Nope, definitely not in the mountains this weekend.  On a normal weekend, I have decided that if I am going to go up there, it's leave asap after work on Friday and get up there so I can spend 2 nights up there and leave on Sunday morning early enough to hit church at 10:00am.

I haven't actually tried that yet, but soon enough I will.  I've also asked for 5th and 6th of July off making it a 5 day off "weekend" starting on the 4th of July.

I was called yesterday by a survey company that I have participated in before, they are paying $85 to participate in a 2 hour, small group.  That's $42.50 per hour. The location is about a mile and a half away.  Yup, convenient enough and I"ve done it several times in the past.  This time, they said it would be more writing than anything and that it was going to be a very small group and that attendance was highly critical.

The issue?  Water conservation, as far as I could tell.  I thought I had answered some of their questions "wrong", but apparently not.  Apparently, they want people that do know about what's going on with the state's water supply but do not want people that would consider themselves environmentalists.  Anyway, I'm good on that one, that pays for 2 trips up to the mountains in fuel, thanks.

Gilbert - the 22 year old tenant - comes home about an hour ago.  He did not look well.  He had one of his girlfriends with him.  He looked at me and informed me that his day was not going as planned. Oh? What's going on?

He was driving down the road, swung his car one direction to avoid hitting a dog, steered back the other direction but over-corrected and ended up in a ditch.  He had the car towed here and it's sitting in front of my house.  I sympathized with him - whatta drag - he went into his bedroom and I went out front.  Front end of that car is totally trashed.  The wheels are smashed up against the fender-wells, that's thousands of dollars worth of damage right there, at least.

This must be dog day.  My dog picks up a toy dog at Petsmart and treats it like it's a stuffed doll, biting into it and here is Gilbert trying not to kill a dog and trashing his car in the process.  I love dogs, oh yes I do, but if I knew that the end of the line in attempting to not hit a dog was going to be a totally trashed car?  The dog would lose.  Okay, I have to admit, if it was one of MY dogs I was about to hit? I would run the car into a tree first.

I haven't had a chance to ask Gilbert yet if he has full coverage insurance on it.  Mark started arguing that "minor" damage is covered by minimum liability insurance. No, sir, it does not.  Minimum liability insurance only covers damage to the other driver's car if you are at fault, it usually covers nothing on your car.  Well, it doesn't matter who is at fault, it doesn't cover it.  It just keeps you out of debtor's prison if you happen to run into a car and totally trash it.  Of course, modern cars?  Doesn't take much to trash them nowadays.

It's not like they're built out of any amount of metal anymore.

Weekends.  They disappear quickly.  I know it's only Saturday but it's already 5:00 pm and it seems like the day has vanished.  Perhaps it's just getting stuff done around here all day long, but it goes way too fast.

Later.

ben