Tag: movie

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Wharf, or Art Thou?

“Lakeview Property”

I ran home to get things ready for my conference. We didn’t get out of town quite as early as I wanted, but I probably would have been too tired to do much else anyway. Once I got everything packed up and the pets all fed, I went to get Summer and we went to the high school to pick up a laptop. Dale came by his office just as we were finishing up, so we chatted with him for just a second before leaving.

We hit the road in the middle of the afternoon, stopping for some snacks in Ola before making the rest of the trip. It didn’t seem like a long drive, and I didn’t have any traffic in front of me for most of the trip. When we got to the Staybridge, the a guy from maintenance was in the room trying to fix the garbage disposal. I told him it wasn’t a big deal, but he wanted to fuss at the front desk anyway. We took all our stuff back downstairs and then stowed it away in one of the conference rooms while we went out to eat.

I had heard about Fisherman’s Wharf in my past travels, and it was just across the bridge from the hotel. It seemed really tiny from outside, but once we got inside and chose to eat outside on the desk, we realized just how big it really is. They had a pretty impressive outdoor seating area, and the food was pretty amazing. Summer kept getting up to take pictures of the geese and turtles. I was most impressed with how many roll up doors they had. I counted 19, and we can’t get even one for our warehouse. We sure can renovate an auditorium for the super’s singing club, though.

After we ate, we went back to the hotel and got moved into our room, then went downstairs to check out the social. We found the theater room and decided to tuck away in there for a movie. They had 13 Going on 30 on the counter, so I stuck it in and philandered with the remotes a while until I finally got it to play. Amazingly, Summer had never seen it before, and I thought it was right up her alley.

Once the movie was over, Summer went up to bed while I tried to make sense of my schedule over the next couple days. I guess tomorrow night I’ll have some time to try and put my thoughts together on how to present for my breakout session.

I do my best work when I’m rushed at the last minute, because I never complete any work until then!

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Go Go Gojira!

I wanted to get up early to help get my sleep schedule back in order and so we could spend more time in Conway, but I slept pretty poorly, and then woke up really early to the sound of a cat barfing, so I ended up sleeping in a while. It didn’t help though, because I still felt so drained all day long. Maybe it was the weird dream I had about going to a conference, seeing Egon Spengler, and then losing Summer in some kind of psychotic, murderous, space-bending maze while trying to find our room in the casino.

When we finally got ready to leave the house, I noticed the house was really warm and discovered my air conditioner had blown the fuse outside again. I wasn’t going to let that hold us back though, so I called Dad and then we skipped town while my house heated up.

Our first stop was Hog Pen BBQ for lunch, and boy was it a treat. I told our waitress that it was our first time, and she brought us each a sample rib and some pork skins. It was some of the best barbecue I had ever had in my life. I got the sampler with ribs, chicken, and sausage, and it was some of the smokiest, most tender meat I’ve ever had. It was a good cut of rib meat without too much bone. The sauce didn’t seem like anything special, but it was really only there to wet the meat a little bit anyway. It definitely wasn’t lacking in flavor. The sausage wasn’t my favorite and had some gristle to it, and the sides left something to be desired mainly in portion size, but you could tell the focus was on the meats, and there was no shortage of that.

Neither of us could finish our plates, so I packed up another meal worth of meats and we headed out to the strip mall. We had never been to a Kohl’s before, so we stopped there first. They had a fair amount of clearance stuff to skim through, and Summer picked out a shirt for me. I’ll have to slim down a bit to fit it properly, but at least I have until winter. Then we went to Shoe Carnival so I could spend my $10 reward coupon. Finally we stopped by Target for a Frappuccino and to kill the last bit of time before the movie. We ran into Courtney and Eston there and chatted for just a second before we went on our way.

We made our way to the Cinemark early for Godzilla: King of the Monsters. I thought the story lacking quite a bit, and I found the characters unrelatable at best. I never felt any kind of emotional investment in any of them, and I didn’t get the feeling that it was because I didn’t see the first movie. The action was larger than life though, and it was a relatively fun, mindless action flick. I still can’t get over Godzilla’s tiny head on his massively fat body though.

