That was it. My manager had my name on her pad, scratched it off without actually giving me a load to haul anywhere.  She called me this morning apologizing profusely.  Basically, it's 5 days off again.  She actually went into work - on a weekend - to find out what she had done.  I mean, what am I supposed to do? Bitch and moan about it? I just said I forgive you this time and chuckled.  I could make a huge issue out of it, but I think that now that this has happened, she probably won't do it again.  Good enough.  Of course, I could have had a good 2 or 3 day run out of those 5 days at least.......2 paychecks from now is going to not be so great. 

But, that sent me on a tizzy again looking for cheap airfare to Phoenix and it simply doesn't exist.  not like the "good ole days" when you could look up last minute air fare, airlines trying to sell out planes, and find the deals.  And yes, I checked all kinds of sites, the ones I have always used and some that I haven't.  $355 round trip from Dallas was the cheapest thing going, even with Spirit red eye flights.  Further searching revealed cheaper, red eyes that would have me in Phoenix for 24 hours and flying late at night. It's not really worth going over there without hitting at least one weekend day to visit friends on their weekend off.

Moving on and attempting to get that notion out of my head, I have today, tomorrow and Monday off now.  Do I take vacation hours? Or just eat it?  I dunno. 

But if I'm not going anywhere, productive use of the time is warranted.  There is a large amount of yard work that needs to be done.  I got a very good start on it a few weekends ago, but a lot of driving since then hasn't given me any time to further the activities.  Front yard needs totally raked up, back yard needs mowed and partially raked.  However, the next door neighbor - up from us - we're on a hill - never cleans their back yard and cleaning up the concrete over there is like a waste of time.  You clean it nice and then rain comes and washes all their s*** onto our property.  Just like it was before you cleaned it all up.  I was thinking of putting flashing that we have left over along the bottom of the fence line to stop the flow of their leaves, twigs, dirt and whatever else, but I suspect that would be a waste of time as well.