Life

I couldn't decide whether to get up on that roof and start on one of those issues up there or start hauling rock and deal with that stuff out front - so - so far anyway - I've done neither.  I don't necessarily expect an extremely busy week at work, have Thursday off for Thanksgiving, but next weekend I may have to work in helping move from one building to another.  Someone has to drive that semi truck and I would be at least somewhat offended if it were another hourly worker.  If it's a salaried worker - as they are attempting to use for all of it - different story, but I don't know of any salaried workers in our local conundrum of people that have a CDL A license.

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Ahhhh, working in the rocks out front isn't hardly work at all.  It's so incredibly beautiful outside, yes, I went out there and finished an area I had been working on and then figured on another area where I would like to put more of the landscaping rock.  Well, I didn't get started on that part of it, but at least I got something done out there today.

Getting on the roof of the trailer and using a scraper and a machine to get junk off the roof?  That will be work, but even that will have it's rewards.

One of the next door neighbor's dogs was barking.  Dogs bark, right?  This one will start barking and will go on for hours, non-stop.  I had half a mind to go out there and start up my old routine with them - I haven't don't that in quite a while.  That dog is now tied up over on the other side of their house but that barking is still pretty annoying.  I did nothing.  Eventually, they must have done something as the dog stopped.  The dog?  Bored.  Lonely. Etc.  What is the point of having dogs if you are going to show them absolutely no attention at all?  Security, I guess, but there is absolutely nothing on that property of any interest to any thief within a 1,000 miles.

BTW, what do you do with neighbors that won't change their ways? Ways that are - out of control.  Living in filth and squalor.  Piling up junk on their properties and continually bringing in even more junk.  Having animals to the point it would probably qualify as animal hoarding.

I figured it out.  Well, I didn't actually figure anything out, I just came up with my own answer: pray for them. Many people will scoff at that idea and laugh.  That's okay.  I'm not here to please anyone.  I don't really care if anyone agrees with my ways of doing things or not, to be honest.  Some do, some don't.  The point is to seek the Lord on this issue and see what He might do.

Changing the subject completely.  I am exposed to some pretty wicked stuff in traffic on a daily basis while driving the semi.  I was sitting at a red light the other day in the truck, waiting to make a left hand turn.  It's an unbelievably long light for the side street I am on getting out onto the major road that turns into a 55 mph highway to the left of the light and a 45 mph surface street to the right of it.  To the left of this light is Indian reservation and in that area, nothing but farm fields.  To the right of it is the city of Chandler and spreads into a 6 lane surface street.

I'm a pretty observant driver, but I don't always catch everything.  When I don't, something else kicks in.  Whatever it is, it tells me to do something, usually to stop.  The light turns green for me.  A tractor-trailer rig has pulled up and stopped on the street I am turning on, right there in the "slow" lane going towards Chandler.  I am making a left turn going the opposite direction.  2 cars come flying through the intersection after the light had turned red for them.  I then begin to move out in front of this truck.  I was about to go in front of the other lane when that something said stop.  It's not a calm, cool collected thing, there is something in my mind that shouts stop the vehicle, now.  I stopped.

I just shook my head in wonder as a woman came flying by the stopped semi truck at at least 60 mph not even slowing down for the light that had been red for that direction for at least several seconds at that point.  It was a no-brainer that if I had continued, there would have been a horrific accident, that lady would be dead, probably and I have no idea what would have become of me. That SUV would have slammed into the full fuel tank sitting right there, underneath to the side of me, and into my driver's side door.

I wonder what is so important that people have to be in such a huge hurry that they risk their own and other people's lives to get ahead in traffic.  I wonder what is so important about a text message that a driver feels compelled to respond to it to the point that they are paying no attention to the traffic in front of them while they are moving down the road.  I wonder about drivers that are so engrossed in their cell phone calls, they make erratic and "drunken" type of moves on the roadway, completely cutting people off to the point that you wonder how contact between 2 vehicles wasn't made.

