Tag: work

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Doldrumly

The girls had me a little behind this morning, but I made it to work on time. It was pretty quiet all day long, and I think everyone was a bit bored around the shop. It’s odd that we have some techs with so many older work orders, and Zach has been struggling to inspire them.

I met Greg and the Trifecta at Old South for lunch, where I go the Reuben on a rushed whim. It was good, but didn’t seem to have any sauce on it, and the corned beef tasted a little bit old. Otherwise it was an awkwardly quiet lunch.

Afterward, I went by Oakland for a while and returned to the shop with an armful of Chromebooks. I fixed one, couldn’t find an issue with the second, and didn’t have a resolution for the third. Quitting time came slowly, but then snuck up on me at the last minute.

I ran home to change and get the crutches, then went to my parents’ house to see them for a bit. Mom cracked the bone right above her ankle and was in a boot, but was still spirited enough to argue about things that nobody cared about, and already agreed upon.

When I left there, I decided to go up to Summer’s for the evening. She was wrapping presents and the girls were doing late night chores after being away from home, and otherwise being lazy. Autumn expressed frustration and a feeling of unfairness about who went to New York on the band trip, and I wasn’t having any of it, knowing how little she practices. I remember how bad she is at squawking the clarinet. She earned nothing, and I was ready to fight about it.

Everyone went off to bed pretty quickly after that. I hadn’t slept very much all week, so it was as good a time as any to start.

I’ll show you attitude.

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You Worry Me to Death

I was a little early toward work this morning, so I stopped at Casey’s for a free coffee that put me behind by a couple minutes. I slid into my office with an awkward number of people in the shop area, but nobody was bothered to say anything. Otherwise it was pretty quiet. I never even heard from Brody except for when lunch time came around. Kyle spent the morning and afternoon trying to take his A+ test in Zach’s old office, but they could never get the webcam to work through our firewall.

Five of us went to Wendy’s for lunch, and I tried to take it a bit light with a chili and a little more than half of a salad. After lunch, I spent some time at Oakland, and then made it back to the shop to pick at a few things.

The end of the day came up pretty quickly, so I stopped by Oakland to drop off a laptop on the way home. Julie called me just as I got in, and I was on the phone with her for over an hour. I did my best to shut my thought processes down and just sit and listen. I couldn’t do anything else that required much thought and still effectively listen, so I ended up cleaning my old shrimp tank.

The girls showed up once they had finished at their house, and Eaddie got to studying. Autumn said she needed to study something very lightly, but then went straight to bed and watched TV. Eaddie at least watched her study videos and then confirmed that it was all stuff over which she felt comfortable testing.

I filed some more paperwork, and then Eaddie and I ended the night with two really good episodes of House, followed by one that was kind of back to normal with the procedural drama. I get enough of that on TV. I don’t need any more by surprise.

The universe really doesn’t care.

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Room Full of Losers

Autumn was up before me this morning, and kept banging around and yelling at the cats, so I couldn’t sleep in. Summer got up and made a couple eggs for a light breakfast, and then I continued my game of Don’t Starve until I eventually died from a spider bite.

All three of the girls went to the gym today. I stayed and ate a little more food before going home to clean up. Summer and I had to go to their company Christmas party in Little Rock, so the girls went to spend some time with their grandparents.

I picked Summer up and we headed out of town. We got to the Westwind School of Performing Arts, which appeared to be, at least in the dark, nestled right into the back of a relatively low-class neighborhood. The building was pretty nice, with more room than the place we went to a couple of years ago.

There were enough people there, trying to eat in some form of orderly fashion, that those that went first were done eating well before the last groups got up to get their food. They also decided to draw tickets for a single grand prize, but by eliminating people periodically throughout the night. Not only did it take longer, but also served as a method for management to call everyone a loser. I suppose the desired result was to give the last five standing the opportunity to split the $500 worth of gift cards, but they opted for all-or-nothing instead.

I made it through Christmas trivia and into the second round of Splash-specific trivia, but lost there on account of not being aware of anything relating to the company. We left as soon as they wrapped things up and made it home to a house of sleeping children, so we didn’t waste any time ourselves.

