I'm tired and cranky.
Ever since Gilbert did his attempt-to-move-out-in-the-middle-of-the-night-thing-without-my-knowing thing, I have not been sleeping well.
But whatever.
The room is clean and done.  I called the man today to let him know it's ready and he stated he was moving in tomorrow.  Okay, I replied, Mark should be here all day if you show up before I get home from work.

However, I will be giving Mark a simple set of instructions: the man must pay up before he moves in.  Money or nothing.  I will give Mark a little "reward" of the money given for doing all he has done to help in this situation.

Long day at work.  Just tired.  I gotta get some sleep going here. I'm working on 4 or 5 hours per night, well short of what I need to feel good throughout the day - or if need be, take a nap and feel good again after slowing down.

Some of the things people do in traffic...............just maddening.

But I am not going to go into that.  Instead, since I have posted that ad for the room, I have had a large number of inquiries concerning it.   I have had numerous phone conversations, but in the end, it's whoever shows up and seems like a good fit is the person that is going to get it.

So, on my way home from work yesterday, I get a call from one of those individuals informing me he was at the house and can I get someone out there to let him in?  Yes, of course.  I was expecting him and had informed Mark that someone might be coming.

By the time I got home, they were in the bedroom, looking it over.  Quite the mess, actually.  But not the end of the world, either.  The disconcerting thing is the melted wax on the floor.  I wondered how close this house might have come to burning down with a person burning candles that is paying so little attention to them, large quantities of wax are oozing onto the floor?  This is the kind of risk a person takes, I guess, in renting out rooms.  I can't deal with things I don't know about.

Well, anyway, his brother and this guy had come, his brother already has a place, they were just doing this looking around thing together.  Apparently they had been to numerous houses/apartments, looking for a place but much of it was a "frat house" type of atmosphere, a living situation this guy didn't want any part of.  In other words, places filled with college aged students.  After listening to this guy talking for quite a while, I came to the determination - as much as one can make in such a short space of time - that this guy would probably work out in moving in here.  There are never any guarantees and sometimes people have quirks and/or things that they do that cause great annoyance for others.

But, we shook on it and so the race begins.  The room is - was - a mess.  I started right in on cleaning the carpet.  This guy needs the room - immediately actually - he is living with his brother but it became obvious that that was only intended to be a short-lived situation.  I got the carpet looking pretty good - excepting the wax. How does one remove wax?  The only way I could think of is with heat, but I couldn't fathom how you could use heat to extract it from the carpet.

An online search, of course, got the answer:  a piece of newspaper set on top of the wax and an iron put on low heat and let it sit there.  According to the site, the newspaper will absorb the wax.

Well I haven't gotten to that yet, it was as much as I could get done to go over that carpet numerous times with the machine in trying to get it to looking as good as possible.

Well, Mark was going to do the rest, but he has his job today so that isn't going to work out, either, when I get home from work I will continue on the cleanup and try to get it done or mostly done by the end of today.

As for now?

Time to go to work.

G'day.

ben

Finding A New Tenant/DirecTv

The search goes on.
For a new tenant.

But first: Direct TV

My favorite company to hate and they deserve it.  I stand on my evaluation of this company as continuing to have the worst customer service on the face of this planet.  They have not improved in their customer service since they made all of those announcements last year about it - after losing millions of customers because of it.

Regardless.  They came out and replaced the dish, the lines that go to the dish and the switch.  Whatever the switch thing is called, it is a block where all the lines from the house go into it and the 2 lines from the satellite dish go into it.  It needs electricity for whatever it does.

Saturday, I noticed several channels were not working and "searching for satellite signal".  I called Direct TV and made an appointment.  No biggies on hurrying, it's only some channels, not all of them, I can live without them until they come and fix it.  This morning, George (one of my tenants) called me and told me that it was all out, none of the channels are working.  Although he said he had called me to prepare before I got home and found nothing working, I knew better. I can live without TV at all.  The internet a different story, but TV I can take it or leave it.  I have some favorite shows, don't get me wrong, but nothing that makes me have to have it.

