House People with Lap Dogs

I actually woke up pretty early today, and beat Summer out of bed by a couple hours. I warmed up some coffee and made a couple burritos for brunch, and Eaddie left for church. Summer and I finished Agatha All Along before she eventually got up and went to the gym for a while. I cleaned up sporadically around the whole house, and tried to organize and uncover some horizontal surfaces.

Eaddie got home and then left for rehearsal with her quartet, and then Summer and I went out back with the dogs for a while once she got back home. Stilgar kept wanting to lay in her lap, and both of them were super sweet and just wanted to snuggle up for a while. We eventually came back in and showered, but I should have taken the dogs out for a run before that, because it rained a bit and I couldn’t take the Onewheel out after that.

Summer did some stuff for work while I kept organizing. Eli came over with some pupusas for Eaddie, and I found a deal for a free Pixel Watch 3 after bill credits, so I got a couple for Summer and myself. I got a load of laundry done, then wrapped up for bed.

Ewie gewie!

Hundred Baker Would

Summer had a 5k in Conway this morning, but I stayed home in a warm bed for a little while longer. I checked with Diana to make sure she was home, and then I had Summer pick up an assortment of baked goods from the Blue Barn Bakery in Conway on her way home. We got cleaned up, and then went to visit Diana for nearly a couple hours. She was super chatty, and had a lot to share about music.

After our visit, Summer and I went to Walmart to pick up some things on my shopping list. We ran into Allen, who seemed a little worse for wear. I think I’ll have to check in on him a little more often. On our way out of there, I texted Mom and Dad about coming over to clean up the bún bò Huế. We unloaded the car at home, then walked the dogs to their house.

The dogs did okay, but kept pulling pretty hard for the entire walk. After we ate, Dad let me fly the FPV drone around a little bit as it got dark, and Summer played with the dogs. Then we walked home in the dark and settled in to watch some Agatha All Along. Eaddie was gone all day for a robotics tournament in Conway, but came to visit with me once she got home. Everyone was tired and went to bed pretty early.

Is it even bread?

High Schooled

I don’t know how the cops manage to single out particular vehicles for traffic stops in the morning. We nearly had a dead stop after Conway this morning because someone got pulled over. I got in and started messing with SCCM, but then Kyle called for some help replacing a switch at the high school.

I made it across town and it wasn’t too bad. He really only needed me as an extra set of hands, so I pulled a flatbed cart with the switch chassis across the campus. We looked for some rack screws to mount the old temporary switch, but instead just set it on top of another shelf. After sitting around and waiting for Kyle to investigate his issue for a while, he discovered that the problem lied in a configuration change that he made, so we moved everything back to the production switch.

At that point, I was late for lunch with no plans or lunch buddies. I tried texting Ben to see if he wanted to meet, but he responded after I had already made it across town to Arby’s. I ate my roast beef and then went into the Walmart for a few minute to investigate their clearance section. I found a couple things for the girls, grabbed some apple cider, and headed back to the office.

Instead of getting back into SCCM, most of my afternoon was occupied with more PRTG, since it was evident that it has been correctly identifying failures for Kyle before he has been aware. Hopefully making those maps highly visible for everyone will make them all more aware of their systems.

The drive home was a little slower because the Model Y’s range had diminished for some reason. I don’t know if it was the temperature, but I barely made it home with 5%. I stopped by the old house to check on the fish, and Dad had been by to move some of my stuff into the shed next door. Once I finally made it home, I took the dogs out for a pretty quick run. They were super good, and I kept trying to teach them directions.

Near the end of the run, they both had to poop at the exact same time with absolutely no warning, so I got that cleaned up and we made it home. They both got their own hot dogs for being so good, and then Summer and I watched some WandaVision before bed.

In a real magic act, everything is fake.

Pizza and Dogs

I woke up around one or two in the morning to the dogs going absolutely berzerk right outside the bedroom, so I yelled at them through the side door. They would run into my line of sight, and then immediately run away again, so I had to grab a flashlight and follow them to see what all the commotion was about. In the distance, I could see two glowing eyes of a medium-sized possum, terrified and motionless as they barked at it. I shooed the dogs away and hoped it would scurry off, but it just sat there motionless. I ended up grabbing a shovel and scooping it up against the fence. It started to waddle a little bit, and climbed up the rabbit wire we placed to keep the dogs in, but it wouldn’t go any farther than that. I had to scoop it up and carry it out the front gate, where it slowly trundled off into the night.