On the way home, we stopped in Morrilton for some drinks and I picked up a couple bottles of cocoa cayenne Bird Dog that ended up being super delicious. Amanda invited us over to hang out with some of her furry friends, and we got to hear some interesting stories while Summer tried her first Jell-O shots. Nick took the girls to the house, so we didn’t stay out too late. We did have to stop at Taco Bell for a midnight snack, and we finally crashed at her house for the night.

History shows again and again, how nature points out the folly of man.

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Nearly Under the Sea

I slept in quite a bit today, snugly tucked under my weighted blanket. It was still a bit warm, but it may have been better with the new cover. All I know is that it’s going to be amazing in the winter.

I got up and around, and went to pick the girls up to go to Conway. We were running more behind than I wanted, but Summer had chores she wanted to accomplish first. We made it there for a late lunch, but the barbecue place I spotted was closed for the day. On the way across town we noticed a Korean barbecue place called Bulgogi that had a 4.9 star review, so it was an easy choice to stop in. They had an assortment of rice, noodle, and ramen bowls, and even some cheesesteak sandwiches. I’ll give you one guess who didn’t like their food, but everyone that got something traditional really enjoyed theirs. The cheesesteak was even pretty good, but needed some sauce to spice it up a bit.

After we ate, we went to Sam’s to kill some time. Summer picked up a few things, and I thought really hard about getting some beach chairs. Ultimately I decided against them, because geographically it just doesn’t make any sense for me to own any at all. I really liked the whale though, and there are times when I wish I had some kind of folding camp chair. They had a rocking one that was pretty nice too.

We made it to the movie pretty early, and the previews seemed to run forever. The movie was good, but it seems that 2019 is the year of the women’s power movement. As someone who grew up in a household where the matriarch clearly wore the pants, I simply can’t empathize, and frankly I feel preached-at for no reason. When I hear a character say something sexist, I don’t need a woman to sing a song about it to get that the dude is being a dick. I already understand that he is a villain. It’s just a little too SJW for me, and it really takes away from the movies. I guess “it’s not for me” though, so I should just be quiet.

It started storming pretty hard right as the movie started, and evidently we had some flooding back home. It wasn’t too bad in Conway, but it never really stopped raining the rest of the day. When we got out, I took us back across town to do some shopping. Summer picked out some shoes at Shoe Carnival, while I wandered back and forth trying on every shoe in the store only to bring back nothing. Then we went to Dick’s for a missing valve stem cap, and the girl at the register remembered us and asked about the bikes. That brought us to a very late dinner time. Most everything had closed, so we ended up going to JJ’s Grill, which turned out to be more of a bar than a restaurant. The food was good, though priced like bar food. I had a fried bologna sandwich with an egg on it, which would have made a great, if greasy breakfast.

On the way home, I stopped at Andy’s and got frozen custard with Eaddie. The others wanted to stay in the car, so it felt kind of special to get out and have a treat for ourselves in the rain. When we got back into town, the usual half of us were ready to crash. Eaddie will probably stay up longer than me too.

The genie from Uncanny Lamp

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Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels Bezels

Heather met me at the junior high this morning, and we ran around working on a few of the individual work orders I had collected last week. It wasn’t much, but she did at least get to open up a computer to pull out a power supply. We, or I, should probably be going over some of them with more urgency, but summer is nearly here, and I’ve lost a lot of steam. Jesica was in town for a meeting and wanted to get lunch, so I met her at Stoby’s and we caught up a bit.

After lunch, I went to the high school and helped Dale out by doing a stack of keyboard bezels. Then we brought two more carts full of laptops to the office and stowed them away under the bins. It was tiring, boring, and thankless work, but evidently I have to do it now. I did pull a quarter out of one of the card readers, but I’m sure if anyone from central office had seen me earn that bonus, they would have relieved me of it. At one point we did get a little bit of excitement when Paul burst into the office asking what our IP was. After some digging and looking at the snipping tool clip of a screenshot he printed on paper, I discovered he had gotten a popup regarding a reset password. I was relatively certain he was crazy, but I gave him a couple pointers and sent him on his way. He came back just minutes later and asked us to come take a look at it, and left in an audible huff when Dale told him we were too busy at the moment. I honestly think there may have been tears. It must have been remorse for not paying attention, or not having a damn clue.

