Tag: Traditions

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Tropical Christmas Cookies

I got around this morning and went to Walmart and to get gas on my way to Summer’s. She baked lemon cookies for the kids to decorate when Noah got out of work. Eaddie was still in bed, so I was more or less left to my own devices for most of the day. When Autumn left the TV, I played some more Don’t Starve, which has been fun playing a little more casually on the couch.

Summer made a big pot of chicken alfredo, and we ate when Noah arrived. Then they decorated the tree while Summer made colored icing. It didn’t seem like anyone was really in the mood to do any of that stuff this early, especially with highs in the mid 70s this past week. Our weekends are pretty booked up until Christmas though, so we made do.

When Noah left, Eaddie went to finish up homework while Autumn did chores. I played my game some more, but ultimately died. C’est la vie. I needed to warm back up to the mechanics anyway.

You don’t keep it this warm in here even during the summer!

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Ye Olde Parade

I took the R1 to work today, and it was pretty frosty on the way in, but it was very close to perfect in the afternoon. I got distracted helping others in the morning until lunch time. Brody has been wanting to go to Nonna Bella’s for a while, so five of us went there and discovered that they have pretty good lunch specials. When we finished there, I went by Oakland and plugged a bunch of things back into a surge protector. It’s the silly things that really keep me going.

On the subject of silly things, I got TWO compliments on my mass emails today after sending out the meeting minutes in medieval English. It wasn’t a long email, which made it that much better that people cared enough to notice and write back.

We left work early so we could get out of the way of the parade. I went by Casey’s to try and score a free water, but they were out. From there, I went home to get dinner ready for the girls. Summer brought them over before they had to be back to school, and we had leftover burgers and hot dogs. Then she took Eaddie to the junior high while I took Autumn to the high school.

We met back up at Big Poppa’s since there was still room to park for the parade. I brought a couple camp chairs, and we sat at the edge of the road to talk until they officially closed the side street. Then we moved our chairs up into the street to watch the parade.

The parade itself was really spread out, and we were just on the tail end of where the bands stopped playing. We didn’t even hear them play further down the road, so we didn’t get to see either of the girls do anything cool. We ended up leaving early, and I went home to wait for Autumn to finish at the high school.

When we finally got up to Summer’s, she was already in bed. I stayed up late to help Eaddie with her math homework. I could really relate to how frustrated she was getting, but at least it was geometry, which is a subject I could really visualize.

On your guard, knave!

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Sleepsgiving

The girls went to Conway this morning for the Turkey Trot while I slept in. I just barely caught up on my sleep time when the cat turned my CPAP off, and the girls arrived back home shortly thereafter. I just showered there while Summer made some green beans, and then we went to my parents’ house and waited for Julie to arrive with the food she had cooked.

Bác Vân and Doug were there, along with Dad’s college friend Dave. Julie showed up exhausted from working nights on outage, but left without eating. The food was fine, but it wasn’t worth dragging herself out like that after not getting any sleep. We all ate, and then Mom joined us for a game of UNO FLIP!

Autumn left to go to her father’s, and then we took Eaddie home so she could clean house before her boyfriend could come over the next day. Summer developed a pretty bad headache and went right to bed. Eaddie cleaned, and then watched House with me on her breaks. I was tired, but stayed up a bit to look for deals. Otherwise it was a quiet, boring evening.

Shoppers are coming….

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A Real Jokester

I struggled to get out of bed an hour early today for the back-to-school breakfast. I’m pretty sure I was the first from our department there, but Greg walked in right behind me. We both expected them to be enforcing masks after the board meeting last night, but hardly a soul was masked. We got our food, which was probably the best I’ve had for the occasion, and found a seat right in front with Summer and Justin. The casserole was so good I had to go back for more, but it was okay because they didn’t have any other events or big raffles like previous years.

After breakfast, we headed over to the arts center for some quick training. Without Ben’s cyber security training, we just heard from a couple suits and then listened to Judy talk about FMLA before our OSHA training. I liked that guy the best just because he seemed like a cool, old guy.

We got back to the shop a bit before lunch, and they sent out the first draft of the proposed classified salary schedule. That, of course, sent everyone through the roof when they learned that our pay was lowered both at the base, and then significantly at the cap. I divulged that I had gotten a big raise, likely unintentionally, and was making more than Zach for the school year.

I was still full from breakfast, so I only ordered some chips and a shake when a group of us went to Slim Chickens for lunch. That left me pretty salty and dehydrated for an afternoon of crunching numbers, and then trying to find out why we were short so many new laptops for junior high students. It was just one clusterfuck after another, all day long.

After work, I went straight home and immediately had to start fighting sleep. My gut never quite recovered from the food from the day, but at least I was able to go to bed early.

