Well, I have Tuesday and Wednesday off after Memorial Day.  Making a 5 day weekend.  I'm just a little unsure about a trip to Phoenix.  Certainly don't want to plan it the way the last one went, where I worked all day, drove 2-1/2 hours to the airport, had a late flight, go there at 1 something am and didn't really arrive at her house until 3 or 4 am.  Yeah that just doesn't work.  The price of airfaire near here is just ridiculous.  Compared to flying out of Dallas it is, anyway.  Shreveport by far the highest.  I just can't justify paying that much money for a flight when I know I can save a lot of money by driving clear to Dallas.  It ain't no fun, but it's pretty much my modus operandi.

I guess I just don't feel like going to Phoenix right now.  I like driving trips for the cost savings, but Phoenix is just too far away for a road trip. Day and a half to get there, day and a half back, 3 days of driving leaves...what for a vacation?  Let me ponder this.  Take off after work on a Friday and start driving.  So, let's say leave at 4 pm.  Drive until around midnight, get a cheap hotel.  6 hours of driving at 75 mph 450 miiles.  Get up the next morning and leave around 8 am.  It's 1252 miles from Shreveport to Phoenix.  So there's still 800 miles to go.  Easy 12 hours if you include stops for fuel and bathroom breaks.  So that's 8 pm Saturday night I arrive (if it worked out that way and assuming no problems). An hour of visiting and then go to bed.  So, have Sunday through Friday to visit.

That's 2,500 miles of driving plus any incidental driving - in an old car, btw, that thing is a 2004 model.  Still running quite strong.  No leaks, no smoke, runs great really.  Interior fallinga part but I don't give that much importance in considering the fact the car is paid off and I have been driving it for a long time since I paid it off, 3 years I believe now.  Anyway, so $200 worth of fuel for such a trip, add $30 to be safe.  Now, to drive to Dallas from Shreverport I think is 175 miles.  It's 3 hours - well it's likely less for me.  I drive the 37 miles home from work in about 32 minutes.  Less than a tank of fuel to get there and back, anyway.  $168 round trip Southwest Airlines.  Spirit has cheaper but they charge for carryon or checked luggage which makes their price - not as good as SWA. $203 to get to the airport and fly, 30 to park the car for the time gone, and probably 20 each way from airport to mom's house and back (whe won't drive to the airport). $273 total. When you look at that and you compare that to driving plus hotel? It's close to even.

I dunno what I want to do.  Seriously don't. Especially in the middle of this fasting.

Oh, I was looking at my change which is what brought all of this to mind.  I've been saving change for quite a while, I have a large coffee can filled to the brim with quarters, dimes and nickles.  A few pennies but mostly silver.  There's got to be at least $400 in there.  I don't even know if I want to tap that for a vacation of just leave it and start a new coffee can.

Just trying to think of how I would want to pay for a vacation.  I have 90 hours on paycheck being deposited tonight and that should bring me close to what I was getting before the hour cut.  It isn't at 100 and likely never will be again, but the increase in work and subsequent hours at least give me a break to find the right job instead of just taking the best one that comes along in X amount of short period of time.

I have a driving day tomorrow - though I don't know if they are going to throw any orders on the truck or not.  A contractor bought 35,000 feet of pipe almost 2 years ago and ended up only using a couple thousand feet of it.  They bought and paid for it, but they wanted us to take it back.  It's a significant amount of money and it has sat there while everyone tried to figure out what to do, because we weren't going to just eat that kind of hit. A deal was worked out with the supplier to take all that pipe back to his yard and he will try to sell it on consignment.  Well, the pipe is sitting in  dirt field, grass and weeds are growing through it for it has sat there so long and the bundles are broken, making it difficult to load on the truck.  And there is at least 6 loads of it.  I'm apparently doing this alone.  1 load done today, another tomorrow.  It's a nice run especially considering fasting, I don't have to worry about extreme exertion.

