Let The War Resume

My next door neighbor is back from Michigan. This is the guy that started building a new house earlier this year and then - left the property in a shambles and it has been that way for some 8 months now.  For whatever reason as yet to be acquired, the City of Phoenix did nothing about it, even though people filed formal complaints against the property.

Whatever the case, I don't speak to him anymore because of the cat blowup of last year.  He thinks it's stupid and ridiculous that I should demand him keep his cats off my property or pay up for the damages incurred.  Someone's grey cat basically lives on the front of my property and that cat is going to get caught and be relocated to a new home - at least 15 miles away.

However, Mark was out there talking to him and found out that 350 man is still encroaching some 24 inches into Randy's property (the next door neighbor from Michigan).  350 man built a fence - he was forced to finish it I do believe, I don't really know as I don't much look over there anymore as his property is also a piece of s***.  So, Randy is suing 350 man and of course if it's true that the property lines have been crossed, there IS no defense for that.  350 man will have to remove that fence.  Randy refuses to accept a cash payout for the property that is encroached.

I wouldn't accept, either.  First because Randy's property is so small.  MUCH smaller than mine.  Second because it's 350 man involved, the guy is a moron. I wouldn't give him a cut piece of grass from my property, much less a portion of my property.

Now it also comes to light that Randy hasn't been paying his property taxes.  This is a big problem.  There are companies that do nothing but pay up property taxes on delinquent parcels and after 3 years of making payments?  They can take the property away from it's owner. I personally think it's heinous that this is allowable, for a few thousand dollars you can get a property worth whatever- hundreds of thousands. I understand the city needs the revenues from the property taxes, but to take away someone's property and give it to someone else at a very minuscule fraction of it's worth is a travesty of justice as far as I'm concerned.

I am a proponent of doing away with property taxes altogether and making up for it in sales taxes.  Or at the very least reform the law so that a person isn't going to lose their home because for whatever reason they couldn't afford to pay the property taxes.

Whatever the case, apparently 350 man had intentions of going down and paying up Randy's taxes and attempting to acquire the property for himself.  That would make 3 properties this pig would own - all of them in a shambles, none of them having any kind of landscaping on them to make them look good.  Just what I need, 350 man owning the property right next door to me. What does he want with all of these properties, anyway?  Hey, if the guy wants to pay off my mortgage I'll be happy to get the bleep out of this sh**** neighborhood and wash my hands of it forever.

If his mother is that rich, let him buy up the entire street and he can live here all alone.

On another note, I found out what my yearly bonus is going to be.  Highly disappointing, to say the least.  A 2 man crew that has worked our @$$es off for an entire year.  A store that has done so much sales with such high gross profit that it gained national attention from upper management.  A year of some fairly unpleasant moments because the workload was so great and the 2 of us trying to keep up with all of it, we sometimes got on each other's nerves.  We eventually worked that out, but the point is: we fully expected a bonus that reflected that hard, intense work. What I am getting I consider almost insulting considering the above mentioned facts.  I know what the bonus pool is for our region and the amount of people that are eligible for a portion of that pool. If I divide the pool by the number of people eligible, I am not even getting a equal amount.  Not that that ever happens anyway.  One assumes management will get a much larger share than anyone else.  But that's the point.  Our efforts should have been reflected in the amount of the bonus, it definitely was not.

I have no recourse. It is what it is.  My pay for last fiscal year was up a large chunk of change, but that was because of having my 8 hours restored and doing overtime on top of that.  Come to find out that more hours worked and amount of money made - the more you get during the work year, apparently, the less you qualify for in the bonus pool. That really makes a lot of sense, work twice as hard and get less percentage of pool money because of it?

I will eventually get over it, I am sure, as again, what am I supposed to do?  I could complain and I am sure that will get me nowhere.  It just makes me wonder why they did not consider our efforts worth a much healthier take of the pool than what we got.

Well, I am headed outside.  It's somewhere in the 80's out there right now.  I am doing the Miracle Gro application on the entire property.  I intend on soaking the plants with the stuff as well as getting it into the ground.

With that, I bid you......
G'day.

ben

My son came banging on my bedroom door about an hour ago now - around 4 am.  He doesn't look good, his eyes are glassy and the expression on his face.  I'm going to the hospital, he informs me, and wanted to make sure I knew about it.  He has had severe/migraine headaches going on for days and days now.

Okay.  Thoughts start running through my head, had to quelch that stuff quickly.

Hmmm, well it's Friday but not necessarily a happy start to it.

ben

According to an instant poll, Romney won the debate, 46 to 22 percent.
I watched the entire thing.  There were a few occasions were Obama was stuttering.  He also was looking down at the podium frequently when Romney would be looking at him in the eye.  He made numerous facial expressions and he looked rather - feeble - at some points. He appeared to be well out of his comfort zone.

As far as the specifics goes, though, I didn't think either of them did a very good job of it.

Whatever. I am still paying for Tuesday's extremely heavy work load and working near 14 hours.  I draaaaaagged through work yesterday and felt very fortunate to get off at 2:00 pm, instead of a couple of hours later, which it would have been if the delivery I was going to leave to go do at around 1:45 pm hadn't been cancelled.

Besides that, I don't know what else might be in there - the truck routing system that is - for today.  Doesn't matter, I'll get through it, just hope I don't get another extremely long day either today or tomorrow.  We have already posted over 140k for the first 3 days of the week!

The weather is also still an issue. It is still quite warm out there during the day and it is a bit much.  It's October, for crying out loud, not July.  Let's get this heat over with.  I hope a cold front moves through here and just knocks it all out.  I can't wait any longer to put those new plants in the ground, I'm going to have to do it regardless of the heat.  That pretty much precludes going up to the mountains this weekend - but I may just wait until I can take a day off anyway.  Well who knows, but I am pretty much decided to stay home for this coming weekend.

Well, time to be off to work!!

G'day.

ben

75 minutes into the Presidential debate and I declare both candidates losers.
This is a politically-correct debate that lacks the - debate factor.  Neither candidate came out with anything new, they aren't getting into it with each to the degree I had expected and if there are undecideds, will this debate do anything to change their views?

Hope and Change have changed nothing for the better is my perspective and I thought of so many thing Romney could have come back against Obama in every single topic, yet he mostly did not do that.  I guess I hoped that this would be a defining moment for Romney, perhaps it is and I am missing it, but I don't see it.  Perhaps the people that campaign is targeting sees things I don't see - most of us have already made up our minds long ago who we are voting for - and perhaps that's why this debate is taking the tone it is.

Whatever the case, I think this is over soon and I am heading to the bedroom.  I was paying for yesterday's 13-1/2 hour day of work all day long today.  I was tired and worn out and it was like that all day long.  I was lucky to get off at 8 hours - a contractor leaving early was the culprit otherwise I would have been out at least 9 maybe 10 hours.  Overtime is great, but I have plenty for this week already.  You get too much OT and what happens.  You get into a higher tax bracket and the next thing you know, you barely get any extra money as it all goes to the federal government.  I'm still baffled at why, exactly, it is, that the federal government should get even more of my money simply because I'm breaking my back working my @$$ off and happen to work more hours?  I'm going to have to research when and why this extra tax came into existence.

Whatever the case, I'm done for today.  When Friday gets here, then I will decide whether I am going back up north or not.  I'm leaning that way, but I have been waiting for a bit cooler temps here to go ahead and plant some more replacement plants and if it comes this weekend? I'll be playing the dirt and mud out front of my house : )

ben

Wednesday

Yesterday. Wow.  Went up to the mines in Globe, well, closer to Miami, distinction without much of a difference.
Three drops there, ridiculous amount of time spent.  By the time I got out of there and started heading to west Phoenix for pickups for delivery tomorrow (today), it was already almost 11:00pm.  So, I'm running around all over the place picking all kinds of stuff up and end up with a fully loaded trailer.

Back to the yard. My manager's looking at me like: Ready to get this done?  Order after order after order to be pulled and loaded on the truck and out of the yard no later than ...... 6:30 this morning.  I'm looking at him like, dude, do you know that we are going to be here until 8:00 pm doing all of this?  I am going to have to unload the entire truck and reload everything, not to mention pulling all of those orders, wrapping them and all the rest of it.

He's doing all the paperwork and I'm out there pulling orders.  I'm not complaining about him doing the paperwork, btw, it has to be done and you can't just let it pile up.  The afternoon drags on.  4 pm; 5 pm; 6 pm, the sun goes down.  Working at a feverish pace attempting to get it all done, get it all on the truck and have it ready for this morning.  We actually get all the stuff done and then find out that - they threw another order in the system that is huge and also "must" be delivered early.  I"m starting to feel it - the longest day of work I have put in in a long, long time and not only just a day of work, but a very HARD day's work.

My boss has a conniption - they throw these orders in and they don't even bother to tell us about it.  He calls the salesman, they get into it on the phone.  I didn't want to hear all of that, that would just piss me off considering some of what I was hearing coming from that salesman, I went back outside.  It was around 7:40 pm by the time we got done - and yet there is still a pallet to be wrapped, loaded and then all of that material has to be strapped down.

