Thursday - 9:00 am

Yup, slept in.  Why not.  I haven't made any decisions about upgrades yet so I don't have a lot to do over there. The park hosts have gotten their act together, even if temporarily, that usually happens when the mom shows up and tells them what to do and get it done now, thanks.  She can't do any work but she can boss those kids around. I take it back, kid (32 year old) - the other one is in jail for some drug charges or something from the past.  

I also called the state of Texas just now before starting to write this, they were threatening to take away my franchise/business license.  Why? Because, I was told on the phone, I had put in the wrong year. Well wasn't it for 2023? I asked...yes, but you have to put 2024 on it.  That literally makes no sense to me whatsoever.  Anyway, she sent me a link to efile, I was able to bring up the correct form, it autofilled, she looked at it after I clicked on continue which sent it into their system and walaah. No more hassles with that.  

At least I got something done and probably why I didn't sleep well last night, I kept waking up thinking about it and how I was going to call today and resolve this issue, if possible.  

Actually, I intend on going over and spending a few hours on the tractor.  I want to get some more gravel from the rear and fill in some holes up front on the driveway and also see if the thing will dig into the mounds and start removing those hills formed after burning down the forest.  

I think I will go to Lowe's and price out the materials to build a covered parking setup.  Specifically, I want to know the various prices of roofing I can put up, looking for the cheapest that still looks decent.  It is highly likely I will press the GO! button in my brain on building a covered lot and get with it.  I will build the first one 30 feet long by probably 12 to 14 feet wide, depending on material costs.  I'm figured around a grand to build one but that really depends on the roofing costs.  

Oh and I'm going to take the pickup to the car wash, wash it and vacuum it out.  Vacuuming being the operative word.  Dog hair in the back seat, it's been there a long time from a dog that is no longer among the living.  So yes, I do have an agenda today, I just didn't feel like getting up early was necessary and especially since I had troubled sleep last night.  

La Quinta refunded my money for the night's stay over there.  Although that's good, I want more.  I have definitely suffered. The constant itching was unbelievable and the sleeplessness just as bad.  Admittedly taking Benadryl helped with the sleep substantially, but then you have trouble waking up and have this foggy feeling all day long.   At least they didn't try to say that I was making stuff up about the fleas.....

Oh! The grouchy driver.  See, I get along real well with the mechanics at the yard.  We're like minded and see things pretty much the same. So when I asked about "Johnny's" truck - it was obviously his because there was a mountain bike mounted to the rear of the thing, the lead mechanic said he had trashed a transmission.  Oh myyy.  I'm sure the company isn't in love with that, transmissions in semi trucks are extremely expensive either to buy or repair.  A new one is at least 10k.  You can buy used ones cheaper but you don't really know what you're getting.

He also twisted off a drive shaft on another occasion.  I know how that happens, but that's usually with oversized loads that are extremely heavy and you aren't getting into granny gear without extreme caution.  Our loads are at most 79,000 pounds and I just don't see how he could do that without extreme malice, like doing it on purpose.  But whatever, the point is that he's not a particularly good driver and also got cranky with the mechanics.  I can tell ya from experience, mechanics will give you a hard time if you've done something stupid.  They don't care for the man and I've had a couple of unpalatable experiences with him, he feels entitled to show up whenever he pleases, including during my loading or offloading time.  

The latest poll has Trump at 50 and Harris at 48 percentage of the national vote. Meaning, Trump is going to win? Oh, I've been predicting a Trump win regardless of the polls.  Even if Harris wins the popular vote, which I don't even think she'll do that, Trump will win the electoral college.  But now the polls are starting to catch up with Harris word salads.  She was asked specifically on 3 separate occasions on 3 different venues now how her presidency will differ from Biden's, she goes straight to Trump and never answers the question.  

She doesn't really answer any questions, she just goes off on how she feels, how people feel, how life was when she was young, yada yada yada and giving no specifics on the economy, the border chaos, the world stage, etc. 

