Tag: movie

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Thanksgiving Pregame

Summer went to work at the shop today. I got up a little early to get ready for lunch with Jesica. She said there aren’t any good Chinese buffets in Fort Smith and was craving Mulan’s. I saw Ronda’s car there, but couldn’t find her in the restaurant, and then she passed by us on her way out and stopped by to say hello.

After we ate, we ran by Tropical Smoothie to get lunch for Summer, and then we decided to walk off a little of our food at PetSmart. She didn’t get any treats for her new dog Harris, but I spotted an aquarium plant that was just cheap enough to try out, and the guy even let me keep the hitchhiking snail for free since he didn’t belong in the tank. From there we went back to my house to drop the plant off, but were too lazy and fat from lunch to get out again. We watched a weird vegan YouTube cooking video, and then I drooled over a couple aquascape build videos.

We headed to Walmart to pick up some dinner materials a little before Summer got out of work, where I ran into Bradley and chatted for just a minute. When I found out the girls wouldn’t be home until late, we skipped that stuff and I just picked up a couple things I needed and we made it the rest of the way to Summer’s for the evening. I surfed Netflix for a while before landing on Red vs. Blue, which always seems to surprise the otherwise uninterested with laughs. The girls got home just before we finished the first volume, so we wrapped that up before Jesica left.

Summer was the only one around with any real hunger, and she needed to carb up for her 5K turkey run in the morning, so I called in an order to La Villa and brought her some chicken parmesan. I burned a bánh bao that Bác Vân had given me earlier while I was at home because it seemed to be raw in spots. Summer got a migraine and went to bed early. Autumn landed in her bedroom on her laptop for the rest of the evening, and Eaddie binged some more Arrow until I made her go to bed. I got lost on the internet for a while, then found myself tangled up in the can of worms that is Please, don’t touch anything!

If you put him on an F150, he would be Harris on Ford!

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The Crimes of Grindelteen

Autumn woke us up a little early this morning saying she needed to go home to shower and change. Summer wasn’t too happy about it after how she had already been acting last night, so she packed the girls up and headed home. I showered and headed to pick them up to go to the movies. We dropped Autumn off with her grandparents first as punishment, then went to Wendy’s for lunch.

We got to the theater plenty early, but it was unnecessary. The three of us nearly doubled the number of people in the auditorium. I was aggravated at how dim the picture was, and dark scenes were nearly indiscernible. I’m convinced that crappy theaters are responsible for killing 3D. The movie itself was alright, but seemed unnecessarily confusing at times. Whimsical flashes of fantastic magical creatures were interrupted by boring and convoluted conversations about the plot that was happening in the background. It all seemed mostly uninteresting in the end.

After the movie, we went to the Neighborhood Market to pick up a few things for Thanksgiving, then dropped them off at Summer’s. While we were there, we unpacked the things we got at Kmart the day before. Mom made chow mein, so after we finished putting everything together and away, we went to my parents’ house for dinner. I called Julie to try and plan Thanksgiving, and I think we’re relatively prepared.

When we finished there, we came back to my house to finish season one of Stranger Things before bed.

Should things at some point go terribly wrong, it’s good to have a place to go, you know, for a cup of tea.

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Harry Potter and the Prequel about a Book

The girls beat us out of bed this morning. Summer started on breakfast, and I grew my colony on Oxygen Not Included. After we ate and Summer got some chores done, she and Autumn went to the gym while I went home to shower.

I played a little Rocket League while I was waiting for them to get done, and then I went back to their house to help bring dinner back to my place before we all went to pick at Kmart’s Big-Karcass. We spent about three hours wandering aisle to aisle, picking up a few things. We didn’t get to cover the whole store, but I got hungry and gave up for the night.

We came back to my house and started heating up the chicken, broccoli, and rice casserole that Summer made, then ate while we watched Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Autumn barely touched it, citing a lack of hunger. Compounded with prior bickering about wanting to change the plans we’ve had for the past two days, she was left out of dessert, and likely won’t be going to the movies with the rest of us tomorrow.

Well, my philosophy is that worrying means you suffer twice.

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I’m the damn paterfamilias!

Summer and Eaddie went to judge an event at the high school this morning. I slept in a while, then got up and fixed some leftovers from last week for Autumn and myself. She mostly sat around watching TV or on her laptop, and I milled around fighting boredom. When Summer and Eaddie got back, they got a few things done before going to pick up their new eyeglasses. I loaded up Oxygen Not Included and played for a little bit before taking a shower.