I ended up calling home and asking someone to please feed the dogs, they would have been ravenously hungry by that point and I didn't want them to go hungry.  By the time I got home, it was almost time to go to bed.  I thought about church on the way home and realized I had not only missed the small group meeting, I hadn't even thought about it until I had gotten in the car.  Oh well, I hadn't thought much about anything else, either, considering the workload and just trying to get every thing done.

Fast forward to this morning. The alarm goes off, I wake up out of a deep sleep and ................ it didn't even feel like I had ever gone to bed. I'm still tired, I'm sore and yes, I'm a bit cranky.  Just in case, I have put the Presidential debate on record.  But I have no intention of working that late today, I doubt I would last as long today as I did yesterday.  The biggest problem with working long hours like that - I used to do it daily for years - is that you don't have time for anything else.  The stuff you need to get done around the house doesn't get done, you don't really have time for much of anything but work, the drive there and back and a few basic things that you must get done.

I don't miss those days.  I don't mind doing it once in a while, but I would definitely NOT want to have to do that kind of routine again on any regular basis.  In fact, there's only one real advantage to having to work like that: you don't have time to eat and you are working hard, so if you have any weight issues, you won't have them for long.

Well, my pre-work rituals are already over, it doesn't even feel like I started them. It's time to be off to work for a very busy morning. There's even MORE to do after all of this is delivered.

G'day.

ben

After coming home yesterday, my son comes walking in.  Sick again!  You can't really just keep up an unending pace, while sick, and expect that you are going to have a rapid recovery.  I can see keeping up with school, the rest of it, however, the social stuff, should be put into a little basket and kept there on hold until he gets better.  But, it's his life and he has to figure these things out on his own.

Meanwhile, the first Presidential debate en-queue for Wednesday.  Apparently, because of the time zone difference, that debate is going to be seen here at 4:00 pm!!  I don't know who the brilliants are that made up the schedule for this stuff, but a lot of folks are still at work at 4:00 pm.  Sure, you can record it if you have the capability, but I think this is a major gaffe in itself in at least making an attempt to ensure that as many people as possible can see it live, while it's happening.  It should be entertaining if nothing else.

I continue to change the wording on my ad and bring the price down on the trailer out in my driveway that I am trying to sell, not a single response.  I'm only going to go down so far in price and then throw my hands up in the air with it.  I am not going to give it away.  Or take half of what I paid for it.  It's a nice unit in good condition, no roof leaks, new refrigerator, etc etc.  I would have thought perhaps someone might take me up on the trade offer if nothing else.

I am going to have to force myself into work mode this morning, I am dragging and that's a fact.  I was going to ask for a day off either this week or next, but one of the drivers downtown left on vacation for 2 weeks going to Italy and other places in Europe.  Bon voyage!  But I can't take any time off until he gets back. Although our store's numbers - gross profit - were great for September, many of the other stores in our region did not do so well, meaning they would rather have another driver come and take my place for the day or two that I am off versus having to hire a temp driver.

But, since other drivers take 2 weeks in a row off, I am considering doing the same thing next year - providing there is a next year for me (I simply mean: Lord willing).  That would be cool, even if I didn't take a major vacation anywhere.  Though I do have a standing invitation to come visit some folks in Texas - I actually know quite a number of people that live in Texas from my missionary days.  I would love to go back to Pittsburgh and re-visit the place of my childhood. It's changed so much since I was a little kid.  Of course, I have always wanted to go to Italy myself, not to mention London and a few other places in Europe. But, that costs money - a lot of it - and even saving up in advance?  It would take a couple of years of saving to come up with that kind of money.

Whatever.  Musing about things.  A missionary trip would be another option - there's a place in Africa that takes in short term missionaries.  But I also know people in the Philippines; Romania; India; Italy; etc etc etc.

Well, for right now, however, there is another trip that must be taken: the drive to work!

Lol.

ben

I finally got my act together this morning - got up late and knew I wasn't going to make it in time for church - and got the process moving towards leaving the property.  Shut off the gas; close the roof vents; put out the mouse traps and the mouse bait (D-Con); clean up the dog poop; empty out the grey water holding tank; etc.  I finally got to the dog part and getting them in the car.  Amazingly easy this time, they are finally learning.  Pull the power cord to the trailer, roll it up, pull out to the dirt road, close the gate, lock it and I'm outta there.

Travelling along the forest road I come along many campsites.  Slow down, I think, I am going too fast meaning putting up a lot of dust and choking them out. No reason to do that on purpose. so I slowed down to around 20 mph whenever I came up on one of them.  Popular weekend to go camping, lots of them out there with their RV's and tents and a lot of 4-wheelers.   Came up to Tonto Village, I think to myself that might be a nice place to retire. Or not.  The lot I was looking at listed for 35k is in that little town.  But unless I were able to get a hold of that lot within the next few years, I wouldn't want it.  It hardly has any trees on it and to get it tree inhabited by the time retirement comes would mean to plant them now.

Passed by the convenience store/bar/restaurant. One building, same owners, been there forever.  Of course, groceries in the convenience store are highly inflated, but hence the word convenience.  I have only stopped in twice in the 20 years I have been going up there.  No need for the groceries, I bring enough to last 3 times the amount of time I am up there - just in case - who knows.  I don't remember about the restaurant, whether it was good or not.  I continue on.  Mostly nice properties with a few trashy ones thrown in for yuck's sake.  When I say trashy, I mean hoarders.  Piles of junk heaped up.  I guess that stuff exists everywhere?

On to the main highway.  It was solidified in my mind that I had gotten out there too late when I saw the large amount of traffic on it coming from the Rim country and potentially Kohl's Ranch and Christopher Creek.  I waited for several minutes, actually, to turn out onto the highway.  I drove into Payson after getting trapped behind a long line of slow moving traffic on a 55mph highway.  Just the way it is on a  2-lane highway and everyone going home at the same time.  On the way into Payson, a large contingency of the new-style Cameros came up to a side street and started turning onto  the now 2-lane highway.  Cool looking cars, there were at least 20 of them.

Well, I had no interest in following that pack as I was bound and determined to follow my ritual: Pull into the Payson McDonald's and get a large coffee with 4 creams.  It's amazingly funny to see the look of surprise on the faces of the personnel working at the windows when they look down into your car and see 2 giant dogs sitting there, looking back up at them.  Lol.  After that, a mile down the road to the best fuel station in town: that because of the best prices.  I had hoped perhaps a re-run of lower prices up there than in the valley, but not to be found.  In fact, a bit higher.  Bought just enough fuel to get home since it's cheaper in the valley.

The amazing - read: ridiculous: stuff starts after I get out of Payson.   4 lane highway, 2 lanes going in either direction. Signs periodically seen that state: SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT. I grew up reading those signs and I grew up to live by that motto.  If someone is coming up behind you and you are in the passing lane, move out of the way as soon as practical.  It's not my concern if they are speeding or not.  I don't consider myself a rolling road block for speeding cars as some do, though I am usually going faster than most vehicles anyway.  I am not racing anyone, I just want to get the driving portion over with.

Well, the rolling roadblocks were plentiful today.  I would see 2 cars side-by-side off in the distance with a large number of cars blocked behind them.  It would go on for miles.  I would catch up to them and pass them.  How?  Wait until a lapse.  Everyone would be in the passing lane, obviously hoping the driver that is holding up traffic would get a clue and get out of the way.  But in the last decade or so, I have come to realize that these people don't care one way or the other whether they are blocking traffic and I suspect many of them do it on purpose.  I'm not going to wait for them to move, they won't do it.  Something else has to happen - usually the car in the right lane either speeding up or slowing down so faster traffic can pass on the right.

I sat behind one such set of vehicles for a short time.  I had seen the blockage for quite a while coming up on it.  When I got up to it - I  purposely took a seat in the slow lane, right behind the car that was part of the rolling road block - I waited.  The 2 vehicles side-by-side gave way, just enough for me to squeeze in and take off.  I didn't flip them off, I didn't even look at them, not going to give them the satisfaction.  Just ignore them and move on to the - next - rolling roadblock. It happened several times on the way back.  I am always amazed at how drivers can be so selfish and - even arrogant - as to just sit there next to another car on an open highway out in the middle of nowhere and treat others that are stuck behind them in such a fashion.

Some of these people are blocking that lane for miles and miles and miles and then have the audacity to flash their headlights at you when you finally are able to take advantage of a lapse in their purposeful blockage and get by them.  You wonder why they are doing it and what is going through their minds.  Or when you are climbing a steep grade and have a good speed going.  You are about to pass a driver and then baaam, they pull out in front of you, no indicator light, just blink and they are there.  Wow!!  Yup, that happened twice today as well.  You lose all your momentum, the person is going way slower than you are and again, you are left wondering what is going through these people's minds.

Never-the-less, finally got home and got busy. I wanted to get all of the linens, blankets, wash cloths washed today, dried, folded and packed and ready to go for the next time.  Next time could be next weekend or a month from now, who knows, but have it ready while it was still fresh in my mind.  I only left a fitted sheet for the queen mattress on it up there, the rest I brought home to wash.  I saw that the mice weren't going under the fitted sheet on the mattress so I figured to leave it on there and bring the rest back. I am actually hoping the mouse problem is resolved, but who knows about that.  That trailer is spotless at the moment, I thoroughly cleaned it from end to end.  I don't "cohabit" with mouse droppings, thanks.  I vacuumed, scrubbed and otherwise wiped everything down.  Bathtub, sinks, counters, everything.  Pulled everything up to find the mouse droppings to get them out of there.

