Tag: holiday

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Sleepsgiving

The girls went to Conway this morning for the Turkey Trot while I slept in. I just barely caught up on my sleep time when the cat turned my CPAP off, and the girls arrived back home shortly thereafter. I just showered there while Summer made some green beans, and then we went to my parents’ house and waited for Julie to arrive with the food she had cooked.

Bác Vân and Doug were there, along with Dad’s college friend Dave. Julie showed up exhausted from working nights on outage, but left without eating. The food was fine, but it wasn’t worth dragging herself out like that after not getting any sleep. We all ate, and then Mom joined us for a game of UNO FLIP!

Autumn left to go to her father’s, and then we took Eaddie home so she could clean house before her boyfriend could come over the next day. Summer developed a pretty bad headache and went right to bed. Eaddie cleaned, and then watched House with me on her breaks. I was tired, but stayed up a bit to look for deals. Otherwise it was a quiet, boring evening.

Shoppers are coming….

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Pick a Number

We met at the shop again today, and this time Thomas was there while we all shared funny stories for nearly an hour. Eventually he had us all pick numbers, and the closest got to go home. Greg was the first one out, which was funny because he seemed the most eager to work. I went to Oakland and closed three work orders, which got me down to four, which are all basically non-issues. I guess it’s time to come up with some projects.

It wasn’t long after I got back to the shop that Thomas sent everyone else home. I stopped in to see Summer for a bit, then picked up an online order at Walmart before going to get Eaddie for some time on the Grom.

Eaddie did great today, and I think next time she’ll be ready for shifting gears. She rode around a couple of parking areas, and then around some of the paths in front of the school. When she was done, we went back to the shop to see Summer. Autumn pulled in just after we got there, and we went upstairs to eat some chili they made for the crew.

After a while, Autumn took Eaddie home and I went back to my own house for a while. Summer was supposed to leave around three, so I went up to their house a little after then, only to find that she was held up due to some employee drama. The girls were home feigning doing chores, and eventually Summer showed up.

The girls started in on each other with some attitude about who does what, and who likes who better. It wasn’t long before Summer confronted Autumn about skipping wrestling practice and lying about it. That argument took a little while and ended with the loss of phone and car privileges for a couple days. I don’t know that it will fix anything, but hopefully some other structural reinforcements will help.

Summer and Autumn went to the bedroom to watch a movie, and Eaddie and I watched several episodes of House until I was ready to pass out.

Drama Mama

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Stranger Thanks

We got a much needed slow start this morning. Eaddie and I watched some more House until I went home to clean up. Summer took her to get haircuts, and then I met back up with them to go to a Thanksgiving gathering with John, Melissa, Travis, and friends.

I upset Summer by being predictably surprised by how short her hair was cut, which set her mood toward me for the rest of the night. Autumn was still at Quiz Bowl camp until later in the evening, and Eaddie didn’t want to go, so the two of us left for my house to get some chairs, then my parents’ house to get a folding table.

We arrived at John and Melissa’s at just about the perfect time to be helpful for the setup but not in the way of others already helping. Actually, Summer helped and I mostly just sat by myself until others started to show up. It was a majority of new faces, but it was a good time. We were split up at three tables that were separated just enough to make communication relatively impossible, so Summer and I just chatted with Travis and Veronica, who sat with us.

We never did get to any games, and people filtered out a fair bit earlier than I expected. Summer’s cold shoulder wasn’t helping any, so I loaded up the car by myself and we awkwardly left. Just as we got home, Summer said she had to go check on a customer that claimed to have a massive oil leak after a service today. I took her to the shop, where we picked up Justin and headed up Mill Creek.

They did what they could by flashlight, and ultimately determined that their service wasn’t at fault for whatever was leaking, though they never really did find the source. All they could see for sure was that the filter and drain plug were in place with no signs of a leak in either place.

We weren’t out for very long, and headed back home for the night. Eaddie was in Summer’s bed when we got there, so the three of us watched more House until Eaddie wanted to go to her own bed, and Summer and I talked a bit before going to sleep.

“How is it that you always assume you’re right?”
“I don’t. I just find it hard to operate on the opposite assumption.”

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Excessage

I don’t think I slept great this weekend, because I kept getting up out of bed last night as well. I didn’t want to let myself sleep in too late, but I just felt so tired. I cleaned up the last of the taco meat that Summer had, and then took Eaddie home with me as soon as she was ready.

She was supposed to go ride her bike to her friend’s house to work on some homework together, but she didn’t leave for a couple hours. I picked up a little bit in the other bedroom, then took a shower once she did leave. By the time I got out, Summer and Autumn had gotten what they needed from the grocery store and I met them at my parents’ house.