Well, when I found that out, I started making calls.  Hard to do while working, but I was able to make the calls without sacrificing work at the same time.  It's called multi-tasking and I"m pretty good at it.

I knew I would get loads and loads of  BS - and I certainly wasn't let down on that issue.  I won't go into all the details, it will take too long and I don't feel like writing that much.  On finally calling their headquarters and getting to someone who said no-one was available to come out today, I then asked for her manager.  She didn't want to but I am very persuasive, read: I'm not going away and you are going to have to deal with me on my terms.

Her manager gets on the phone and tells me the same thing.  It became quickly obvious that they weren't actually doing anything, they were just looking at the appointments available and reciting to me that the local department where I live didn't have anything available. They were not calling them and asking them - at all - if they could squeeze it in somewhere.  So I told this lady flatly, after listening to her repetitive tribe for a while - that "you are completely useless".  Yes, I insulted her. This isn't customer service.  I call it customer disservice, or more like customer dissing.  You will not question them, they are the final authority and that is that.

This went on for a while, when she finally started talking in logic instead of dictation, then we had a discussion and then she got off the line and made her phone call or email or whatever she did and yes, when I came home from work today at around 5:00 pm, there was a Direct TV van sitting in front of my house and the man had already finished the repair.  I thanked him profusely for doing that and freely admitted that I am the - person - that made life miserable for headquarters and everyone else.  He said no problem and I replied that I wouldn't do that to him, anyway, thanks for coming out.  Turns out that he had a 45 minute drive from the place he was at to my house and that he was at the end of his work day when he was called by his general manager to come out and fix the problem.

But, it took me 2 hours to get that done.  Otherwise, no TV here until tomorrow afternoon.  So, I got some money taken off my bill but I intend on reserving this latest episode with this company for when my current, free movie channels expire, which is very soon.

Back to Gilbert, the tenant that tried to leave in the middle of the night and - dunno why, really amazing that he started acting that way because I have had a good relationship with him all the way up until now.

He crawled out the window the other night in order to, apparently, not have to "deal" with anything.  But,  I wouldn't have said anything further to him at that point, anyway and I was remaining congenial with him.  But, we did have a short conversation - very short - and it was basically that he was leaving, would be out by the first.

So, I talked to other tenants about it, they said if I wanted, they would call me if he showed up to remove the rest of his things, to which I readily agreed.  Yup, I got a call from Lynnette today - he's here, wanted to let you know, do you want me to do anything?  Yup, hand the phone to him, I want to talk to him.

But, I remained cordial and "nice".  If a person is intent on moving out - even without giving any kind of notice at all and owing money - then they are going to do it and there is nothing I can do to stop it.  More importantly, nothing I should do to stop it.  They are leaving for a reason and whatever that reason is, my place doesn't work for them anymore, I am good with that and let's move on.  I told him I would like if we parted on good terms and not turn it into something - bad.  He agreed and we discussed a few things before I asked him: are you still going to give me the money you promised? Yes, he replied. Fine, you can leave it with Lynnette.

So yes, it was a pleasant surprise - surprise, yes - to find that he had left the money he had promised.  He owes more than that, but I know I am not going to get it out of him and I am going to let the rest of it go.  I won't necessarily tell him that, but I am not going to ask for any more.  He has stated he owes me a couple hundred more, which is fine, but he's hurting and getting as much as I did out of this situation today was, actually, a very good ending for me.

I'm tired.  Tenancy issues can be draining.  I have to have the income, period.  It's a non-negotiable deal for me.  I have talked to 3 people so far on the phone about the room and will keep on talking as replies come in off my Craigslist ad until someone takes the room. I had a long conversation with another truck driver who  is looking for a room and though it sounded okay, something better might come along.

