Lovely.

My dispatcher just called and informed me that all loads are cancelled until Monday (at the earliest).  Like, even Monday isn't guaranteed, the glue plant just shut it all down and said c'ya. Now, I understand stuff like this happens at plants, but I was very much ready to go back to work and start getting some runs in on the pay period for 2 paychecks from now.  I already know this next check is going to be spartan.  Just really couldn't happen at a worse time.  The park has 6 open spaces so there's a good amount of money not coming in and top that with a job that I have missed a lot of work and you get a person that is glad that a good chunk of change came in from a different source recently, otherwise, I'd be up the creek without a paddle.  

I'm a little discouraged with this change.  I was really ready to go back to work. I might despise the trucking industry, I don't despise paychecks.  It's what I do and I do it well.  I can't just go out and find something to do to make up for it beyond my park and attempting to figure out ways to lure people from other parks over to mine. It is a thought I've had.  I don't mean going into other parks and soliciting them, but finding something to give them that is so appealing, they can't resist or at least give it serious thought.  This is where I started thinking about the covered parking and the hot tub.  

I'm just going to lose money here for the next month or maybe less depending, I just checked the tablet and they took out tomorrow's run and put in a run for Monday. I need to work pretty much every day for several weeks to make up for it. That won't happen, it never does. I think, ok, I'm going to be driving every day for a while now. Yes, that was true under the old dispatcher, she was fired and the manager took over her job. He gives me time off I don't ask for or want.  I get sick of driving every day, yes, but again: paychecks.  I'm just going to have to be the squeaky wheel. If he gives me late runs, I'll just have to eat them and do them. 

Christmas is just around the corner, birthdays are coming up, Thanksgiving, I was half entertaining a thought to fly home for Thanksgiving but - yeah/no.  I've just lost too much time working and I suspect a short visit will cost me a fortune flying at the time of the year.  

Well. I found relatively cheap flights out of DFW.  Flying out of GGG is a non-starter.  Way too expensive. We're talking 3 days off and then working a weekend and into the next month after that.  I don't want to spend Christmas in AZ, but I'd do Thanksgiving.  This is more like a pipe dream at this point, going back there so soon. I don't have much CC points left, certainly not enough to even remotely cover flight expenses.  Still Frontier and Spirit have good rates on round trip flights. I know, Spirit charges you extra to breath on their airplanes, I don't know about Frontier.  

I think I'll put that out of my mind.  Tho it would be now or never, I would feel like I'm stepping out on a limb asking for time off after having been off so much. 2 weeks sick and a week traveling.  I don't regret anything, I just don't think it's a great idea.  Others have highly likely asked for time off as well.  Play the "good boy" role and just work through the Thanksgiving holiday and then - sort of demand but not really demand if you know what I mean - Christmas Day off.  It's a thing I have set in place for - ever.  I get one or the other off.  The only thing that could change it is if either plant is open on either of those days, but I doubt that. They are 24 hour operations. 

I don't know how the receiving plant is dealing with this, I was  told it is the shipping plant - the one that makes the glue - that is shutting down.  That really can't be right.  Because if the plywood plant wants to operate, the glue plant only need switch to their glue plant in Crockett, AR to get continued supply to the production plant.  

Well whatever. It's getting late, my version of it anyway: almost 10:00 pm.  Not that I have to go to work tomorrow....I did get a lot done today but I want to clear off that trailer and get it back to usable status.  

Oh, the park host kid? Came up and said to me today, well, I need to install a water pump in that motor before we do anything else.  He can't do any more work until he can run it, he says.  I thought, well and fine, what about everything else? Yeah, I zipped it on that one.  If I get a new water pump - they are around $150 - and he doesn't install it - I'm going to unload on him.  Somebody needs to....

 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

Wednesday - evening

Long day.  It's 2 hours and 40 minutes up there and the same back.  Tho that's a  little bit, the problem was they wanted to go through the whole truck.  I got in there and they told me at least 3 hours and that was with 2 of them working on it - but also included taking an hour lunch break.  It was 4 hours before I left there. 

I took the company van to a local restaurant, it was an old, wooden, passenger rail car that had been turned into a cafe, tho I tend to call such things diners.  Whatever it was, the food was quite good.  Amazingly good, in fact.  Spartan crowd, friendly people.  I was only gone maybe an hour and then I still had 3 hours to burn, so I just went into the driver's lounge - no one in there, muted the noisy tv and took a couple of naps, actually.

I had wished I had taken my laptop this morning, I didn't even think about it.  Maybe next time I go up there I'll remember.

Anyway, I am not scheduled to load until Friday morning.  I picked up a different trailer, this one is actually in good condition and they just replaced all of the brake components - slack adjusters, brake shoes, bearing, hardware and even the caps with windows that go over the hubs.  They put windows in there to be able to check that there is oil in the axles.  

Typically, it's a much longer day going up there and today was no different, tho I hoped it would be lol.  

Still no bites on any of my ads.  I hate to run a Google ad for much more money and get nothing out of it, but I'm sort of stuck here with 6 empty lots and I really need to get some of them filled. This is the time of year where you are making more money because the electric bill goes down for lack of hot weather.  I've run free facebook and a couple of pay facebook boosts and tho I'm getting some overnight traffic, no long term has appeared.  

Tomorrow might be a good day to get all of that wood off of my trailer and get it ready to go find a hot tub somewhere, or carry stuff back to the park to build a carport or whatever.  That wood has been sitting on that trailer for months, I'm tired of it stopping me from access to my trailer.   It's not my doings but if I want the use of my trailer back, I apparently am going to have to offload it.