Tag: lessons

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Orbital Anomalies

I thought I’d go for a change and stop at McDonald’s in Atkins this morning, and I had a much better experience than I expected. It was a bright, anxious ride in to work just to learn that Randy was leaving at lunch. I got LAPS working on my test devices, but then struggled to choose a battle for the rest of the day.

Since I was on my own again, I just went to McDonald’s for a late lunch date with a Big Mac. It felt fittingly depressive, and then I sipped on my punch all afternoon. When I got back to the office, everyone was standing outside due to an evacuation alarm. The fire department showed up and gave the all-clear, but we never did figure out what triggered it in the first place.

I ended up working just a little bit late since I would be meeting Mitch for dinner. He said he had some extra crew in town that was going to grill at the hotel, so I figured I could grab some steaks on the way over. I stopped to charge for a few minutes outside the Baptist Health building, but it ran even slower than a regular outlet. I finally went to Walmart and picked up a couple T-bones, some chips and dips, and a couple ears of corn, and went to Mitch’s hotel to wait for him.

They ended up having outlets on the outside of the building, so I charged faster there than I did at the Baptist Health chargers. Mitch showed up, went to change, then came back down and sat in my car. Evidently he changed his mind and wanted to go out, but I misread the message and bought food. We changed plans back to grill, but then he wasn’t sure when the other guys were cooking.

We ran to a gas station so he could get some beer, then went up to his room for a bit. We talked for quite a while, and I never realized he dated Rachel seriously way back in the day. He said they broke up and she turned right around and married Jacob, who later divorced and married Sarah. It felt like the layers of the Matrix were being pulled back before my eyes. It’s all a construct.

We had finally given up on cooking and I was just going to let him keep the food and go out instead, but as soon as we pulled into the Cactus Jack’s parking lot, he got a text that they were ready to grill and we headed back again. One of the other guys had the grill going, so we let him take care of the steaks. They actually turned out perfect in spite of the trouble he had with the wind blowing out the propane. It was a decent time, though Mitch had Alyssa over and it ended up being the three of us eating alone.

I got home quickly after that, stopping in Conway to charge for just a couple minutes. I couldn’t handle much more of this tiny universe. These bodies orbit much too closely.

I have Trusty Shoes

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Run Like Yell

We got up early for Summer’s run in Dardanelle this morning. We wanted to take Muad’Dib, but Summer wasn’t very proactive when we were trying to load things up to go, so I ended up forgetting my OneWheel. We got downtown and I started to just hang out with her, but I decided I’d try to run home and get it quickly so I could be back in time to watch the race. Unfortunately I got back over the bridge just in time to be stuck in traffic as they closed the road. I had no idea they would be running the race in that direction.

Once I got back downtown, I took Muad’Dib from Brian and a bunch of kids who had been babysitting him. Evidently Summer told them his name was Paul, because when I called him back to me, Brian said something along the lines of, “ah, now ‘Paul’ makes sense.” We raced after the runners and I felt really bad for being so late. We did encounter Summer after she was already on her way back from the turnaround, but we kept going. Most everyone seemed excited to see us, but I think I did get some glares, and one lady made the comment that I shouldn’t be doing that during a race.

On the way back, the same lady made another comment, and then immediately after that, Muad’Dib went rogue and brushed up against the back of another lady’s legs, who freaked out while she was running at full speed. I ended up moving to the next block to get back downtown, since I didn’t want any more grief or to cause any more trouble. I guess next time we’ll just bum around in other areas.

Summer finished the race before we made it back, and then I took Muad’Dib down to the river to try and clean up from the mud puddle he used to cool down. Summer made third in her age division, so she got another little pin, and then we headed home.

We had plans to go out for breakfast, but Summer didn’t feel well and had to soak in the tub for a while. Once she made it out, we ended up going to New China for lunch instead. Then we came home and started to doze off on the couch for a while. I woke up gasping for air multiple times, but didn’t make myself get up until much later, which hurt a bit.

Summer wanted to go to the Tech graduation for some of her employees, so I ran Muad’Dib over to my parents’ house to see if Mom wanted me to grill steaks for Mother’s Day. Then Summer and I went to graduation while Eaddie and Eli went out for cap and gown pictures with Dad. Summer got lots of pictures, and then we found the graduates outside once they were done.

The drive home was a little tense because for some reason Summer didn’t expect that I’d still be having a pretty hard time in general. She pouted, but I pushed through a trip to the Neighborhood Market anyway, to get everything we needed for grilling. The kids were watching TV when we got home, so we went to the bedroom and watched Neal Brennan: Crazy Good, a stand-up special until she crashed from her long day.

Normally I prefer my cookies to be a little less ambiguous.

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Are You Sidereus?!