So, if I have to go through that again, so beit.  I will take the mini-wet vac with me again next time just in case.  With everything I had to bring back - more than I took up there with all the linens and such - I barely got everything crammed into that car!!  I figure between me, the dogs and everything else at least a 750 pound load on that car, lol.

Well, fresh work week starts tomorrow, as well as beginning of a new month.   Our 2-man crew did around 470k worth of sales this month.  Close to 100k of gross profit.  There is already a large amount of work to be done tomorrow - which is great, I hate a slow work day and rarely see those anymore.  Don't know if that's going to last.  But most importantly, for right now? It's my bed time, lol.

G'nite.

ben

Mountains

Yes, up in the mountains once again, enjoying fresh, cool mountain air and a distinctive lack of big city noise pollution.  So, mom said she wasn't going to be up here this weekend or next, turns out after I left and called her to tell her I was coming up - yup, she's here.  I didn't know whether we were going to have a problem or not - I pretty much am not going to come up here without my dogs in tow. They absolutely love it up here, as much as I do or more, perhaps, I just wouldn't feel right leaving them at home.  I can think of a couple of circumstances where I might leave them at home to come up here to deal with things.

Of course, I was fully prepared for the fact that there would be mouse droppings all over the place, so no surprise to see it everywhere.  Brought my mini-shop vac with me and I went to town.  Took me about an hour, actually, to vacuum out the entire place, including my bed which had droppings all over it.  I have it done, but there is more cleaning to do tomorrow.  Mostly wiping everything down with antibacterial stuff and getting it spic and span.

So, the only real irritant was the Direct TV.  The card had been deactivated.  No choice but to call them - which I really hate to have to do considering my history with them.  One phone call, talking to a Filipino (I don't care for the idea of America farming everything out overseas, it is just one piece of the puzzle of why our country's economy is sucking so badly) but I bit the bullet and just dealt with the lady and she had it going - after 3 full tries.

Oh, fortunately I thought perhaps the bed might have had some mouse damage so I brought clean sheets.  If I hadn't?  Leave the dogs here in the pen and go to the Payson Walmart and buy a new set of sheets.  I have decided that if I am to come up here in the winter, I am going to have to buy another set of sheets.  But, mom left out traps and poison and decided that the mice hadn't been in here in at least a week.  Okay, but they had obviously been in here, lol.  I know where the mice are getting in and I will be dealing with that tomorrow.  I am also going to bomb this place with foggers when we leave.  Set them off and then stick around for a while  - I dunno, I just don't trust the things unattended until they are done and have filled the place up with their fog.

Something tells me that a mouse in here while we are here with that Catahoula dog around isn't going to work out too well for the mouse.  She's not a fan of cats or other smaller critters.  Which, in this case is a good thing.

Then there's Mark and Lynnette.  I am confident they are happy when I leave.  Not because they hate me or something, but because they pretty much have free reign of the living room - meaning one of them can come out and watch whatever they want. Though Lynnette does that sometimes on the weekends anyway.  Which, fyi, doesn't bother me, I watch a limited amount of television anyway.

So, to come up here in the winter means to remind myself that I am going to need a space heater. I have heat in the AC unit and I have propane heat, but I think a small space heater will be nice as well.  In fact, I'm not sure I am going to want to use the propane heater.  Rather just keep the propane for cooking and in the summer heating the water tank.  In the winter, the water system has to be winterized or - else - busted plumbing with freezing conditions.  No shower, lol.  Bring disposable cups/paper plates.  I'm cool with that, I don't normally stay up here long enough to get to smelling bad by missing one day's worth of a shower and besides, the dogs could care less what I smell like!  lol

And, finally, it also means I am going to have to consider getting a bit larger TV with a much better sound quality.  I thought this thing I bought on Black Friday was going to be a better unit than it is.  It will do the job for now. but I want something larger.

Speaking of trailers, I have had the one in my driveway up for sale on Craigslist for a couple of weeks now.  Not a single bite.  I brought the price down a bit with OBO.  I also put trades accepted.  I further put I would be willing to trade both trailers for a single bumper-pull trailer - with  slide-outs.  I may have to list the other trailer in the RV Trader and see if I can get any bites. I even put in there I would consider whatever trade a person might have.  Just keep at it until something happens or find a place to park it at an RV park and then sublet it.

Oh, can I just throw in here that it's going to get down to 54 degrees tonight?  It feels nothing that cool, yet, and this property is a higher elevation than Payson - where I am getting the closest temp reading - about 1,000 feet higher.  Nothing like having to use blankets to keep warm at night : )

Our 2 man store did $458,000.00 this month.  The month isn't officially over, but for business purposes it is, at least for our company and our division in the company.

I guess I'm done for now.  I want to read some news and see what's going on.  Though, there was a high speed chase in Phoenix today with a man that hijacked a car and ended up killing himself out near Tonopah - it's on the way to California off of I-10, basically.  They apparently got this on tape, the man offing himself.  I heard this on the news shortly after he had killed himself and thought about his fate, going before the Lord.  I can't judge the man, that's God's realm.  It just kinda hit me a bit heavy - even if there are those that feel the planet is better off without him.  Yes, and the planet is probably better off without any of us considering the condition of mankind, but that's a different story altogether.

I was heading back to the shop and was a half mile away from the shop to come upon a gruesome accident scene. It is by FAR the aftermath of the worst motorcycle meets car accident I have ever seen. The impact of the motorcycle hitting the mini-van was so severe, the front end of the mini-van was trashed, that thing was totaled and the frame of the motorcycle was bent in the middle.  I would be surprised to find out the rider of that motorcycle is still alive.  From the position of the bike and the mini-van, it was clear the mini-van had made a left-hand turn in front of the on-coming bike.

After that, I was in the semi to make another delivery, in the left-hand turn lane.  The light turned yellow and I was starting to make my turn when I noticed the SUV coming from the opposite direction was not slowing down.  Guessing it was going 60 in a 45 zone, I just stopped.  She was busy looking at her cellphone - texting - and not paying  damned bit of attention to the road.  She looked up, saw a  now-red-light and slammed on her brakes.  She was in the intersection by the time she stopped, but not enough to impede traffic.

Strange day in traffic.

Leave it to Fox News to report a poll that actually states that most Republicans AND Democrats believe that EVERYONE should pay at least SOME amount of income tax! Of course!!  But it smacks Obama in the face in his rhetorical, retaliatory attacks on Romney's declaration of the 47% percent that do not pay any taxes.  Lol.  I just love Obama stating that he is going to create jobs for "Americans".  Really? Let's discuss that with facts in the last 4 years.  Thanks for playing.

Thursday.  It's after 9:00 pm and I am wide awake.  I am attempting to wind down from an interesting day and I am having trouble doing it, but my reading and writing should take effect anytime now.  Well, I was thinking of going up North tomorrow after work, but if I don't sleep well tonight, that idea is slap bag dog done out the window. But we'll see.  I'm good on 6 hours of sleep, maybe a bit less, so still time.

Umm, well anyway.  Nothing new around here, excepting the view blocker that the "neighbors" behind me put up.  They have, as Mark has been telling me, working out there late at night.  He's asking me how I can sleep through all of that noise.  Well, I wear ear plugs at night and I run a box fan.  I have been doing that for decades now.  I CAN sleep in dead silence, pretty cool actually if such occurs, but around here?  No such thing exists.  The only way you gonna get dead silence around here is to be DEAD and not capable of hearing anything.  Other than that, I have tenants, dogs, neighbors, airplanes, cars/stereos/ and whatever else going on.

But, I started using ear plugs on the mission field in the 80's.  I couldn't sleep because of the noise all night long and a 20 plus year missionary handed me a pair of ear plugs and informed me that this is what SHE had been doing for decades.  Yup, I used them, nope, I never stopped using them.  Even up at mother's property and sleeping in a very quiet area I use them - but only because of the dogs.  They move around at night and make noise and that would wake me up without them.

"Talking" about the mountains is getting me to consider driving up there whether I am tired or not tomorrow. But we'll see and no guarantees.

Anyway, I am finally getting tired.  I think I can go to sleep now.  Which is a good thing, I can still get plenty if I can get to sleep anytime soon.

G'nite.

ben

Went to bed at 7:00 pm last night, slept quite soundly until 11:00 pm, which is when all the lemonade I had drank just before going to bed (I had no intention of going to sleep that early, it just overtook me, shut the lights and that was that), rid myself of that and slept straight through until 3:39 am.  Almost 8 hours of sleep.  After that I could not get back to sleep and just - got up early, even earlier than normal.

