Thursday

LONG day. I woke up last night and couldn't get back to sleep. I got less than 5 hours of sleep.
I did finally get back to sleep about 45 minutes to an hour before the alarm went off - I was wasted tired.
Forced my @$$ out of bed, took my shower, all that junk, go to work. I wasn't on the clock but I was filling out a performance review of - myself. My company makes everyone do that once a year. I find it VERY difficult to evaluate myself. I mean, isn't that a job best left to your superiors?
Get done with that, sign in - off to the races. 5 deliveries spread out all over the place plus a stop downtown.
I continue to hear, on an almost daily basis, are people that are enthralled by my backing of the truck.
Hey, if I do at least one thing well, I might as well talk about it.
People ask me how I did that? You do something that comes to you in automatic mode, you don't think about it. Construction sites are often either very small, or very large but no room in either case to turn around. You have to back out the way you came in - whether that's 50 feet or a quarter mile.

Well, whatever. I was busting butt all day long - well past the 7-hour maximum that corporate has enacted. It's end of month, our numbers are down, we are going to get out whatever we can and deal with the aftermath later. Today was a $23,000.00 day in terms of sales on the deliveries I made. Tomorrow will have - I think around 10k as well. 3 days in a row will total over 50k, which is pretty good considering the times we are in, and will boost our stores numbers to a bit more acceptable level for month-long sales totals.

Get back to the yard - had to go in for my review with the boss. I will say he gave me a very good review, very heartening to hear and read that. He has to answer the same review fields that I had to, and rate each set of directives.

Anyway, done with that, went home - for 5 minutes - and left. Off to Karen's house - she had some guys dig out that pine tree she was going to give me yesterday. I wanted to get it here and get it into a large container of water, just before it starts dying. So, I put a blanket on the top of my car, put the tree on that, roped it down with 3 ropes. Visited with Karen for a couple of hours - she made some grilled baby-back ribs that were just excellent - had some good conversation.

Headed home. But, I stopped at the Fry's down the road before getting here. I had spoken to the GM of that store yesterday - she said they had some of the chicken breast in and would hold it for me in the cooler until today. Great, I wanted some of that stuff. I go to the meat department, ring the doorbell. I hear the bell ring, I hear a guy in there working, no answer. Ring it again - and again, and again - nothing. I back up to see the guy is spraying something off with a garden hose, apparently couldn't be bothered with customers.

Whatever, I just asked for a manager to go back there, get my meat, I wanted out of there. The manager - not the GM who isn't there that late - opened up a closed lane, gave me an additional $5 off the already low price - I paid $5 and change for 4 large packages of bone-in chicken breast. Worth the stop, I figured - shook the man's hand, thanked him and left.

Got home. Task of getting the tree unhooked from the car, finding a suitable container large enough to put the root ball - what's left of it anyway - into so I could fill it with water overnight and probably into Saturday.

Done with that. I'm here, it's almost 9:00 o'clock - where I got the energy to write this energy who knows, I only hope the energy goes away and I go to sleep and STAY that way tonight. I was NOT going to go to Karen's today after the miserable night's sleep I had last night, but I figured that tree would probably die without resurrection if I didn't get it here and get the roots underwater. She had it packed with mud and wet - but - this tree did not have a deep root system, had not been sufficiently watered by whoever had lived in that place before, and is in obvious need of a good dose of water, especially considering being uprooted from the ground.

Somewhere, I have a container of vitamin B which I will also be giving it to help it survive the move. Karen's house? Unbelievably nice - I mean, she paid $31,000 for it - a 3 bedroom place, not huge but PLENTY big enough. New carpet and tile, paint, the owners/bank/whoever had done a lot to it to make it sellable. I'm imagining a huge loss, regardless for whoever owned the property before Karen bought it. A steal in every sense of the word excepting, of course, actually stealing it.

Mary? No more from her. She has closed the channels and is not communicating with me. My last words to her in email were that if she didn't want to deal with me in email, she would be forced to deal with me in front of a judge. I would rather the former, but I just about guarantee the latter. This will not be an eviction case, either, it will be a plain-jane lawsuit. It will take longer, but it will cost less in court costs.

I'm toast, fried and well-done, therefore, I'm gettin' offa this and going to bed.
G'nite.
ben