Saturday - late

The day started at 4:45 am, tho I was awake long before that. I didn't sleep well last night and it just happens that way, tho I think the noise in my ears is definitely attributing to the even worse sleep mode.  

So, I drive up to Arkansas, unload, drive back and home in time to grab a sandwich, get my gear and head off to the swimming pool.  It's a rental pool in town.  We were there around 3 hours before we left to go eat at Chili's.  After Chili's, stopped at the house for 2 minutes to grab my shoes - forgot to take them as I was wearing sandals at the pool.

Off to Piney Park. The pool was in my plans, Piney Park definitely was no part of any plans I made today.  I figured after working and the pool I'd be worn out and would want to go home and relax.  Well who needs to relax, apparently, when there are families with kids not to mention 2 kids in my clan who have seemingly limitless energy to bound around this place doing all kinds of stuff.  Up stairs to slide down slides.  Run around a maze to play tag.  Walk around the entire wooded area to see all of the Fall stuff they had out.  Sit down with the kids and have an ice cream.

I did not have an ice cream, the kids were begging so I got them some.  $17 for 2 small cups of ice cream. Well, we did get in free through a friend and that is the only money I spent there. I am consuming no sugars of any kind and excepting for the 5 days of cheating, I haven't been eating sugar at all for many months.  

Also note that the maze was crazy.  I don't know where that energy came from.  I was running through this thing trying to get away from the tagger.  I not only got away from whoever was "IT!", I couldn't believe I was outlasting these kids!  They were bent over huffing and puffing, I was busy running around not getting tagged. 

No, I didn't want to run around a maze. Again, the kids were insistent I go through the maze with them.  This Piney Park adventure was literally non stop for hours.  

Got home around 30 minutes ago, it's after 10.  This has been one of the busiest days I have experienced in quite a while.  My ears are buzzing like crazy and I just remembered I was going to take a benedryl tonight. YES.  The doc asserted it would help with draining the fluid out of my ears and that's exactly what I intend to do. In fact, I'm taking one after I get done with this blog entry. 

Well I want to go to bed so I'm getting offa here. 

 Friday - afternoon

With getting horrible sleep, I started using a box fan to drown out the noise of the ringing ears at night.  I was informed it could take weeks for this stuff to go away.  I intend on taking a Benadryl Saturday night to see if that will help, I won't take it on a night before a work day.  But, the box fan helped the first 2 nights, last night? Not so much. Woke up at 3 am and never got back to sleep, giving me a "full" 5 hours of sleep. 

lol

Whatever. Today's work day is done.  I went and got my Ford out of the shop.  Lovely bill at almost $900.  They had to replace all the hardware for the driver's window to make it roll up and down, that was the biggest part of it at near $500.  Oil change and getting the low tire light to go off.  The ABS control module? No thanks.  $1,400 for the part!  I looked it up and found it "cheaper" elsewhere, but we're talking an older vehicle that has been running without all of that stuff for 3 or 4 years now, I am not spending that kind of money just to get some lights to go off.

If I can find a good used one out of a salvage yard, I might do that, but only if they, too, aren't trying to rob people blind with ridiculous prices.  I've had that vehicle 9 years now and it's served me well. I don't know how much longer I'll keep it.  I just hate to get into car payments and if I buy a building, that will be a payment in and of itself.  I have definitely decided on getting a structure, what I will end up getting is a different story.  Keep it minimalist and low payments? Or go for the gusto and just get a giant building that I will need if I ever get the park upgraded and will serve for multiuse?  

On another note, airfare has gotten pretty crazy.  $550 round trip to AZ ? Huh?  That's way up from the last time I flew over there.  WAY up.  I simply don't have the time or the desire to drive over there so I"m going to have to fly.  I just balk at the prices.  I'm sure some of it has to do with fuel prices right now.  

I got the zero turn turned into the shop yesterday.  The thing wasn't running too great - it needs to be used more than I use it - so he is going to clean out the carb along with changing the oil, sharpening the blade and one of the steer bars is a bit stiff.  The tractor - well, I really think I should bring it home. Experiencing theft gives me the chills.  Some person tried to steal gas out of one of my guests cars, sitting right in front of their trailer while they were sitting in their living room. RIGHT THERE.  Then there's the person - maybe the same one - who exchanged my rather expensive Husqvarna weed eater for the much cheaper one.  