I don't wonder why I get stressed out in heavy and rush hour traffic.  It's a constant dealing with people cutting you off.  Diving their cars into the cushion zone you have in front of you so if the vehicle in front of you does something abrupt, you have time to react and deal with it.  Note that I did not say that it's a place for cars to cut in and cut off the truck. But people obviously don't see that as such.  It's a truck going too slow, taking too much time and look at all that room.  The worst thing though is when they dive in there and then slam on their brakes.  I hate driving in the city, to be honest, I absolutely hate it.  I would far rather drive on the highways, biways and interstates.  The down side to that, of course, is that you are never home.  There is no happy medium here.  The benefit of dealing with city traffic in a semi truck is that I get to go home every day - that makes it worth it.  But I'm always wondering if "it" is ever going to happen.  Where I can't get the truck stopped or moved out of the way fast enough because of someone else's moves that - mostly - endanger their own lives.  The attention concentrate that is needed to drive a big truck in city traffic is more than most people will ever realize.  If you don't want to kill people, run them clean over and create chaotic destruction - even if not your fault - you are going to have to devote so much mental energy to the job at hand that by the end of the day?  You are mentally exhausted.  If it's an OT, even that much the more worse.

I still vividly remember the situation earlier this year when I was also at stopped at a red light, waiting to make a left hand turn.  The light turned green. I remember hesitating for unknown reasons and then slowly starting out into the intersection.  The car in the turn lane beside me also slowly started out.  Out of the corner of my eye - that light has been red for the other direction for a long time now considering traffic standards - seeing something.  My automatic reaction was to slam on the brakes.  It would have been another disaster.  My fault? Not at all.  The driver of that car that ran that red light never slowed down.  I was within a couple of feet of that car when it went by me.  Had I continued on, that car would have slammed into my truck - again, right into the diesel fuel tank and right below the door where I am sitting.

Well whatever.  The weekend comes to a close.  As it always does, lol, but this coming week is a bit different.  Thanksgiving on Thursday.  Going to mom's house.  Black Friday and hopefully sending someone to stand in line and maybe score something for me.  Our store moving on the weekend, but no word yet as to whether I will be involved with that or not.  Tuesday is our church's first annual "Community Dinner" - Thanksgiving dinner 2 days early.

Hmmm, I think I'll go to bed early.  Which for most people is like going to bed before dinnertime, lol.  Well whatever.  We all live our lives the way we want to?  No, not really.  If you lived the life of your dreams, would you be doing what you are doing right now with it?  I'm definitely having some life altering thoughts again after getting back into the church...........

G'nite.
ben

Sunday 11/20/2011

I have definitely come to the firm decision that no matter how much of a pain in the @$$ it is going to be to do it, I am going to replace most of the plastic "fixtures" on the roof of that trailer and the other things up there I am going to scrape off all the old sealant down to the bare metal including using a wire wheel and get it all freshly sealed, new plastic and not have to worry about leaks.

I mean, it's going to be parked on a piece of property up in the mountains, it wouldn't be very smart or rational to take the thing up there with some leap of faith hoping it won't leak. The problem is simple.  There are giant cracks in the sealant where whoever has had this thing before has attempted to put fresh sealant on top of old sealant.  It doesn't work.  You HAVE top take the old sealant down to the metal if you want any kind of permanent fix.  That is my experience with it, anyway.  I'm going to have to stop at Harbor Tools today and see if they have an electric thing to put a wire wheel on there.  Fortunately, the roof on that trailer is a solid piece of metal from front to back.  The only places that it can leak are where the vents are.  It eliminates the guess work of what older trailers are made up of - sections of metal with seams.  The seams, of course, can leak.

I have my work cut out for me, but there is plenty of time.  I do intend on getting with it, though, I am not going to put it off any longer.  Getting up there yesterday and getting a good start on it motivated me to just keep right on going with it until it's done so I can focus on putting new carpet on the interior.

Church in a bit.  Should be interesting today for a variety of reasons that - I am not going to go into in full detail here and don't really have time right now to do that anyway.

Whatever the case, I am hopeful things will start going a bit better in the church department and perhaps even start building some relationships within the church - though that is certainly not a guaranteed event and I am just taking this one step at a time.

Whatever the case, I have some things to get done before church and therefore?

I bid you a happy Sunday.

ben