I slept in a little bit today after a fairly long, rough day yesterday. Time had lost most of its meaning anyway. Summer was having coffee in the living room, and I think Eaddie went to school at least for a little while. Shawna actually responded back to my checking in on her lack of checking in. I said my peace, which went predictably about the same that it did fourteen years ago. At least it provided a bit of closure so I could keep my eyes forward.

Summer went to work for a while, and I took a shower and then put on some music while I assembled a metal locker I got from Vine for our dog accessories. Later in the afternoon, Summer met me at the Genesis Blood and Cancer Institute when she finished her workout. I had to pay a bunch more money (big surprise!) for reasons that could not be explained (when are we expecting America be great again?), and then we sat in the waiting room for nearly an hour before going back for vitals and then a chat with an eerily chipper Dr. Chen.

He entered the room with a cheery, “Hey buddy!” that had me dreading the worst news. It must be incredibly deflating to deal with a terminal as a profession, but he had good news. I now had too much iron. He dropped my supplements, and then suggested an SSRI for my anxiety attacks. I was leery of too much tinkering, but I’m no science-denier. We’ll try it his way.

We headed home, but it was too rainy to run Muad’Dib. Summer took a bath, and then we went out to Check H for dinner. We watched a Ricky Gervais Netflix special when we got home, then started for bed. Eaddie called late because she had lost the keys to the Murano and was stuck at the high school. I actually had a bit of dialog with Shawna to wrap up the night, and wrap up whatever the fuck happened there.

Hopefully we all learned a little about each other, and a lot about ourselves.

🚩 Took me 20 minutes lol 🚩

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Chasing Lightning

It was a bit rainy on the way to work, but the drive wasn’t too bad. Lightning rippled through the clouds a few times, creating a fishing net of light cast across the sky. I arrived fairly early and Randy was already hard at work with the domain controllers. I mostly sat back so we didn’t have too many hands in the cookie jar, and instead fought an issue for our Cenergistic guy who couldn’t figure out how to remote into the system I set up for him. He eventually came by the office so I could take a look at his laptop, and it looked like he just couldn’t save the connection because of rotating credentials.

Randy and I met Jay, Charles, Kyle, and Hunter at Cotham’s for lunch, and I think my burger was even bigger than usual. It was great, and I tried to impart as much wisdom onto Jay as I could. I was feeling a little frisky, so I almost approached a girl for him, who he was eyeing, but I figured that would be best saved for another time.

Randy left for the day after dropping me off, and with Maggie out all day, things were quiet at the office. Time got away from me a bit, and then it was an aggravatingly slow drive home through traffic. The kids had just finished eating some leftovers when I got there, so I took Muad’Dib out for a run.

We went all the way out to Casey’s so I could redeem a free slush. We encountered an old lady walking a rather unruly dog, and she pointed at us saying it was bad because her dog didn’t like it. Muad’Dib stayed right by my side with hardly a look, and waited patiently outside while I got my slush. Tracy saw me walking out and said hello, and I thought the number of call center throwbacks has been wild this year. Muad’Dib and I rode down the sidewalk and crossed over without any trouble, and I decided to swing through the Ridgewood Brothers to see if anyone was home.

Failing there, we continued past Kroger, across town, through the basin for a dip, and down to see Dad for a while before we made it home. Seven and a half miles, and he loved every bit of it. The kids were gone, but Summer got home shortly after we did. She ate some leftovers, and then we wound down pretty quickly. Eaddie tried on her graduation gown when she got home, and it was off to bed before the Toad Suck race in the morning.

’cause the love that you lost wasn’t worth what it cost

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Shame on Me

I managed to lock in this morning and had all screens going for maximum efficiency. Each answer led only to more questions, but that is often the case with so many hands in the cookie jar. I brought some leftover pizza and munched on that throughout the day, so I didn’t go to lunch. I just kept digging for our unknown domain controller, assuming that our problems were due to misconfigured DNS, and Kyle wasn’t able to articulate anything to help. I think I’m on top of something big, though.

The afternoon went by pretty slowly, but there were people through the office all day to keep things from getting too dull. Traffic home was horribly slow. Just after I got into town, a storm blew through and I could barely see ten feet ahead of me. Within my last mile I saw several large branches go down, and our driveway was flooding into the garage when I made it home. If I had realized how high the water was, I would have left the garage door closed and just run into the house by way of the equally flooded front walkway. At least the step up there would have been high enough to prevent water from coming into the house.

Summer was warming up leftover spaghetti while I ran around trying to direct the water from the driveway around the north side of the house. Eaddie and Eli tried to help just inside the door as I ran for things like the leaf blower, squeegee, and eventually a towel to keep from dripping all over the house. I don’t think there was any real water damage after that, and I got almost all of it out the door.

I ate with Summer while the kids studied in the living room, but she finished pretty quickly. As of last night we had plans to meet Shawna at Crystal Bridges on Sunday, but Summer said she backed out today because she has a new boyfriend with pictures to prove it. I wish that was more of a plot twist than any of us expected, but I just hope she finds what she needs.