And that's that.  It's a little before my bedtime but I am exhausted.

ben

Tired and irritable.
I was attempting to sleep last night and kept getting woken up by noises. What are these dogs doing, I'm thinking?  After being jolted into awake-land, I finally understood that whatever was going on, it wasn't the dogs.  People going in and out of the back door.  My first thought?  Gilbert, the college-aged tenant, moving out in the middle of the night.

Wouldn't be the first time that something like this has happened.  I gave him a notice a few days ago - though not an eviction notice, I wanted him to pay up.  He has been getting behind and he had promised to give me money on Friday - though I was up in the mountains on Friday - yesterday I had to ask him about the rent (versus him coming and discussing it with me).  He gave me a story about losing his wallet and that he will need to go to the bank to get some money.  Perhaps he actually did lose his wallet, I will never know.  Anyway, I figured the notice and his situation would be the only ones moving out like that, the other tenants are not the kind of people that would play those kinds of games.

So, I got on some clothes, came out to the kitchen to find JD on the old computer.  No surprise there, he's been doing it for years, my on restriction is that he doesn't visit porn sites. He wants to do that, go get his own computer and pay for his own internet.  Yes, I can tell, just go through the history and see what he's been up to.  I don't do that often anymore, he is a good "kid", I think he's 20 now, have known him since he was 12.

He had earphones on and didn't even know I was there, but upon observing what he was watching, I had no reason to interrupt him.  He wasn't the reason I was out there.  Just stood there and waited.  Sure enough, here comes Gilbert and 2 of his friends, arms loaded with stuff, walking through.  Gilbert didn't say a word to me, so I ventured out into the deep blue sea and said: "Moving out in the middle of the night, Gilbert?".  It was 2:00 am or thereabouts.  He fumbled for words and said that he was "just moving stuff to a  storage unit".  He then finally offered he would be moving out and would be out by the first of the month.  He further offered money on Monday and the rest of it next Friday.

Well first off, storage units aren't opened at 2:00 am.  I know this for a fact.  Any of them around these parts usually don't allow people in before 6:00am, some of them 5:00 am to accommodate for contractors keeping their trailers and materials stored there.  Second off, he has been giving me the money story a couple of times now.

Whatever.  No notice, just goodbye.  Whatever again.  This isn't the mature or respectful way to deal with such.  Just be honest, that's all I want.  I have never treated him poorly, I have only asked him to respect my rules with the washing machine and lately, asking him about rent.  He stated last week that he had had his hours reinstated so I believed that he was simply going to get caught up on his rent and that would be that.

Well, this basically kept me up the rest of the night.  A flurry of thoughts and immediately went back into my bedroom, got out my laptop and started writing up a room rental ad.  I haven't had to do that in a long time now.  I think Gilbert's been here at least a year, probably longer.  I don't really keep track.  I have no idea where he is moving to, I would guess some place cheaper, though my rent rate is cheap enough and includes utilities and all the perks such as WiFi and 231 channels of Direct TV.  I could do without the Direct TV, but, tenants won't and you can't really lure people in without it.

So now starts the rather arduous task of finding a sane, normal person (it's a gamble every time, unfortunately).  I think Gilbert has been here over a year and a half, judging from the last time I had to place an ad and still in my Craigslist account.  Fortunately, all those ads are still in there, I can simply copy and paste all of that into a new ad instead of having to sit here and write a new one up every time.   When you are running a new ad twice a day, that can add up to a lot of time spent, I am pretty thorough  in my ads in what a person can expect in moving in here and what we expect of them.  Pretty much weeds out a lot of people in advance and don't have to waste a lot of time with people who will not make a good fit in here.

Meanwhile, an entire family came out yesterday to look at the trailer.  I am trying to sell the thing and get it off my property.  Have been trying to sell it for a while now.  They looked at it for a while, said thank you and left.  Probably not, going to repost the ad since the one I have is well down there on the list on Craigslist.  In fact, I was surprised anyone found it considering it is at least a month old and a person would have to do some searching to find that trailer on there.

