Wednesday, July 7, 2021

 My mother texted me today telling me that my cousin who lives in Australia died yesterday of a massive heart attack.  She was only in her 40's.  It is a sad and tragic loss, for not only wasn't she that old, she also has a son that is less than 10 years old.  Married, I have never spoken to the husband.  My mother said that several people from that side of the family have had heart problems.  It makes me consider going to see a cardiologist to have my heart checked out.  I'm seriously considering seeing if I can make an appointment to see one.  

We were not close, no.  But we did speak occasionally on Facebook.  I was sent an email address for the man so I sent a letter of condolence and prayer for him and his son in this time of grief and anguish.  It was short, I didn't know what else to say.  I feel like so many of our namesake have been dying off in the last several years, there aren't a lot of us left.  

I decided not to post anything about it - yet anyway - on my Facebook for as I said, I wasn't close to her and I don't want to come off acting like we were best friends or something or just the allusion of putting on some kind of charade. 

 I hope she was saved and I hope she is reunited with her dad in heaven.

I just got home from Oklahoma. I left this morning intent on doing a day trip and getting this over with.  I'll have tomorrow off for sure and I don't know about Friday, but I was almost out of hours so they had to give me a 34 hour reset. This was a one day run.  The only odd thing that happened was the scalemaster in Oklahoma informing me that I was to go back without a trailer.  He explained that they only had one empty up there and they needed that and the one I brought up for shuttling back and forth between a railyard about 40 miles away.  They go through a lot of ethylene.  2 of our truckloads a day plus rail cars that are unloaded into one of our trailers and a guy that lives up there that does the shuttling back and forth.  

News came today from the realtor that the title company had gotten back to her - there are a couple of minor, easily fixable issues the seller has to rectify, otherwise it's all good.  That was really great news.  I asked her if the survey issue had been worked out, she said she had been giving them time to find the field notes but that it's getting to the point in time where they are going to have to order a fresh survey and they will have to pay for it, per the contract.  I'm attempting to patiently wait this thing out.  

Once the property is in my name, I will have a difficult decision to make.  Do I finance the entire park in one fell swoop, or do I piece-meal it together over time as finances afford it?  To make an informed decision, I'll have to get quotes on the power company running the 7,000 volt lines to a transformer and then down to a panel with at least a 400 amp circuit breaker.  That's all they have to do, the rest I can either do myself or pay someone to do it, depending on finances.  The water main tap another company will have to give an estimate and yet another company for the septic installation.  

Once I get those figures, I'll still have to figure out how much the water pipe will cost to plumb the park, sewer line for the septic coming from the individual lots and the electric line running to each pedestal.  On top of that, will be the cost of having the driveways made and the pads, plus the cost of the gravel - I'm currently investigating slag as an option.  

You see, today, I was making the eternal wait in the scale house for my paperwork, an older gentleman - older than me anyways- was discussing something with another driver sitting next to him. I overheard him talking about hauling loads of slag for $400 per load.  I had never heard of slag being used for driveways so I was asking him a lot of questions, he seemed to know what he was talking about.  After that, he started discussing how to build a pond, I was all ears. I won't go into that tonight, I am a bit tired and it's almost midnight.  

The only other thing of interest, at least for me, is that I found a comprehensive website hosted by a man that knows how to wire up an RV park and has diagrams along with pictures posted.  It was what I have been looking for for a while now.  I can figure out how much I will need for all of the electrical stuff and get a ball park estimate. 

The pond thing was interesting. He stated that the water table is unique in our region and that if you dig down to the clay in building a pond, you don't even have to have a water source, the water will seep in from the ground and eventually fill it up.  That explains the numerous ponds I have seen that have no streams running in and out of them.  He also said that if you build a pond, it will eventually fill up with fish without putting any in there.  He stated that birds get fish eggs on their bodies and that some of it will drop into the pond and viola! You have fish.  Yea, I'd stock it to begin with but it was an interesting conversation.  

I can't go on any longer with this post, I am exhausted, and almost 16 hour day is done and I'm going to bed.

G'nite.  

 Friday late-morning Typical morning when there is no work.  It was, I should say, until the new guy called.  "There's nothing wron...