Monday, October 30, 2017

I'm standing true to my word and not watching NFL games at all, until this idiocy of kneeling and pumped fists and such is done away with. 
However, I am definitely watching the World Series and what a hoot that game was last night!
Kept me up a bit later than I wanted to be up, but worth it - well I think worth until I have to get on the road later on today lol.

But I only have a 93 mile trip down to Lufkin so I can rest for a while after I get there if need be. Likely will get sent up to Mount Pleasant to load and then over to a place not far from Jackson, MS to deliver it - a giant Koch foods plant.  Now I understand how these Koch brothers got so rich - they don't have small facilities and every one of them I have been in has hundreds and hundreds of cars parked in employee parking lots.  Huge facilities - one of them stinks badly, would have to work there.  Well I wouldn't work there anyway for I am sure the pay isn't all that great for the blue collar workers. 

Meanwhile, the rats are trying to come into the house in a mass attempt to get out of the cold.  I have been buying glue traps like crazy and yes, they are catching those nasty vermin, even the big ones.  They get so stuck in the glue there is almost no way off of it.  Sometimes they wiggle their way off, but usually those glue traps are their demise.  However, there are creatures in the ceiling, I can hear them and they sound bigger than rats.  Possibly raccoons also attempting to get out of the cold.  I figure that I am going to have to have a rodent exterminator come out here, crawl up in there, find out where they're coming in at and seal it all up.  Probably won't be cheap, either, but we can't have rodents tearing up the attic. They can tear up a lot of stuff, including electrical wires and cables running through there. 

Meanwhile, next weekend the lady tenant is off to Michigan.  Near Detroit.  I bought her the ticket - she made enough of a commotion about needing to go that I finally just broke down and put it on the credit card.  Just paid $200 of it, the other guy in the house said he was going to pay the rest of it.  These folks are on fixed incomes - she is on a very small budget.  She has a friend up there that was diagnosed with ALS and the husband you best come now if you want to talk to her while she's still coherent.  Her family is also up there so she's going on a 10 day visit around the area.

Fortunately for me, the guy in the house said he would deal with my dogs.  Otherwise I would be looking for someone to come and tend to them at the house - or worse, have to put them up in a kennel.  Which would be very costly and not really good for dog psyche.  Welp, no need to go to Walmart for a bag for my toiletries, found the one mom gave me last time I saw her and packed it all up into there.  I might could get one for dirty clothes, but plastic trash bags will work for that for now.  I'm still sorting out whether I want to do this job or not.  If they could get me home pretty frequently as they are now claiming, it wouldn't be much different than going to work in the morning and coming home at night. 

I mean, before the new manager came in and changed our hours, I was getting up at 5:20 am to be at work by 7 am.  There was 38 miles of driving either way.  Got home normally around 5:45 or so, depending on traffic and some days much later on runs that kept me out later.   So there's 12 hours of every day that was consumed by work.  If I thought I was leaving this afternoon and coming home tonight, I wouldn't even be stressing about this.  But I know that isn't going to happen because I am starting the work day too late.  However, I should be home tomorrow or at the latest Wednesday.  I don't know how they want to work this out, but they reassured me with confidence that they would be able to do so.

I am not going to count whatever I get to do after this load today for this since it is so late in the day and I don't mind.  I do mind not getting home on Friday night or at the latest, Saturday morning. That was some bs right there and I was starting to get agitated Saturday evening attempting to beat the clock to get home in time.  Not to mention I didn't want to drive over 600 miles on a Saturday.  Get me my work during the week, get me the miles and then, get me home. This is what we agreed upon. 

Well hey, the dispatcher called.  Asked if I had my 34 reset?  yup, that occurred at 5 am this morning. That's when you stop for 34 hours and the 60 hour clock starts over again.  Basically, you start a fresh work week with that being done. Otherwise, I think you just don't get any more hours.  I'm not sure about that one since I didn't have to worry about that on my previous job.  We were off every weekend and we were subject to different rules since we were a "local" type operation that doesn't even need to have log books kept.  Anyway, kept any hostilities out of the conversation, excepting that Saturday, I drove over 600 miles and was 6 minutes from going over hours when I finally pulled into the yard. 

I don't have to tell him now.  He knows  I am not happy about that.  But, if it looks like a repeat this coming weekend, I will say something on Thursday about it. That's when you figure out whether you're going to make it home or not.  I might not be too objectionable to working til Saturday morning this week since I'm starting late today - but then again, none of this was of any fault of my own. So, maybe just take less miles for this week and get a bit smaller paycheck.  I think 2,500 miles per week is the minimum they want us to drive.  At over 600 miles per day, that is pretty easy. Plus the new work week doesn't actually start with this company until Tuesday. Any work you get down before Tuesday goes on the previous week's miles.  So, the delivery today will count for last week, which means I am close to 3,500 miles for the week, which is a healthy, nice paycheck.

However, if I don't have time to spend it, what good is it? Hmmm, not a terribly bright statement, i guess, considering the debt I am in and now going to start paying it off. Which started earlier.  I paid all my credit card bills this morning and applied an extra $200 to the Capital one card that I have racked up so much on.  10 months of that will get me in the hundreds of dollars range owed on that particular card and then i can start working on another one.  I'd really like to get about $1,500 in debt paid down quickly, tho, to get my credit score back up. 

Well, ending this one. I still have stuff to get done before I leave and I need to get to the truck early so I can get it situated with clean sheets for the bed and such. 









 Sunday - early 20 minutes until departure time.  I don't much care for delivery on Sundays for it takes a while to get security to the ...