse for those quiet ones that are in there for serious competition. Next year, we’ll have to weed out the club from the teams.

After work, I ran by Summer’s to try and help load the extra chicken strips into her freezers, but she had already done all of the work. Instead, she took the last case that wouldn’t fit, picked the girls up from karate, and met me at my house so we could stick it in my freezer. Then she was craving Stoby’s, so we all went out for dinner. I tried the PB&J burger, which was actually really good. The sweetness of the jelly with the jalapeños really did it. I could have gone without the peanut butter though.

Finally it was back home for the evening to cool the jets after a long, but fast-paced day of running around.

Nobody nose whistling like I do.

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I Want a New Duck

It was really slow again today, but I spent most of my time trying not to hulk out instead of cleaning or doing much of substance. My morning systolic blood pressure was pretty good, but my diastolic doesn’t like to hang out much below 90. I stopped by Sonic to get some Ched ‘R’ Peppers for Summer and a free fresh cherry lemonade that I stuck in my fridge to sip on over time. Jessica finally got power for her TVs outside the library, but I had to climb up to reset the Chromebits.

Allen wanted Dairy Queen for lunch, so I met him and Jason there. They had a promo chicken and waffles meal that was super good. The waffle was really crispy on the outside and perfectly soft in the middle, and I even got some gravy for the chicken strips. Even the fries were hot and tasty today. I felt that it was a great accomplishment to order a 4-piece meal instead of the 6 that was offered. Baby steps.

A little while after lunch, I had to go back to the doctor to let them take my blood pressure a couple times until they found a number they liked. The bad thing is that they kept my diastolic blood pressure of 80, which is an all-time low that I’ve only ever reached once before during a reading where I was distracted and taking a phone call. I always just assumed that one was bogus and should be thrown out. In any case, they wrote me a proper prescription for the 10mg of amlodipine besylate I’ve been taking, plus a new prescription for 25mg of hydrochlorothiazide. I’ve only got one more double-shot of my original prescription, so I guess I’ll wait a day and take my new ones together so they run out at the same time.

Summer had a really rough day and was super frustrated with everyone, so I took the girls with me while she went to the gym. We stopped by Walgreens so I could pick up my prescriptions, and then I took Autumn home since she was dealing with a bad attitude as well, and Eaddie wanted to join Summer and me for bún thang at my parents’ house. The soup was great, but it’ll be interesting to see how my body deals with the extra spice tomorrow.

After dinner, Summer took Eaddie home and I went to my house and did a little cleaning before setting up my replacement TicWatch E. I really love my Pebble more though, so I may try to sell the TicWatch and come back to Wear OS later in the future. A big part of me is frustrated by how many interests I’m trying to juggle right now though, and just wants to sail off and disconnect for a while. At least I think it does. I suppose it’s possible this is just another one of my many interests that is feeling neglected at the moment. I haven’t been on the water in a while.

One that’s never gonna try to migrate or escape!

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Computer Hardware 101

It’s been rainy, or at least threatening rain for days, so when today looked to be only cloudy, I jumped at the chance to ride the bike to work. I spent most of the morning at Oakland setting up a new phone extension and configuring a switch for it. Shavon emailed me along with a couple others to invite us for lunch, so Allen, Jason, and I all drove there separately. I wanted to go to the junior high in the afternoon, and I guess Allen wasn’t going back to the shop either.

I stayed at the junior high almost until school let out, slowly making my way around some work while trying to keep my blood pressure low. Then I went back to preschool for a work order on the way over to the high school to meet up with Dale. We scanned in another cubby worth of laptops and did a very little bit of exploring before quitting time.

Back home, I felt flush all evening. I couldn’t tell if it was an actual problem, or if I was just paranoid, but I wasn’t going to stress over it. Summer had to go to the shop for a meeting to be introduced formally as the new manager, and then to Autumn’s band concert. I spent some time cleaning up my computer, and then even more time just trying to relax in bed.

One of my esports founders expressed boredom, so I suggested he troubleshoot his desktop that doesn’t currently work. For a kid in EAST that I would assume has some interest in computers, he really seemed to be afraid to try anything at all. Maybe I’m looking back through rose-tinted glasses, but I feel like I never hesitated to tear into stuff. I remember getting a VooDoo graphics card from Jared and installing that in my computer to improve seemingly everything. I wonder what happened to things like that. In the end, we narrowed it down to a likely bad hard drive, but I can get him a crappy spare from scrap. It should be easy to get him back in business.