If these people are that brazen, what is next? More expensive stuff, obviously. The zero turn was a no brainer: easy steal if no one sees them doing it.  Hidden from sight? Sure, right next to a guest's trailer in fact. However, she is gone most of the time as she is an OTR truck driver.  I know how that goes.  She does have a car parked in front of it tho so it at least appears that she's home - but - no.  I'm going to spend some time beefing up the video surveillance, I have a whole system I never installed because the wifi in the shed wasn't working, unbeknownst to me at the time until I tried to hook it up. 

After that? I gave up on it. The ordeal I went through to get that wifi router hooked up to T Mobile was incredible.  Incredibly insane and ridiculous, but incredible at best. I posted several blog entries about that quite a while back and not going into that again here, pretty aggravating stuff. But I have all of those cameras, I'm going to now see if I can hook the system up to the wifi and get it up and running. It will necessitate running power lines to all of them.  I bought the stuff to do all of that and put it ---- somewhere. 

The onus is on me to get a full scale video surveillance system going.  To that end, I received the Eufy camera yesterday. It has WIFI capability. It recharges itself with a mini solar panel.  It doesn't have a monthly fee and it is allegedly high quality. We'll find out about the latter soon enough after I get it installed where I want it and see what kind of clarity it provides. I'd like to be able to see license plates clearly on it. I am going to likely put it on a tree to catch vehicles coming down the driveway.  

The temps are getting lovely in the mornings. Afternoon temps a bit much still but I'm happy for cooler weather.  I am going to force myself  to start attending to the property a LOT more than I have been.  The stifling heat? No thank you.  

I dunno, if I leave this entry here and go do other things as I'm about to, I'll just not finish it and leave it hanging and either not publish it or publish it without finishing it, been doing a lot of that and would prefer to have an ending to this one.  

I have work tomorrow, I'm going to get up a bit earlier so I can get home in time for the pool I rented.  I think there's 14 of us going.  It's an app called Swimply. If there is a pool for rent nearby, you click on it, reserve it and all that entails and walaah, you have a pool for however many hours you want it. I opted for 3. Decent amount of pool time while keeping the costs down. The hotel we use? They already shut their pool down for the season! 

I since learned that a lot of hotels shut their outdoor pools down after Labor Day. Go figure. It's still quite warm out in the late mornings til evening.  There are a couple of indoor pools in this town, they're quite small.  If we do an indoor pool thing, it won't be with all of those people. Hotels monitor such things and likely they all require every person to be in a room in their establishment.  Except this one we've been using. We know because the manager came out and we were honest.  She said, it's ok as long as someone is staying here.  Yup, we were. 

It isn't a compelling reason to get a pool at my park but is - A - reason.  Lol.  Nahh, I'm thinking this building is far more important at this time. Or a loan big enough to cover both. But if I'm going that big, I need more income so finish the 4 lots at least?  That should make a payment for another loan, easily.  

This is enough? I think so.  At least I'm finishing this one lol. 

G'day

 Tuesday - evening

 I finally caved and went into the urgent care. The noise is ridiculous.  Ringing in my ears that is.  The doctor found problems in both ears, amazingly enough. Somehow, I have fluid behind the ear drum in the ear that did not have the tick.  The ear that did also apparently has fluid in there and she is saying that that is the cause of the ringing.  She prescribed ear drops which I still have to go pick up but she actually recommended taking Benadryl for the fluid build up.

Benadryl.  My history with that stuff is that it knocks you clean out and you have serious trouble waking up the next morning.  I'm looking at a box of it sitting on my shelf right now.  Maybe if I go to bed early?  I want this ringing gone.  It's ridiculous. 

The 30X70 steel building will cost around 20k.  That's delivered and installed.  I've had several places pricing it, pretty much the same price everywhere. I'm going to give a local person a chance to give a quote - but not yet.  

The thing is, I will have to either put the building behind or near the shed, or, put it in a location closer to the front of the property.  In order to do that, however, I am going to have to run the power line. A couple of places I wanted to put it? Can't, there's underground plumbing for the park it would be sitting on the top of.  No thanks.  