I don't know, but someone else has decided to get up early today, apparently going in to work early.  This particular individual makes a LOT of noise in the morning and I find it extremely irritating.  First that they have no more consideration for their neighbors that are sleeping; second for the fact that this person almost always leaves the bathroom door open while brushing teeth (as if the whole house, apparently, wants to hear THAT noise) and thirdly because yes, it does disrupt my morning rituals.  I don't need anyone to tell me about the fact that that's what I get for renting out rooms.  That doesn't mean that people should not give the same respect that is afforded to them.

On another tenant front, I have one tenant informing me he's leaving somewhere in January, unless another tenant moves out and then he would consider renting out 2 rooms.  He is going to start doing his work at home instead of going into work.  I dunno, but that's still several months off. I never particular care for the rather arduous task of attempting to rent out another room.  Not because I don't get enough people interested, but because it's sometimes - if not always - difficult to figure out what kind of person it is that is sitting across the table from you that you are speaking with.  Yes, sir or madam, could you please keep talking? Just keep on going, I want to hear as much as I can in the short time we are together to attempt to make a decision whether you are going to make a good fit in this household.

Long time readers already know some of the nightmares I have gone through in the past with tenants from hell.

Fortunately, I have the eviction process down to a

"Israel has "no roots" in the Middle East and will be "eliminated."

  When I read those words in the news from Iran's dictator, I wonder what this world will be like when Iran actually has the nukes and is capable of carrying through such threats.  Of course,  I still firmly believe that in the case of Israel, they are going to have to deal with the Lord in destroying the land of the chosen.  I may be wrong about that, but I really don't think I am.  Of course, it could be the type of thing that is prophesied in the book of Revelations.  What would the U.S. do if Iran started an attack on Israel? Or, what will the U.S. do if Israel attacks Iran?

I dunno, I'm just about the business of getting my life right with the Lord and attempting to get back into His business, which is souls.  Whatever happens in this world, I can have peace in my Creator.  If nothing else, we are all going to go out of here in some fashion, might as well not fret about it and just do what your calling is while you're here and fulfill the destiny that God has for you, yes?    I'm definitely in the middle of that battle right now, the battle being one of flesh against spirit.

Umm, think I will leave for work a few minutes early, since I have been up for a while.

G'day.

ben









l

More conviction, more strength to fight the battles.  Inner battles, I mean and am referring to the service at church today.  I wasn't even going to go, but something inside me said, no, you can't just stay home, you must go.  I was very glad I did.  Renewed vigor to overcome, fight the good fight of faith and come out the victor against the enemy's ruthless onslaughts.  This is spiritual warfare, in case you think I'm going Postal and gonna start shooting people, it has nothing to do with earthly weapons or earthly warfare.  In Jesus' name, I am going to overcome.

The weekend "grind".  Cleaned out the in-ground pond's filtering system, which was pretty full of fish waste.  Amazing how fast it builds up in there.  The water, though, is crystal clear.  The above ground pond I can now, finally say, is also crystal clear, you can see to the bottom, there is no murk or muck to obscure the view.  It was interesting to see the bottom of that pond is also covered with a layer of a sand-like-looking substance, it gives a very nice effect, actually.  Just the sand/small rock particles carried in by the strong winds that come through here relatively frequently, I guess.  It's nice to be able to look underneath the giant plant and actually see all the fish huddled under there.  Their hiding spot - they don't like something that's where they go.  The larger fish swimming around the bottom actually helps kick up the dirt/yuck stuff on the bottom and get it into the filter.  I had too many fish in there, I now realize, so, pretty much gonna keep it at it's current numbers.  The front pond - I still have put no fish back in it.

But, those little mosquito eating fish survived where all the rest of them died. Hearty little suckers.  They have that pond all to themselves, lol.  I have half a thought to go get some .13 cents per fish goldfish and dump about 20 of them in there to see what happens. They are VERY small fish, maybe half an inch to an inch long at most.

Debates.  That's what I'm waiting for.  I feel that the Presidential debates are going to be what determines who is going to be the next President of the United States.  A lot of "undecideds" are probably going to make their choice depending on who says what and what specific problems are specifically addressed.  We're going to fix this doesn't address HOW the economy is going to be turned around.  I will be watching these debates, they should be entertaining if nothing else.  I'll be interested to see if Obama talks the same way in person to Romney as he does on-stage, speaking to whoever at a crowd.  October 3rd is the first, scheduled debate - not too far off in the future.

Well, whatever.  Nice, large glass of sugar-free lemonade, going to go outside and get a few more things done today.

ben

I'm going to have to bite the bullet and cut that large, almost dead, plant down.  It will get a proper burial, ie: the trash can.  Once I get that down, I have 6, small, Cape Cod Honeysuckles to replace them.  I wanted the 8 or 9 foot tall Indian Laurel Column, but there was no way to get it home in my car and they don't care if I live across the street from them, it's $50 to haul it.  I absolutely refuse to pay $50 for hauling something this is 2-1/2 miles away from them.  I'll have to figure something else out about that.

Apparently our 2 man team at work got some kudos at the manager's meeting.
It's nice to get some sort of recognition just ONCE in a while.  I didn't even get that to my face, but hearing about it will just have to do.  One higher level manager was telling my manager "don't think your work is going unnoticed", is the way I believe it was presented to him.  It was put across as the statement that no other store in the United States could have pulled off what us 2 did in the last fiscal year.  Yes, we worked our @$$es off.  We had a few moments of - not being so nice to each other - but we got past that and are pretty much very busy every day. I'm not sure why management in my company is so short on  giving the good ole' pat on the back.  I don't mean every day, week or even month.  But once in a great while would be nice.

Well whatever.  I guess we are supposed to be in the "be happy you have a job" realm considering all those millions of unemployed workers out there, many of which have given up looking if you believe the statistics they are putting out.  I have a question: If Obama's Hope and Change didn't work the first 4 years, what's going to be different the next 4 years?  Oh, and since Obama is so behind all the "middle-class Americans", maybe he should takealookat the report the CBO just put out: that 6 million middle class Americans are going to have to pay the penalty for Obamacare.  Gee, Mr. Obama, I thought you were all about the Middle Class?  Oh, wait a minute, you aren't in that category.  You are rich, too.  You smash Romney for being rich and having bank accounts in the Caymen Islands, yet where is your own self bashing? Aren't you worth millions of dollars yourself?  And YOU think YOU can relate to the average, common-Joe/Jane?

No.  If I have to endure another 4 years of that freak in the Oval Office, I'm sure I'm going to pull my hair out.  I haven't heard anything about what's going to be done about this "Fiscal-Cliff" we are approaching on January 1st, 2013.  It's a fore-gone conclusion that neither one of them are going to do anything about Social Security.  The Post Office is going to be insolvent very soon, they have no choice but to either deal with it or let it go under (want to talk about the ending of a LOT of jobs?)  Medicare will also be insolvent, I think they said 12 years from now.  Hey, I know what: let's just print more money!!! WooHOOOOOOO!!

I didn't go up to the property - while mother isn't there - because I didn't feel like it.  It would be drive up there today and come back tomorrow.  Not worth that much driving for only one night's stay.  I need a 2 night's stay for me to actually think it's worth that much driving and the prep going into going up there.  It's been a while since I've been up there after the conflict with mother.

Well whatever.  I have work to do.

I'll never live it down.
I'm telling you, it will never go away.
But since everyone thinks it's funny, it doesn't bother me now.
It's the situation where our company was having a "Town Hall" meeting.  If you can't attend physically, no matter, just call into an 800 number and give them the password/code/whatever.
Well, I was driving home from work one day while listening to the general manager and......arrived at home while it was still going on.

Of course, if the dogs happen to be outside when I come home, I get greeted.  By dogs. Large dogs with deep voices whose barks are very loud.  Well, these cheap cell phones from our work don't have a mute option, so the sound of those dogs barking loudly stops the meeting, actually.  The general manager can be heard saying: "is everything alright?, what's going on?" as the sound of my dogs barking can be heard over the speaker or whatever it is they have set up for those joining the meeting by phone.  I didn't hear what was said next, I had the phone behind me and I was yelling at the dogs to shut up.

Well, from what has been told me from numerous people that were there at the meeting, the entire place erupted into laughter at the sound of my yelling at my dogs to shut up.  They apparently thought I had yelled shut the F up, but I can assure you, the f word doesn't need to come out of my mouth to get my dogs to quiet down, instantly, when I tell them to.

That subject came up yet again when my manager was at an annual manager's meeting at some lavish restaurant/resort. You know, the kind of place the refills your water after every sip and replaces your silverware after each use? But, they were all laughing about it which was good enough for me.  I had thought badly of disrupting the meeting, to be honest, at the time.

Well, anyway.  I left the tire store today, got another tire at half price - it was under warranty and it's tread was below minimum tread depth.  85,000 mile tire that got 15,000 on it. Those tires are now 25,000 mile tires and cost a lot less money.  The used tire they sold me was re-balanced and away we go.  Out the door, into the car and on the freeway, cruising at my version of freeway speeds.  Very nice.  Nothing like fresh rubber on a car for great handling as well.