Let the output reflect the input.

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Less Taxing

Summer took Autumn to work this morning while Eaddie and I slept in pretty hard. I felt really refreshed when I woke up, and then got to ease into the day. She came back to get Eaddie and went to pick up groceries for dinner with Noah, which ended up getting cancelled.

After Autumn got off, they came to pick me up and we went back-to-school shopping for tax-free weekend. We went to Staples first, where we ran into Jazz, who had a couple quick questions for me. Then we went across the street to the Valley Park Center. TJ Maxx was fun. Ross was about as disappointing as usual. Shoe Carnival was selling things at full price. Rue 21 was where we saw the most excitement. I had gone to move the car while the girls walked across the shopping center. When I got there, I ran into Candace and Ana. Then a few minutes later we spotted Zane Dave from across the room, but Eaddie was being weird and just hid from him.

On the way home we stopped at Walmart for a couple things to go with dinner. Summer prepped some tilapia for fish tacos, so dinner was ready super fast. We ate, and then Summer watched TV while I proofread Autumn’s apology letters to the officers she called last weekend. She ended up going to her grandparents’ house so she could take a stab at proofreading it, and stayed the night.

Trying to prep for school, Eaddie showered early and went to bed too. With both girls off to bed, I wrapped up my evening therapy and went to sleep.

I love pens, but I hate writing.

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That Thon, Th-Thon Thon Thon

Summer left early this morning for the RussVegas Half Marathon. I set an alarm so I could get out to meet her at the end, and made it early enough to hang out for a little bit and then get a picture of her actually crossing the finish line. We walked around the train depot area to take a couple pictures before making it back to the cars, and then we went to Las Palmas for her recovery lunch. The service was pretty absent, but the food was good.

Afterward, we came home and she cleaned up and crashed in front of the TV while Dad came over and helped me seal up the hole in the brick outside. Once that was caulked in, we had to let it dry and moved to the other end that went into the laundry room. I still needed foil tape and wanted to try and find some kind of flange or boot to put against the wall, so we went to Lowe’s and then Leonard’s without any luck. We ended up just going to get some of his old sheet metal, and cut out a piece with a hole in it to tape to the wall. Since then I’ve seen some flexible tape made for flashing that I may like to find in order to seal it up a bit better.

With that done, we had to leave the foaming for later, since we couldn’t really get into the inside wall without disturbing the caulk job. Dad went on home, and then I came in to watch a movie with Summer. I warmed up some leftovers for dinner, and then we watched The Shape of Water, which had far more frontal nudity than I expected for a love story between a woman and a sea creature. Otherwise I thought it was a pretty good movie.

Summer continued to fall asleep on me while I browsed YouTube for a while, and finally went to bed. I scoured the official photos from the marathon for her for a while, and eventually had to save the rest for later so I could get some sleep.

I think I’ll sing it again!

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An M. Night Shyamalan Plot Twist

We had a shortish meeting at work this morning, and then I unboxed a giant iMac that I would have to learn to enroll in our device management system. I didn’t notice until much later, but Josh and Brody basically burned the whole day putting the wrong image on a bunch of flash drives to take to the middle school because Josh didn’t want to image them over the network.

Most of us went to CJ’s for lunch, and when we got back, I helped make the correct flash drives while Josh started some lab computers imaging over the network. Kyle came in and kept me company while I churned out drives. I started to wrap my head around Jamf Apple computer management, but ultimately had to leave it for Monday.

Mark asked me to come by after work, so I ran home to grab my laptop and then went to his office for a little under an hour. Then I picked up the girls to meet my family at Pasta Grill to celebrate Mom’s birthday.

We had a really great time at dinner, and it was nice to see the family actually functioning and smiling. I think everyone was pretty satisfied with their food too. My blackened redfish pasta started out tasting like it was floating in butter, but either it got better or I just got used to it, and I really enjoyed the rest after a while.

When we got home, Summer wanted to talk with Autumn because I had caught her leaving town with Harry without Summer’s permission. What I thought was going to be more or less a disciplinary talk ended up being everyone coming together and spilling their guts all over the place. It was pretty hard for Summer. I’m still not really sure how I feel about some of it, but at least it was a proper airing of the past. I’ve said for a long time that therapy only goes so far, and that eventually the kids would have to come home and talk to us.

Summer and Autumn went to bed immediately after that. I stayed up a little bit longer and tried to finish an episode of House with Eaddie, but even she was tired and ended up just wanting to sleep on the couch.

We’ll never make it through the entire MonsterVerse like this!

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The Easter Boomer

I’ve felt pretty exhausted lately, and last night was no different. I slept super late today, and only got up in time for a little leftover brunch before having to get ready for a late Easter lunch with my parents. Summer made some deviled eggs, and the girls caught the irony. We let Autumn drive us all, and Bác Vân and Doug beat us there.

