Thursday - afternoon

Less than 24 hours and I'm out of here.  It's just so hot here, it really took me by surprise that it's still as hot as it is.  Most people that live here are also not happy about it, lol.  October and it's still 110, 108, 106?

We went to the Dollar Tree a bit ago and mom stocked up on whatever she wanted.  Her second and only remaining vehicle is leaving here tomorrow morning, I am sympathetic to her continued verbiage of having lost her freedom.  Can't hop into a vehicle and take off anymore.  I did offer if some miracle happens and her vision comes back, she can have her truck back.  I know that's unlikely, but through Christ all things are possible....

Last night I spent 5 hours at a pub in Florence with one of my buddies.  I did have a couple of beers but I stopped drinking long before I had to leave, no sense taking risks when you have a CDL.  He wants to meet again tonight, he's pretty much pouring out his heart - his wife died during covid because of covid, the connection is that I knew her wife from high school days.  I knew him as well, tho we didn't hang out much.  

Today I'm visiting with my son at Texas Roadhouse followed by a couple more hours at a different bar, I guess, with the old friend.  I'm going there to visit him, that is his place of consolation apparently. Can't judge the man, he's in a psychological hell losing the lady of his life, I think they were married something like 40 years.  I'm not staying late there, however, I want to get up early and head out.  Drive about 10 hours, stop for the night probably in Odessa and then finish out the trip on Saturday.  

Credit card rewards paid for the trip out here, the Texas Roadhouse adventure tonight (I have the gift card in my email and ready to go) and hopefully, a hotel for tomorrow night. I was going to use BofA points, they do it differently.  You purchase whatever is approved and then you get reimbursed for it later.  So, I just redeemed all of that, some $400 plus and it's going to be deducted from my current balance.  

I am now going back to Chase to see what I have left there, I didn't have much Wells Fargo rewards because I had used them previously on an expensive desk chair for my room and then for the Texas Roadhouse thing.  

Ahh yes, enough for a nice night's stay at the Marriott Residence Inn.  Haven't been to one since...Oh, we stayed at one of their properties in Dallas area when we went to 6 Flags.  I had my own room because I sleep better without other snorers around, lmao.  

I've driven the truck around town quite a bit, a gas guzzler like my SUV, oh well. Once I get it back it will be driven around a very small town for the most part.  I've had my SUV for 6 years and put maybe 50,000 miles on it, that's including driving to previous work several times a week which was 32 miles each way. None of that now, I will not rack up the miles on the odometer.  It would be many, many years before it gets up to 100k miles.  

I'm just happy that a vast portion of this trip was paid for with rewards that I have had sitting in there for quite a while.  I wondered if there are expiration dates to them so yes, I have cashed most of it in.  

I was watching the hurricane devastation.  Over 3 million people without power, a terrible amount of property damage and 5 people confirmed dead so far. It's the tornadoes that really got to me, tornadoes are "evil" in nature, popping out of the sky and completely unpredictable in their path.  Not like a hurricane which people can see well in advance and can plan on whether they need to leave or not. 

I think a Sheriff said one county alone had had 17 of them.  

But the real tragedy is Kamala Harris attempting to make a political issue out of it.  DeSantis rightfully stated she has no role in it whatsoever and openly discussed his conversations with both Biden and the head of FEMA.  It sounds like Biden and DeSantis have remained on good terms with each other in order to deal as best as the government can with the aftermath.  

I'll be glad when this election comes and is done and over with. The ads here in AZ about both local politicians' campaigns and national are unbelievable.  

I've heard no complaints from the park.  One person wanted to pay me cash, I told them I'd collect it when I return. The park host people - the mom is there now - said there was no 2 stroke oil so I had some delivered yesterday to cut the excuses for not doing anything out.  I have a 4 night stay coming in today, plus the 2 1-week stays and a couple of overnighters coming in tomorrow, at least I've got something going on with the available lots. I've had several inquiries about long term, but they hear my price and balk at it.  Yeah, wait til you go to the competitors.  In fact, stay with them awhile, get charged the extra for electricity and then I'll see you in a month or two, lol.  