What was supposed to be some super simple grilled sausages for dinner ended up being pretty frustrating. First, about half of the zucchini I brought over fell right through the grill because Mom cut too much meat out of the middle of them and they slipped right through the grates. Then the new jalapeño cheddar sausages I wanted to try from Sam’s were super greasy and caught the whole grill on fire. Everything else was pretty burned after that. All the while, I had to hear Autumn in the background continue to be generally obtuse and uncooperative.

Summer got in the pool for a little bit on her own, but I was busy sweating over the fire. I didn’t get to swim until after we all ate outside. I think I’m learning that I simply don’t care for eating around round tables. With several exceptions, I tend to also become frustrated by having too much other stuff on the table when we’re eating. The sausages had way too much cheddar inside of them, and the cheese overpowered the rest of the flavor. By the time it was all over, I just wanted to make a lap in the pool to cool off. I just felt increasingly tired and aggravated all day long.

The girls went home to get ready for school. I stuck around for just a little bit before going home myself. I was sleepy enough to just go to bed, so I didn’t even risk staying up any later. I only got out for a couple minutes when Bác Vân called me over to get some egg rolls.

-Cap’n Crankypants

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Smörgåsbord

I let Summer sleep in until about noon today before we got around to my parents’ house. Dad had already started two grills for the heaps of food we’d be grilling. There were steaks, burgers, chicken wings, shrimp, corn on the cob, zucchini and squash that all made it across the coals. Bác Vân and Doug pulled up just as we left to pick up a couple fill-in items from the Neighborhood Market.

I kept Julie up to date with a play-by-play as we were cooking, since she was just a couple neighborhoods away. Then she showed up as everyone was finally eating. We were all set up to eat outside, but by the time we finished grilling in the sun, we were all too hot to enjoy the reasonable weather.

We stayed and listened to Julie’s mad karaoke skills for a while. Then as we started to leave I had a small anxiety attack that threw me into a severe headache for several hours. When we got back to my house, Summer went home and I dozed for just a little bit in bed. I eventually made it up to her house for the evening, but never fully kicked the headache, so it was an early night to bed for us.

BOOM–TISSSSSS

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Independence Day

I got up with Summer this morning and went to Walmart to pick up what she needed to grill hot dogs for her crew at work. Then we went straight to the shop and got things cooking just in time for lunch. Once everyone ate, we headed back home to get Eaddie and then met Autumn at my parents’ house to help clean the pool cover. I was still plenty sore from stacking wood, so I was worthless all day long.

We went to Morelos for dinner on the way home, then ended the evening with a classic Will Smith action flick. At first I questioned watching the modern sequel in 3D, but I think I made the right choice with the original. I can’t even remember the plot to the new one.

Once again, the LAPD is asking Los Angelinos NOT to fire their guns at the visitor spacecraft. You may inadvertently trigger an interstellar war.

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Don’t Be Shellfish

I got downstairs early today to walk the beach with Summer. She was finishing up her run as I got down there, so I got a couple pictures of her in front of Diamond Head in the sunrise. I missed a good one with the moon between a couple palm trees though. When she finished, we walked around by the water to see if we could find anything neat, but they do so much combing of all the trash and everything else that there weren’t any shells at all. Just some larger broken pieces of coral.

We headed back up to the room to try and score tickets to Hanauma Bay, but were unsuccessful. Julie came down and made French toast, bacon, and eggs for breakfast. Summer got us all tickets to the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, plus housekeeping had to come by in our absence to check all the lamps for women’s underwear. Once everyone was ready, I was able to get in touch with our cabbie friend, Susan, for a ride to the harbor. She had to send another friend of hers to get us, but it worked out fine.

I liked the memorial quite a bit more than I thought I would, and I really enjoyed for one of the few times in my entire life learning about world history. At first I got a bit confused by the audio tour because I didn’t see the numbers that were supposed to prompt me to play the next track. Once I had that straightened out, I moved through the displays as quickly as I could. We almost didn’t get to take the boat to the Arizona Memorial, but they started it up again and we managed to make it on the standby line.

After we finished, Suzan was able to come get us herself, and she helped us decide on dinner at Karai Crab. It was kind of a Cajun-style seafood place, and I think everyone really enjoyed it. Even Dad got adventurous with the mussels and clams. I was a little worried it wouldn’t fill me up, but I felt good afterward. Susan checked in on us as we finished up, then took us back to the Lagoon Tower. It’s been fun building some rapport with her, and she’s been really helpful just in our chatting during our rides.

We got back to the room just in time for the sunset, and then we went back downstairs for some ice cream. I had a five half-scoop waffle bowl that was super good. Summer finished hers and then crashed. Everyone else watched TV while I worked on my evening journaling. Tomorrow, we hope to find better local snorkeling than the super popular tourist destination that we failed to schedule today.