Life goes on.  I haven't decided yet but probably not going to church.  I'm just too tired to sit there and attempt to remain attentive and engaged in listening to a sermon and worshiping for 2 plus hours.  I am glad all this didn't happen on a work night.  Mark is out in the trailer cleaning up after the dude that I basically forced out - and continues to talk trash to me via texting.  Don't really care.  He was BS'ing me all along, I knew he was but I gave him several chances anyway to pay up.  Getting rid of that trailer is the best idea as far as I am concerned.  It just isn't getting a lot of replies, I may have it priced too high, but I paid $2,500 for it and I always start higher than what I want for it.  At this point, I would take 2 grand to get it out of here.

That's it.

Happy Sunday.

I wrote all of this up at the trailer in the mountains, so posting regardless if the next day:


Well, here I am up in the mountains again.  Took care of a problem with being able to winterize the unit - it has tubes hanging down below the trailer and you simply remove the end caps on the tubes to let the water drain out.  The problem? Those caps must not have been off of there for a long time and 2 of them busted off the lines without much effort in trying to remove them.  I had to replace them  - but I put valves on them instead of replacing them with end caps.

I was then going to fix the deadbolt on the shed door on my mom's property, but after looking at it, it's simply the striker plate.  It is too small to adjust it to a new position, so I will be bringing up a new one next time I am up here.  She is very concerned about it because she won't be able to lock the door - I had to lift up on the door handle, hard, while turning the key at the same time to get it to lock.

It is absolutely gorgeous up here.  The wind is blowing a bit hard, but it's nice and cool, it is quiet, there aren't many other people up here right now.  My mom's neighbors aren't up here at all, which is very nice to have a place like this all to yourself.  Nice place to take a couple days off. Came up yesterday and will be leaving tomorrow morning.

I have needs to get back to the valley and get some situations dealt with.  Namely, the college kid that has been slow paying on rent and the situation with the trailer tenant that reached a head last night in communicating with him via texting.  He told me he was going to pay me on Monday, then it changed to Wednesday and then it changed to Friday.  So last night I texted him stating I fully expected to get money from him tomorrow (today).  He asked me if he could just stay until the end of the month - for free apparently - and then he would be moving.

Knowing full well this guy got paid, I declined.  No, I texted back, and if you aren't going to pay, you need to get your stuff and get off of my property by morning.  That's when it turned sour and he started cussing me out.  I didn't bother to tell him I am not in town, I replied to him that if he wanted to come in and talk to me face to face, we can have a conversation about his tones towards me. He did not reply to that text and he has since removed his possessions. I had Mark lock the thing up, if there is something in there he missed, someone will have to get it out of there for him as he is not going to be going back into that trailer.

As for the college kid, he has also changed his payment story a couple of times.  I left him a note under his door before I left informing him that I fully expect him to pay up what he stated he was going to and also about his laundry habits.  He does 8 to 10 loads of laundry per WEEK.  This is one, single individual.  He runs the washer on double extra rinse cycles.  He uses hot water on every load. He sometimes does the same load twice.  Need I say that this is beyond excessive use of a freebie thrown into the rent?  What single person needs to do 8 to 10 loads of laundry per week?  I get by with 2, sometimes 3, cold water, no extra rinse cycles and certainly not washing the same load of clothing twice.  I'm just dealing with stuff that is beyond the scope of what a normal tenancy/rental normally is.  If he wants to continue to use my machines like that, he is going to have to pay $1.50 per load after the 3rd load (giving him 3 for free).  Washing clothes twice counts as 2 loads.  Hot water is .50 cents extra.

I left at the end of the note for him to contact me as to whether he wants to agree to these terms and also about the rent.