I'm half considering making the trip up north tomorrow with the dogs, since my mom won't be there.  But, the whole situation has caused me to step back and realize that - I would really have to have my own property to be happy.  Everyone does things differently and sometimes that grates on other people. You can't really do whatever you might normally do on someone else's property.  I don't mean anything destructive, loud or otherwise obnoxious.  Just you have to respect the owner's wishes and that can put a damper on the situation.  I thought I had thought this whole thing through before buying a trailer to take up there to have some time away from the heat at, but this particular thing totally escaped me during that thought process.

Well, whatever. My bedtime : )

Sitting at Discount Tire, waiting. The spare they sold me last week is vibrating; the "check tire pressure" light keeps coming on and I wanted the new tires on the front, as I asked them, not on the back.  I'm not dissing Discount tire, they always make things right, I just didn't want to have to come here today. But, I can't be driving a car around that has an extreme vibration coming from the front end, especially when I am at high speeds on the freeway, so, get it done. Fortunately, they aren't busy right now, I even more hate having to wait for long periods of time.

A fresh weekend starting now, regardless.  Plans include more work on the east side of the house and potentially cutting down the large, almost dead, plant that really sucks that it is dying. 90% of it is completely dead with no hope of coming back.  I am going to have replace it - but how do you replace something like that?  With a 2 foot thing that will take 3 or 4 years to get as big as this one did (and effectively cut out the view of one of the hoarding neighbor's hoards).  So, if I want something even relatively large, it's going to cost.  I did see something a few weeks ago at the tree nursery, the thing was about 10 feet tall and was $75 plus delivery.  I can't dump a 10 foot plant into the trunk of my car, unfortunately, worse, they want $50 for delivery even though it's only 3 miles away.

I'm going to go back tomorrow and take another look around.  They have a HUGE nursery covering a lot of acreage and a lot to look at and take in.  Like, to make a decision after looking at all of that will simply require me to go back and look again.

Nothing much else new on the home front. Had ideas of going up to the mountains, but I ain't driving up there today, too tired. I wanted to tackle this mouse problem, though mother apparently has been all over it anyway.  Problem is, she's not up there so any mice will have free reign of the trailer doing whatever they are doing in there.

Hooker Gate. Okay, that's a new one. If the Obama administration isn't the worst overall consortium of people of what I consider to be of bad character (in some cases, that's putting it mildly), it's gotta be in the top three.  "Hope and change", he said 4 years ago, yet the

Thursday Night Football. Quite the joke tonight.  I compare it with a Little League Baseball game where one team has been - formed - illegally - if all the best players playing against a regular team that has both great, bad and everywhere in between players. The first team is kicking the second team's @$$. So it is with New York v Carolina.  Carolina being handed a dish.  A dish of @$$-whip that is.  Maybe that's more like a charged can of whipped cream.

I don't necessarily write entries every day anymore because - I don't necessarily have anything new, or I simply don't feel like it.  Not that I'm quitting, just get the urge here and there and other times?  Don't wanna.

The newest dish on Obama is interesting.  I don't care to discuss it as I am rather sick of politics, will November please get here, let me get to the polling place and get it over with? Thank you.  My vote has not changed since it became clear that Romney was going to be the GOP candidate.  I think others would have been better, much better actually, but I'm of the "Anything But Obama" camp.  Time to make some bumper stickers.

My manager was off work sick on Monday and Tuesday, at work on Wednesday and then gone today.  It's not that his replacement was a bad person or did shitty work, but that person does not run stores and though he may understand in theory what should be done, he doesn't quite get it in reality.  Which is okay, I just take the load and deal with it.  They don't bring managers in to take manager's place.  They bring in inside salesmen, usually, who already have a full plate in front of them.  I just give them a pass.  "Do you need help with pulling this order?".  No, I'll get it.  They can get back to their computer screen and I will sweat my @$$ off and be happy as pie.  Why?  Nothing like a good workout.  Lifting parts that weigh 100, 150, 200, 300 pounds a piece? I can dead lift 300 pounds, I really can't get it up higher than that, lol.

Weekend almost here.  I would like to go up to my trailer and see what kind of - situation - it is with mice.  I will not have a problem with killing them. My mother doesn't like the traps that snap their heads off and such, she drowns them in water.  Lol.  Well what's the difference? You are killing them just the same.  It's her way of dealing with it, so be-it.  I haven't been up there in a while now since the altercation with the dogs. I still am of the mind that the trailer needs to be moved off the property and do something else until I hear something different, but I don't want mice trashing the place.  She isn't up there right now and I don't want extended periods of time going without someone being up there and tending to the problem.  I am going to have to find out where they are getting in and taking care of that.

The newest doggy has obviously been abused by it's previous owner.  Whoever that is, piece of s*** and a few other choice words.  It will literally be years before that dog is considered anything near "normal", but she is a cool doggy anyway, just has issues.  I won't be getting rid of her if that's what you're thinking.  No, most dogs I have owned are from what I gather to be abusive homes considering some of the issues.

Well isn't life grand.  It is, right?  It's what you make of it?  To some degree, I suppose that true, but to another extent, probably more reliant on what you  make of the true and living God.

Just throwing that in there.

ben

The idea that cooler temps are coming - while true - hasn't exactly arrived yet.  Highs still in the low 100's for the rest of this week.  It'll be October before the highs are in the 80's, of which I can stand pretty well because that usually means the lows are low enough at night to shut off AC and open the windows.  A task I will gladly do in exchange for a much lower electric bill.

It is interesting that an obese inmate, slated to be executed for shooting and killing a hotel clerk some 30 years ago, is now stating that he is too obese to be executed because it would cause a ""torturous and lingering death."  I have mixed feelings on the death penalty.  I sort of think that should be God's purview and no-one else's, yet there are people that have been executed that I thought nothing of - they "deserved" it and that was that.  The biggest problem I have with it, though, is if the system is wrong and the person being executed didn't actually commit the murders or whatever that got that person onto death row.  You occasionally read about individuals who have spent 20 or more years in prison for something that they find out that person didn't do, whether from DNA testing or a "witness" that comes out and says they lied.

What do you do with a witness that lies under oath, in a courtroom and is responsible for putting a person away for life or even death row?  

Well, whatever.  I was just reading that article and came to the conclusion that I'll leave those kinds of judgments in the hands of the Lord, that contrary to popularity vote, God is a merciful God and those that come to Him through Christ, asking for forgiveness of sin and truly repenting of it - find that mercy and that forgiveness.  

G'day.

ben

Amazingly, I slept through the night last night.  I mean, I woke up this morning, looked at the alarm clock going off and realized that something that rarely ever happens - happened.  It was almost shocking.  I usually wake up somewhere between midnight and 2 am.  I usually have to get up, get a book or get on the internet and start reading something to get me tired again to be able to go back to sleep.  If I don't get up and do that, I will lay there for hours, awake, tossing and turning attempting to get back to sleep.

Well, whatever, another work week.  I don't even remember if there is work en-queue for today, but I certainly hope there is, there is nothing worse than going to work and having nothing to do.  That would hardly be true right now, though, we have been grinding for weeks and the shop - the entire place really - needs a good sweeping and clean up.  That's one of the "casualties" of having a 2 man crew with the kind of workload we are engaged in.  We try to clean up as much as possible, but, that takes time and when there are deliveries to get out, the deliveries take precedence.  The company knows we need another person working there, but they have assessed that the workload is only temporary and doesn't warrant a third, full-time person.

Great.  Hire a part time person to come in and simply do some cleaning.  I am sure there are plenty of bodies around that would gladly take some kind of work over the nothing that is out there.  Instead, upper management determined some time ago that they would send one of the guys from downtown to help with cleaning up the place. He is supposed to come every Tuesday.  He hasn't been there in about - 2 and a half months now.

Whatever. I'm not complaining, just don't really like a dirty place whether it's my home, the truck, or my workplace.  I spent a good deal of this weekend cleaning.  Sort of a bug that just hit me and I went to town. The east side of my property, though not done yet, is looking much better now.  MUCH better, really.

Teachers in Chicago on strike; Netanyahu obviously trying to get the US to do something more than just sanctions with Iran; the Obama administration at odds with other nation leaders about whether the embassy attacks were planned or "spontaneous", the world is full of good news out there right now.

It seems to me that Netanyahu is not really wanting to engage Iran by Israel alone and would like some of the world's leaders to step up with them and take a stand, it also seems obvious, at least to me, that sanctions aren't going to work and in the case of the leaders of Iran, will only strengthen their resolve to get the nukes.

Whatever the case, it's time to leave for work.

G'day.
ben

It's easy to get into modes.  To get into routines that may or may not be healthy for you.  To engage in habits that creep up on you slowly, over time.

It came to my attention tonight, not in any conversation I was having or dwelling on any internet interaction, just started thinking about things - that there is a lot I could be doing to better my life beyond what I am doing now.

Church was the first step. Offering to get involved was the second step, which was very recent but so far no offer for any kind of engagement.

But there's more. I can taste it and feel it.  I need to start going on fasts with prayer, seeking the Lord.  Even on the physical level, I feel the need to start working out seriously again.

Odd, the thought dropped into my mind, I looked upon my past of the things I used to do and wondered how I ever got to this place and point in life.