Whatever the case, I had totally forgotten about adding the tractor to the park insurance policy, getting that done immediately and probably add the zero turn as well.  I am also going to go to T Mobile and get trackers for both of them.  I don't know who the thief is, whether they live in the park or not, but I do have eyes looking out for people. One person said a green volkswagen comes back there daily, no one knows who they are. I really just need to get a good, wired video system going.  

With high quality cameras?  

Sitting in my truck Wednesday morning at the loading plant. I stepped on the scale this morning annnnnd… finally. I lost all the weight I gained doing that 5 day cheat episode and now 2 more! I’m at 209 pounds, haven’t been this “light” in a long, long time. I can taste the day I hit 199. 

I just won’t do that many cheat days in a row unless warranted. I’m tentatively going to see mom for thanksgiving so there’s definitely going to be some cheat days there. But before then? I might do one cheat day just to get my potato fix but not any time soon. I want to get down to say, 205 before I do another cheat day  that way I might go up a couple pounds but I won’t leave the single digit range. It will probably take over a month if not longer to lose another 5 pounds. 

Anyway, just wanted to report that. 

 

 Monday - night

Mondays - are Mondays.  Work was a bit slow but nothing too terrible.  I got to the plant to load, they had me back down into the bay but the loader came out and said I'm going to have to move, that other truck needs in the bay right in front of you here. I normally just load them as they come, first come first served but they said you are early. Yeah, I'm early, that other driver is late I thought but didn't speak.  I just smiled and moved out to the parking load, an hour and 15 minutes later they were loading me.  So, I was there like 2-1/2 hours.

I've had to wait much longer than that there before, so I just let it go.  

Parents are within their right and reason to monitor their children's activities online and using cellphones.  So it came as a shock to me today that the mom sent screen shots of the oldest going off on another person in some sort of chat room or the phone or whatever I don't really know.  It looked funny.  

Many hours later and the truth came out.  That thing monitoring him just posted up everything that was being said between the two, it didn't delineate who said what.  The child went and got his phone and showed how he had said none of those thing, it was all the other kid.  

I have been looking at various sheds and steel structures to get something over on the property to have a lockable storage facility.  I started small, then realized I could have a small office in there.  Now, at those prices, I'm thinking go much bigger and just get it over with. I've needed and wanted a building over there for some time now.  The front portion of  my 25 acres doesn't have a lot of extra room on it if I ever get these other lots put in.  Putting a small building in makes no sense after thinking about it.  Just go for the gusto and get a bigger one - a 50 footer I'm thinking now. I was quoted 12k for a 40x30.  That's a steel building and it costs about just as much to have a concrete pad put down, which I would want. 

What if I went 50X30?  Half of it can be for equipment storage and work room, the other half can be a bathroom, laundry facility, small office and whatever else I want to do.  But, I'd have to design the thing first. If you are putting in a bathroom and laundry facility, you have to run the plumbing before they pour the cement. So now I'm in sort of a conundrum about that.  

So I'm going to put the brakes on that for a minute and think about it and go out and mark a 50x30 piece of land to see how it actually looks and if that's even enough.  Right now, it's around 23k for the 40X30 with concrete pad.  It isn't anything that would have to emerge overnight into a usable facility for an office and such, it just needs built and locked, put my stuff in there and keep it all under lock and key.  

Well, I just saw a 70X30 for 20 grand.  3 roll up doors, 2 walk in doors and several windows.  Note that none of these from any of them include any electrical or plumbing.  Hence the idea that it wouldn't have to be an overnight thing. Build it, get my stuff in there and then either do it myself or find someone to do it for me.  I prefer the latter. I wired up my shed and it's worked perfectly well, I also plumbed it and haven't had any problem with that....

....however...it's not my line of work and I had to make endless trips to Lowe's to sort through aisles worth of plumbing and electrical stuff and spent countless hours researching how to install all of it. Now, I haven't exactly forgotten all of that. Quite to the contrary, I remember how much of a pain in the ass it was, to put it bluntly.

If I got a 70 footer, this would allow for a one room hotel style room (not for rent, for me, others I know who need a break in some other world where they can disappear), a bathroom with shower, maybe 2 actually for male and female delination instead of a one size fits all, the storage an offce and a small C store.  