I just can't envision that person being  the President of the United States.  No one wants to hear her blabbering about nothingness, they want to hear about how she is going to help their bank accounts. As I've been saying, people are going to vote with their wallets and people affected by illegal aliens swarming into and flooding their communities are going to vote for whoever they think will deal with the problem. Helllllloooooo?  Harris is IN office and was supposed to deal with the border crisis already and what has she done? NOTHING.  She finally went to the border a few weeks ago and blamed it all on Trump, blasting him and his policies that they immediately got rid of when Biden was sworn in.  Helllloooo?  WHAT is going to CHANGE? The answer is obvious: NOTHING. No, take that back: it will get far worse.

Are we supposed to somehow accept a bunch of murderers and known terrorists crossing over into our country illegally? Venezuelan gang members taking over the streets of certain communities?  I'm voting for Trump not because of his eloquent speech but because he'll take immediate steps to rid our country of these people.  Trump said the other day he's going to get rid of sanctuary cities.. How? By sending ICE in those cities, rounding these people up and deporting them.  

On a rant I guess, but this stuff is unnerving. To idly sit by and watch the destruction of our country and call yourself the President or the VP is maddening.  And people want 4 more years of this chaos?  No thank you.  If Trump loses, things are going to get a lot worse than it already is.  Will Harris carry on Biden's war on natural gas appliances and new oil leases?  

I'll stop now.  I have things to get done today after I started writing here about it.  However, coffee takes precedence! And I've only had one cup lol.  

Oh, the State of Arizona already sent me the title for the truck. Clear over here in Texas, yes.  That was fast.  And from Texas' website I have figured out that I will end up paying $395.31 in vehicle sales tax.  I don't think there is any way around it.  That's just the sales tax, btw, that doesn't include title and registration fees which will bring it to around $500 total. That's pretty outrageous.  AZ charged me $41 to do the same thing.  One need not wonder why the state of Texas has billions of dollars in a "rainy day fund".  

Wait, maybe not. The title is in my name already, I read some fine print that it's referring to having it switched over from a seller.  I dunno, I guess I'll go in and find out, if it's really going to charge me a sales tax fee I'll wait until I get at least a paycheck in to help pay for it.  I need to go in anyway, I never did get new license plates for my SUV after driving through that flooding in Galveston.  The front plate is gone and a cop could pull me over for it if they really wanted to.  So far they haven't wanted to, but it's just a matter of time and I don't know if that's a ticketable offense and if so, how much.  At least it's not a moving violation.

Which reminds me, time to start pricing car insurance.  I've got 2 vehicles in my name now and it's going to cost me pretty good every month to keep them both fully insured.  I don't want to get rid of the SUV just yet.  Well I don't want to get rid of it at all.  It's worth around $7,500, it's got some issues that need to be fixed and well, I just don't see a good reason to get rid of it.  It's got new tires and it will have new brakes and rotors on it soon enough and eventually I'll get the rear AC working.  I don't need to deal with ac now since it's cooling down and frankly, the front AC blasts cold air to the point that when driving it long enough, the entire vehicle cools down anyway.  \

Oh my yes, I'll save $135 per month switching back to Allstate. I got rid of them after they jacked my policy up - and at the time with no accidents or tickets.  Now, they're far cheaper than Progressive.  I think I'll check a few more tho. This is with full coverage on both vehicles including if I cause an accident again - which hopefully I won't - and the vehicles are fully covered.  Of course, they are only going to pay market value for a totally trashed vehicle.  That would be a ripoff but that's common in the insurance industry. 

State Farm turns out to be a lot more than Allstate.  I dunno how they come up with these quotes. I'll probably do a few more and then settle on Allstate if nothing else shows up better.  All I know is I don't want to spend $408 per month with Progressive.  It's probably because they had to pay out the repairs for both vehicles in the accident. The good news is that it really wasn't that much, especially to the other person's vehicle.  A bumper and a broken tail light. 

Meh, I'm done with that for a while.  Time to get out of here and get some stuff done.

G'day