Remember that time you thought you couldn’t do that thing, but then you turned around and did it anyway?

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Underpaid Factory Work

It was rainy all day, so I decided to start at the high school. Dale was expecting a bunch of keyboard bezels in today, so we had the afternoon to start that. I spent most of the morning trying to augment his barcode scanning sheet so he wouldn’t have to scan both the library tag and the laptop serial tag, and instead have it auto-populate the serial from a sheet with the complete inventory CSV.

He had to leave a bit early for lunch with the super, so I went to Oakland to work on a couple things. I ended up sitting and chatting with Sharon, Stephen, and Marcia for a while before getting back to the science room to fix the issue. By the time I got back to the front of the building, everyone had pretty much eaten all of the barbecue they brought in. I managed to scrap together a ham sandwich and sat in the lounge watching the rain outside.

Afterward I went back to the office and got around to checking my blood pressure. One of the diabetic kids was in there, and we laughed about how we were dying. He started rambling a bit about his mom, and as Leslie was turned around seemingly ignoring us, I told him he should run away. We both turned to look at her still facing the computer, and giggled that she wasn’t listening. Of course she turned around laughing, and told him not to run away. My numbers were pretty high, so I tried to chill out the rest of the day.

Back at the high school, Dale and I started tearing into the repairs. We had a pretty big stack of bezels come in, and he showed me how to replace them. Something like 27 screws and some calloused fingers later, I had the old part out. Then it was just a matter of doing it again in reverse to put the things back together. My back hurt from leaning over to perform this mindless task, and I found myself really hating it. If I’m going to last there any length of time at all, they’re going to have to let me come inspect them throughout the year so I’m not stuck rushing through it all over the summer.

We left work a bit early since Dale had a haircut, and I worked through most of my lunch. I went home for just a little while before having to get back out in the rain to make it up to Summer’s house. She had taken the day off and made a nice dinner for everyone. I never really got to feeling better about my blood pressure all afternoon, and that carried over into the evening with the kids being of normal volume. I couldn’t be mad because they were all behaving relatively well, but I just couldn’t decompress the way I really needed to.

Eventually everyone made it to bed. At least tomorrow morning I’ll have a break from the already tedious labor I’ve been assigned, but I imagine it will be back to that old grind stone in the afternoon again.

I have learned absolutely nothing today.

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High School; High Score

I went to the high school this morning to see what Dale was doing. They were just starting to pick up senior devices, classroom at a time. This all leads in to the busiest time for them, and I’ve somehow got to wrap my head around all the RMA processes while also learning a massive new campus. To make things even more difficult, I won’t properly be able to do my own part replacements until I get my A+ and Lenovo certifications. I can already tell I’m going to miss a lot of time that I have traditionally used to learn new things. I kind of hate it, but I’m still hopeful it won’t be that bad.

Teacher appreciation week is here, so Dale and I mooched off of their catered lunch from La Huerta. Then I left to go to the junior high for some work. They were serving hamburgers, so I grabbed one for later while Ben, Jason, and Allen were there. Then I went to work. On his way out, Ben said he basically gave his blessing to move the technology office into a closet, which really got me pretty angry. Evidently it was enough to earn myself a new high score of 200/112, so I went straight back to my room and kicked back for an hour. I tried calling my clinic, but the nurse line voicemail said they only check messages at the end of the day, and I wasn’t sure if I should treat it as more of an emergency. I gave it some time and checked my blood pressure again at a more normal high of 184/101.

Chrystal convinced me to call the clinic again, so I left the voicemail and went back to work. Eventually they did call me back, and told me to double my dosage to 10mg. It’s still not a lot, but the 5mg didn’t seem to phase me at all and I feel like I’m flush more often, or at least more consciously aware of every twinge and ache in my arm, chest, and brain helmet area. They want me to come back in a week instead of the two and a half weeks later for my 30-day checkup.

After school, Summer left for the gym while the girls went with me to my parents’ house. Eaddie came and sat next to me on the couch for the first time, and we both played on our phones until Summer got there. Mom made spring rolls with some pork that Dad smoked, and I filled up on leafy greens. I feel like the fish sauce may have nullified some of that, with a bedtime reading of 150/100. It’d be great if I could keep my diastolic out of the triple digits.

Maybe I’m just too intense.