Summer let me sleep in a while, and then I got up and started to pick up in the kitchen. I warmed up the leftover fried chicken for her so she could go out and mow the lawn, and then I took a shower so we could go to the store. I was craving Cici’s, so we went there to eat first. I thought the food was pretty good today. Afterward, we went to Walmart for a relatively big shopping trip, since we hadn’t been in a long time.

When we finally got back home, I took the dogs out for another good run. They were a bit more excitable than the past couple days, but they did alright. We stopped by my parents’ house, and then went up the hill again to get back home. They got some food, and then I came in to rewatch WandaVision with Summer until she was off to bed.

Roll back!

Noticed for Two Weeks

I was out of bed so many times last night that I lost count. I slept horribly, and barely squeaked in to work because of it. Fortunately, I’ve never worked in a more relaxed environment, and Randy wasn’t even in today. Jay and Maggie were in the office a bit, but otherwise it was super quiet until lunch time. I actually left for a McCafé frappé in the morning.

It was the last day for one of the other guys in the building, and evidently he cooked for everyone pretty frequently, so he threw his own going-away party by cooking lunch for them one last time. He fried some catfish, smoked some ribs, and grilled some pork chops. There was a big tray of mac and cheese, some of the best collard greens I’d ever had, and some fries and fried okra as well. There were even a couple cakes for dessert.

Maggie ended up taking a half day, and I took a couple calls from Jim about some trouble his teachers were having that appeared to be hallucinated. I haven’t been hugely impressed so far, but the longer I’m there, the less surprised I am.

I ended up taking off a few minutes early myself, and stopped in Conway to check on Summer before making it home. Eaddie was out for a ballgame, so I took the dogs out for another awesome run in the sprinkling rain. It felt great outside, and they were super well behaved. I still wish they’d be a little more obedient all of the time, but overall they’re super good on walks, and they’ve been running a whole lot more now that the weather isn’t so suffocating.

Summer beat us home, and we ate some leftovers after she had a bath. Then we laid on the couch and watched some YouTube and an episode of Modern Family before bed.

But why aren’t you guys better?

You Can Take Rally’s Out of the Hood

I squeaked into work this morning, and I think I’m even more consistent with my arrival time now than when I worked five minutes away. The guys sat on the other side of the partition for a while, and Randy debated his Chromebook strategy with them. I had to be careful not to ruffle too many feathers, but it was the same old story. They didn’t seem super anxious to work any harder. I still think people will grow to meet your demands if you’re consistent in holding them accountable.

Nobody showed up for lunch, so I went to Rally’s by myself. I ordered online and got my food reasonably quickly, but I felt super out of place when I saw the other people that had walked up to the window. The fries looked soggy, but tasted alright. I even tried their mozzarella sticks and found them to be pretty tasty, even without the marinara sauce they failed to give me. Then I found they had mismade my burger, so I went back to the window again to ask for a correction. A guy named Omar came up to the window and gave me some grief about it, and said, “we don’t have onion straws, so you wouldn’t have got ’em anyway.” I offered to let him just squirt some barbecue sauce on my partially eaten burger, but he called for it to be remade anyway.

I tinkered with SCCM and VMware the rest of the afternoon, and fought traffic the entire way home after work. Dad had the trees cut down in the front yard at the old house, so I stopped by to have a look and grab a few things. I didn’t care much for the look of it, but I suppose now there will be fewer tree-related problems.

The car was pretty gross from all the bugs I encounter on my regular commute, so I stopped to wash it on the way home. Summer was getting ready to take a bath when I got there, so I ate my leftover remade burger from Rally’s and discovered that they did have onion straws after all. It was even pretty good reheated. Then I took the dogs for probably the best run I’ve ever had with them. They ran the whole way to my parents’ house and sniffed around there for a while. Then we went through the basin and back up to the house without any fuss. I didn’t even have to scoop any poop!

