Pain in the Drain

I made myself get up earlier this morning and made some coffee before finally crawling back under the bathroom sink. I’ve been back and forth on whether I wanted to replace or swap faucets, or buy a whole new matching set. I figured the first thing I’d have to do is take the existing one out, which was easy enough even with the silicone we used last time. I was concerned about one of the connection points in the S-trap though, so I ended up taking Dad to Leonard’s to see if we needed a rubber gasket of some kind.

I wasn’t really satisfied with the parts we found there, so we went back to the house to look at what we had, and decided against the extra gasket. We took the top of the drain assembly back to Leonard’s to replace only that part, but that would have been a third the cost of a whole new faucet and drain kit, so I decided against that as well. The spare faucet I’d purchased long ago would have to do for the moment. We ran by the old house to get a cat carrier for Dad, and then I dropped him off at his house.

We considered going to a movie with my parents in the evening, so I ran by UEC to see what time slot had Wonka in the better theater. Then I took a break to eat some leftovers, and Dad texted when he remembered that he had a couple spare pop-up drain assemblies that he wasn’t going to use. He brought one over, and the installation was a piece of cake. I was pretty sure I still had a very tiny leak due to a poorly cut angle in the sink, but I figured I could tighten that up later.

Summer got home with a little time to spare before the movie, but Mom decided she didn’t want to go. Eaddie had been coloring in front of the TV for most of the afternoon, but then spent the early evening rearranging her room. She and I never got to our plans to move things, so she wanted to get out of the house for a little bit. I needed a couple things from Harbor Freight anyway, so we took her car to PDQ to air up the tires a bit and then headed across town.

We picked up a magnetic paper towel holder and power strip for the coffee bar, and then sat in the parking lot for a little bit while we decided what to do next. We thought we witnessed a robbery when a couple cars pulled up and a group of guys in hoodies ran in and out of the store super fast, but other people seemed to be coming out of the store unsuspiciously. Eaddie was a little bit hungry, but we couldn’t decide what to get. As we started driving toward home, I suggested the Krispy Krunchy Chicken inside of Walmart, and got excited. She even mentioned walking around a bit, but as we walked up to the counter to order some food, the employee said they were closing down and would sell us everything they had left in the case at a discount. We ended up getting a mix of tenders, thighs, and some mac and cheese for half price, which was awesome.

We headed straight home and ate, and then Summer wanted to watch an episode of Loki. The second episode of the new season had me super confused by the end, so after the girls left I had to scrub back through the first episode and then parts of the second one again. The more I thought about it, the less sense the whole plot made. If killing He Who Remains was all it took to cause the timeline to branch, then were the TVA agents actually doing anything at all? Why, after hundreds of years of pruning individual timelines, were the TVA agents suddenly so distraught when a group of rogue agents pruned a bunch of branching timelines? Didn’t that negate the overloaded Temporal Loom?

Questions unanswered, Summer went to bed and Eaddie continued rearranging her room. I rearranged the coffee bar again and then helped Eaddie for a bit, and then we were off to sleep.

Krunchy Khicken?

Bean Water

I tried making a couple lattes again this morning, and it went alright. I think I need a better cup for steaming milk, rather than doing it in the tiny milk carton. It took me a few to find one that wasn’t sour anyway, so it won’t be long before I have to come up with another plan. I ate a little, then cut up the last of the ham, and considered cooking some old bones for soup, but gave that up in favor of cooking some taco meat we bought a couple days prior.

Eaddie left after a while, and I took a long bath while my phone fussed over failed contact and message syncs. Summer spent most of the day catching up on work, and I tried to clean up a few things before making some refried beans from scratch.

Julie and Kevin were at my parents’ house to visit, so I rode the Onewheel over just to get some time on it and get out of the house for a bit. Then I rode back home in the twilight so I could make the taco meat. I didn’t want to waste the water from the refried beans, so I used what I needed for them and then poured the rest into the taco meat just to experiment. It turned out alright, but I think cutting out the salt made it a little more bland than usual.

Summer and I were watching the second episode of Secret Invasion when Eaddie finally made it home, and then Summer went to bed. Noah came over late, and then watched some horror flick with Eaddie late into the night.

Tootin along.

Cruise Control

Eaddie slowed me down getting out of the house this morning, and then I had to drop her off at the high school on the way to work. Since I was already late and traffic wasn’t helping, I stopped in at Casey’s for a free coffee before making my way into the county. It was quiet all day, and I tried my best to focus on cleaning up my Windows 11 image.

After work, I fed the fish and then beat everyone home. Summer made slow cooker chili in the morning before going to Little Rock, so I stirred it up and waited for her to get home from work. She wasn’t terribly late, but Eaddie was. The two of us ate, and then I put my Govee ambient light strips on the back of the living room TV. The effect was pretty impressive.