More pondering and even more action required.

ben

Find my camera, get out there and take a bunch of pictures and post the thing for sale on Craigslist this weekend.
That is my goal to at least getting the thing online and advertised, the trailer that is.
I want that thing out of here, to be honest.  I want the money for it, too.
If I saved it and sold the other trailer, I could take both of those amounts and buy an RV trailer with slideouts and that would be very nice, indeed.

ARRRRGH.  I just saw the first cockroach in my kitchen that I have seen since I paid $150 to have them eradicated and removed out of my house - quite some time ago.  A call to the exterminator will be in order today.  I HATE cockroaches and I refuse to "live" with them in my house.  We keep this place clean, but that never seems to guarantee that cockroaches still won't decide you have a nice place for them to live.  YUCK.

Oh well.  That service was guaranteed for "life", whatever their definition of that is.  I don't want to pay another $150 and if that's their demand, I'm going to be finding another exterminator since I pay them to come out to my house on a monthly basis and make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen.

Oh, did I mention it's Friday?

The violence and turmoil continues in the Middle East.  Some suggestions have been given to the White House in how to deal with it, but apparently Obama isn't interested in the ideas of Senators.  Of course, the man doesn't seem to want to listen anyone.  His statement about "experimenting" with the economy in his speech is rather alarming.  Nothing else he has tried has worked, I don't really want to find out what his experiments are going to come to, neither do I want to be on the receiving end of it.  Perhaps we could "experiment" with balancing the budget and coming up with a plan to reduce the deficit and ohhh, maybe deal with Social Security while we're at it.  I guess this issue with Social Security won't be dealt with until the hand is forced and it runs out of money.  THAT'S the way to deal with it, just about the time I am ready to retire, I will be seeing greatly reduced benefits because none of our elected officials wanted to deal with it.

Which is why I just increased my 401k to 7% and have upped my goal from ultimately having 10% taken out to 15% percent.  Yup, I need another rental unit.  I saw a nicely built casita type thing sitting on a trailer on the side of the road with a for sale sign on it the other day.  It was big enough that you could make a small rental unit out of it and small enough that you wouldn't need city approval/plans/permit to have it on the property.  Of course, I could build such a thing myself, but I was wondering if it was something someone bought and were just trying to get rid of it or if it was something they are building on a consistent basis as an income generator.  If the latter, than probably building one myself would be cheaper.  If the former, then perhaps it might have been a good deal. Who knows?  You know what?  I bet I could build something that size with the proceeds of the sale of the RV and really, it looked very nice with a window and nice door in it.

If my neighbors are allowed to put up the junk they have put up on their property behind me and the City of Phoenix is not going to do anything about it, then I can certainly build something that actually looks decent. It's getting the time of year when my electric bill will come down substantially and water usage will decrease and that bill go down as well, meaning more money to be able to foot the bill for such a project.

Umm, time to be off to work.

G'day.

ben

Devising plans and goals.
I realized not long ago that I am devoid of having any goals.
Well, let's restate that: I am devoid of goals that can be accomplished any time soon.

Long term goals are wonderful, but I think it always encouraging and a bit of satisfaction comes from coming up with goals that can be accomplished, say, in the next 6 months to a year.

First off, I have finally resolved to just stick it out in this house.  I have spent too much time, energy and money in to the property to just walk away from it.  It is upside down regarding amount owed versus market value, so beit.  I have nowhere else to go that would be much of anything acceptable to be able to do anything else, besides possibly finding an owner-carry lot with an old mobile home on it.  Which, actually, isn't that far-fetched of an idea - I can always fix up an old home to my liking, renovate it and make it very nice.

With that in mind, I started re-visiting some ideas that I had put on the shelf.  One, to build a casita.  That would still be a relatively long-term goal, though, since it would cost more money than I have.  I mean, you have to have a set of plans to carry into the Planning and Development office at the City to have it approved.  That can be expensive in itself - plus the permits.  Then you face the cost of having a foundation poured; buying the lumber/windows/doors/electrical/plumbing/roofing/interior such as bathroom and small kitchen.  I'm looking at around 5 thousand to do it myself.  I can probably fetch at least 2 grand out of the RV trailer parked on the side of my house of which I have no further use for since Mark and Lynnette are not living in it, but that's not enough obviously.

I also was just outside and looked at the amount of space I have on the east side of the house and musing how nice it would be to have a 1,500 to 2,000 gallon pond out there.  That would be awesome, actually.

That is one I am definitely kicking around in my head.  About $300 for the liner and sub-liner; digging out the ground and a good filtering/pump system will cost at least another $300 if not more.  Not cheap by my standards, but perhaps in the next 6 months, doable.

Selling the RV trailer is turning into a priority, though. If I don't build a casita, well, I just want that thing out of here.  It is taking up space.  Get the money out of it, put it into the savings account and figure out what's next.

Umm, the other thing I really need to get done - I have been waiting for cooler weather - is to spend serious time on the east side of my house and get it spruced up.  Lots of gardening type of work to do out there and to that end I have that kid coming over on Saturday, I think, to spend a day out there helping me with that situation.  He's been over here about 5 times and always does good work, motivated, energetic, gets whatever I ask him to get done, done.  Much of the fiolage needs trimmed and lots of grass to pull.  I am going to look into ground covering plants that might be able to edge out the grass.

Almost everything I came up with in terms of goals - costs money.  Reality check.

As for my newest tree, I'm afraid it may be doomed.  I checked average winter temps in Madagascar, where the tree is native, it doesn't seem to get down below the low 60's there at any time of the year.  This tree will experience temps down into the low 30's this coming winter if planted outside.  Well, at least not a lot of money lost if it doesn't survive.  But then again, that's what they say about the Norfolk Pine - Norfolk island gets down to the low 60's in "winter" and yet, mine Norfolk has now survived 3 winters going down to half that in temp.  But, one plant surviving doesn't not guarantee that another kind of plant will also.  Well, as far as the experts are concerned, my Norfolk pine should definitely have never survived the first summer here, much less a winter.  It's doing quite well out there : )  I think what may be helping it?  It's situated right next to the condensation drain for my central AC unit.  It pretty much stays swamped over there, which I would have thought would have killed the root system, but - it's really doing quite well albeit it doesn't grow very fast.  Beautiful little tree.

REALLY short terms goals: get rid of the trailer and get the east side of the house spruced up.

Mid range goal - not settled on it yet, but possibly a much larger pond.
Save for an RV trailer that has at least 2 slide-outs for more room.  No, I don't live in an RV trailer, this is for recreational purposes only.

Between mid range and long: somewhere around 2 years or less left to pay off the car.
Front loading, energy and water efficient washing machine.  That is really something of a priority because I will see significant savings on electrical use right off the bat considering the amount of laundry being done around here. At least 12 loads per week, probably more.

Long range goal: save for substantial down payment on property up north.
Save for pickup truck.

Definitely undecided goal: Casita for another money-earning rental unit.

Budget: Go through entire budget on money spent on everything and see if there are any savings to be had.  Do another month-long, written journal of every penny spent, no matter how small, every day.  Tally up the costs and see what kind of savings can be had in either eliminating things altogether or substituting with something cheaper.

I upped my 401k plan 2 days ago to 7% being taken out.  Goal: 15%.

I also have spiritual goals, but I will keep those to myself for the time being.  Well, not all of it has to be kept to myself, it am just looking at financials in this goal driver and what I can do, what I can save and how I am going to go about doing it.  If I cannot come up with a definitive plan for each item listed, then I need to discard that goal and focus on the others.

Oh, the physical goals: simply to get back into a regular work out routine.  Work provides ample amounts of physical exertion, but as far as sustained cardio workouts, that isn't necessarily true on a daily basis.  That isn't really for losing weight, it's for feeling good, sleeping well, things like that.

My seeming obsession with trees.  I am not a tree hugger.  Cut the thing down if you need to build a house, make furniture and the myriad of seemingly unlimited uses for it.  I'm more about the beauty effect they provide, not to mention the shade and wildlife.  I'm not against lumber companies cutting down portions of forests.  I AM for them reforesting and responsibly managing forests.  Of course they are going to plant more trees, that is their livelihood.  We aren't going to somehow run out of the need for wood any time - in the next 1,000 centuries, but who am I to look that far in advance.

Enough.

G'nite.

ben

So, we jumped through their hoops - the State of Arizona that is - took the car back to the repair shop, they installed the "new" hose, took it across the street and he it checked.  They passed the car for the emissions test and that was that, right?  While all of this was going on, Caleb had to do all of that as I simply am dumping responsibility for that car onto him, I was at Discount Tire attempting to get the warranty on the tires honored.

85,000 mile warranty on the tires.  Well, that car doesn't even have 85,000 miles on it and 3 of those tires were either very low on tread or bad - one of them had the cords separating.
I was offered replacements at half price, which I jumped on, but the "new" warranty for the same tire is now 25,000 miles.

I went over to Garcia's mexican food across the street, had dinner (it was going to be at least an hour wait for the tires and I had no inclination, whatsoever, to sit around in that waiting area) and was talking with Caleb about the car as he was going through the "process".  The emissions facility is going to pay for the damages to the car.  So, the car passed emissions and all is good in the world, right?  NOT.  I tried to register the thing and it came up with: "Needs emission tested".  Yeah, whatever.  Once you pass emissions it automatically goes into the system as passed.  I have the PASS paper in my hand!