We left at the end of the day, feeling vaguely accomplished. I went home and tried to clean up a bit through a headache I had been incubating. I spent a bit of time on the aquariums, less in the kitchen, and a bit more on the computer. I’ve got to get things ready for the trip, but my travel anxiety is already well on its way. I ate my leftover beef spud from last week when I got home, but after wandering around the house for a couple more hours, I worked up enough of an appetite to run to my parents’ house for some more leftovers. They were watching Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves on TV, and they both had forgotten we had watched it before. It was one of my favorite movies as a child, and I thought we had the VHS, but it’s possible we had borrowed it from someone. I never remembered much of it myself for some reason, but I sure remembered those fire arrows!

Back home, I wound it down pretty quickly and headed to bed for a long sleep.

A snake, a snake! Snake! Snake! Oooh, it’s a snake!

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Avengers: Girl Power

We got up this morning and headed to Little Rock for lunch and an IMAX showing of Endgame. Our first stop was at Sam’s to pick up a bag of rice for Summer’s mom, and then we went to Chuy’s to eat. The food was amazing as usual, but looking back it was probably too expensive to be taking all of those youngsters. They end up ordering cheaply made food and not enjoying the value of the more expensive dishes, but everything there is a bit higher anyway. I’d love to go to happy hour at some point without them though.

After we ate, we went to The Promenade At Chenal to walk the food off a bit. We never even made it to any of the stores, and just did one loop around the area. We did make a couple stops at some benches to rest, kill some time, and take a few pictures. I made Summer mad because I wouldn’t pose with her in front of a concrete LOVE sculpture, but I didn’t like having to get someone out in the street for a proper angle. I did take a couple from behind that could be mirrored, but by that time nobody would really cooperate anyway.

The kids walked on ahead to the theater, so Summer and I went on in even though we were over half an hour early. The entire process was ticketless, which was kind of a bummer for me because I like keeping them as a sort of souvenir. My glasses were dirty too, but they washed well in the sink. The kids got some small popcorns and drinks, and we made our way to our seats. All of my bladder training paid off, and I made it through to at least the start of the regular credits.

Endgame was an amazing movie. It was constantly full of emotion. I thought there were some moments that could have been shortened a bit to shave some precious seconds off of the total film length, but I was pretty happy with the screen time that the characters got. I wasn’t a fan of Captain Flythroughyourships, and I was surprised to see her get a lesbian haircut in the middle of the movie. I also didn’t really care for the girl-power moment. I’m all for powerful female characters, but we already had some that we killed off. What happened here was too forced. In the end, I thought they did a fantastic job of bringing the story to a close. I’m interested to see where Spider-Man goes from here.

We weren’t really hungry after the movie, so we headed home to drop Noah off, and then we watched some Parks and Rec until bedtime.

I am Iron Man.

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Baader Meinhof Adapter

I was so incredibly tired this morning that work got me into a bit of a cold sweat. I jumped right into things, trying to track down a buzzing sound in the Oakland A/V setup. Jamming to some sweet classics, the lunch ladies came out dancing. I’m told there’s a video of me being unwillingly pulled into that somewhere. The preschool kids got a kick out of Baby Shark during breakfast. Fortunately I was able to fix the buzz with a ground loop isolator. Coincidentally, I ended up needing another one in a different classroom as well, but it didn’t seem to help as much there.

There was a call for Chick-fil-A, but I lead a larger group of people to the far superior Zaxby’s instead. Poor Zach had his order cancelled on the back end and ended up waiting forever to get his salad. Everyone gave me their toast. I ran out of time before food.

The afternoon was slow and I felt pretty crummy. I did replace a Chromebook screen after Ronda and I interrupted Jessica’s class by popping bubble wrap. I stayed late to take Autumn home after color guard practice, and we stopped by Little Caesar’s to get dinner on the way home. I appreciate when companies go out of their way to support and employ people with disabilities, but I wish they’d keep the blind guy away from the cut station.

After dinner, we finished I Am Legend, then finally watched a couple episodes of Parks and Rec Tommy’s Place. From there, I headed home for the evening, but spent most of it steam cleaning carpet stains. Split’s been throwing up a bunch lately, and I’m just sick of it. He’s about to go on a strict diet. I probably should too.