Summer went for a bath while I spent some quiet time with Muad’Dib in the rain. I took care of some chores and then set up a new wireless microphone for Eaddie’s flute, which also involved testing out my old PA system. The kids played with that for a bit, then I cleaned up a bit in the kitchen before bed.

The sun doesn’t give light to the moon assuming the moon’s gonna owe it one.

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PGA Tour

After the intensity yesterday, I knew I’d have to medicate today to keep the shakes down. I was early, so I just let the car do its thing to get me to the office, and from there I was actually pretty focused. I continued working in SCCM to fix some issues with Jim’s laptop deployment, but was still delayed by the network latency. At this point it would be much faster to just go to the high school and test my task sequences there.

I offered to take Maggie out to lunch for her birthday, but she said she had plans to meet a friend. She ended up disappearing for much of the day, so it was just the two old men and me, sipping my sweet tea all day. I didn’t eat my banana, and I wasn’t hungry for lunch, so I just plowed right through. I tried to stay hydrated, but somehow the lid to my cup popped off and I spilled 32 ounces of ice water all over the floor right outside our office. All I could do was shrug. I broke my cup and lid in the process, and to add insult to injury, they don’t seem to keep a mop in the closet with the other cleaning supplies. I had to use a rag to wipe it all up after wringing it out repeatedly.

The afternoon dragged by slowly, but quitting time eventually rolled around. I was exhausted and a bit dazed, but the car was a champ again. Eaddie called and wanted to know if we were going to go to Nebo with her, Eli, and my dad to take some more senior photos, so that was our new plan. I got home and tried to lay on the couch with Summer for a bit since she had gotten home fairly early. We started talking, and that continued off and on all night long.

The kids got there, followed by my dad, and we loaded Muad’Dib into the Pathfinder to drive up the mountain. Summer had to use the restroom, so we found the bathhouse first, then took some pictures at the overlook there. We still had quite a bit of daylight left, so we went around to the waterfall and took some pictures there. Our last stop was sunset point to get a few more shots as the sun set behind the clouds. I spotted a lone lady sitting on a rock staring into the distance, so I made a point to walk down by her with a smile and wish her well. I shared with her that I had spent many evenings there alone, and hoped that she was doing okay.

We stopped one last time at an overlook on the way down the mountain, and then headed home. My chat with Summer had kind of gone back and forth all day, but really took a defeating turn on the drive home. The way she digs into me and refuses any help unless somebody is forcing her makes me worry that I’m doing more harm than good just by being around at this point.

I didn’t find out until later, but Summer robbed my liquor cabinet on the way to take a bath. I warmed up some spaghetti for Eaddie and sat in the kitchen with her for another really great talk about how she basically wished we would split up. Coming from either of the other kids might have been an insult, but I knew what she meant. She just wants us both to be happy, and has a logical enough mindset that she sees a path forward for all of us. She recognized the decline of our relationship, especially after moving in together, and identified the core differences in our values and priorities. She especially didn’t want us sticking together on account of her, and hated that we’ve both been so unhappy in spite of how Summer says she feels. We discussed sitting down as a family to share our feelings, which is something I’ve struggled to get Summer to do even one-on-one, but Eaddie has proven time and time again that she has insight that both of us could use. She really is the daughter I always wanted.

I started to wind down, but heard Summer whimpering in the bedroom. By the time I got there, she was absolutely hammered and sobbing into her pillow from finishing my bottle of cocoa cayenne Bird Dog. In nearly eight years, I had never really seen her cry, and I’d definitely never seen her that drunk before. We “fought” for over two hours, mostly about me trying to get her to drink some water. I needed her to be able to open up emotionally, but in a more constructive way. We both called in to work, and I guess we’ll see if we can actually have an adult conversation tomorrow, but I’m betting on at least one hangover eating into that productivity. She is such an incredible woman, and we both learned and grew from one another a great deal in our time. I would still be broken in a big way without her. I never expected this to come to a head in this way. I’ve tried so hard, but I just don’t know if we can truly be good for one another in this kind of relationship.

Older than the ocean. Older than the night sky, I am.

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Whiskey Business

I was absolutely riddled with anxiety all day long. MacLeod got me to work safely and I did my best to settle in. I’ve been really surprised at how quiet things have been, and I wondered when the techs actually got any work done since Jimmy and Gary have been spending nearly all day, every day at the office. I got into the script server to run a manual sync for a new sub, which prompted a call from Randy while he was out on bereavement. I had it handled, so all was well.

Time seemed completely irrelevant, and I continued to wring my hands and tap my feet because I think I knew what was coming. I skipped lunch and tried to focus on Mosyle until I had to stop and help Jim with an OS deployment on one of the new Acers he got for the high school.