Well that's it.  I was going to take a nap earlier but sitting down was good enough.  Was trying to stay awake until bedtime - which is only an hour away now.

Water Fast Day 4

There is one thing I can say with certainty: If I had had to have done too much physical exertion today, I would have to end this fast.  I'm not saying I didn't exert any evergy at my job today, I did, quite a bit actually, but I was out driving as well which pretty much saved me.  I had to load the truck this morning but it wasn't that much material, drive 1 hour 35 minutes to a delivery site - which I only had to unstrap and then drive to a jobsite to pick up pipe that they contractor couldn't use. That part was the physical part.

This post will undoubtedly get hits for some time to come for the water fast part, so here is the TMI part for those that are searching around the web for personal experiences.  Mine hasn't been quite like anyone else's but that only because, I think anyway, I have had to work every day since I started it.  My job consists of driving trucks, yes, but also lifting and moving around heavy parts, palletizing them, shrink wrapping them, loading them onto the truck and strapping it down.

Today.  As with other days (and I forgot to say this yesterday), cold.  Getting cold in any place with AC.  This is a common occurence with people that are fasting, so I'm not worried about that.  Hunger wasn't that bad, really, in fact, today was a little easier than yesterday, albeit I am now home from work and going to do absolutely nothing for the rest of the day.  I haven't had any dizzy spells as others have reported, which is a good thing because if I did, I would have to stop the fast immediately.  My urine is still quite yellow, I would have thought that would have cleared up by now but I'll give that one up for getting the toxins out of my system.

I've had bouts of itching.  No idea on that one and also I am coughing out of the blue, here and there, it goes on for a few minutes and then it stops.  Weak. Definitely weak.  Again, I was lucky to drive the truck more than anything today because that really isn't that difficult.  And the sleep problem that many report.  Actually, I was in a deep sleep last night one someone called me at 11:30 pm and that ruined my sleep for the rest of the night.  Grand Praire Texas?  I didn't even bother to answer the phone and they didn't bother to leave a message.

But it was some pretty strange sleep after that.  I really - I don't know it's hard to explain.  But the sleeplessness or strange sleep is also normal. After having that kind of night worth of sleep I would  have thought I would have been out of it this morning, but to the contrary, I actualy felt pretty good for a couple of hours.  That didn't last, though, I became fatigued.

Now according to eveything I have been reading, day 5 is a "magic day".  That starts for me in an hour from now. It supposedly becomes much easier.  I haven't fasted like this in a couple of decades, I don't really remember.  I have fasted in the last couple of years, but that was a fluid fast - not limited to water only.  The water  only fast is  the most difficult one to do, it is definitely a challenge, but the results for de-toxification are much faster than juice diets.  One plus of the water diet is the you are giving your digestive system a rest.

I'm not going to liie, this has been an extremely difficult journey.  It would have been much easier if I hadn't been working - but - the flipside to that is that you have a lot of idle time to sit and think about - fooooood. That happened to me today, though, anyway.  Like a heightened sense of smell, I was smelling food in the air and couldn't see anything anywhere near for the source.  People talking about food on the radio and videos I was watching.  It didn't tempt me to go find the nearest burger joint, though, but the smell, that was hard to ignore.  The folks where I live are good cooks and they make some delicious smelling meals.....ugh.

I have a bit of a windfall for tomorrow at work: I am driving to the same jobsite I was at today and picking up pipe again.  There's like 30,000 feet  of pipe to move from that place.  But, that means 1 hour 45 minutes to the jobsite, 2 hours to load the truck - it just doesn't work the same at a jobsite where pipe has been sitting as it does going to a manufacturer and having them load you, it takes much longer - 2 hours to the vendor who is going to re-sell it for us and another 1-45 minutes back to the yard.  That's almost 8 hours, which will cash in the day unless there is something to do when I get back to the yard.

End of this one.  Another report tomorrow.