I think that's it for now. It's 11:30 am and still many hours before I leave to meet my son and have a little adventure. 

 Well that's over with.  We got there and the guy was saying they can't just put the title over in my name, they have to register it as well.  Well dang.  I was thinking a lot of money because the truck is worth a bit, 16-18k on the market.  We stood there discussing this back and forth and I just said well let's see how much it's going to cost to register it in my name?  The thing is, they had trouble doing it with my brother and the car she gave him last week.  

But, this guy made it much easier than what they went through last week.  The end of the story is that I have the truck registered and titled in Arizona in my name at my house and they are going to send all of the stuff to the house in Texas.  For $40.  Yeah, I was almost shocked, I really thought a lot more. Much easier to just transfer a title already in my name than one in another name that also has a living trust attached to it.  That was the point, bypass the living trust stuff.  So, I don't think it was wasteful in that regard to go ahead and do it here only to have to do it all over again in Texas.  

It gives me 30 days to figure out how much that's going to cost me, but the thing is, it said it was almost a thousand dollars.  Crazy.  A 15 year old vehicle costing me that much because it's a new-to-me vehicle so they are going to charge tax on it.  

Anyway, it's good to have that over with and I already put insurance on it, don't want to be driving it around without insurance obviously. The truck needs a good interior cleaning but otherwise it's in good shape.  

Arizona is a swing state. I've been sitting here watching the smear tactic ads coming from both sides against the other. It's absolutely brutal.  I've seen nothing like these ads in Texas but that's because we aren't really a swing state.  I wouldn't say Texas is a solid red state what with Houston, Dallas, Austin and other towns but it's more so red than blue.  I just sitting here in awe the viciousness of the attacks. I'm assuming these are coming from super pacs.  

Well, mom wants to go eat, I'll have to get back to this later.  

_________________

Good taste in food, Mexican food more specifically.  

Meanwhile just sitting here watching all of the news and reels and videos of people in dilemmas of what to do.  I mean, if we're talking a Cat 5 hurricane, I'm outta there.  Helene was bad enough and those people haven't really even cleaned up after the first one.  They're predicting landfall Wednesday night.  I think if I lived in Florida - and I don't because of things like this and house sized mosquitoes - I would have a pile of plywood and screws readily available in a shed, on-property, to deal with this stuff last minute notice and then get the heck out of there.

Yes, it will likely downsize, but a Cat 3 can wreak horrible damage.  Not like it turns into a puff of wind and then it's gone.  I feel for those people, definitely, but again, I don't live in Florida for a reason and it's been a long, long time since I've been down there.  I remember getting stuck in Miami once long ago when I took a truckload of stuff down there but they couldn't find anything to get me back out of there. After something like 5 days I told the company they either get me out or I'm just driving out of there regardless.  I wasn't getting paid at all. 

Oh, I'm thinking I'll just drive 10 to 20 for the route back. I kinda need to make up my mind soon because using those credit card points for hotels, you kind of need to do it in advance.  I was thinking make it to Odessa the first day and finish it out after.  

It is very warm in this house.  It's still hot here and she just doesn't like it too cool.  I'm actually mildly sweating sitting here.  Which when you are in that all day long....Grin and bear it.  2-1/2 days and I'm out of here.  Plus I'm going to see a friend either tonight or tomorrow, I'm waiting on him to tell me when and Thursday will be dining with my son and spending some time together.  I wouldn't mind driving around and seeing all the changes here since I've moved out of this place.  

There seems to be a helluva lot of people either changing their minds about voting for Kamala and therefore voting for Trump or not voting for Kamala as they were going to but not voting for Trump either. Either way, Trump picks up gains.  I don't believe these polls.  I just don't.  There are 3 or more historically democrat supporting unions that have decided they aren't going to support either party.  That's a win.  

I dunno, I haven't looked at the metrics of any of these polls, I might start doing that again. Find out what sampling they took of each party.  I saw so many in the 2016 polls that were sampling more democrats than republicans even the parties have pretty much the same percentage of eligible voters.  Many of the polls are run by leftists.....

I get calls once in a while to do a survey, they find out I'm conservative and then it ends, lol.