 Saturday mid afternoon

It isn't shocking that someone decided to "replace" my $400 Husqavarna weedeater with a much cheaper version of one and think I or others that use it wouldn't notice.  There are a couple of people that come to mind, the leeches that kept saying they would pay rent and never did are one of the suspects.  They had stated to the neighbor that they couldn't get theirs to run.....I don't doubt for 2 seconds in my mind that those lying trash people took it. But, there is another individual I could suspect as well.  Poor people that have limited morals often times excuse their thievery because they are poor.  

In their minds, they deserve what they need because they can't afford it. It isn't just food that they steal, it's anything they want or need. I know this because I was poor for quite a while and tho stealing never entered my mind, the neighborhood was full of other poor people and MANY of them had no problems with theft.  I never understood that for in all the years I was barely making it, stealing stuff wasn't a part of the equation.  I toughed it out and I made things happen - eventually. 

It has forced me to decide to buy a large storage shed on payments.  I can't afford to keep losing more stuff. Ladders, chainsaws, tools and now this.  Get one installed, get the thing loaded up with security measures - cameras and stuff - put it near people in the park and lock it up.  I want one finished this time with electrical outlets and flooring and walls already in it. I do not want to do all that work again like I did in the laundry room one. It took wayyy too much time and in the end, it would have been worth it to just have paid to have it fully completed in the first place. 

The only thing about that one tho is that it is big and it was a good price.  Still, a couple thousand more for the wall, outlets and flooring to be in it would be easily worth it and hopefully some insulation.  

 Monday - late afternoon

Where to start. Well, I had the weekend off. And per the tick in my ear, I haven't had any ill side effects - yet anyway - so I'm just letting it go until/if/when something arises out of it.  Crazy thing to have a tick inside of your ear. Never even heard of that in a human. Dogs, yes, all the time but humans? Yikes

The non-payers heeded my warning - it wasn't fake - if they hadn't have left by today, I was going to have them physically removed out of there. They must have left yesterday afternoon or night, their trailer and all of their stuff was gone.  I'm out $1,150 and I am promising myself to never let it go that far again.  A month at most. I've had pretty good luck helping people out when they are down on their luck, usually people pay it back.

I'm half considering suing them. They have a nice car, the trailer was a bit old but I don't think they owned it and at least one of them has a job.  Just decided to lie to me on 4 separate occasions about making a payment - they never did.  It was the last time they made that promise and it didn't come to pass that I started becoming very irritable with them.  But, I kept it in and just taped the notice to their door. 

Then and only then did they magically find my phone number, texted me claiming they "have been trying to get a hold of me". LMAO.  The number is posted on a large sign out front if nothing else.  Liars. "Well i can give you some money on " whatever day, I don't remember, I wasn't falling for that again.  I'd rather have that lot empty than have leeches sucking out my electricity and giving nothing but grief back in return. 

Whatever the case, they are gone and that headache is gone with them.  They completely cleaned up their lot, I'll give them a weeeeee little bittle of credit for that.  I have a person that wants to move in, but I have 2 lots empty now so I need to find another one.  I'm not running any ads, calls have been coming in several times a week, I'll see if someone will just call without doing all that other stuff. 

Saturday was the Octoberfest - in September. The explanation they gave was that there were too many scheduling conflicts with everyone in October - you know, Octoberfest? yeah, that one... - So we went. I don't think we stayed even 2 hours. It was hot as blazes out there which is why I wondered why they were doing this in the hot hell of summer.  We weren't even there 30 minutes and firefighters were already treating a person with heat exhaustion (or whatever stage she was in).  That was what we did Saturday, the rest of the day was spent at home.

Yesterday was the baptism. It was pretty cool.  The kid and mom and I went up to the top of this church, they have an entire complex of rooms up there, one set of them dedicated to baptisms.  They have a big tub with a foot anchor - to help people from having their feet/legs pop up when they're dunked.  I had never baptized anyone before so it was a  special thing for me.  I baptized the child first and the entire congregation erupted into a huge amount of applause, yelling, whistling - good stuff - for him.  It was great.  Then I baptized his mom and the same thing afterward.  The whole thing started with the pastor giving a short preface and then 2 videos they had taken of them being asked questions about their lives and why they wanted baptized. 