I fed the dogs, loaded them up on treats, and then settled in to watch a couple episodes of Modern Family with Summer until bedtime. Eaddie made it home a little later, but I only barely caught sight of her as she came in and ducked straight into her room.

…but you can’t take the hood out of Rally’s.

Ground Beef Week

I was super groggy again this morning after taking nighttime medicine. I knew better, but I just felt so gross last night. I did manage to make it to work on time, since the traffic hasn’t been bad now that school is out. It was another quiet day all to myself, and I spent nearly all of it cleaning the office. I figured out a stupid imaging problem I had, because I had disabled a step in the task sequence that was causing trouble previously. That allowed me to set up a “guest” workstation for new teacher setup and the like.

The cafeteria has been on a hamburger meat kick, with burritos on Monday, tacos on Tuesday, and Frito chili pies today. I doubt we’re having actual hamburgers tomorrow, because I’ll bet that’s too much work for the small number of people they’re feeding.

Ben called at the end of the day to check in and confirm he’d be coming to visit tomorrow. We chatted for a little bit as I packed up to head home. The girls were hungry, so I picked up some Domino’s after I fed the fish. Just as we sat down to eat, someone knocked on the door wanting to sell us a security system. Summer struggled to turn him away, and now I’ll be worried he’ll rob us.

After dinner, Eaddie and I watched an episode of Better Call Saul before bed. She was struggling with a head cold as well, so I guess it’s just going around.

S’all good, man.

The Hunt Continues

It was pouring down rain this morning, and I really struggled to wake up. I just didn’t get nearly enough sleep, and I rolled into work a bit late. Still, nobody should have cared, and I had my timecard for the week filled up. Denice showed up for a little while, and I left the office to rewire the library cart that was an absolute wreck. I left work around lunch time, and there were only a couple other cars left.

I fed the fish and then stopped by the wash to see Summer. She took her car and I took the Pathfinder home and got Eaddie so we could go to New China for lunch. I got a call from Joel at Bitec letting me know that they went with one of their other candidates, so now I have no prospects for the time being.

After we ate, we came back home and Summer and I both got super sleepy. She napped for a while, and I dozed off watching some YouTube, so I gave up and snoozed a bit on the couch. I slowly felt more and more sick in the throat from either sinus drainage or possibly from snoring, though I don’t remember falling asleep that hard.

Eventually Eaddie got to a point where she wanted to watch Better Call Saul, so we watched one episode before she had to finish packing for her band trip. Summer helped her with that, and then we all went to get Eli and drop them off at the high school.

Once we got home for the night, Summer went to bed. I applied for a remote job that looked pretty good, and was ready to pass out myself.

A sense of humor, you say?

Donut Be Discouraged

I was a little early out the door, so I decided to stop at the new donut place on the way to work. I ate a bacon, egg, and cheese croissant on the drive, and made some coffee when I got to work. Shortly after I sat down with it, I took a sip that went down the wrong pipe, and coughed into my cup. Coffee went everywhere all over my clothes and keyboard, so I spent a while cleaning that up.

I wasn’t at all interested in cheesy pull-aparts, so I just had a couple donuts for punch. There was an office full of people behind me all day, and Kim spent most of the day on the phone trying to find someone to come out and fix her washing machine. I tinkered with a laptop and eventually pieced one together for the stage that ought to really scream compared to the old piece of crap they’ve had out there.

After work, I tried to wind down quickly. I fed the fish and then came home to Summer making a really good shrimp pesto pasta. Eaddie didn’t have anything going on, so it was just the three of us for dinner. Then I sat on the couch and watched the first episode of Heroes with Summer until she went to bed.

Find something fulfilling!

How Now Brown’s Cow

Summer went to work for a bit this morning, and I did my best not to sleep all day after not making it to bed until three. After she got back, we went to Brown’s for a late lunch, and had some great catfish at a surprisingly reasonable lunch price. She had a headache for most of the day, so we didn’t do anything else for the rest of the day, but sit in front of the TV.

Eaddie went out at one point to buy a new paint-by-number, but otherwise we all just lounged all day. I caught up on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show episodes, and then Eaddie and I watched about three more episodes of Better Call Saul while she painted, and then everyone went to bed.

How cudly.