Tag: home

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Powered Up

We had a nice, quiet morning again today. Summer had coffee on the porch, and I got up for some coffee and cereal myself. Eaddie wanted to bake cupcakes, so Summer went to the gym and brought back stuff for that while I reorganized the kitchen a bit. Eaddie left for a little while for band practice, so Summer worked on her nails for a while. I took a shower and finished cleaning up the kitchen, then went to the old house to pick up some surge protectors for the many, many electronics we still have to hook up.

I was there a bit late, but my car needed to charge as well. I stopped to wash the car on the way back to the new house, and Summer was mopping when I got there. She didn’t cook dinner, so I warmed up a leftover stuffed pepper. I got more of Summer’s office nook set up, and we’ll get the full office set up as soon as we have a car charger here.

Eaddie was up a bit late, but Summer is chaperoning a band trip with her tomorrow. Kids are out of school for me tomorrow, so I’ll be climbing around in the ceiling a bit.

Light it up!

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Getting Used to Home

Summer got up and went to the gym this morning, and I got around to do some laundry. I forgot a couple towels at the old house, so I ran across town to get them and complete the set. When I got back to the house, I took Summer around the block to look at a TV stand someone had left out. It didn’t look any better than the ones I have, so we left it and went back to the house to continue cleaning up.

Most of the day was pretty uneventful. I fixed a chair, sliced my hand trying to bang out a dent I put in the dryer, we went to the Neighborhood Market for some dinner to grill. Later in the evening, Summer snuck off to assemble the bed frame while I mounted a new smoke detector twice. I was certain the first time was where I wanted it, but went back and did it again with a laser level when I noticed it was at least an inch off of center.

Things are very slowly coming together, but sometimes the new habits we’re trying to form are a moving target. Summer thinks that I have to have things done my way because I think that my way is the only right way to do them. The part of the process that she’s never been around to experience are the 700 other ways I tried to do them first. Any one of them might have been perfectly fine, but you should always try to do them better the next time.

You see, I measured it wrong 499 different times.

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Fire, Good!

I slept in really late today after not getting to sleep until around three in the morning. Summer had to work, so it was quiet in the house. My shower was infuriating, because the water was either cold or scalding. I’m convinced the mixer is broken, so my next big project may be to install a thermostatic one. I also ran out of hot water about halfway through my already-quick shower. I wanted to relax in it for a while, but that just didn’t happen.

Eaddie got up and put away her laundry, and I left to meet Summer for lunch. I picked her up at the wash and we went to McDonald’s to fix my Big Mac craving. Afterward, I dropped her off back at work and went to my old house to charge and pick out a few things to take to the new house. I ended up staying there for way longer than I anticipated.

When I left, I loaded my trunk up with fire wood so I could try out the new fireplace. The girls were doing their own things, so I got a fire going and tinkered with anything I could get my hands on. It cooled off really fast outside, so hopefully we can take advantage of the nice weather while it’s here.

Enjoy the scent before burning, the smell escapes when lit.

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If I Had a Nickel

I slept in a little bit today before we got around to organizing the house. Summer mostly did things herself in the spare room, and I finally got the cabinets pulled away from the wall in the laundry room. I got a little hangry after a while, so I showered and we went to Mulan’s, Walmart, and then to my house to pick up a few more things.

I had an idea to mount Eaddie’s bathroom Google Nest Mini on the wall and to make the power cord into some wall art to look like a flower stem with leaves. The Command Strips we picked up weren’t perfect, but I eventually got them to stick, and I thought it looked pretty good.

Summer didn’t feel great, so she cancelled her therapy appointment, took a bath, and settled down pretty quickly. Brody invited me to see The Exorcist: Believer, but I turned him down on account of my being a big sissy. He stopped by to check out the house though, and then I let him take a ride around the block in the Model Y. He seemed to be doing pretty well at Clarksville, and it made me angry again that I didn’t go join him when I had the chance. The pay there really would have been so much better.

Eaddie was out late at an away game, so I was up by myself pretty late. I took apart the dryer because it had been making an awful racket, and I shook a nickel free from the edge of the drum. That seemed to resolve the issue, so I put everything back together and eventually made it to bed.

This sleep schedule is getting out of hand.

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Zero Productivity

I was early to work today, but that was about as good as it got. I pretty quickly got sucked into doing other peoples’ jobs. The one task I set out to do for myself ended up breaking a switch again, so I had to factory reset it. Fortunately that didn’t take down the entire network like what happened on Monday.