When they got back, Summer left the girls with me and went to the gym for a while. I continued my game until she returned and eventually started on dinner. After we ate, we turned the lights out and put on O Brother, Where Art Thou? until one by one the girls fell asleep.

We ain’t one-at-a-timin’ here. We’re MASS communicating!

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Workin’ Truck

I took the Murano in to Orr before work this morning for an oil change and brake fluid recall. I missed my time to catch a ride to work with Summer, so I got Zach to come pick me up. Then I took the work truck to the junior high and worked until lunch. Summer and I grabbed a quick Thanksgiving lunch in the cafeteria, and then I met everyone at the shop so our Belkin rep could take us out for Fat Daddy’s.

After lunch, I helped Gary and Zach clean a bunch of stuff out of the server room before heading back to the junior high. I got several things done to be ready for testing tomorrow, so I don’t anticipate much trouble. I am however still aggravated with another reported 25 missing headsets in my computer labs. It’s insane and unnecessary.

Orr called a couple times throughout the day. First was to ask if they could service my in-cabin air filter. I noticed some foam blowing out of my air vents over the summer, so I had them go ahead and do that. Then I got another call to say they had to order a part, and wanted to know if they could keep my car overnight. Since I agreed to that one, and Ben couldn’t let me take the other work truck home for one night, I had to get a ride home from work. Daddy to the rescue. He picked Eaddie and me up at Gardner, dropped her off for karate, then took me to the high school so I could snag Summer’s car while she was at a quiz bowl scrimmage.

I ran home to change before picking her and Autumn up, then dropped them off at Karate and the gym before heading home to do dishes so they could eat here tonight. I guess I spilled some rinsing agent in the dishwasher the last time I filled it up, so I started to get some suds leaking out of the front and had to get the carpet cleaner out to suck it all up. Once it settled down, I went to karate to see if Eaddie wanted to go shopping with me. She didn’t, so I went to the Neighborhood market for some rolls, picked Summer up from the gym, then picked the girls up from karate and headed home.

We watched the ending of Scooby-Doo while we ate the leftovers, and then the girls headed home for bed. I decided I’d rather ride the bike to work in the cold than lose an hour of sleep. Then Julie called to talk about black Friday deals, and we ended up talking for over an hour before bed. She said she was working nights for the outage and offered to take me in to work in the morning after she gets off, which worked out perfectly for me because I don’t fit into any of my leather any more.

Look, I’m a man of substance. Dorky chicks like you turn me on, too.

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What imperative does a grey box have to interact with another grey box?

Summer got up and took Autumn to an eye appointment this morning. I slept in a little while, then got up and moved her new TV cabinet into place and hooked everything up. Her TV didn’t fit in the cabinet, so it had to sit way up high on top of it. She made breakfast when she got back, but had to go help her mother because her car wouldn’t start.

After she got back and ate, I headed home to clean up and waited for her to come over. I played a little more Rocket League and had a shower. Once the girls’ father picked them up, she came over and we went out to New China for dinner. When we got back home, we watched an episode of Black Mirror, followed by Ex Machina. Both were pretty trippy, but I’m not sure they had quite the suspense we were looking for.

Actually that’s someone else’s quote.

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Sensationalism

I had a headache pretty much all day today which kind of gave me a mood, and maybe a bit of an attitude at work today.

Every time I would come through the shop this morning, Brice would be sitting in a chair doing something on his phone. I completely understand having to be babysat until his background check comes in, but I swear he didn’t even move for two hours. He can’t go anywhere near the kids without an escort, but surely there’s someone he could be shadowing or something he could be reading over while he’s sitting in the shop. Maybe I’m remembering my first week with arrogance, but I seem to remember at least trying to keep busy. Maybe he just already gets it and will jump right in once he’s cleared to do so, but that’s when he opened his mouth and said he was coming in 15 minutes early and leaving 15 minutes late every day this week to build up some comp time so he could take a day off next week.

Fucking what?!

We give Amanda enough shit over using all of her time off and having to make up overtime on the weekends to earn comp that I feel absolutely confident saying that in no damn way should this kid be cleared for coming in and sitting on his ass an extra half hour every day of his first week so he can take a day off before he’s even finished training enough to do a day’s work. I mean, we basically already paid him for six days before he started coming in to work in the first place. Did I get that? I honestly can’t even remember at this point.

I holed up at the junior high the rest of the morning and all afternoon. I simply couldn’t. I left him in the shop alone. Heather was at the front desk at least. I really don’t think anyone else was even there. That’s our fault. I offered to train him.

