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Since the wall doggy door was posing so many problems in just buying one - I went back out again to the stores: Petsmart; Lowe's and Home Depot. Walmart had a cheap junk thing that looks like it will fall apart quickly, so I counted that out.

Lowe's had a super extra large door and so I opted for that. It's bigger than the one I have now, the price tag was $105 and change after taxes. I stopped by Home Depot on the way home and was looking at their extra large door. It's smaller than the super extra large, but I thought it big enough for the Danes, and is a little bigger than the door I have now.

I about-faced back to Lowe's, got my money back - though they offered to sell theirs at the same price IF I had "proof" of how much Home Depot's was going for (yes, sir, I always carry around information like that in print, just let me get that out of my back pocket here, holeonaminute) - went back to Home Depot and bought that door for fully $50 cheaper. I put the rest of the cash from the refund onto the prepaid card for eletricity.

That was, actually, quite the time-consuming ordeal. And now - I'm looking forward to at least a semi-busy day tomorrow at work. Take the semi down-town, pick up 40 foot lengths of HDPE pipe, head to Casa Grande, pick up some "spools", head to east Queen Creek, deliver the pipe, then to northeast Mesa to deliver those spools. That will consume most of the morning as that is quite a lot of driving.

The boss is taking the day off and the sales manager from downtown is taking his place for the day. In reality? We can run the branch without a manager for a day. However, this particular person likes coming to our branch and getting away from sometimes hectic atmosphere of the office where all the inside salesmen are cranking out phone calls and bids and usually at least a couple of outside salesmen are also busy, working away.

In fact, I am quite sure I could learn the paperwork and reports the management position of our store has to do on a daily basis. I have watched the reports and have seen what has to be done - it would take a little hands-on, yes, but I know I could do it. Well, if I survive the layoffs and am still with this company if/when the economy starts picking back up and construction starts taking off again, there will eventually be a position opening for a manager of a new store somewhere in AZ.

I have flat worn myself out today already. I've been all over the map in terms of getting things done - but the hiking and the weightlifting definitely took it out of me. I have gone into the mountains the last 4 out of 5 days. Not bad for an old man. Lol. Yeah, well that's what I'm referred to around HERE anyone, at least from the perspective of the boys.

Onto other things. I'm still stuffing food away here and there into my food stuff. The thing that got me just now was that - upon looking in my freezer - it is STUFFED and almost all of it is meat. 14 pounds of ground beef, a 10 pound turkey breast, chicken, pork, all kinds of stuff. The refrigerator is stuffed as well. My portion of the kitchen pantry is overloaded and I'm getting the closet - which is just a pantry in disguise - in the bathroom also filled up with canned and boxed foods.

I took a short break from that and started buying dog food. The "extra" amount acquired so far is at 150 pounds. I want at least 300 before I'm happy. 300 pounds of dog food is enough for 3 months. Dog food lasts at up to/at least a year in storage.

Speaking of the dogs, they are totally passed out on the kitchen floor in front of me. They are definitely liking this greatly increased amount of physical exertion - I am happy because they have less energy to irritate me with, when they want to irritate, that is. I have more things I want to get done today - not sure I'm gonna git'er done. Laundry is going, AC is on. Yup, AC is on. It's warm outside, and when it's warm outside, it gets HOT in here. A piggyback evaporative cooling system would work great right now and cost a fraction of the cost of AC.

This entry has gone on long enough, and I at least want to go clean up my bedroom.

ben

Sunday

Can you believe it's March already?
I'm not really wanting all the cool months to pass by so quickly - every year, I get less and less tolerant of the AZ summer heat. Pretty much at the point where I would just love to up and say buh-bye to this place - forever. If I didn't have all the ties holding me here, I guarantee you I would be gone.

Not to mention the fact that I am also employed - doing anything that would disrupt that at this moment in time would be very - stupid I think. I probably couldn't sell this house for what I owe on it, and even if I did, I definitely would not qualify for another home loan in this economic environment.

No, I've settled in. Tomorrow, if I want, I can call the mortgage company back up and ask them for the FHA thing where they stick the past due payment on the end of the loan. I will be doing that, oh yes, I will. No matter how long it takes on the phone, I will be calling them and asking them to go ahead and do this for me. I will try to get through to the refinance department as well.

Today? I've already taken the dogs for a gruesome walk in the mountains. Duke continues to lag behind when we get to about 2/3rds of the walk being over. I also threw some free-weights around - chest stuff - and have made some phone calls to Capital One. They handed my account over to a collection agency even though I have been making the payments. Albeit, I've been making minimum payments, the problem is that they feed me to death when I got behind that one month when the other female tenant wasn't paying me anything, and the fees have compounded.

I don't want to lose this credit card to collections. I arranged to pay some of the over-the-limit fees - but I refused to do it if they weren't going to erase some of it. Why they agreed to take off a large chunk of change - I don't know. I don't care, either, I just wanted to get this taken care of. That is now paid down to acceptable levels and all the other credit lines are current and the amount of money on each account is at least below the maximum of credit for each of those acounts, Capital One now included with that.

With the other payments - I'm doing pretty good. I'm a week or so late on the car payment (but I paid it yesterday online) - that is nothing and they don't even charge a late fee for only being a week late (and it doesn't show as a late payment on the credit files with Transunion and such), I am NEVER late with the child support, I paid up the DSL account to zero and the satellite is also at zero balance. The only thing left after paying the child support - which will be much earlier this month than I normally send it - is the water bill. I can't pay that until tomorrow - they simply aren't open right now and I totally forgot about it until this weekend. Don't want to let that sucker get too far behind, they will come out and shut off the water, they don't care. I don't blame them, but it ain't going that far.

Umm, the only other thing today: I decided to simply get an entrance door pet door instead of wall mount. I cannot find a wall mount that is big enough with the accessories needed. I can only get it online, and I don't want to wait that long. The door is in the utility room and after thinking about it, I thought maybe it's better to "ruin" the door than put a permanent hole in the side of the house - in terms of resellability. Plus it will be much cheaper.

I have already placed an ad for the next temporary tenant. The current one is allegedly leaving on the 16th. I won't be committing the room until I am sure about that date, but I wanted to get that ad out there. I have had one response so far.

I also committed to a date for the next party: the 28th of March. I have several confirmed coming - and bringing food. I am going through "piles" of email looking for that individual that offered $600 for the next party. I have no clue what I did with that email - I definitely would not have deleted it.

Well, I have some runs to go on - I want to get that doggy door and I need to get money for the electric card reader and - whatever else.

Have a great and happy Sunday!
ben