People keep calling or stopping in, which is throwing off my flow too. At least Denice wasn’t there for most of the day, but being cramped in half as much space has also made things more frustrating. I’ve just been having a bad time overall.

I tried watching the Pixel launch event, but struggled with that too. I ended up ordering a new phone and watch since my S21 Ultra has been on the struggle bus for a while now with its battery. I guess two and a half years is about the best I can hope for these days.

I thought I might sneak out a little early, but somehow still ended up a little late instead. The stupid kids hit my car with a basketball again, and it infuriates me that the teacher just sits there rocking in his chair the whole time. There’s still no damage, but I don’t want any more scuffs or dents. They just don’t respect peoples things.

Summer made dinner, so I ran home to change, stopped at my parents’ house for some moving boxes and eggs, and then made it to the new house for dinner. Afterward, I tried showing Summer how to load the dishwasher better, took care of my plants outside, cleaned up in the bathroom, and tried removing some more screws from the stupid extra cabinets in the laundry room. I still have one super stubborn screw to get out of one side, and then possibly more on the other side before we can take that thing out. Once we do, we should have plenty more room for the spare refrigerator.

Down the review rabbit hole.

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Settling

We milled around a little bit this morning, and then Summer and I got the washer and dryer into place. I wanted to get a stainless steel hose to replace her old rubber one, so we headed out to run some errands. We were hungry too, so we stopped at Zaxby’s for lunch. Then she had to check on the wash for a bit to see how the crew was doing with some cleaning tasks. Next up, we went to Lowe’s for the washer hose. They had a couple tiny orchids on clearance that we picked up as well. Then we went by the old house to get the last couple of things we wanted. We left a small cabinet and a little TV stand there, and I felt a little bit bad for not just disposing of them ourselves.

I forgot to go back for my old plant cages, so hopefully we can swing by and they’ll still be there tomorrow. We got everything back to the new house and unloaded. With the washer and dryer done, that should be everything the girls need. I’ll start bringing some things over, but most importantly I’ll need to get the ceiling fixed.

I got the back porch cleaned up a bit and brought the extension cord up above the deck to see if the string lights would work. They did, but I was surprised by how rusty and gross the outlet looked. I’ll need to get that replaced sooner than later. As the sun set, Summer and I spent a little bit of time out on the deck. Eaddie wanted to get out of the house, so she asked to go to the movies. It didn’t seem like we did a whole lot, but I felt completely beat for most of the day.

Hope

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Consoling

After being late yesterday, I was actually really early today. I backtracked to Wendy’s for breakfast this time, and still made it to work several minutes early. I decided early on that I wasn’t going to get any work done, all to focus on moving things out of my office and into the front office with Kim. I started by moving some things around in our storage room, and I think I might have a reasonable plan for how to make the storage more easily accessible.

I skipped out on lunch because ham and cheese wraps sounded awful. I survived on coffee and lemonade and stayed an hour late until I got almost everything out. There was still one set of cabinets with some toner in them, but I don’t even know what they went to, so I figured that can be a problem for Monday.

We decided to keep the television console, so I queued Kevin up again. I thought he was going to be later than he was, so I started to go get some food. He texted me just as I left the house, so I turned around and went to the new house to pick up my straps. As soon as I got there, I realized the girls never took them out of the Murano after they unloaded, so I had to go back to the high school to get them while Eaddie was at a football game. I met Kevin at his place since I was already right by him, and we took his truck to get the console.

The power was already shut off, so we were working in the pitch black. Somehow we managed to get it loaded onto the truck, and I grabbed the lawn mower as well. There were still a few small things to get that Summer didn’t grab, but I figured that would wait until the next day. We got the console and mower to the new house, and then Kevin took me back to my car.

I finally stopped at Arby’s for some dinner, just as it approached bedtime. I’ve been a constant state of exhaustion, and the Big Game Burger I got was kind of a disappointment. Summer was up and mentioned a centipede in the bathroom, but all she did was cover it with a towel and surround it with shoes, hoping it wouldn’t get away. Then she got confused about what kind of bug it was. In fact, it was a centipede, and we were lucky it didn’t crawl away. I dispatched it and then took a shower, taking time to clean a whole bunch of gunk out of the crevices while I was in there. Of course water went everywhere outside of the shower while I did that, so I had to suck that up with the Bissell too. It was super nasty.

Frustrated yet again, I struggled to get to bed for the night. It wasn’t entirely fair, nor was it entirely unfounded. It feels like another week gone by, and not much closer to feeling like home.

It’s just not my year.

