I've decided neither of my more cherished holidays will be spent with family  If family wants to bicker and fight, let them, I'm just going to come in between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I won't see either of my brothers and that works for me.  I asked my manager if I can have Christmas off this year - citing the fact that I spent last Christmas in Defiance, Ohio, where nothing but a few hotels were open, including anywhere to get anything to eat in freezing temperatures.  She said OK.  Cool and then asked about getting off sometime next month - Ok. 

So that's my quest this morning - since I'm off for a 4th day in a row - to find whatever the cheapest airfare is from here to there.  Likely not going to go the Dallas route, when you factor in gas to drive there and back and high cost of parking, there isn't much savings over just leaving from two towns over here where parking is free and relatively short drive.  So far the $350 to $380 range is what I'm finding.  Mother has already promised me the use of one of her vehicles basically saying she wants me to stay with her the time I'm there.  All well and fine, but I have an agenda that I didn't get done last time that I definitely want to this time. 

The trip will intentionally contain an entire weekend so I can visit with some friends that are only available during that time, which I wasn't able to visit last trip, almost a year ago.  I never gave up on an overseas trip, I just put it on hold, btw, cause' I bought that boat. And after my solo trip around the lake 2 days ago, I can safely say that I'm not having any buyer's remorse.  It's still at the mechanic, more bugs to work out, hopefully we get that resolved soon. There is a leak, neither of us can find it.  He filled the entire hull up with water after I left it there and said nothing was coming out anywhere.  Water's going in but not coming back out? Weird.  He said he was going to hoist the boat off of the trailer to see if there is perhaps an opening where the boat sits on those carpet covered slats. 

As for the missing brownsville trip on my previous pay?  If I hadn't tracked down the problem, I would have never gotten paid that money.  $1,261.93 of money that would have just poof - disappeared.  They flat out paid the wrong driver for my trip.  I was certain of it after I saw the settlement sheet.  It had my detention pay, it had my breakdown pay in Harlingen for the trailer that came up from mexico that had been placed out of service, it listed my layover  - 10 hour break - in Combes, TExas where I had decided to spend the  night (not far from the facility where the trailer was repaired) it allllll matched up including the trip number.  It's a farce that I have to keep track of every single, payable movement I do with the company, but if I don't do it, I get screwed over.  This has been going on since I started at the company, yes, but it got worse after we merged to the giant corporation. 

Stuff pisses me off, really. Why can't these people get their shit together?  Why do drivers have to do their own investigations to find out what's happening to pay? Why are they missing ENTIRE runs - which has happened several times in the past - or now, mixing my pay up with someone else? And omitting entire sums of detention pay.  I call that pure and utter incompetence.  Ugh. This stuff really gets me fired up.  I've spent 2 days on this now, it's just disconcerting that if I hadn't of found this, not only would I have gotten shafted for that pay, another driver would have gotten away with taking it from me! Not that the other driver had anything to do with this, but he should have realized that he had received far more pay than he should have on the last paycheck.  I'm expecting that this money is added to my pay this week.  And now, this week's pay looks short as well. The pay is on one web site, the settlement sheets are sent via email. Those sheets have not been sent  yet - the get sent to me sometime today, I'll be researching that immediately. 

So what are they going to do with this other driver who got my pay?  I'll tell ya: they'll take it out of his next paycheck.  Which will probably piss the other driver off, but that's the breaks.  You shouldn't expect to keep pay that you didn't earn, I know I wouldn't. 

Soooo tempting.  Southwest airlines has round trip airfare for $200!  For the dates I want!  But it means driving to dallas.  Now that  is savings I would consider driving to dallas for.  Prepurchase cheaper parking - namely at a local hotel that has paid parking for the airport even if you don't stay at the hotel and has a free shuttle to the airport.  2 checked bags free.  American has no checked bags free and is rather pricey on their checked bags, I think the first one is $25 - each way. So that's $50 saved plus $150 minimum saved on the flight, that's $200 savings and then remove from that savings fuel to the airport and the parking fees.  Further tempting the deal, it has departure times for both flights that I am very much in love with.  Not red eye flights, either.  I pretty much resolved a long time ago I wouldn't do any more red eyes unless the deal was just too great to pass up or some sort of emergency that I needed to fly out for. 

I'm going to sit here and look for more deals, tho. I'd far prefer not to drive to Dallas Loves Field or DFW, which is even further away. 

Unfortunately for the other driver, I just received word: My missing pay will be added to tomorrow's paycheck and his paycheck will have that entire amount deducted from it.

Uggh. A trip to Walmart today.  I'm completely out of dog food and it's the only place with the large bags of Iams around here and at reasonable prices.  Really do NOT like going to Walmart!

G'day.