Collected rents, was dragged into a very elongated discussion with 4 people and then left there.  Only to get a phone call shortly after I left that an altercation had occurred with another guest who had come in too fast - according to the dude I had just talked with - and that he had gone over and asked him why he was driving so fast.  That phone conversation went on for a while and then the other guy texted me.

Completely different story.  The man had come over, yelled at him in front of his 4 year old son and was rude and belligerent. 

So who do I believe? Well, the family with the kid are really nice folks.  The man that was allegedly yelling had been drinking and was drinking when I was talking with him.  He offered me a beer, which I turned down.  He wasn't overly drunk but you could tell he was definitely feeling it.  Still, drink enough alcohol and your tones can changes to much louder levels and much more aggressive than you may realize at the time.  

I don't care if they drink.  I do care if they start trouble with people.  I'm thinking to just change the speed limit to 10mph and that will end this problem.  I put 15 on the main driveway because the gas workers have to drive clear to the back of  the driveway which is around 1,500 feet and going that slow was asking too much, I thought anyway.  It would be nice if people would just do the 15 before and after the park area.  

Anyway, that situation has calmed down at least.  I did drive by the dumpster and saw the lights come on the camera.  Not very bright, you'd have to be looking at it to catch it.  Especially since it's away from the dumpster. Did that on purpose so it wouldn't be seen and someone being tipped off to the fact that they are being filmed or worse, steal the camera.  

I also went and got 2 of the large briskets on sale.  $2.00 per pound if you buy $25 worth of other stuff in the store.  $2.00 per pound in this economy for brisket is unheard of. I haven't bought any in a long time because of the price tag that comes along with it.  It's easy to spend $25 in a grocery store nowadays, it wasn't even that much stuff. A 5 pound chub of 73% lean ground beef,  a thing of fabric softener, some frozen creamed spinach and a thing of heavy whipping cream.  No, I'm not eating today, but I will be soon enough.  That creamed spinach looked good and low carb.  

I haven't done any meat smoking in quite a long time, I want to get the smoker fired up and spend half a day smoking a nice half brisket.  I say half cause there is no way we are going to eat a whole one of those.  These things are huge.  And since I'm going to be smoking, I want to get some other cut of meat in there, maybe pork, and smoke that at the same time.  That shoulder roast pork is on extreme sale, I like to call it, when the price of a slab of meat is absurdly low.  You don't see it often but the shoulder roast is also less than 2 bucks a pound.  Seeing that brisket on sale that low was almost shocking. 

It's after 9:00 pm, but James just left for the hospital 30 miles away to get Taylor. They are letting her loose, saying she will have to have some sort of tests done every other day, but doesn't need to be in the hospital for that.  They still haven't determined why her enzymes are high and Taylor said today that the "doctors are confused as to what's going on".  I don't reckon that hearing such a statement coming from doctors is reassuring.  But I'm sure she'll be glad to come home and get into her bed.  

Well that's it.  I'm kind of a bit - antzy? - about these 3 people that might be leaving. If they are, I could fill those lots up with railroad workers.  I hate to go ask them, hey!  Are you leaving?  I heard y'all had an issue with the park, could you tell me what it is so I can try to make things good for y'all?  But I'm not going to do it.  I'll just hope they stay and not have to deal with 3 empty lots.  

Anyway, fun day! Lol. G'nite.  

 So, my aspirations to do more signs were stopped in their tracks with several situations.  First was one of the newer guys that wanted to get into an elongated discussion about how wonderful my park is and how I am "cool as f***".  This guy is older than me, lol.  "I've been in 30 plus RV parks and I can tell you this one is the best one I've ever been in. 

Alright.  He wanted a mirror, I put up a mirror after going to Big Lots and finding one that would suffice.  I don't know how to install mirrors, btw.

After that, the NJ lady informed me she had thrown the dude out and she was on her own now.  Which means, she will need rides to the store/s.  She was desperate for cigarettes so I took her to the nearest convenience store about 2 miles away.  She was also asking me for bottled water last night - there's plenty in the shed, help yourself. 