The drive home was the worst, as tics slowly took over all motor control. Then, as if I had been building up to this moment all day long, Shawna texted and then called to set expectations. Selfishly involving her in our own troubles had caused more harm than the help I was meant to provide for her. It would have been different with any other person in the universe, but there was no way she had thought of me the way I had thought of her for all this time. I couldn’t help but to freefall.

By the time I got inside, I was shaking pretty violently. Summer was warming up leftover spaghetti for dinner, but found me shivering in the corner of the closet. I don’t know how long we talked from that point, but after an anxiety attack, I wasn’t in a position to interfere with anyone or anything else. I quickly found the Fireball to keep myself from making any surprise trips out of town, and sat down to eat with Summer.

After our expectedly awkward dinner, I took Muad’Dib out for a run. He was amazing even when we encountered other dogs, including a loose poodle around the basin. He took a quick dip in the creek, and then we went back up and through the roundabout before making our way to my parents’ house. Dad came out with some leftover pork loin for him, and then we made it home where Summer and I sat out on the porch together for a bit.

The evening wound down pretty quickly after that since I wasn’t fit to put much brain power into anything else. Eaddie got home late and came to visit me briefly, and I eventually found my way to bed.

But what if it had actually worked???

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Swing, Swing, Swing

I went to bed super late and woke up when Summer made her coffee so I wouldn’t waste the day. We spent some time with the dog, and then she went to the gym while I tried to clean things up a bit. Suzanne and her godmother came over to return the old turtle tank I gave her, but I ended up telling her to just sell it and keep the money rather than let me put it into storage since I still have two large tanks that are unused.

Eaddie went out with Eli for an Easter service, and Summer and I eventually made it to the Neighborhood Market to get stuff to make salads and spaghetti for dinner. When we got home, I continued cleaning while she cooked. Then I took Muad’Dib out for a good run and returned Dad’s sledgehammer. I felt like that extra weight made my feet hurt on the Onewheel even more than usual.

The kids got home and we all sat down to eat a really great spaghetti dinner, and everything turned out really great. Summer cleaned up afterward, as I dealt with some minor aggravations. Later on, Eaddie went to chat with Summer in bed for a while, then came to talk to me as well. We ended up going to sit in the living room and had a great talk for a couple of hours until I started trying to fall asleep.

I should have known from the start.

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Draining Circles

I was pretty hungry as I got into North Little Rock this morning, so I decided to stop by the donut shop for an assortment. Randy was out all morning and there wasn’t really anything else going on, so I did a bit more research on my taxes, and then spent most of the day pumping out Vine reviews to get my percentage back up. I’ve been seriously slacking, so I’ve got a lot of ground to cover to keep this thing going.

The morning went by super fast, and I took a late lunch to grab a Minecraft Big Mac meal from McDonald’s. Then the afternoon was more of the same quiet until quitting time. Julie called to chat for a while on the drive home, and then Summer was hungry when I finally got back into town, so the two of us went to La Huerta to share some nachos and then sat at home and talked for quite a while.

I took Muad’Dib out for a run just before it got dark, and I think he may have reached a high speed the way he was tearing through the yards on our downhill run. My parents got tickets ahead to see The Chosen, so we continued on through our route to get home. It was a quick evening to get everyone settled down, and then I spent the remainder of the night finalizing my taxes. I’ll review the actual forms tomorrow to check for errors, but I think they’re probably done well enough. I guess there’s always the chance that Ol’ Donnie will axe the IRS, so it may not matter anyway.

Remove yourself.

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Tempestas Fugit

I got up this morning and considered taking Muad’Dib out for a bath, but as soon as I started petting him, even more hair came right out of his coat. He’ll need to get further along in his shedding before we bring him in for any length of time. I had plans to be pretty productive for the day, but it just didn’t happen. Summer was up and we were able to have what I thought was a long, meaningful chat. Eaddie had to prepare for prom when she got up, so all I really did after that was eat some tacos and then wait around for her.

Eli’s mom came over in the afternoon to do Eaddie’s hair and makeup. As they finished up, we got some pictures and then went outside to wait for his dad and sister to come and take pictures outside. I took Muad’Dib up the street for a quick jaunt just to burn some energy, and he jumped into Eli’s opened driver-side door when we got back. He knows cars are for adventures now, and he’s not afraid to go for it. The kids did great, and even Muad’Dib sat still long enough for some photos before they left.

Summer and I chatted some more in the evening, and I eventually got outside to grill a couple of burgers for dinner. It was dark by then, so I took Muad’Dib out for a run and tried to catch up with Shawna for a bit. We stopped to see my parents and their new kitchen countertop, and then it was a fairly quick night to bed. The kids came home to change before going to the after-prom party, but neither of us could stay up as late as they would be.

So taxing.