Truck Driver Disrespect

It so happened last week that I was in one of our competitor's store, a very large facility, getting some material.  I find it unfortunate that we frequent a competitor for parts, but we do. They don't have the same rules that our company has in inventory - they will carry whatever and leave it out there for however long. Our company ranks inventory and when it gets to D rank, it's toast.

So, they carry parts we don't and sometimes if we don't have something we normally carry, we go to them if they have it. They mark us up 10% on parts, we mark them up 10% on parts, a mutual agreement.

I have been in there 50 times at least over the last 7 years.

Random interjection: I am up in the mountains, the wind is howling and it's starting to rain heavily.  The wind is blowing so hard the trailer is shaking, the trees are dancing and my Direct TV dish on it's stand just blew over. I am not watching TV right now anyway, so no biggies.

Back to the story.  The place has very little driveway space. To go in there with a semi means a rather involved ordeal of backing around a lot of objects to get turned around and then pull up to the place next to the dispatch building - blocking much of everything but there is no choice.  They are moving soon to alleviate that problem.

I went in there last week to find the place filled with trucks. I stayed out front, but my truck was parked directly in front of the will-call (store) entrance.  People had to walk around my truck to get into the store.  I left the truck running - it was warm that day and the truck gets hot inside even if only warm outside - and started to walk into the store.  I heard a noise behind me, someone yelling.  I ignored it and continued walked.  But then the yelling occurred again: HEY, FERGUSON, YOU NEED TO MOVE YOUR TRUCK!!! This wasn't a "nice" request to a customer, this was a verbal command being yelled at me such as I used to hear schoolyard teachers yelling at us kids as 5 year olds in elementary school.

I ignored it again and continued walking.  I do not respond to people yelling at me.  Ask me nicely and with respect, the same as I will give to you.  His voice got as loud as it could go, apparently, as he yelled a 3rd time, I looked around, told him I don't respond to yelling and walked into the store.  I had never seen this guy before, to add to this story.

This guy followed me right into the store - where many employees were working behind the counter - and he started to raise his voice to me again.  I interrupted him loud enough that everyone could hear it: Are you going to start yelling at me again?!!  YOU NEED TO MOVE YOUR TRUCK!!! I was at the counter, I turned my back to him and completely ignored him.  He just stood there, staring at me at that point.

I was outwardly keeping my cool, inwardly I wanted to deck this guy.  The counter manager for the waterworks side wasn't there.  I waited a while, there were plenty of plumbing associates but they don't deal with the waterworks material or tickets.  Finally, a salesman came out.  We shook hands and I told him what I was there for.  He knew the ticket and headed to the doors to the warehouse, but not before this dude stopped him and informed him that I "won't move his truck".  The salesman said nothing to me, disappeared behind the doors along with this fellow and came back several minutes later.

I informed the man that I hadn't moved my truck because of this individual's attitude.  If he had asked me nicely, I would have gladly moved (but to where, I have no idea, their yard was full of vehicles).  This guy, the yeller, is standing there with this icy glare, arms crossed and attitude written all over his face.  Is Vito here? I asked, because I know Vito will not tolerate this kind of shi*** behavior from workers.  No, he's somewhere out back.

Well, some words were exchanged as I had had enough of this guy's BS, I had my material in hand and walked out to the truck, half expecting this moron to follow me out there.  He did not and I had to back out of that place because, again, there was too much traffic back there to do anything.

I was back in that store again several days later.  Several individuals started smiling - back for more, huh? - referring to the dude's attitude of several days earlier. I got into a discussion with them about that guy, he did not get out of that mess scott-free.  In fact, he got into quite a bit of trouble.  Vito was sitting there and profusely apologized for the man's behavior and demeanor and informed me that man shouldn't even have been up here at the store, he is a yard worked and belongs - in the yard.  Vito then stated that he had forgotten to discuss with the general manager this guy's attitude.  Well, we talked about that for a while, but got lost in the discussion of a P.O. (purchase order) that was skewed. I had to call our salesman a couple of times to clarify things that  - our salesman had not made clear and I wanted clear before getting stuff from this company. They have a no-return policy with us.  We buy something, we own it forever.