Now, when I was installing the mirror, I looked into the toilet. That is my habit now, see if anyone blew up in it and if it needs cleaned. It hadn't been blown up in, but the bowl was almost empty of water. Strange, I thought. I flushed the toilet and the water just pooled up. 

Great.  Backed up system. I go outside and the opening for the vent had let out all kinds of poop and pee all over the place. The vent isn't even on the toilet line and it is further up the line from the toilet.  I knew this day was coming. Someone will eventually flush something down the toilet such as feminine napkins or just too much toilet paper at once and clog the system up.  It's why I capped the end of the line but didn't put glue on it. It seals nicely without glue and you actually have to hammer it off with a screwdriver.  

I got it off and of course gallons of disgusting sewer water came out.  No choice in the matter, it had set there a long time without any water being added to it and it still wasn't draining.  Oh well. I went home, got the power snake we now have for the house, went back, stuck the snake in there a good 30 feet and then put the hose in there and turned it on.  After a few minutes, the water started gushing back out of the line.  

Pulled it out and decided to stick the snake in further down the line where one of the sewer outlets is for connecting rv's.  I put it in maybe 3 feet and walaah. It cleared right out.  I turned the hose on and let it run awhile.  I wanted to make sure it would get to where the laundry water enters the line, after that, it gets flooded with water and not very likely to back up.  

It was hot, I was sweating and I had that junk on my fingers.  Cleaned myself off, cleaned off the snake and put it back into it's holder, took it home and that was that.  

That was it. All of that and phone calls ate up the day.  Not that I started early, not after last night and being awake all night.  I feel oddly fine right now. I say it that way because I am operating on maybe 3 or 4 hours of sleep at most? Not even that much.  I'm sure - or hoping anyway - that it will hit me sooner or later and then I'll go to bed.  

I have to say that I almost didn't clean out that line. I was so tired and I knew it was going to wear me out from being fatigued already and the heat. But, it's not a good thing to have tenants wanting to come in taking showers and using the toilet and finding out everything is backing up.  It's a good way to lose people.  

I also lost a goodly amount of railroad workers.  I don't have 5 or 6 lots available, sorry.  They wanted to move in for "some time" - must be doing upgrades somewhere - but I couldn't accommodate them as much as I wanted to. They all want to stay at the same park. Not going to be me, I won't have 5 spaces available until next month.  I do have a lady that's called me several times now wanting to move in at the first of the month. Well, she sounds like she does.  This isn't a worker, this is a person that wants to live there.  If they're decent people with decent looking trailers, I'd far rather have some of them in there.  They aren't leaving in a month, 2 months, whatever.  

It still sucked losing all of that potential income knowing that I have at least 2 people leaving next month sometime. Oh well.  

I got no applications in today considering the day filled up quickly, most of what I encountered was not planned.  One of the new guys quit his job, he's 60.  He stopped me today while I was sitting at the trash can looking at the situation.  He said no way that thing is filling up with just the people in the park. He said he would keep an eye out. Yup, my camera will keep a 24 hour eye out as well.  At least I'm not thinking wrong that that thing is full that quickly. 2 days after it was emptied it was already full again? 

No.  Just no.  I'm not the local landfill, pay for your own trash to be taken.  It just looks so unsightly driving into the park and there is this dumpster with bags of trash snow-coned out the top of it.  

Anyway, it just dawned on me that if those 3 leave the end of the month, I could fill them back up immediately with these railroad workers.  But, I hope they don't leave.  They've been there quite a while and are decent people that don't really bother anyone else.  

Tuesday - late morning

Well, that was short-lived at least. The power went out 45 minutes ago and came back on maybe 10 ago.  I was dreading the thought of having to go get the generator and go through all of that stuff to get things powered up.  The power has been going out at various places around town in recent days without explanation.  There have been no storms or high winds.  

