Monday - evening

Another almost 3 hour offload.  Temp of product was at 50 degrees. Anything under 60 is going to take a long, long time to get out of the tanker.  The other driver was talking to the people at the production plant, they are going to try to see if they can start keeping the temp around 65 degrees.  This would be fantastic. At 65 degrees, I can unload that thing in less than an hour, maybe even 45 minutes.  

I dunno, but I just ended up going to sleep for quite a while after I was sure the pressure was good.  

I was in a fog this morning when I woke up and I could have slept for several more hours.  It's this habit I got into during the year off where as if I didn't sleep well that night, ie: awake for hours in the middle of the night, I would just sleep in until I was rested.  I tend to sleep much better in the mornings than at night, amazingly enough.  

So, being forced up at 5:30 am every day regardless? Well, you'd think after enough sleepless night your body would force you to sleep well at least once in a while. Yes, true but too many nights where I'm awake for 2 hours and nothing I can do about it.  

Anyway, I have the late load tomorrow morning and this time? I'm glad.  I won't have to get out of bed until 8:00 am, leave the house by 8:30, leave the yard by 8:50.  Hmm, that isn't early enough, strike that. 

8:00.  Leave the yard by 8.  Umm, no.  Let me think here, lol.  Yes, I think if I leave by 8 that should work out okay.  Or if I am sleepy just sleep in. I'm just trying to to end up getting home too terribly late.  The appointment time isn't until noon, but the other driver said he'd be at the plant loading by around 9:00 am.  I am working off of that.  Give that an hour load time, if I leave here by 8, I'm in nacogodches by 9:30, half an hour at the washout, 35 minutes over to the plant and I'm at the plant by around 10:40 am-ish.  

That's good enough. If I'm out of there by the latest noon I'm home before 2 pm.  So, if I were home by 3 that wouldn't hurt my feelings either.  It's the idea of getting up later and perhaps getting better sleep that is appealing after all of these days in a row getting up at 5:30 am.  

The dispatcher asked me today via text message: Hey Ben, are you working this weekend?  I thought, are you kidding? I'll have been working 14 days in a row and you want me to just continue on with working?  I flatly but nicely said no thanks, I will have been working 2 straight weeks, have missed church twice, I need a couple days  of down time.  Oh forget it, I was just reminded that this weekend you should have off. Yes, the manager knows what I want in terms of time off. At least every other weekend.  The other driver won't be working either, I guess their local drivers or OTR drivers will be taking care of it. 

I'm not sure I plan on doing anything this coming weekend. I just want the time off.  She loaded my table up with 3 more loads for next weekend beyond the 2 loads that were already in there for this week.  4 more days and I get a couple of days off.  

I just got a call from someone needing to stay for 3 weeks.  I offered him the monthly deal and he took it. Weekly rate he would have paid $50 more for 3 weeks over the monthly rate for 4.  The nature of the business, people coming and going and trying to stay on top of it and keep the lots filled up.  I've got the pull through lot loaded up for 11 days out of the next 23 days, I'd like to get some more in there, tho just 4 more days and it takes care of an entire month of lot rent for a month.  

Well, I'm beat.  I did see in the news today that an appeals court lowered Trump's bond money to 175m.  That's also ridiculous but not near as unbelievable as $450m.  They say he defrauded businesses by overvaluing his properties.  I listened to the real estate experts - lots of them - explaining the erroneous factors the judge used to come to his conclusions and the judge heard this stuff in his court room.  This judge cannot seriously be doing what he thinks is the "right thing" here.  I just think he's another Trump hater and using the bench to exact pain from a political opponent.  Yes, I do think these people are pawns for the Democrat party.  Especially this Leticia whatever her name is person.  

They must be terribly afraid that Trump is going to win the next election, they absurd declarations and accusations about another Trump presidency coming from them are surreal.  It's like living on a different planet, where do these people come up with this stuff?  

April 8th draws near. We will have a partial eclipse here, I am informed, to see the full eclipse we would have to drive about 60 miles down the road. No thank you.  Partial is fine, I am more interested in the 2 tailed comet that will be flying by.  No, it's not 2 tailed, apparently 2 horned. Well whatever, that would interest me far more than an eclipse.