When I was leaving, Vito got up and went in and started discussing - rather loudly and door opened - the event that had transpired earlier in the week.

This isn't just something I am writing about concerning a particular thing that happened - though I frequently do that.  This is also to describe how truck drivers are treated at many places.  At many warehouses and DC's and such where drivers have to deliver, you are treated as nothing more than a number.  You are a piece of dirt, in umpire's terminology.  Many of the people running these places have no respect for drivers and could care less how disrespectfully they speak to drivers.  It's quite amazing to stand there and listen to some of it.

I am not "just" a truck driver.  I am a representative of our company and I am involved with just about every detail of running a store, when I go into a place such as the place I was at in this story, I am a customer and I demand to be treated like one.  When I see long haul drivers coming into places like this and being treated rudely, I almost always speak up.  I have gotten into altercations with arrogant, obnoxious, self-aggrandizing idiots that have a title in these places and have gone to their management to complain about how they are treating drivers.

Eventually, reform to the trucking industry will be forced upon it.  The hours; the wages; the disrespect.  All of it.  As I have stated several times in the past: the newer generation is generally not interested in the trucking industry.  They do not want to spend their lives out on the road and they do not like the pay.   If they knew how they were going to be treated out there, that would only add to the list. The over-regulation of this industry is so grand, it is amazing any of us drivers can actually drive without getting into trouble at every turn, it is not possible for humans to meet the over-bearing amount of regulation without violating some of it at any given time.  We aren't walking computers or robots.  It will eventually come to a head.  There will be, at some point in time that I cannot predict but I can tell you it's definitely coming, a shortage so severe in the trucking industry that at some point, news media coverage will become much more intense about it and the public outcry will emanate so loudly that Congress will have to force the FMCSA to reduce it's extremely severe restrictions on drivers.

They are enacting even MORE HOS crap on drivers (hours of service) to the point that the trucking industry outcry was enough for a petition to halt the implementation of it for at least 3 months while they decide whether this new regulation, on top of new HOS regulations ALREADY put into place, is really going to do any good - at all.

But the sticking point? When the public has to pay so much at the furniture store; the grocery store; the whatever store because the costs of transporting the goods  there have skyrocketed because of the extreme shortage of "qualified" drivers, THEN and only then will this issue be crammed down Congress throats.  Well, if truck drivers could ever truly unite and simply stop driving for a week, oh myyyy.  What would happen then?  But drivers are hugely divided group of people and coming together even on something that would benefit the entire industry?  Probably not going to happen.  So, I leave it to the statistics that show the younger generation is generally disinterested in trucking as a career and the ensuing chaos it will have on the transportation of nearly everything that is grown, produced/manufacture or shipped into this country in getting goods from point A to point B.  When the older generation that is the current majority of drivers all retire?  Yeah, good luck!

Dorrie

I just found out today on visiting her Facebook page that she was involved in an airplane crash.  Her last entry was how excited she was to go back to CA to see her folks.  Someone posted a short news blip of the crash - it shows the plane.  How anyone survived through that I don't know, the nose end of the thing is totally trashed.

Dorrie is such a sweet, energetic, personable, caring and loving person, the things that happen to good people in life just are confounding sometimes.  She just entered retirement, what, a few years ago at most?

Dear Father God in Heaven: I life Dorrie up to you.  You know her intimately.  You know the condition her body is in right now.  You are the giver of life and you are the Creator.  You are the Healer and you are able to fix those things that happen to your creation.  I pray your healing hand washes over her brain and all those things that have been damaged in that accident.  I ask that you restore her fully back to the life she knew before this accident.

Your will be done.

Thank you Lord, in Jesus name.