At least there was “food?”

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See You Later

I was early enough this morning that I stopped by Casey’s for a free Rockstar. We had a nice, long, quiet meeting to ease into work, and lunch time showed up super fast. As everyone else left to eat, I went to Oakland to finish up some work orders. Then I was done for the day so I could go to my eye appointment.

I had enough time to go home and eat some leftovers. Then I went to see Summer at work until my appointment time. When I got to Russellville Eye Clinic, they had no record of an appointment for me, so they scheduled one with a different doctor for a week from Monday. We should be out of work early enough that I can make it, but I’m not super concerned after burning half a sick day today.

I ended up going back to the shop and sitting in the unseasonably warm and breezy air until Summer got off work. Then we went to Walmart to shop for a bit. She couldn’t find any cleats at Walmart, so we went to T.J. Maxx and Shoe Carnival before giving up. I dropped her off at her car and went home until it was time for our gathering.

Julie had a package she wanted me to pick up, so I got that and then got stuck at a train for several minutes on the way to get Summer. While I was parked there, a guy on a bicycle paced back and forth across the road until he finally gave up and climbed up between two train cars with his bicycle. He made it, but I kind of wished the train had started to move just to mess with him.

We made it to Travis’s before John and Melissa, and ate a bunch of pizza before they got there. Then we chatted for a while and started drinking a bit before breaking out Melissa’s game, Spontuneous. It was slightly more fun than I expected, but I’m not sure it was fun enough to repeat. We stuck around for a bit longer afterward, but had to leave early for Summer’s exercise event in the morning.

The girls were already in bed when we got home, so we crashed as quickly as we could.

GET OUT OF THAT REFRIGERATOR RIGHT NOW!!!1

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Fire Roasted Egg Rolls

We didn’t sleep too late today, because Summer had a video call for work and Mollie texted with some computer trouble as she was trying to work from home. I got dressed and went to her house to try and help, but I kept having trouble getting the laptop to connect to her home network. I finally just took the laptop to the shop to let it talk on our network for a bit, and then took a hotspot back to her so she wouldn’t have to worry about it connecting to her network.

When I got home, I started cleaning house and washing dishes. It looked a lot better by the time I was finished, and then I took a shower while I waited for Summer to show up. She baked a delicious chocolate cake for Suzanne’s birthday. When she got there, we went to Walmart for a few last minute things, and then went to her house to pick up the cake.

Once back home, I started the fire pit and we waited for Suzanne and Trent to show up. Noah came over pretty early, and the girls showed up once they finished packing at home. It was a fun night by the fire. Bác Vân and Doug were making fresh egg rolls, so she had me take a bunch to everyone at the house. They seemed a bit undercooked, so I crisped a couple of them up over the fire and they turned out great.

Autumn went to bed predictably early, and probably questionably clean. I think at this point I just always assume she hasn’t showered when we’ve told her to. Noah and Eaddie started watching House tonight, and stayed up a bit later, but went to sleep once Suzanne and Trent left, and Summer and I went to bed.

Easy to forget that it’s a school night.

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Missing

Gary had me work on building something out for HR this morning, but we were both missing pieces. Evidently there was an email I needed that never got forwarded to me. An email in to Powerschool got me on the right track after lunch.

I met Brandie at La Huerta for lunch to catch up, since we hadn’t done so in over a year. I tried to get the inside scoop on a possible job that Brody had mentioned, but she knew nothing.

The afternoon was pretty quiet, though I did get three work orders out of the blue from Oakland. Two of them were simple restarts, and the third was the teacher asking for software that was already installed. They’re really phoning it in this close to the holiday.

After work, I made Greg show me his crow call, which was startlingly accurate. If I hadn’t watch him make the sound, I would have sworn it was a real crow.

I went home to eat and get some things ready, and then headed up to Summer’s for the evening. The girls were both busy with homework, so I just started a new map in Don’t Starve until everyone went off to bed. Summer’s surgery is super early in the morning, so it’s going to be another short night of sleep.