Fortunately, the car has another 3-day permit on it so it's legal to drive for 2 more days while I call the state of Arizona again and ask them why they are so incompetent.  This is not the first, or 5th, or 10th time I've had problems with either the vehicle registration or the driver's license department.  It's just unbelievable that we've had to to through all of this crap.  

Yup, just tried again in case there might be some lag time in it getting into their system for whatever reason, no go Joe, it's coming up with "needs vehicle emission testing", blah blah blah.

A nice thing that occurred yesterday, though, was coming home and finding my new tree sitting on the kitchen counter.  Took it out, very healthy specimen.  Not sure if it will survive the winter, I need to do more research on that.

Well so much for my peaceful pre-work rituals.  Not going into that, but it's time to leave for work anyway.  I am going to do a search for temps in Madagascar, though, during their version  of winter and see what it gets down to.  That's where this tree originates from and it's natural habitat.

G'day.

ben

So, I sort of figured out what was causing the vibration on the car, extreme vibration.  A bad tire - cords showing on the front.  Which makes the situation even worse since it's a front wheel drive.  I'm trying to drive home from work yesterday and it was ridiculous.

Well, these tires allegedly have 85,000 mile warranty on them.  I got 20,000 out of that one.  So, I got a prorated amount plus put a used tire on another spot going on the rear of the car which will last quite a while.

I have one more mileage credit, but I couldn't really afford all of it right now, save that for the near future.  At least they're honest about it - Discount Tire that is - they don't try to screw you, they have everything on file and they simply go by that.

Meanwhile, Caleb was just at the repair shop with the old car, they were putting on the junkyard version of hose and he is currently waiting in line at the emissions station waiting to get the car check ed out.....however.......the repair facility called ahead and warned them he was coming, to take care of the situation and be ready to deal with this quickly. What fun, waiting in line a second time when it should never have occurred in the first place.  We'll see how that turns out, though they have already stated they are not going to pay for the damages they inflicted on that car.

Yeah, right and we'll see about that.

LONG day at work.  I went to a person's house with 20,000 feet of pipe.  You read that correctly, 20,000 feet of pipe.  Small diameter pipe, but still a lot of pipe.  I get there and find out they do not have a machine to unload the pipe with.  It was 70% humidity and unknown temp in direct sunlight, unloading that truck by hand.  2 unmotivated workers taking their sweet old time helping get it off of there, I was getting irritated.  The final lift of pipe I simple dumped off the side of the truck with the new owner's blessing.  It had already gone on almost 2 hours and I had a LOT left to go.

Whatever.  I think I will go up to mom's property 2 weekends from now when she isn't there and yes, with the dogs.  I was getting a little excited about finding property up there for sale, but it's going to have to wait until I get some debt taken care of. I know it sounds crazy, but what I really need is another room to rent out and get extra income in to save for a couple of years to get a good down payment on property.  Or not. What I would really like is a travel trailer with slide-outs.  I like the one I have now, excepting it doesn't have enough room. If it had a couple of slide-outs that would make all the difference in the world.

So, sell the one in my driveway, save up the rest and find hopefully a decent one.  Pull the one up there off the property and potentially drag another one up there - if we work out this dog situation that is.  No hurry.  If mom doesn't have a problem with me going up there when she isn't there, well, she isn't there the entire winter.  She can't stand the cold and will not go up there at all until Spring and that only when it warms up enough to her liking.

LONG interlude - and my bedtime.

ben

So, meanwhile, life goes on (referencing the car situation).
Which reminds me, the registration on my car has to be renewed this month but thankfully, no emissions testing needed.
I called my mother today.  I was sitting at a job site in Casa Grande, looking at the dark skies and enjoying the cool weather.
I wished her happy birthday, yes, her birthday is 9/11 and then we went into some things.  I decided to go ahead and bring up the subject, not about the dogs but about the rat she says she found in her storage shed on her property up there.
She then went into the mice that she caught in the traps and then, after the mice apparently figured out the traps, put out D-Con.
She then informed me the place would be vacant the weekend after next, apparently offering me the place without her being there.
The subject of the dogs never came up, I wasn't going to bring it up and she apparently didn't want to go there, either.  So beit.

Obama snubs Netanyahu.  Even the liberal news media is reporting it as such.  Is this supposed to be a good thing?  I can only imagine what must be going through the minds of Israel's leaders: PLEASE, ANYBODY but Obama in the White House come next election.

Anyway, I put this inquiry in online last night and today?  Mailbox full of realtors giving listings for all properties in that area under 50k.  Going as low as 24k.  Interesting that property taxes up there are so high.  What are they paying for? Dirt roads? $2,500 property tax for a property sold at 30K?  HOA dues in some places $2,500 per year? lol.

Watching some 9/11 footage, finally found some.  Went to church for small groups and the only people that showed up were a married couple that are elders in the church.  We talked for about 70 minutes and got into some different subjects an dissues and then - went home.  Oh, myyy, time for bed.

ben

State Of Arizona Emissions Employees Damaged My Car

Nice title, yes? Is it true?  YES.
Today.  My son finally took the car to the auto repair shop which is directly across the street from one of the State's emissions testing facilities.

The prognosis?  There is a line coming off the vapor can that state employees pinch off with vice grips and then do a pressure check on the gas tank and line going up to the can.  Well, on cars such as mine, you cannot USE vise grips on that line because it is a solid, hard-plastic line.  To use vise-grips means destroying the line.

Guess what they did and guess what was destroyed?  Yup, didn't take much for you to figure that one out.  They broke the plastic line and come to find out, GM doesn't make that plastic line any more, it's not available.  The mechanic - also the shop's owner - said he has never seen anything like that in his 26 years of repairing vehicles and specializing in repairing emissions problems.  On cars such as mine?  It is procedure to NOT check the pressure since they can't without damaging the car.

This repair owner is a pretty cool guy, from what I am getting on the phone.  He has volunteer to help us make the State make this right.
____________________________
Long interlude.  Not going into all the details, but the manager at the emissions station admitted what they had done was wrong - but flat denied helping out in any way, shape or form, this to the shop owner, not to me.
She picked the fight with the wrong person, which would be me.  It took about half an hour of phone calls and I found myself on the other end of the line with the Project Manager of Emissions, including emissions stations, over the entire State of Arizona.  We got into it.  Since they should not have even performed this test on that car  and since the rest of the car passed emissions and equipment, there should be nothing more to it.  Go into the system, change it to pass and be done with it.

Nope.  Not a happening event.  Fine, then please call this Donna woman at the emissions station and ask her why, exactly, it is that the repair shop can't just use tubing bought from Home Depot (his words, not mine) and install it since there IS no option to replace it from the factory/dealer, he already tried and they said it is no longer made.  ???  The state is going to pay for this, that's all there is to it.  I don't care how much trouble I have to go to, they did wrong and they think because they are the government they can just tell me no and I will simply go away.

Sorry, Charlie, but that IRKS me to NO end which only motivates me MORE.  But, I was amazed at getting this man on the other end of the line so quickly.  I did not think I was going to get to talk to the director of the entire program after only having tried for 30 minutes to get ANYWHERE with it.

Meanwhile, the shop owner calls me back just a few minutes ago (after starting this entry even) and states that he found one from a friend/acquaintance junk yard for $25.  Yes, let's do that, get the thing fixed, get it back to emissions, get it passed and get it registered!  Registration for that car is like $18, lol.  It costs less to register it than to take it through emissions!

However, the State of Arizona is not going to get a pass on this.  They are going to pay for all of this and that's that.

So, I come home from work, greet the dogs who are already greeting me and then proceed to go out to the ponds.  I can't believe another dead fish!  I'm thinking, geeze, not again!!

But then I look at the fish.  Oh my gosh - GROSS!

That fish had been dead a LONG time!!  I am not going to describe it, suffice it to say it was absolutely disgusting.  It's body must have come up under the huge Yerba Mensa plant and had been lodged under there - until today, that is.  Got it out of there immediately.  That dead thing could not be helping the eco system in that pond - at alllllll.

It rained yet again last night and I just saw my water bill.  It's down about $40 right now and next month it should be down even more than that - from previous months that is.  Today's high 91 degrees.  The plants are not being subjected to scorching heat so they aren't sucking so much water out of the ground but even if they were, the now-frequent rains have been keeping the ground wet.  I'll be happy to see the water bill (which includes sewer and trash) get below $100.  I'll be really happy to the electric bill go down to somewhere around $150.

As I figured, 9/11 shows are on tonight, the night before the anniversary.  But of course my mom's birthday is also tomorrow.  I am going to call her and attempt to keep the conversation away from the dogs and her property at this point.  Pretty much losing interest in going up there at this point.  Not going to walk on egg shells around her, it's her property, she can do what she wants with it.  If I had some extra funds every month, I would definitely be looking into buying some property somewhere up in that area.  But I don't have any extra fund and an extra 3 or 400 per month for -ever - is out of the question.

Just did a search.  One lot for sale at 130k.  Nothing on it, not even improved.  Another lot for sale at 100k. Same thing, vacant lot.  Then I find another lot with an A frame cabin on it for $79,000!  Just dreaming.  Would be awesome to have a cabin like structure up in the mountains.