Summer’s resignation was posted in an email out to everyone today, so I guess it won’t be much longer before my changes are made known.

It’s going to be an interesting summer.

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Shazam!

Summer got up early this morning to pick Autumn up at 8 from her lock-in, and took her to the gym while they were out. I felt a little sorry for her at first, but later found out she went to sleep after midnight, so she gets less sympathy now. That’s just a normal amount of sleep for any regular human.

When they got home, I left to clean up and pick up Noah while Summer made lunch here. Summer had Autumn take a shower before she passed out, and we let her sleep until just a bit before we had to leave for the movie. It rained a bit on the way to Conway, but it was never really too bad. I tried to set a leisurely pace.

We got to town a bit early, so we stopped by Harbor Freight for a minute to see if they had something on sale. Evidently I had mistaken the date on the flyer I had at home, so we left with nothing and made our way to the theater to see Shazam!

The movie was pretty great, and in fact was probably the best recent DC movie I’ve seen. Noah didn’t like that reviewers said it was a “fun” movie because he didn’t understand what that meant, but I thought it was a perfect way to describe it. It was lighthearted in all the right places, but still told a story with some feeling.

On the way home, Autumn’s cup lid split and she got soda in her lap. Then when we got home and dropped Noah off, I did the same in the 10Box parking lot. We ran to my house to clean up before going to Walmart to pick up some extras for dinner. They didn’t have the asparagus Summer wanted, so we ended up having chicken alfredo instead, with dinosaur-shaped pasta. I spotted some french bread on clearance that turned out great too. Summer had a really successful week of meal planning and cooking at home.

After dinner, Autumn wanted to watch Coco again, and this time Summer and I stuck around to finish it. I still would have preferred to see it in 3D at home, but I guess I’m glad to have at least seen it by now. Autumn fell asleep in the middle of it and went to bed, and then the rest of us went to bed after it was over.

You’re going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.

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Logan’s Birthday Run

The girls got up and left this morning so I could get ready for our trip. Summer dropped them off with her parents so we could go to Little Rock for The Great Inflatable Race. I got going quite a bit later than I originally intended, but it all worked out in the end. My ghost shrimp appeared to have perished in the night for some reason, but the cherry reds still seem to be doing okay.

I fed everyone else, and left to pick up some Starbucks on the way to get Summer. I ordered a “featured drink” called the Iced Cinnamon Cloud Macchiato, that I simply could not recommend. Someone must be tickled to pay for air, but it’s certainly not me. You can keep your whipped cold foam that fills half the glass. I didn’t even know how to drink it all separated like that. Luckily enough, the foam collapsed by the time Summer got into the car, so the rest swirled nicely in the cup.

We first made our way to Conway for a free birthday appetizer and happy hour drinks at Logan’s Roadhouse. The waitress seemed a bit lazy at first with her reluctant response to my request for soda water. She reported back after she found it at the bar where I knew it would be, but fortunately she turned the experience around after that, and we had a good time sipping drinks in the sun coming through the window.

Next we made our way to Red Robin where I had a free birthday burger. Summer got a BLATT with bacon, lettuce, avocado, tomato, and turkey. I got the Burnin’ Love with the jalapeño on top. We both ate too many fries and had to take half of our sandwiches to go.

Our final birthday promo gauntlet stop was at MarketPlace Grill for dessert. I had a $10 voucher, so we both ordered desserts and got out for like two bucks. She got an apple crumble dish with ice cream, and I got a cheesecake with raspberry topping. Hers seemed good. My cheesecake was dry and possibly overcooked, and didn’t have enough raspberry drizzle. Both seemed like really tiny portions, but we ordered the full size portions, so I’m puzzled whether the smaller option would come on a baby food spoon. Service was great though, and I guess I can’t complain too much for getting out so cheap.

We completed our trip to Little Rock with a stop at Academy in Sherwood to pick up Summer’s race packet. They didn’t have her shirt size there, which aggravated her since she preregistered quite a while ago. She did find some leggings with a pocket on clearance though. From there it was a short trip to the hotel. It’s right behind Red Lobster, so I think I know what we’re doing for lunch tomorrow. Summer watched some gymnastics on TV for a bit, and then The LEGO Ninjago Movie played us out for the night.