The coach. Well, the glue traps are catching massive amounts of.....cockroaches.  So not only were they living with rats in their filth, they also invited in a cockroach infestation.  I'll be bombing the thing yet again soon.  I keep forgetting to do it for it's just not a priority right now. It's going to need work and money dumped into it.  In fact, I'm considering ripping the kitchen counter out with the sink and installing a regular house version that would look much nicer than the thing in there plus give me access to clean out the infestation underneath it and generally have a nicer unit.   

That wouldn't cost that much money, I see those things listed all the time on the cheap.  Same with the shower, would like to tear that out and put in a nicer thing, that one is old and ugly.  Basically, redo some of it, not all of it and have a nice unit I could rent out.  I might just save up the money and pay James to do it for me.  He does good work.  He gives attention to detail and doesn't try to bypass necessary steps to make sure the finished product is not only going to look good but is also going to work correctly.  He'll do stuff like that for pay and I don't mind paying him if I have the money to do so.  The thing has a brand new ac unit on it, I'm kinda stuck with it now.  

Well, besides just taking that ac off of there and getting rid of the thing, but who is going to want a rat infested, cockroach filled thing? Well, if I can get all of that out of there, no one need know.  Just clean it all up and start over.  New carpet, a good used sofa couch, maybe re-do the kitchen and bathroom, nothing terribly major.  

It's going to be a project and since funds are tight, that isn't a project I am going to start right now, hence no hurry.  Well, I want that bug infestation and rats out of there now, not later. Rats can chew up wiring, tear things apart, they are very destructive little ugly creatures.  Throw out the mattress she undoubtedly destroyed, I'm not going to bother keeping things that people that live like that were using.  It's probably disgusting, I wouldn't sleep on it and I don't want to think about having others  sleep on it either.  

Look, if my next paycheck is as good as it should be per the mananger's statement about my pay-per-load, I will no long have financial issues. Well, maybe at first I will trying to get caught up but after that I will be good to go.  Money will be saved to invest in this business.  I do not have stocks or 401k anymore, I got out of that to pay for the RV park.  

Oh, the tractor.  Haven't gotten into that yet.  Just depends on monthly payments, really. Need, yes, getting one? No idea yet.  I did qualify for a small, $6,000 business loan but the payback is a grand a month.  Yup, they take $250 or something near that every week for 6 months.  That's a really short payback scenario and I don't know if I can do that.  But, I could get a used tractor and hopefully some attachments with that kind of loan and the good news is the payments don't go on forever.  

Who knows, but the driveway is quickly getting back into horrid condition yet again, it's been raining all over again and no, I didn't put a drain pipe across the driveway. I haven't had time for it and frankly, it's likely going to take a mini-ex to do it. Mini-ex rental is ..... near $500 per day : )

Now, I could do the driveway crossovers and I could dig the trench from lot 1 to the shed with it, thereby getting some use out of it other than just a 25 foot wide crossover.  In fact, I could do a couple of places on the driveway with drainage and get it draining from where the trench on the side of the driveway ends and where it really needs a good sized pipe to drain into a culvert, through the pipe and over to the other side.  The only good thing about a rental like that, is, it would be a lot cheaper for me to do it that way than to pay someone to do it for me. Trust me, that would probably cost a couple of grand at least to pay a contractor to come in and do it for me.  

Let me just say here that I will be needing to do that trench from lot 1 to the shed pretty soon.  By the end of April anyway, before the heat starts hitting. That or do away with "alternate sites".  Nope.  They make me money, I have a long term back there now and he says he's going to be there awhile and no, he doesn't want a regular lot now that he's back there.  I know because I offered it to him.  This is all in reference to the lack of sufficient power getting pumped back there from current setup to provide for both the shed and 2 trailers. I would put the 2 trailers on it's on panel and take it off of the shed power.  

This would eliminate the problem back there when ac units are pumping away all day long in the summer heat.  I already have everything...but...the....trench.  It's about 175 feet of digging, I can tell ya that isn't happening with a shovel.  Not me, no way and no thank you.  I can use a ditch witch, but if I need a mini-ex for the driveway? I'll just get it all prepped and get it all done in one day with the mini instead of a trenching machine.  There are other things I could do with the mini ex as well if I had time left over after doing all of that - tho I doubt there will be time.  I'm pretty good at digging trenches with those things.  I could probably dig out all of what I need in a couple of hours.  But, you have to lay the pipe and back fill it and lay the electrical line and backfill all of that so you add more hours to the process.

Well, I'm done here.  I'm going to go to be around 10:00 pm and set the alarm for 7:30 am  instead of 5:30 am : )

G'nite.