Put that thought on a shelf in the mind and let it sit there for a while.  Probably a long while.

Meanwhile, life goes on.  Reading the Bible and attempting to get a foot in the door of church to find some place to serve.  Whatever position that is is irrelevant to me, just to have the opportunity to serve again in some way.

The old Buick failed emissions about a month ago. I have been telling my son to get the car in to a shop and have it fixed.  Probably the charcoal cannister.  But whatever, I am not going to just start buying parts out of a guess and hope that it works.  Found a place right down the road from his college that has rave reviews in an online search.  Customers not only stating they were happy with the service but that they had compared prices and this place was cheaper than those they had inquired of.  It also happens to be a place that specializes in emission repairs.

I am, frankly, tired of dumping money into that car.  At the same time, it's been a while since I have had to do anything to it.  So, if it's been something like 5 or 6 months since I had to dump anything into it, and if I can get out of it this time for $200 or less, then I still consider it a good deal.  Monthly payments on a newer car are much more expensive.  You are enslaved to a contract for however many years - trust me, I am soooo sick of paying on my current car, I have been paying on it for like 4 years now -Newer cars equal higher insurance payments and you are forced to have full coverage insurance on a financed car.  That old Buick has minimum liability coverage and that's that.  I told my son if he totals that car, that's it, it's done and he will have nothing to drive.

I'm sorry, it's a vapor canister.  I just know it has charcoal in it.  That's what I am guessing is causing the trouble, that or perhaps it's just a bad line, which would be awesome since that would be a cheap fix.

He's taking it in in the morning, waiting until the 30 day permit runs out - which is today.  I told him he could get a pretty hefty ticket if he's caught.  Whatever.  You can only get 1, 30-day permit on any given vehicle per year.

Speaking of vehicle problems, the window assembly on my car that raises and lowers the window broke - for the third time now.  That's right.  I heard a cable snap inside the door when I was lowering the window and I knew it was trash.  I took it back to the shop for a 3rd time and had them fix it - they did it for free again since I paid them almost $900 last year to fix both windows.  The question is: how is this track breaking like this?  I asked the owner of the shop, he shrugged his shoulders, no answer.  Well it's a pretty good bet they aren't going to keep replacing this for free forever, even if they are getting comped for the part from the parts store, they still have to give free labor to repair it.

I'm thinking maybe don't use that window?  I dunno.

Been keeping tabs on the presidential election race? Yeah, right.

Alright.  I'm in a left hand turn lane (in my car) with the "Turn On Green Arrow Only" sign sitting up there.  There is a girl in an SUV in front of me who is at the front of the line.  The light turns green.  The inevitable cars that are running red lights to make THEIR left turn LONG after the light had turned red come through, but after that, this girl is still sitting there.  Yes I did honk my horn and no I don't have any regrets.  Get your eyes OFF of the freaking cellphone and DRIVE YOUR DAMNED CAR!~!!  \

Down the road, she gets RIGHT on my bumper.  Temptation: hit the brakes she isn't paying attention, she has that stupid cellphone in her right hand on top of the steering wheel, I could see it in my rear view mirror.  But, that would be illegal to try to cause an accident and unethical, so I instead hit the gas.  Whatever the case, I had checks to deposit at Chase bank and I got into a turning lane.  This girl starts honking her horn on the way past me.  I guessed she wanted me to look up to see her middle finger, so, I completely ignored her.  The honking went on until well past me, I continued to ignore her, lol.

On the freeway today, I-10 Eastbound in Phoenix near 40th street to be precise. I am in the semi this time.  A lady in another SUV is swerving back and forth in her lane, going around 70.  I was attempting to guess: is she drunk, on drugs or texting?  I guessed texting.  A few hundred feet more, she had to slow down for traffic in front of her and sure enough, another texting phone, on the steering wheel, this woman paying far less attention to the road than to that stupid phone.

What is it going to take for it to become a socially unacceptable thing to text while driving?  People are dying on America's roadways every day from it, so that's not really an effective motivator - everyone already knows it causes accidents and many times horrific accidents yet they still do it.    I don't know, really, but if I were King, I would have enacted a ban on texting while driving long ago.

That's it for now.

ben

So let's see.  Nothing grand done this weekend. The lady that I gave some pond plants to and the hard shell pond liner came back - with more people in tow - to get some of the mosquito eating fish I have. I mean, there must be 150 to 200 of them things in there.  They are very small fish so it doesn't do anything to the appearance of the pond itself.  We sat there for a while catching the little fish and putting them into a coffee pot container.  I'm waiting to hear back whether they are doing their jobs or not, but, I figure those little things were pretty hungry so I am assuming they would eat as many mosquitoes as they can find.

Other than that, I went to church and not much of anything else.

Mom's birthday tomorrow - 9/11.  I am expecting to see a lot of stuff on TV going on today and tomorrow about 9/11, of course.
Ummm, it's early, looking at quite a lot of work today and just going to get up, get out of here get to work and get it all over with.

Later.

ben

It's Friday, albeit the fact that it's almost over.
It's been raining on and off throughout the week.  My flowering plants are going crazy with new blooms for all the water.  Honeysuckles have orange blooms all over them and - ummm - lol I can't remember the name of the other one - are also well abloom.  The only ones that aren't producing are the vines, which, when they feel like it, put out hundreds of beautiful yellow blooms.

It rained most of the day today.  Which, when driving a semi in heavy traffic, isn't really all that fun.  Not because of the rain itself, but because of the effect it has on other drivers on the road who are already not paying enough attention to the driving task at hand.

Noteworthy is the totally trashed pickup truck on the freeway.  I was on a transition ramp from one freeway to another.  I saw near the end of a median that has plants and landscaping rocks a decided scraping of tires.  Looking up, I saw it.  A pickup had slid across that dirt area, onto the next freeway, across 4 lanes and slammed against the concrete, rebar-reinforced median wall. The front end of that pickup trust was TRASHED.  This was coming off a steep turn and I surmised that he was going too fast coupled with wet roads.  There were no other vehicles involved.

Or other accidents I saw today. I try hard to stay out of accidents.  It isn't a matter of right and wrong - well that guy was at fault and I was in the right.  Who cares. Accidents cause a lot of problems if nothing else.  For a truck driver, employers don't want to have to deal with accidents that you are involved with, regardless of who is at fault. Accidents happen, definitely, I just try my best to avoid them even if people are driving completely stupid.

I was at one of our better contractor's sites today and I was speaking to one of the foremen.  In recent times, his eyes have turned red and are always red when I see him.

They are working 6 or 7 days a week - depending on the whims of the corporation that is paying for the construction of the new plant.  Their schedules are changed weekly.  This week, they are working through Sunday and have Monday off.  They have been subjected to this for about a year now.  I haven't bothered to tell them the life of an OTR truck driver and the relentless, grueling hours they spend on the road.  I did that for years.  I know what it's like - long before the CDL license and extreme rules - in driving well over hours and spending 7 days a week for months on the road.

Instead, I sympathized with them. They are away from their families alot and when they are home, they are tired, worn out and can't spend quality time with their children and spouses.  Oh, I said them, them being foremen that I frequently encounter at this particular jobsite who are getting burned out, yet know that the economy sucks and this is their only life-line right now. The foreman I was talking to today is abused by his company.  This I know for a fact.  Yet, he isn't going to say anything to them about it because he is making good money and he knows the prospects for an unemployed construction worker in the Phoenix area right now.

Regardless of what Obama, Michelle or Clinton had to say in their speeches, the economy is tanking and a LOT of people are out of work. A LOT of people have given up looking for jobs.  A LOT of people are on food stamps.  Well, that's all political, I didn't vote for Obama the fist time around and I will definitely not be voting for him this time. I'll write in Donald Duck before I vote for a man that made as many promises as he did in 2008 that have yet to be delivered.

Well, that man walked away from the conversation shaking his head at his plight.  This particular foreman hates to be told (not asked) to work on a  Sunday.  I would too, if it was an on-going thing. If it happened once in a great while, I wouldn't care that much.  In fact, I was called by my company on a Sunday night, at 9:00 pm, JUST as I was about to go to sleep.  Get to the shop, get the truck, drive to Tucson, get the pipe, bring it back to a site in Chandler.  It was after 8:00 am the next morning before I left work and went home to go to sleep.  I actually enjoyed that trip, it was a challenge and a change of pace.

In fact, I wouldn't mind being sent across the country on some wild trip to pick up something that for some reason can't be delivered any other way.  Lol, probably not  going to happen.  I don't miss the days of endless OTR driving, but a road trip here and there would be nice.

Nothing going on this weekend besides the normal.  Church, mostly.  I had thoughts of going up to the mountains, but, the situation with my mother constrains that.  It isn't a hopeless cause, but there is a at lease some chance that I will end up moving that trailer off of that property and back to my driveway.  Actually, a pretty good chance unless my mother is going to offer something different than what she has already said.  I wish I could afford monthly payments on a property up in the mountains somewhere, but I have enough as it is.

Well, it's just about my bedtime, even if a Friday.

ben