I was up most of the night with the runs.  Came out of the blue and even after taking medicine didn't stop until around 5 am.  Yes, I feel like hell.  Well actually, now that I was forced out of bed with the power outage and had a cup of black coffee, I'm feeling better.  

Because of the events yesterday with Taylor going to the hospital, I did not continue with the fast yesterday.  I made it all the way until around 7:00 pm and then we - the boys, James and I - went out to eat over there.  It was James birthday and obviously not having a fun day with his wife going through what he's going through, I decided I will forgo fasting and just start again - today.  Which I am.  I'm highly motivated to do at least 3 days.  If I can last longer, all the better.  

I just watched some footage of "No Comment Biden" over in Hawaii where the devastation occurred.  There were people that showed up to protest.  People over there are disgusted by his lack of response and apparently being inconvenienced to stop his vacation to go over and attempt to console the citizens. He left where he was vacationing, flew over there, did his stupidity and then immediately went back to vacationing!  

His empathy was when his house was partially burned and he "lost a corvette and a cat".  People have died over there, swaths of homes are completely destroyed - businesses too - people's lives are destroyed and he's talking about losing a kitchen or making a stupid joke about the heat on the ground.  I would like to venture to guess that this man will go down in history as the worst president in history, all of US history since the beginning.  

I can't go on about him and the WH too long, it's too aggravating.  They don't care about citizens, they care about their agendas. That's probably true of most politicians but this dude here goes far beyond just an agenda.  

Anyway, I've got more signs to switch from the metal stakes to the wood stakes and I might as well get some of that done today. The ground is so hard from lack of rain, it's pretty crazy trying to dig holes into it.  But it needs to be done.  I've also got a "Video Surveillance" sign I want to put up near the front of the driveway.  I installed my Texas warning sign yesterday as well. It is required to have posted in a highly visible area if you want the protection it offers, which is basically that if someone has an accident by their own doings in the park, they can't hold the park liable.

People fall, break a leg, blame the park and then try to sue for vast amounts of money.  This new law just came out in June, I found out about it several weeks ago, just now getting the sign into the ground. It doesn't protect from Park negligence, of course, but if you step out of your trailer, down the steps and fall and hurt yourself, that's on you.  I notified others in the area about the new law as well, if they want the protection, they must post the sign.  People generally don't care about such signs, they see it, mostly ignore it and move on. Or read it and brush it off and forget about it. 

People also generally don't sue other people or entities for things they did that caused harm to themselves, but there is definitely a contingency of the public that feels that anything that happens to them? Sue!  That is the type of person that I am protecting myself against, who knows if anyone in the park currently is like that. 

Ok, I just remembered I need to go to Big Lots and get that mirror. I can't please everyone, but a bathroom should have a mirror in it, so a mirror they will get.  I'm pretty much done with spending money on that place, just have spent spent spent. I'm really watching the finances closely, have been for a while.  

I've got more applications to fill out, but I guess I am going to get lucky to have anything coming my way that is decent what with a "preventable" accident on there that is still pretty fresh.  It's not the end of the world for many companies, but there are the more "premiere" companies that want a spotless record for the past 3 years.  It's not going to stop me from filling out applications, I just won't bother with the ones that spell out up front that you must have a spotless record.  

Interestingly, a lot of these big companies that are mostly OTR also have "the final mile" trucks running as well. This is getting the product to it's final destination and they run day cabs in local routes to accomplish that feat.  I've seen them around here, most of them are operating out of the DFW area, I assume those drivers live over there and are dispatched to deliver over here.  I'm not moving DFW area, but I do put in apps for those jobs as well.