Once Eaddie got home, the girls both went to bed pretty early. I watched some TV for a while and just appreciated the ambiance, but then I made it to bed a little bit early as well.

I think this fridge is toast.

Love Your Curves

I slept fairly hard last night, and woke up feeling alright. I had some cereal that didn’t help, and then moved the old television into the sunroom. I started watching The Martian on it, but then quit to clean up the bathroom sink and take a shower.

Summer and I got out of the house in the middle of the afternoon to go shopping and get my LG television from the old house. We went to Bath & Body Works first, and they were super crowded. We had some coupons, but then Summer started picking up things that I felt like she already had at home. I instantly got flashbacks to all of the barely-used bottles of stuff I had to clean out from under Eaddie’s sink and our own bathroom, and probably got a little too upset about it. We grabbed our freebie with a coupon and then I was determined to take us home to pull out all of their soaps, lotions, and other miscellaneous body products.

Instead, we cooled down and stopped at Harbor Freight to see if we could score a deal on some accessories for the new tool chest-turned coffee bar. Unfortunately everything was just over the price limit for the coupon I had, so we left empty handed and went to swap cars with Eaddie.

She had gone to a robotics tournament, so we took the Murano to the old house to get the TV. Summer forgot the moving blanket in her car, so I had to drive back and get it, but fortunately moving the TV itself was completely uneventful. We got it into the new house, and I immediately mounted it to the new TV stand. I couldn’t have designed it any more perfectly if I had tried. The TV hovers less than a millimeter above the center channel speaker, and swivels well enough to get behind the whole contraption to route cables. It’s perfect.

We were hungry after that, so we went to New China for dinner. Eaddie was just getting back to town, but said she was full from eating all day at the tournament. We ate, and then went to fill up the Murano since Eaddie was nearly out of gas. When we got back to the house, I rewatched the last episode of the first season of Loki, and then kind of dozed through some random YouTube until I finally forced myself to get up and ready for bed. The girls had beat me to it by a couple hours anyway.

The Holy Grail of 3D

No Snek

Eaddie was at a robotics tournament all day, so Summer and I hung out at the house all morning. She watched TV and took several calls for work, and I deployed a bunch of water leak sensors that were just delivered. While doing so, I discovered a leak of something under Eaddie’s sink. It felt like something more than water, but it may have just pulled something off of some of the bottles that were under there. The entire cabinet was crammed full of junk, and I just didn’t understand why they were collecting partially-used bottles of crap.

After cleaning that up and having a shower, we went to my parents’ house to eat some leftovers before going shopping. I wanted to find a drain auger that would be a little less cumbersome than Dad’s giant, exposed, metal snake. Unfortunately Harbor Freight was completely out of them. Walmart had a smaller one for more money, but we decided to just wait until Harbor Freight restocked on Monday.

We picked up an espresso machine on a deep clearance, a localized Russellville version of Monopoly, and some food to grill, and then headed home. Summer watched more TV and I did some laundry. Eaddie got home a bit late, and we didn’t see much of her. I started the first episode of The Orville with Summer, and then just dilly-dallied for a while longer before bed.

Predictably okay.

Holiday Crash

Eaddie nearly stayed up all night, but was probably the most spry of any of us all day. I did my best not to sleep too late, and made Summer a coffee when she got up. They went for a quick shopping trip while I had a shower, and then we all went to my parents’ house to eat some leftovers. Julie and Kevin showed up to do the same, and then we took Eaddie home to rake leaves while Summer and I went to the old house to get my wheelbarrow.

It had a bad tire, so we went to Lowe’s to shop around, and then Harbor Freight to pick up a replacement wheel. It was dark by the time we got back to the house, and we all sat around waiting for my parents to call for dinner. Summer and I watched the first episode of Secret Invasion, and I didn’t much love it, but I think the universe is just getting too big for me to wrap my head around it.

Once my parents had some sweet potato and shrimp ready, we went to eat pretty quickly before coming home to get ready for bed. Eaddie left her purse there, so Dad walked it over to us, and then it was off to sleep before going back to work.

Not completely opposed to the Whataplane.

Bank On It

I got in touch with Missy this morning about our loan application, and spent most of the morning after breakfast trying to decide on which loan to take. All of the rates were pretty bad, so I ultimately picked a 15 year loan just to keep the interest to an absolute minimum. It will be a little bit tighter than usual, but I should also be able to count on a raise pretty soon, one way or another.

I sat down to watch one episode of The Good Place with the girls, but otherwise I was feeling a little stressed being the only one paying attention to the loan information. As lunch time came around, Summer made some more spaghetti to finish up the sauce from the other day. Since we didn’t get out of the house, Eaddie decided she wanted to bake something. We dug out the Stranger Things pizza cookies we bought a while back and made those. We really didn’t get up to much of anything else.