It was pretty special. Nothing more amazing yesterday/Sunday excepting the AC? Went out again!  Amazingly, they had a tech come out within a couple of hours and he was questioning what the other tech had done and why he hadn't checked the entire system? How should we know, we aren't ac techs? LOL.  It does, actually, need a new motherboard.  I kind of thought it strange that it could get wet and then start working again, but I zipped on that when the first guy was out from the second company.  He somehow got it working again, the parts - more than just the mother/control board - had to be ordered. He told us that the ac could go out again at any time, sorry, just the way it is. It's worked so far.  

Today just work.  Got up early, got down there, got the trailer washed out, the truck loaded - tho that took quite a while they were having problems yet again with their system.  Unless another load gets canceled, I will be working through Saturday.

My 5 day cheat is over. 6 pounds gained.  OH well. I am water-only fasting today and will try to make it through tomorrow as well. If I'm really motivated, I'll go through Wednesday.  I usually get motivated by watching youtube videos of doctors explaining the multiple benefits of fasting. Yes, I already know all of this stuff but hearing it coming out of their mouths sort adds a different element to it, like yes you should do it because it will help you.  

 Friday - night

Last night, trying to sleep, I'm awakened by what I don't know. I have my ear plugs in.  I become aware of a scratching sound inside of my left ear.  What on earth is that? I wondered.  I took the ear plug out and didn't hear anything else.  

Fast forward to about an hour ago. I start hearing this noise in my ear!  Am I hallucinating?  No, there is something IN my ear!  I get home from what I was doing, get out the Q tips and start digging.  About the  4th try, ear wax with a TICK attached to it came out!  

Disgusting.  I start hearing a lot more noises.  What?!!  My friend says take some peroxide and fill your ear up with it.  So, I turned my head sideways and filled it up.  The noise got  even louder.  Is this baby ticks in t here? Or is is the noise of  the probable opening the tick made with the noise the peroxide makes on such things? Or what?  

Got distracted just posting it anyway. 

 Wednesday night.

Short here. 

We took the kids to church but I ended up getting them. 

I've been doing it for years, mom wants more involvement which is okay. I just don't want to be eliminated from this deal.  Which if it happens, I'll just let it go and relish in the fact that the kids have been exposed to the Gospel and teachings of Christ and that's enough.  

She was busy anyway.  I got there to pick up youngest from the children's church. Retrieving him I was walking out of the church when the pastor - who was leaning up against the wall - made a comment.  I didn't quite get it at first.  Huh?  

I commend you for everything you've done for that family.  This wasn't any type of confrontational situation here, don't let it fool you the way I'm saying it, I'm just getting to the point without a lot of "stuff" added in. I think it gets boring (or even irritating) and I don't like doing that.  I mean, I engage in conversations as they are fluid, but going into extremely specific details isn't my thing unless the situation really warrants it when writing about it.

Hmm, perhaps that's not too great thinking about it, some or a lot of context can be lost. The pastor is in his 70's and apparently he's not doing 2 services on Sunday now, he's doing 3. I didn't know they had kept the 8 am service. 

Anyway, I really didn't know what he was talking about for sure, I just figured it had to do with the baptism. Oh yes, that's it, he started out with "I hear you are baptizing people on Sunday".  When I got down to what was on his mind, he said he had seen the video of it and it made him cry.  The youth minister - she's the head of a huge children's network and in the church the programs for the children and intensely involved with everything - came in on that one. 

I was saying I wanted to see this video before Sunday, please.  She asked why, do you think it's going to make you cry? Well yes.  It made the pastor cry I want to be prepared. Well it's supposed to be a surprise. Ok, I'll watch it after service on Sunday when I get home - they post all of it on Facebook. 

There is no issue here. I'll see it eventually. I tried to show up on time to see the taping of it on Sunday, but I arrived as they were leaving and it was already over with.  I'm going to do what I have been tasked with, I want to do it and I think  it will turn out great. I have never baptized anyone but it's a pretty simple process - still - I started praying about it today, this  morning to be exact.  

If God wants to speak to those 2 through this, I don't want to hinder it and I want to facilitate it if that's what He wants me to do.  I'm open, God's will be done here.  

The pastor is a really great guy and he just kept going on about how great it is what I've done with that family.  

I do get what other people's perspective may be of it, I had no idea what they were saying in those interviews but now I have an idea - ugh. Sorry, I'm not in it for accolades, that all goes to Christ, all glory, honor and praise to Him!