I don't have to have another hazmat tanker job if I can't get one, tho the job I have lined up is tanker, I never did ask if it's hazmat.  From the sound of it, it is.  One thing is certain: I do not miss the previous job.  At all.  Maybe the paychecks, but everything else sucked about that place. I am still in a driver's group that work for that company, they are always detailing new things the company is implementing to make life even more difficult.  Besides constantly fighting with the payroll department over "lost" runs, detention pay and attempting to get it, dispatchers that have no clue about the trucking industry and a company itself that is owned by investors that have no interest in trucking, just in making a profit and cutting any benefits they can with drivers, I also despised some of the runs.  

And most of these big hazmat tanker companies now have inward facing cameras with microphones.  I know because I ask before I bother applying.  There is a company that is based out of a town about 45 miles from here that I was considering, until I found that out.  They aren't local anyway, it's all OTR stuff but I was considering it just for the fact of the money.  Sorry, but if you've never had that kind of scrutiny, you won't know what I'm talking about.  It's easy to say just eat it and make the money until you have some know-nothing sending you emails or contacting your manager about whatever behavior you are engaging in that they find unacceptable that they see or hear you doing on a damn microphone or camera. 

I never had that happen, I blocked the microphone and covered the camera up when they installed it and flat out told my manager I had done it.  But I wouldn't have taken kindly to the kind of treatment I hear other drivers getting from their companies.  They are afraid of getting fired so they just take it. I would have pushed back and likely gotten fired anyway.  Wear it as a badge of honor and move on with my life. 

I really can't do OTR and try to run a park, that's the bottom line there. I need to be home daily or at least frequently to be able to deal with park stuff.  It's why I'm willing to take a pay cut to get the privilege of being home more often.   I can take phone calls in a truck which is a lot of what I have to do, it's all bluetooth.  You don't touch the phone, you just tell Siri to do whatever you  want it to do.  Message this person, answer that call, call this person, dial that number.  You can have it hooked up to the truck speakers and most trucks have a bluetooth microphone in them you can talk without having to try to hear the phone speaker.  

When we were shooting off guns the other day, Taylor's dad commented about how nice it would be to build a house "down in here". Yes, it would, I said, it would be pricey to get electricity back here tho.  I have to say, tho, if I ever get phase 2 of the park done, that power line will be near the back of the front of the property.   They can stretch a line clear over that easement and not have power poles touching any part of it.  

I would absolutely love to have a cabin back there.  Another septic system and running water line wouldn't be that bad, just getting the power company to do it's thing.  And of course, the cost of building it.  It's sort of a goal.  Maybe.  That's something beyond adding spaces to the park.  My park has to be much larger to support me, that takes precedence over pretty much anything right now as far as spending money goes.  I need double if not triple the revenue coming in the park to live comfortably, save some money and have money for the things I want, not just need. Get me 40-50 lots in there, keep it mostly full and that is possible. 

Well, not going to get too carried away right now with that. Gotta focus on what needs to be done right now, which is go to the park, get more signs fixed up, put in more applications, start the fast again - which is started -  check the camera, make sure no-one did anything with it.  I remembered last night that some red lights come on when it's taking pics or videos.  At night, I don't know how much that's going to stand out. The tree it's on is to the right and back away from the dumpster. Someone looking at the dumpster wouldn't see those lights coming on behind them.  I'll need to go over tonight and see how much it sticks out. That camera wasn't cheap and I don't want it stolen.  

If it is stolen, I'm going to be a very unhappy camper and it will thrust me into the "now I'm going to do whatever it takes to find out who's doing this stuff" mode.  I can only imagine people are just dumping bags of trash on the ground now that the thing is overflowing, they aren't emptying it until tomorrow morning.  I may be forced to get a larger dumpster if I can get this under control.  Much more expensive.  Stuff I can't afford right now.  

It's that or move the thing to the park.  Some people think they want that.  Yea, until you get all the flies and stench that comes with rotting trash, especially in this heat.  It would solve this problem, it would create more.  It also looks bad. Dumpsters aren't exactly eye-appealing in nature.  Where would I put it? Probably by the shed.  Would the refuse company drive back there? Probably, everything is big enough to accommodate it. 

Well, time to get with it.