Say pal, you don’t look so good. You better find something to eat before night comes!

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At Leased We Know

I had to ride the Grom to work today in order to complete the set. I was almost out of gas though, so I stopped at Casey’s on the way in. When I got to work, we had a relatively relaxed meeting before splitting off. We didn’t have many projects, but they thought we might have some stuff to set up or move upstairs. The room was still empty though, so it was back to my office.

I helped some others as they came through, and hung the Christmas lights that Ben left me on his way out. Kyle came back to my office around lunch time, and as we often do, we suggested Ridgewood Brothers. Everyone agreed on account of the weather, though we still brought the food back to the shop to eat. The garlic beef sausage that Gary let me have was super garlicy.

After we ate, I helped Zach scan through some old Chromebooks to try and find some we had lost. We were pretty spot on with what we expected from the summer, but evidently Dell was just going to charge us into perpetuity instead of sending a final bill for the cost of buying out any devices we didn’t return.

The last part of the afternoon was pretty slow, but we walked out a couple minutes early. I went to Casey’s for some free SweeTARTS, then went home until Autumn called me for a ride. We stopped by Oakland to get Eaddie, then went to their house for the evening.

Eaddie went with her grandmother for the night, and Autumn wanted to stay home instead of go to my house, so the girls went down for an early bedtime while I stayed up and pondered homeownership.

Very poor value.

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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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Hot Doggin

After two days of taking Eaddie to school, I was on my own this morning and didn’t get in until five minutes after eight. I wanted to take a bike to work since the high was a little over 70, and I guess eenie-miney-mo took a little longer than it should have. I ended up on the Shadow, behind someone that clearly was not in a rush to get anywhere.

I had a CPPC meeting in the morning, which was super short. We went over some duplicate policies and laughed at how poorly they had all been organized over the years. It’s an embarrassment for all those that came before, really. It’s basically taking a full time employee to fix it all.

I didn’t get into much else, partially because I kept working on the meeting minutes, and partially because I just couldn’t focus on anything. I rode to Brangus for lunch with Thomas, Gary, and Brody. Then the afternoon was pretty quiet as well. I had to run by Oakland to turn a computer off and back on again, but otherwise I didn’t accomplish much.

After work, I went home for a little bit and had a leftover kielbasa on a hot dog bun for dinner. I thought I was doing well by going relatively light in quantity, but it left me hurting a bit later in the evening. Eventually I had to get out to pick Autumn up from a Quiz Bowl trip, so I stopped by Casey’s first for a free drink, then took pictures of the tacky lights on the front of the Gardner building.

I had to wait in the parking lot for Autumn because they were later than I was expecting. Then we stopped by Walgreens to pick up an order, and finally headed up to their house. Eaddie was stuck doing homework in her room all night, so I laid with Summer for a little bit before finishing up my own routine and going to bed.

Nothing noble about these gases.

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Beautiful Day to Waste

I narrowly got Eaddie to school this morning and made it in to work. I thought it was going to be closer than it was, but just like winning – whether you’re early by one minute or one hour, early’s early.

It was another quiet day downstairs. I went to Oakland before lunch again and took care of a few new things. I did my best to kill the time just because there wasn’t much going on. Gary said we were meeting Dale at Taco John’s for lunch, but Brody asked me to pick him up after dropping his truck off at a tint shop. I didn’t realize he was going to one halfway to Dardanelle.

We had to spread out at Taco John’s, so Josh and Greg sat behind us. Dale seemed to be doing well. The Marine talk between him and Brody must have been similar to what they hear when we talk nerdy. I was surprised that Thomas didn’t show up, but he’s sporadic at best anyway.

The afternoon was absolutely beautiful outside, and I was tempted to leave. Ben wouldn’t have cared if I took a half sick day, but I haven’t quite figured out the new regime yet. I just stayed in, quiet and bored.

After work, Eaddie was having fun on the Oakland playground, so I left her there and went home to change. When she was ready to come home, I brought her back to eat, and then I took both girls home for the night. Summer was back from Little Rock, and we helped Eaddie with some math homework and then had pie before bed.

What the buck?