Summer had half of a sandwich left over, so I ate it in her room on her lunch, then sat with the girls in the library while they ate their lunch. I kept busy enough. Maybe even learned a useful thing.

After work, I took Eaddie to karate before heading home to clean up a bit. Then I picked her up and headed up to Summer’s for the evening. Autumn was non-compliant. Eaddie did okay. To wrap up my mood for the day, we sat up and watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show until bedtime.

If only we were amongst friends… or sane persons!

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Pumpkins scream in the dead of night!

I tried to keep a steady pace today, picking up work orders here and there. It was still difficult to find motivation, but I got enough done. I’m still plenty ahead of everyone else in work order count.

Ronda reminded me that Sonic had 50 cent corn dogs today, so I picked up a sackful and brought them back to the library where she, Summer, and I ate them in front of Jessica and her ramen noodles on a plate.

Right as school was about to let out, the house across the street from Oakland started blaring This is Halloween on repeat loud enough that you could hear it from inside the school building. After work, I came home for some light drinking and loaded up The Nightmare Before Christmas. I really just wanted to finish the movie to say that I’d seen it. Now that I have, it mostly reminds me of when I watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show last year and just felt “meh” about it in spite of all the hullabaloo.

And if you aren’t shakin’, there’s something very wrong.

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A Fault and Battery

It was frosty this morning, so I had to let the car warm up before I could get home. Somehow after all of that I managed to make it to work a bit early, but it didn’t take too long before my jacket got too hot. We all went to the middle school to hang and shuffle some TVs and touch panels around. I didn’t know until later, but Allen showed me that the first one we did ended up getting damaged somehow on the side, so I’m absolutely sure it’s just going to end up being a junked TV at some point. I’m hoping I can swipe it for my office, but I guess we’ll see.

Dale, Allen, and I went to KFC for lunch, as Autumn and Summer texted me from the Wendy’s drive-through. Then Jason’s plan for after lunch was for all of us to go to our buildings to scope out what battery components we needed in order to complete the upgrade. The problem here is that not a single one of those guys had any idea what they were even looking for. After milling around for a while, I ended up pulling all of the remaining batteries out of the graveyard and taking Allen and Amanda to the high school to meet Dale so we could scope out his closets. He ended up only needing one of the three spare battery expansions I found, and we switched over four of his closets before heading to Oakland.

They were in the middle of parent-teacher conferences, so all we could do was drop off three pairs of batteries before heading back to the shop. I asked Allen to go to his building now that we knew what we were looking for, and he kept arguing that he wanted to see what Jason had for us to do. I ended up driving the three of us over to the middle school to do it, and he ran around looking at his other closets while Amanda sat on the couch and I went to the truck to get the last two battery expansions for the controllers he and Jason had already brought to his office.

We ended up getting out right at quitting time, but then I had to put the truck away. I went downstairs to chat with Ben for a minute on the way out, and he asked how I’d feel about having my campuses shuffled. I don’t want to leave either of them, but it’s looking like there are other issues in play, and all I can do is hope that he’s not just moving a problem from one place to another rather than addressing it properly with disciplinary action.

Summer came over in the evening and we picked up some Tropical Smoothie for her dinner, then came back home and watched an incredible IMAX 3D documentary about the Hubble telescope, appropriately named Hubble. It was probably the best quality 3D I have ever seen because everything was super crisp and clear, and not blurred with fast-motion, high-action sequences.

You see, this is why I never really get stressed out. We are so very insignificant, and nothing that we do could possibly ever matter in the grand scheme of things.
But yeah, sure. I’ll get right on those TPS Reports.

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Instant Frustration

I got up this morning and watched as the whole day burned away. I did motivate myself enough briefly to clean up after the cats and do a partial water change in the aquarium, but otherwise we just laid around all day long. Summer picked up some Wendy’s for lunch on her way back from the gym. Then I started the old family classic Blazing Saddles half jokingly while she was in the shower, but we actually managed to finish it.

After the girls left with their father for the night, I tried making some chicken as my first meal in the Instant Pot Ultra. I didn’t realize the rice would cook so quickly and keep the water from boiling and building up pressure, so what I thought was going to be a 10-minute meal ended up being a multiple-hour shit show that ended with me transferring the entire thing to a couple of glass dishes to bake in the oven. Luckly the food wasn’t completely ruined and we could eat it for a super late dinner, but by that point I was so tired, hungry, cranky, and frustrated that I was just exhausted from dealing with it in the first place. Even cooking that meal the traditional way only takes about 45 minutes.

Can’t you see that that man is a nih?