It’s amazing what those girls can do on a 4-inch beam.

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Captain Overpowered

I got up this morning and came home through the drizzle to take care of the pets and clean up while the others got ready at home. Then I picked them up to go to Conway for the day. We made it to Old Chicago for lunch, which was a treat. Not only did I have a birthday discount, but they accidentally made the kids’ pizza on the wrong crust, so they gave us the extra wrong pizza for free. There weren’t any complaints about it, and I even had a slice myself that was delicious. They had some pretty good looking brunch menu items that I wouldn’t mind coming back to try. I even got a free ice cream with some cookie dough bits and a cherry on top.

Stuffed to our ears, we loaded up and headed to Sam’s to look around. I had a $45 credit from my promotional signup that I used to stock up on a bunch of bulk meds, and then I grabbed a bag in a box of Coca-Cola on the way out. After doing the math, 2-liters of Coke on sale are quite a bit cheaper than the syrup from Sam’s, but I wanted to try it out at least once with the SodaStream to see how I like making diluted, super-fizzy drinks. The kids got restless and ended up waiting for us in the deli area, where I also ran into a pair of my esports parents. They said they were really excited about it getting their kid out of the house, which is a phrase I literally never would have associated with video games. But it’s 2019 and esports are genuine high school athletic sports, you can pick your own gender, Donald Trump is the president of the United States of America, and I am a coach in a public school district.

We had time for two more quick stops before the movie. First it was Books-A-Million, and then it was Five Below. I had to cut it short at the last stop because I wanted to make sure we could make it all the way across town without incident. We had a little time to spare, but I also didn’t feel like we were really missing anything for it. The parking lot was super full, but it didn’t seem like the theater was as packed as I’ve seen it in the past. There were still plenty of open seats around the ends of the aisles. Autumn wanted a collector’s drink cup and tin of popcorn, and the girl at the register told us she could make it a combo with a shirt for the same price, which was pretty awesome.

Noah was the most upset at the movie’s faults. I didn’t love that they broke the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division gag, and it was weird that Fury called it SHIELD right off the bat when he met Vers. I was also a little fuzzy on the timeline for the tesseract, but some Googling after we got home made me feel a little better about it. Most notably though, the character is unapologetically overpowered. I agree with critics, and think that flying through enemy spaceships to destroy them was a bit too easy.

When we got back to town, I dropped Noah off at home, and the rest of us came back to my place to watch Man of Steel after talking about how bad Justice League was. I guess we just needed to crack the DC universe. At least I really liked this first entry. Autumn passed out before we even got started, but the other two seemed to like it alright.

Did my washing machine just travel through time?

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Robot Trivia

I got myself out of bed this morning and finished up some leftovers before heading home to get ready to visit the junior high. Zach called me just as I got home and wanted to know if he could borrow Cards Against Humanity. I suggested that the whole massive desk that I own might be too much unfunny stuff for his crowd, so when he got here, we spent a little while sorting all of the expansions out so he could take just the base game with even the pick-2 cards removed.

I kicked him out as soon as we finished so I could shower and go visit Summer and the robotics tournament. I ended up standing around robotics for much longer than I anticipated after I rescued Ethan and his need of a printer. It was really neat to see, though. The tournament seemed to go really well, and I’m hoping that it will be similar for us when I work the first elementary tournament. Some overtime pay will be a really nice boost as well.

By the time I got out of that tournament, Summer was wrapping things up for quiz bowl. I followed them back to her room to help pack up, and then headed to her house while she ran the girls around. Autumn would be spending the night with her grandparents while Eaddie went with her father. I managed to pack all of the leftover food into Summer’s fridge, and Summer picked up the house a bit.

Once the girls left, we ran by Harbor Freight to pick up a few things with some 30% off coupons. I finally have a shoehorn, and now my most difficult shoes slide on easier than any other shoe I own. I warmed up some leftovers and we settled in to watch Bandersnatch, which was amazing. I kept trying for alternate endings while Summer passed out, but it really was a piece of art. I think I managed to find everything.

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