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You Don’t Have to Go Home

Somehow I lost track of time this morning after staying at the new house, so I was 15 minutes late to work today. I didn’t really accomplish anything again, because I was preoccupied with moving stuff out of my office. I still can’t believe they’re just fine with cutting my space in half. It would be a résumé-generating event if I hadn’t just updated it already.

Overall the day went by pretty quickly, especially the morning. There’s still a lot to move tomorrow, and if nothing else gets done, oh well. I messaged Kevin on the way home to see if he would be up for helping me move the last of the big stuff from Summer’s old house, and he said he could later in the evening.

I stopped at Casey’s for some free M&Ms before going home for a little while to charge. Then I stopped by my parents’ house for some phở for dinner before going to the new house to find Summer ready to settle in for the night. I motivated her to go to the old house with me so we could prep for Kevin, and Eaddie went to a Tech band concert.

We finally got Summer’s bed apart after taking out way more screws than were required. I honestly don’t even know if we’ll be able to put it back together properly. It’s going to be well and truly rigged at this point. The whole thing was really just supposed to slide apart.

Kevin showed up and helped me take two loads to the new house. We got the washer, dryer, and bed the first trip. Then Summer stayed home while Kevin and I got the deep freeze, kitchen table, and a couple other random things. Summer will have to go back for a little more, but unless we decide we want to bring a couple more cabinets home, we’re done. I just wish she had listed them for free so they could go somewhere useful.

After Kevin left, I hopped in to try the shower to get some of the sweat off of me, and I’m pretty sure it took a couple layers of skin. It felt like I was drowning the entire time, and there was no way to adjust the water pressure down. It was so high-pressure that it was difficult to change the spray pattern.

Eaddie and I chatted for a little bit while I did my stuff on the computer, and then I did my best to squeak into bed by midnight.

But you can’t stay here.

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Eviction Notice

I had a fairly rough night and morning, and woke up hungry, so I stopped at McDonald’s for an Egg McMuffin. The first thing I did at work was assemble another Chromebook cart for our own use, so I could give the one we were using to the library for checkout devices. It wasn’t much later that I received an email from the assistant superintendent that the superintendent’s wife would be needing my office next week, and that I needed to get things moved.

The front of the office looks better now, but there simply won’t be enough room there for everything we have to spread out at different times of the year. Time will tell, I suppose. We had a plate of mushy “tater tot casserole” for lunch, and some guys came to install more security cameras without anyone’s knowledge.

I left a little bit late and ran to the new house to meet John so he could quote me on another Wall Connector install. He suggested we might want to update the panel as well, so we may be looking at around $2,500 for that, plus another $1,500 for the charger. We don’t have time to dawdle, but we also still have to get the last of Summer’s stuff moved, and some drywall guys in to fix the ceiling. Nevermind actually having furniture.

After he left, I cleaned up a little bit outside and sprayed some bug killer after I found a huge trial of ants leading up the deck and across the side of the house. They were on a mission to get somewhere, and I wasn’t going to have it.

Once Summer got home, I replaced her shower head, and then spent the rest of the night feeling incredibly uncomfortable in the dining room. I just didn’t want to be there.

There’s no place like home.

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New Digs, Who Dis

I very nearly called in to work today because I was still in so much pain from moving yesterday. Even driving in to work was a struggle, but I felt better after some coffee at my desk. Kim wasn’t much use to anyone today, and she wasn’t ashamed about it. She didn’t feel the need to be there if the kids weren’t, but there were still work orders that could have been closed.

Todd said Harry called him over the weekend with some trouble with his PlayStation and the internet. Since the school pays for the superintendent’s house and internet, I guess that’s my job. It really seemed like we had a rogue DHCP server somewhere after the trouble I had last week, but I didn’t have much luck finding it. I spent all day learning about that stuff, but still didn’t feel accomplished in anything.

I was pretty hungry by quitting time, so I ran home and finished my hot wings. Then Mom and Dad came over to look at my drippy refrigerator water line. We went next door briefly so Mom could look through Bác Vân’s stuff, and then we met the girls at Morelos for dinner.

The serving sizes were awesome, but the food was super salty. We ate, and then I went with the girls to the car wash, and then Walmart for a shower curtain for Eaddie. When we left there, we stopped by the old house to get a couple of things, and then they dropped me back at my house to get a couple more things.

I met them at the new house and tried to get a few things done before bed. Summer helped me move the grills around outside, I fixed the refrigerator shelving and messed with the shower in the master bath. Then I realized I didn’t have a laptop to take care of the blog. Summer had hers in the car, so I made do.

Floor bed