HE is the one orchestrating all of this in my view of it, I don't want to piss on anyone's party or parade, I just want the real thankfulness to be directed to the King of Kings, the Lord of lords, the Prince of Peace. That's Jesus : ) I'm sure these people know that, I just feel uncomfortable with that kind of verbiage being directed my way. What can I say. 

I'm going to be early tonight, I"m worn out for whatever reason and want to try and get in some "extra" sleep. 

Editing here: if it made the pastor cry, is the whole church going to be crying too? Oh myyy. 

Nite. 

 Wednesday - morning

Since the last post a few things have developed, the most annoying of which was the central AC in our house went out.  It literally went out just before everyone closing (AC repair) on Friday afternoon, guaranteeing us a headache for the entire weekend.  I called a local guy over who apparently didn't know what he was doing even tho highly acclaimed locally for he misdiagnosed the problem.

I'll circle back to that in a second, but the situation developed that he said the mother board was fried and probably the fan motor. I mean, it's whatever, it needs fixed especially in this heat but that sounded like a lot for a newer system that's only been in there what, 2 ..2-1/2 years?  I'm not an AC person so I took his word for it. He said it would take 2-3 days to get the parts in.  

Well, the lady of the house went and bought a portable ac unit for her room, my room already has a new one in it that worked beautifully I might add.  It kept it as cool as I wanted it to be in here.  My room has always been warmer (or colder in the winter) than the rest of the house and I had to make up for it long ago using a window ac.  

But it's been so hot that the rest of the house was miserably hot.  So, I went out and bought a "new" window unit to help bring down the temp in the dining/kitchen area.  It is an 8,000 btu unit, not big enough to sufficiently cool it to whatever temp you wanted it to come down to but I figured it would help out.  It did, immensely.  It was $200, it was still in original box and packaging, you could tell it had never been opened, the owner brought it to our house amazingly enough. She said they had had it sitting in storage for a couple of years.  I just had to hope it was going to work and it did and does, thankfully.

It was fairly nice in there after overnight of it continuously running the compressor.  It actually brought the temp down in the dining room, kitchen and the rather large laundry and pantry room. That room is about 8 feet wide by 30 feet long. 

So come Monday, the father - who is on the road and they are firmly on their way to a divorce - called Lowe's I guess it was to have someone out.  I had contacted the company that came out and they hadn't ordered anything yet!  Lowe's is who contracted out to have the system installed. This dude shows up - he looks to be all of 20 years old - but he knew what he was doing and figured out the problem quickly. I had mentioned that the motherboard and the inside of that area had been completely covered with a lot of condensation and thought that didn't look right for the area they had the motherboard in (control board). 

He went and turned the thing on!  The entire unit fired up and started pumping out cold air.  He just looked at me. It had to be that water got on that board and temporarily jinxed it from carrying out it's duties and once it dried up it got back to work.  He agreed with that assessment and then said "you need to replace the drain pipe, it's clogged up".  He was absolutely correct.  When I cut into that thing, it was completely filled with gunk, there was no water going through it at all. This is the pipe that carries the condensation from the evaporator to the outside. 

Where was all that water going besides the mother board area?  I thanked him - everyone else was at the lake, I had had to work that day and I didn't feel like driving clear over there after they had already been there a while, I wouldn't have been there too long and then time to go home.  It was late afternoon. I went to Lowe's bought the stuff I thought I needed and then was going to put it all together when I realized I needed a few more parts.  No. Not today, I thought.  I rigged up the line to simply drop the water into a 5 gallon bucket and would fix it the next day.

I was amazed at how fast that bucket was filling up!  Too fast to the point we decided to leave the ac off for the night and I would fix that line system when I got home from work.  BUT, I would turn the ac back on in the morning and she would empty it as necessary.  It filled up 3 times I think during the day. 15 gallons of water!  That gives you an idea of the humidity in the air around here.  

That was yesterday, I got home from work, one of the kids decided they were going with me, went to Lowe's got the materials, stopped to see a friend for lunch at Chili's - he works there, went home, got it all put together and walaah.  No new motherboard, no new motor.  The Lowe's rep was $89 service fee call and that was it. And I've already been repaid for it, I wasn't waiting, let's get this done.  I contacted the other company and told them it was just a clogged up drainage system, nix the parts. They still  hadn't ordered them.  I mean, if I see anything asking for who to use for ac in this town again and someone mentions that company, I'm going to tell them NO.  