Michael called me to ask about crypto trading bots, and as usual I had to tell him I just wasn’t paying any attention to that kind of stuff. We talked for a while, and eventually Summer decided she was ready to go to bed. Eaddie came in and we watched some Modern Family, and then everyone was in bed by midnight.

Such disinterest in comparing interest for interests.

GAMblin’ Man

I was sleeping super hard when my alarm went off this morning, and I couldn’t help but sit in the car for a few minutes when I got home. The past several days have just gotten worse, and I can never seem to catch up on sleep over the weekend. It started pouring down rain just as I left the house, and the drive to Ola was pretty rough. I got caught behind a couple different people going overcautiously slow, but managed to make it to work right on time.

I worked on GAM some more and finally tweaked it enough to get it working. Kim showed up after a while, and then I finally worked out the command I needed to run to move a bunch of devices around. I thought we’d go to Plainview to pull some carts out of the grossness, but we never made it. It was hot and humid outside, so neither of us were feeling particularly ambitious. Instead, we spent the last part of the day unboxing and enrolling a few of the brand new Chromebooks, even though we had several from an old order that had never been used at all.

As people eventually vanished, I headed home. I saw a crop duster fly super low over some houses in Dardanelle, which was neat. Then I almost ran over a turtle in my garage when I got home. Dad saw a couple yesterday when the guy from the restoration place came back to stage some fake photos. One of the turtles disappeared, but the other apparently ended up inside my garage overnight and all day. I brought it inside for some water and then released it back into the back yard before heading up to Summer’s.

The girls were just relaxing at home when I got there. Summer had just finished cooking dinner, so we all sat down to eat. Then we eventually watched some Modern Family before everyone went to bed.

Big bucks, big bucks, no Whammies, STOP!

The Bed is Too Full

As expected, Summer had a pretty sleepless night last night. I didn’t do much better myself, but I did manage to shut my eyes for a little while before I woke up to an empty bed. She had gone to the living room and was playing on her phone, so I had to fetch her back. She mentioned that Eaddie had been up, so I went and brought her into the bedroom with us and we all snuggled up together for a bit. There really wasn’t much room, and I didn’t really get to fall asleep again for most of the night. Eaddie didn’t stick around for too long, but I think it helped Summer.

I gave up on getting to work by seven, and stopped at McDonald’s for a frappĂ©. I had forgotten that summer school started today, and there seemed to be more kids around than I expected, but maybe only a few of them needed Chromebooks. A couple teachers came to fetch a cart from me, and we settled on leaving it in the front office where kids could pick up devices on their way in.

I was alone all day, so I spent the morning scanning damaged devices and moving what was left of a pallet of Chromebooks outside of our office. I broke a pretty good sweat, and spent the rest of the day in a pretty quiet office.

It started raining pretty hard around quitting time, and I think I was the last one to leave by quite a while. I headed home and retrieved the phone mounts I ordered for the Teslas. Then I continued up to Summer’s for the evening. Noah was supposed to come over late, and the girls had been out to eat earlier in the day, so I had some leftovers. Then the three of us watched a couple episodes of The Office while Eaddie ate in the floor. Then Summer and I watched some Modern Family until she was ready to go to sleep.

How does she always pick the ones into pseudo-science???

All Eggs; No Basket

I woke up to a rejection email this morning, which stressed me out a bit. He did at least have some kind words for me, so maybe something will work out in the future. After that, I had a bit of a slow start. I wanted to do something productive, so I cleaned the kitchen and then started looking for more jobs. I got a response from an application I submitted yesterday, but that job would require a commute to Maumelle every day.

I eventually made it home to shower and apply for a few more jobs. Then I headed back up to Summer’s once she was on the way home. Joe called while I was driving, and asked me to support Donna in her bid for school board. Maybe I have Jason all wrong, but he’s always been nice to me as a total stranger. I appreciated Joe’s call, but I still find it odd to have people ringing my doorbell or calling my unpublished phone number.

Summer ended up going to the gym, so I got the ham and some rolls out for a snack-like dinner. It looked like the girls went out to eat right after school, so I didn’t concern myself with them. Eaddie came out of her room and we finished Breaking Bad, but then Summer came home talking loudly on speakerphone. We tried shutting her in the bedroom, but then she came back out and sat in front of the TV with us. That was even more annoying, because she hasn’t been interested in watching it with us, but she kept asking questions about what was happening. In the finale.

Everyone was off to bed by the time we finished. Eaddie tried having me fill out a form for her National History Day trip, but we decided to wait until after our meeting the very next day.

Strip the Personality