It was a relatively limited menu compared to our usual, but it was a great meal with much reduced stress. The girls enjoyed overhearing the adults ponder racially-charged social nuances, and it was a good time for all. After we ate, Autumn dropped Summer and Eaddie off, and I went with her to Walmart for a couple things. What should have been a pretty quick trip turned into both of us wandering around alone. It was hot and aggravating, because even when we weren’t browsing and just on a mission to pick up something specific, she felt the need to take off and leave me.

When we finally got back to their house, I loaded up and came home for the night. My left foot had been hurting all day for some reason, and the rising temperatures got me pretty lethargic and cranky. I ended up sitting on the couch for a couple hours and watching some Home RenoVision DIY videos.

Just before an early bedtime, I got out my new MonoPrice tube amplifier and hooked it up in the garage just to test it out with some old speakers. The speakers work great, and I think the amp will look super cool on top of the two larger speakers stacked on top of one another.

Nice weather means they’re sold out of tennis rackets.

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Fool Me Once… Shame on….Shame on You

It’s been cooling off this week, and I could really tell this morning when it started to sleet on my way to work. It didn’t stick at all, and just melted away instantly, but I was definitely caught off guard by the sound of it hitting everything around me outside.

I’m still recovering from re-imaging my laptop, which meant I had to build a Microsoft Office installation for myself. That and a bit of tinkering with some other things got me through to lunch at Western Sizzlin with the boys. Afterward I packed up and went to the high school to help Mike sort depot boxes. We ended the day with the lift in the band room since we finally got our lamp in.

Autumn went to the gym again, so Summer left work and took Eaddie as well. That left me to go home and clean more in the garage. Nearly forgetting to plan my shenanigans, I pulled out my old TI-99 for deployment at work. Not just the base computer though. Oh, no. I brought out the Expansion System as well. That thing was heavy. I needed some help repairing the video cable though, so I packed up and took it to my parents’ house.

Dad got me sorted with some solder and hot glue. Then he pulled out my tiny old CRT television, and things booted up perfectly. Unfortunately I didn’t have the necessary Microsoft Multiplan 5.25″ floppy, so all I can really do is look at the loading screen, but it’ll serve its purpose. He went with me to the office to help stage everything, but just as we finished setting up, Melinda walked in. It was in the dead of night, so I really thought she was there to stage her own pranks, but she was just there to pick up some things. She’ll be out tomorrow, but I was hoping to land the prank on her the next day. Unfortunately she walked right in and saw it, so it’ll just have to be for fun with the rest of the gang tomorrow.

I dropped Dad back off at home and finally headed home to finish up the last of my plotting. Tomorrow should be fun.

Duuuuuude…..

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That’s a Surprise

I slept in super hard this morning, but got up and around for an early lunch. We cleaned up some leftovers, then tried to keep the kids motivated to clean the house in preparation for the evening. Eventually it came time for me to leave for my shower, so it was up to all the girls to get things rolling.

While I was gone, Melinda picked Summer up for their pedicures. I arrived back at the house shortly thereafter with a fresh bag of ice and the hamburgers, and we did our last little bit of prep work before the guests started to arrive. Ronda, Steven, and Maleea showed up first, but were quickly followed by Suzanne, John and Melissa, Noah, and my parents. We had a house full of relative strangers to each other, and I was busy slicing vegetables and running the grill. Had I known the nail salon was running behind, I would have slowed way down, but for all I knew, I had about half an hour to get things rolling.

Around 6:40, Melinda showed up with Summer and we did our level best to surprise her. Ronda had the great idea to have all the friends stand back, so the kids and my parents jumped out first with a couple big confetti poppers. Then as she came further into the house, everyone else jumped out and surrounded her for a second surprise. It was hugs all around, except for Eaddie, who got totally got skipped.

Summer had a blast and was so excited to see everyone. The food turned out pretty well after Steven helped me keep the grill from going up in flames. The decorations Melissa brought were just the right touch, and Suzanne’s cake was amazing. I almost couldn’t believe we pulled it off. I did forget to toast the buns with butter on the griddle, but I suppose there’s always next time for the gourmet experience.

John and Melissa had to take off pretty quickly to get their kids. Dalia was going to show up late after closing at work, but she actually arrived at a pretty decent time since the pedicures took an extra hour to complete. As everyone eventually filtered out, the kids did a quick sweep up to get the house livable again. I ran across town to deliver some cake to John, then went home to trade my contacts for glasses.

Everyone was ready for bed by the time I got back, so I tinkered around for a little while, and eventually went off to bed.

Fool me once, shame on… shame on you. You fool me, you can’t get fooled again.