Anyway, I worked the entire weekend and Monday and Tuesday. I was supposed to work today and through Saturday.  But, my manager called yesterday while I was driving back from Arkansas and said they had cancelled tomorrow's (now today) load and he was rescheduling me.  That was alarming because I have something very important to do on Sunday: baptize 2 people, namely one of the children and the lady of this house.  The kid wanted to get baptized but then the mom wanted to too and they both decided I should be the one doing it.  

The church has already done the interviews on both of them.  They do a video taped production - they have experts that donate their time at this church - of them asking them questions. Lots of questions. Afterwards they edit it and come up with really a nice video, I've watched dozens of them now over the years of going there. They play that video before the actual baptism is done.  I haven't seen it yet but I definitely want to.  I only have to baptized them, the ministry does the rest. So, I ask each one if they have believed in Jesus Christ for everlasting life?  They say yes and they get dunked, separately of course I can't baptize 2 people at once.  Then the audience erupts into clapping, whistling and cheering - they really do and are really happy for the moment - then the pastor prays and that's it.  It's pretty cool actually. 

Well, back to the manager, he had put me down for tomorrow (Thursday) which runs into Friday and Monday/Tuesday run, but nothing on the weekend.  He knows me.  He said, well I could put you on a weekend run but I don't know if you have plans.  Yup, I made plans alright, it is the baptism that I confirmed with the lady of the house who confirmed it with the associate pastor.  I'm not bowing out of that one, to me that takes far greater precedence over working.  I said yes, I am committed to doing a baptism. But he already knew and I am 99% sure he had already handed out weekend work to other drivers who want the work anyway.  Once I came back into the lineup, their workload must have either decreased or they get dumped on the Ennis run.

I mean, if you're looking for a bigger paycheck, I would think they would want the Ennis run anyway? I'm not young anymore, I don't care about driving literally all day long like that, endlessly. I'll do that run once in a while if they get into a pinch, but I don't like it because they always put me on at least 2 of them in a row.  I have to demand to get back into the Gurdon lineup. I literally have to tell them I'm not doing anymore Ennis runs, please find someone else to do it, thanks.  I think that kind of irks them sometimes, which bothers me not. I have seniority over all of those drivers excepting one who has a weird schedule he does and doesn't conflict with anything I do at all. 

Well, it turns out that on Saturday, there is also the Reuggenfest festival.  It's supposed to be an Octoberfest thing so why they are doing it in September is beyond me.  It's going to be hot as blazes out there, it's kind of bewildering.  Yup, just checked again.  There's a slight chance of rain on Saturday the high temp will be 97 which will put the heat index into well over the 100 range. Gag. I mean, we're going and it's usually fun but this decision over doing a traditionally October-held even in September is not registering with me, I'm going to ask the guy that produces it when I see him Saturday.

Anyway, the AC is fixed, the cancelled load worked out in my favor for the weekend and all is well in this world.  Well, ok all is as well as it's going to get lol. 

What else is going on? Well I just figured that the wiring for the expansion project is going to cost around 3 grand.  It's very expensive per foot, it's expected and that's that.  I want to get that sewer line installed and ready to go.  It's so hot I've been putting it off but at the same time, I want to get it done, gag.  Electric is one of the most expensive portions of this project but the septic system was 10k so there is that.  

I'm going to put in much more heavy duty wiring than that contractor put in the park originally.  Way too much load on that line, I'm wondering if it's not the source of the breakers burning out last month.  I'm going to ensure no problems. Aluminum wiring, yes but that's acceptable and pretty much a requirement in underground stuff.  Copper costs way too much money to even think about using it.

Temps will start to drop near the end of this month, that's when I'm shooting to get restarted on this thing.  I will have help - hopefully anyway - that will motivate me to get this thing rolling.  I have one open lot right now, a person was supposed to show up but their work plans cancelled on them so now I have an open lot. And I'm still dealing with these people who are non pays, I am going to give them a 3 day notice today. It's not a pay or leave notice, it's a leave now notice and if they aren't gone in 3 days, they will be trespassed and the Sheriff will be called to escort them off the property.  If they refuse, well that's up to the Sheriff, but they can be arrested for criminal trespassing.  

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