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Taking Things Without Asking

Heather came to the junior high early this morning, and I tried to show her around a bit while we picked up some more computers that were going out for auction. Matt came along and said they were probably going to move technology out of my office and into a closet so James and his people could have the space, which got me really riled up. It was at that point that I decided it was okay to go gut a teacher’s classroom of student devices without asking.

I forgot my medication yesterday, but was back on it today. A big group of us met at Old South for a very slow lunch. I tried the taco salad with their Old South dressing, which seemed like it was all mayonnaise and garlic powder. The waitress even had a little spiel about how she couldn’t tell me all the ingredients because then it would be “everybody’s” dressing, and that it would ward off vampires, boyfriends, etc. It was a little surreal getting all of that considering how busy they were. The taco salad was good though, even with the weird mayo dressing. I felt like it was more taco than salad, but I’d never complain about it because then they would just give less meat.

After lunch, I had to go to Oakland to help with a National Board video conversion. Erica stopped me cold in my tracks and said Ben told them he was moving me to the high school. It was a bad day for everyone.

When school let out, I went back to the shop to chat with Ben until we went to Alene’s retirement shindig. They really do it up big for those at the top of the food chain. Dale gets his party in the library. I imagine mine will be in a bathroom somewhere, assuming I don’t die from it first.

When I got home, I started some laundry and then tried out Breath of the Wild in 3D. The pictures on the TV were way too diverged, and I think it gave me a pretty good, lingering headache. For a bit I thought it might even be the blood pressure, but I went by Oakland to check, and it wasn’t any worse than usual. I stopped by the shop to get the blood pressure cuff from Jason’s office so I could watch it over the weekend, then went to my parents’ to borrow the deep fryers for the car show. There, I found out that Alene was actually the travel agent for my parents’ honeymoon. If I hadn’t been born two years later, I might have been concerned that I owed the woman my life.

On the way home, I stopped by the shop again for some extension cords because I forgot them the first time. Then it was home for the evening to try and relax and sleep before the big day tomorrow.

Space Cadet.

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Removing Tech

Finals started for my campuses today, so I spent all morning at the junior high while Ben covered Oakland. I used the time to dust and wipe more computers for esports kids since there wasn’t any real need for me anywhere. Dale called for lunch and nobody else was interested, so I met him at Subway for an overpriced 6-inch sub. We didn’t stick around long because the parking lot was packed. I went back to the shop for a bit before visiting Oakland.

Steven had texted earlier about his laptop not working. Ben okayed the swap of his old desktop and laptop for a single laptop to use, but I considered it a small success to have him agree to use the office loaner on those very rare occasions that he needs a laptop, and I’ll replace the desktop with a current model over the summer.

I finished the day at the shop, partly messing with a Chrome tablet and partly chatting with Ben. Then I went home and had to clean up a bit and separate my betta pair in the kitchen. The Dumbo’s fins have been getting worse every day, and though I haven’t seen the other betta pick on her in any meaningful way, I had to start eliminating variables to get her better. Afterward, I went to visit with Summer for just a little bit before going to get gas, exchange the incorrect toilet seat I had picked up from Lowe’s on Saturday, and finally to Tractor Supply to pick up some bags of Black Diamond coal slag sandblasting abrasives to use as a soil cap in the aquariums. I really hope it pans out, but it’s going to be quite a bit of time consuming work ahead.

Back home, I started some laundry, installed the new toilet seat, cleaned up, and played some Overwatch with Clint, Jack, and Johnny before bed.

The socks won’t sort and number themselves!

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HIGH SCORE

I tried taking it kind of easy today, but it didn’t seem to help. I’m close to executing a strict Soylent diet. I wanted to ride the bike today, but was too afraid of how I might handle my medication. One of the first things I encountered this morning was a SMART board that a substitute had written on with a dry erase marker. It did not erase. Technology is hard, and I had a headache for pretty much the rest of the day.

Allen ended up taking me to Pizza Hut for lunch, where I was going to use a free P’zone coupon, but we both ended up getting the buffet and I took the P’zone to Summer. Gary and I chatted for quite a while after lunch about various work things, and then I had to go to the junior high for esports practice. I had Chrystal check my blood pressure first, since I had taken my first pill at lunch. To our surprise, I got a new high score of 190/110. I’m definitely dying.

I went to my parents’ house after work for bún bò Huế, which ended up taking longer to prepare than I expected. I tried to relax there as much as I could, and then ended up going home for an early bedtime.

I’m gonna be so mad if I die before “Endgame.”