Can you eat the barnacles too?

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Why Did the Chicken Cross the Terminal?

I woke up at 3:30 this morning so I could have plenty of time to shower and pack up. We made it to the airport in plenty of time, but things got hectic super quickly. After checking our bag, I forgot to get my ID back, and made it all the way to TSA before panicking, completely forgetting that I had just had it out minutes earlier. Fortunately the girl that helped us brought my ID back, but then Summer had a couple oversized bottles of liquids. It would have been different if we hadn’t just flown to Florida earlier this year.

We made it to Houston without any trouble, but did have to huff it a bit to the next flight. If we had known better at the time, we would have chilled out for a while and maybe gotten some food. As we made our way out to the runway, a lightning storm blew in and kept us on the ground for about an hour and a half later than we planned. The pilot made up for it though, and we just barely made our connecting flight in Los Angeles.

That last transition really hurt us, because then we didn’t get any food, the snacks on the flights weren’t very substantial, and we also couldn’t precheck for the COVID requirements. When we finally made it down to Honolulu, we had to wait in an awful line for about half an hour just to get out of the gate.

Julie did great and arranged a taxi for us, so I made the call and made our way out to meet the guy that came out. He took us to Lagoon Tower, where Julie met us at the taxi. We got room keys and made our way up to the penthouse to unload.

Summer and I were starving, and it was dinner time for the others as well, so we went downstairs and out into a tiny, cramped marketplace to find some food. I felt super sweaty due to the heat and humidity after such a grueling flight, which just made me even hangrier. We stopped into an ABC store for a couple things and eventually got our food that had been ready for a while. Evidently the buzzer didn’t work.

We took everything back to the room to eat, and then I took a real shower and crashed.

Because his connecting flight was delayed and he had to be re-routed by the airline!

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An M. Night Shyamalan Plot Twist

We had a shortish meeting at work this morning, and then I unboxed a giant iMac that I would have to learn to enroll in our device management system. I didn’t notice until much later, but Josh and Brody basically burned the whole day putting the wrong image on a bunch of flash drives to take to the middle school because Josh didn’t want to image them over the network.

Most of us went to CJ’s for lunch, and when we got back, I helped make the correct flash drives while Josh started some lab computers imaging over the network. Kyle came in and kept me company while I churned out drives. I started to wrap my head around Jamf Apple computer management, but ultimately had to leave it for Monday.

Mark asked me to come by after work, so I ran home to grab my laptop and then went to his office for a little under an hour. Then I picked up the girls to meet my family at Pasta Grill to celebrate Mom’s birthday.

We had a really great time at dinner, and it was nice to see the family actually functioning and smiling. I think everyone was pretty satisfied with their food too. My blackened redfish pasta started out tasting like it was floating in butter, but either it got better or I just got used to it, and I really enjoyed the rest after a while.

When we got home, Summer wanted to talk with Autumn because I had caught her leaving town with Harry without Summer’s permission. What I thought was going to be more or less a disciplinary talk ended up being everyone coming together and spilling their guts all over the place. It was pretty hard for Summer. I’m still not really sure how I feel about some of it, but at least it was a proper airing of the past. I’ve said for a long time that therapy only goes so far, and that eventually the kids would have to come home and talk to us.

Summer and Autumn went to bed immediately after that. I stayed up a little bit longer and tried to finish an episode of House with Eaddie, but even she was tired and ended up just wanting to sleep on the couch.

We’ll never make it through the entire MonsterVerse like this!

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The Easter Boomer

I’ve felt pretty exhausted lately, and last night was no different. I slept super late today, and only got up in time for a little leftover brunch before having to get ready for a late Easter lunch with my parents. Summer made some deviled eggs, and the girls caught the irony. We let Autumn drive us all, and Bác Vân and Doug beat us there.

It was a relatively limited menu compared to our usual, but it was a great meal with much reduced stress. The girls enjoyed overhearing the adults ponder racially-charged social nuances, and it was a good time for all. After we ate, Autumn dropped Summer and Eaddie off, and I went with her to Walmart for a couple things. What should have been a pretty quick trip turned into both of us wandering around alone. It was hot and aggravating, because even when we weren’t browsing and just on a mission to pick up something specific, she felt the need to take off and leave me.

When we finally got back to their house, I loaded up and came home for the night. My left foot had been hurting all day for some reason, and the rising temperatures got me pretty lethargic and cranky. I ended up sitting on the couch for a couple hours and watching some Home RenoVision DIY videos.

Just before an early bedtime, I got out my new MonoPrice tube amplifier and hooked it up in the garage just to test it out with some old speakers. The speakers work great, and I think the amp will look super cool on top of the two larger speakers stacked on top of one another.

Nice weather means they’re sold out of tennis rackets.