Friday - 7:30 am

I unceremoniously knocked on the door.  A man answered. I think I know who he is, but I have never met him before.  He comes out after several minutes, they were all sleeping.  We're talking 10:00 am, so I don't really have a problem with my asking to speak with them.  It's Allen's son, nice guy, probably in his 30's I'm guessing, no shirt on, but said are you B? Yes. I finally get to meet you!

I haven't been hiding myself, I thought, I'm here almost every single day.   I mean, they can do whatever they want, I just know I want minimum amount of hours done in a month to consider the free rent setup.  And that includes mowing.  In fact, if they did nothing else, the mowing is top priority.  They did fix the mower again.  This time it was a linkage for the steering that broke, I ordered the new parts and they eventually installed them.  Allen isn't coming back until next weekend, he'll have been gone quite a while and one wonders if the man is going to want to do anything.  

Anyway, I took the man over to the freshly parked boat of which he started to uncouple the hitch rigth away. Well that's a good sign, I thought.  Seemed to be a pretty intelligent person, went to school for boat mechanics and said that he's been fixing everything but boats since he got out.  Well, here's a boat! And it needs work. I suppose I should back up and say yes, we got the boat out of it's parking place. James helped out, thankfully, there was a lot to move.  

I filled the tires up, still in good shape they just had been sitting for quite a while, drove it over there, backed it in behind their trailer - lots of room back there, parked it as much out of sight as possible and that was that.  I was there probably 3 hours.  I showed him all the things that need installed/fixed and then the next door neighbor came out. Another cool dude with a good head on his shoulders, his boat was parked out there s well. Much nicer thing than mine, but I'm not complaining.  Mine isn't horrible, it just needs that engine working properly.  

Well, the neighbor is taking his boat to the ocean somewhere near Corpus Cristi, he tried to move the engine up - it has a tilt motor and a motor that moves it straight up or down.  The one moving it up and down? Wasn't working. They spent 2 hours trying to figure it out and eventually got to a relay in the engine area.  He also gave me a $350 battery.  Yup, I didn't ask for it, he said he replaced it with a new one thinking it was bad, only to find out the problem the boat was experiencing was not battery related and it's fully charged and holding a charge.

I wasn't going to turn it down lol.  It was hot out there. In terms of extremely high humidity. It's the stand-there-and-sweat type of sauna style.  I had had enough after 3 hours and everyone else was heading inside as well. C'ya!  The first order of business on that boat is to clean it, it's really quite dirty. 

As for the junk trailer? Supposed it's gone.  I dunno, I'll find out when I go over there in a while, I have to work today but it's the second load unfortunately.  I saw yet another ad in the local gossip group, this time it was specifying that they need someone that can pull a 5th wheel and they had numerous replies.  On one of them, the lady - who is the daughter of the man living in the other trailer - told everyone that she had it covered now, thank you!  

Yes, thank you.  Get that pile of trash off of my property. I do hope whoever hauled it was successful, it's missing an entire axle worth of wheels and tires.  A cop sees that and I can imagine them thinking, what the h*** is this? I was worried about pulling my boat over there and the tires on my trailer are in new condition.  They have hardly been used at all since I replaced them and they don't look dry rotted.  

Load today, deliver tomorrow and then Sunday off and then?  I assume I'm working for a while without stopping.  I wish I could leave right now.....I'd get down to the wash and that would be taken care of but then I'd get to the plant and I'd be sitting there for at least an hour and a half if not longer. 

Making a payment for the mortgage online, the lender has a statement saying my home is worth $149,000, lmao.  Zillow says it's worth $312,000.  So which one is true? Neither, probably. It's worth far more than 149k, but is it worth the 312k zillow says it's worth?  Zillow range is 275 to 344 so I guess they take the median amount.  I just find it humorous that the bank comes up with a number that is far below what would be considered market value, especially in that market where there are few houses available for sale than there are buyers wanting to get into a house.

However, the current analysis I've read is that housing prices are so high now, it's pricing people out of the market for first time home buyers.  I feel their pain. I was in my 30's before I finally bought a pile of junk mobile home, I got it because it was on it's own property and not in an HOA. I fixed it up and then..it burned down.  It now has a beautiful manufactured home on it, it needs some stuff done to it but it's in good shape.  The neighborhood isn't the greatest, but my property is well taken care of.  I would really like to get rid of it tho.  Water conservation efforts have ramped up to the point you are allowed X amount of water per month (I don't remember what it is) and if you go over that, you are penalized along with the regular bill.

Meanwhile, they keep building more houses in the region - the Phoenix metro area is a sprawling layout of a lot of smaller towns surrounding it and it's probably 100 miles worth of cities from the furthest east point to the furthest west point.  So, how do you justify building more housing without enough water supply to cover it? I have no idea.  The area is still in a drought and has been seemingly forever.  They have been creative in building plants to treat waste water and reuse it for the hundreds of golf courses, landscaping along city streets and even cooling the nuclear power plant.  But once it gets to the point you are water rationing, what is the rationale of also approving more housing construction permits?  I don't get it.  

Anyway, a typical water bill is around $225 now. 

There.  While I was thinking of it, just ordered another T Mobile gateway device to be delivered to the house in a couple of days.  The last one they sent, the thing didn't have a sim card and T Mobile refused to send one without me being able to receive a text message on a Tmobile powered device, which I didn't have at the time. No problem now, although they aren't supposed to be sending out those devices without the sim card to begin with.  My internet bill over there is around $225 per month, it's outrageous.  This thing will cost $60 a month and there we go, another huge bill being shrunk down to a more acceptable amount. 

My battle with Tower Loan? No idea.  I sent a message to them on their form and haven't heard back. Shocking.