Amen.

ben

Saturday

As a certain tenant promised last week, he (did not) delivered on his promise of $100 to be paid weekly until it's all caught up.
No, he didn't pay a dime actually but he did, at least, communicate with me that he had a sit down with the director of whatever at where he works who reinstated his hours.  They had done a department-wide cut of hours after a new director came in to take the old director's place.

This is what I was told anyway.

Apparently feeling my angst about this situation, he came out of his room a while later and informed me he was going to go out front and continue where I left off in pulling weeds and grass.  I have most of the weeds pulled, some small ones left.  The grass is an on-going problem of which I have devised a solution to.  It will mean a trip to Whitfill's to get even more of the ground covering plants that I already have out there.  Those plants grow thick and will drown out any grass systems/roots that are in place.  The plant puts out a lovely yellow or white flower and looks pretty good.  Much better than a bunch of unwanted grass, that's for sure.

Thanks to my neighbors and their refusal to deal with their grass problem which eventually spread to my property.  I pulled it and pulled it and pulled it but it finally won out.  The only thing to do is plant something else that will drown all of it out.

I will give the tenant his due: he did quite a lot of work out there.  However, that does not take the place of money: I made no concessions for partial rent for work, I already have that with Mark and Lynnette and cannot afford that kind of situation with anyone else.

Whatever.

My dead-looking ficus trees - I have several small ones and 2 that are about 9 feet tall - are showing signs of life.  Well, there are 6 of them that look completely dead. But I have been watering them and finally, today, saw some very tiny, green buds coming out of what would otherwise be described as a small, dead tree with dead leaves still on it.  Come Christmas?  I am going to buy enough C-9 Christmas lights - well C-7's work and they are a bit cheaper - anyway - to cover all the plants that I now know will suffer dramatically in a freeze/frost situation.  Wrap lights around the plants that won't survive and cover them with sheets and they  will do nicely.  The lights give off heat is the point and covered up they apparently do enough to keep the frost from setting in as I have tried that in the past and it has worked.

So, the property is coming back to life, Spring is basically here for all intents and purposes (was 89 for a high here today) - though it is possible that another cold front could come back through before Spring officially here.  The eloquent weather forecasters declared a few days ago that we are 20 degrees higher than what our normal temps should be for this time of year.

Well, my version of a short entry.  I am going to bed.  Yup, even on a Saturday night?  I go to bed early.  Just a good habit to stay in if one wants to be able to get up on Monday without feeling - very out of it.  OH, and speaking of work, I am getting my 2 days off this coming week. My plan is to go up north for a couple of days - well 2 nights so 3 days - but I never put that in "concrete/stone".  Plans can always change : )

ben

Well, amazingly enough, this lady that came over with my tenant and his girlfriend last night?  Used to go to a church called Gospel Echoes and knew about a church I used to go to.  It was an interesting visit and if nothing else, everyone loved my slow-cooked pork ribs : )

However, during all of this last night, I had "opportunity" to see 350 man standing out in front of his house, gabbing with his lady neighbor on the west side of him.  The man has "power of persuasion" and has people in this neighborhood fooled into thinking what wonderful person he is.  I could really care less, to be honest, what other neighbors think of him or me, but I am not going to tolerate this guy just walking into my backyard for whatever reason.

So I went down there, stood on the sidewalk right in front of his house and let him know how I felt about him entering my property.  He denied it, threatened to kick my @$$, and I invited him to do so.  He was trying to lure me onto his property, which obviously I was not going to do.  I simply stood there, informed him that I was not afraid of him and if he wanted to follow through on his threat, there I was.

Instead, he told his lady friend to call the police, which she did.  No worries to me, I went home, got out the copy of the restraining order - expired but enough regardless - went back outside when I saw the police down there.  They were not, as it turned out, even going to come talk to me.  I don't know if that's because there are "notes" about this situation in their system or what, I didn't ask that question.  The officer was disinterested - but told me I should probably get another one of those orders against this guy.

That didn't take long at all, amazingly enough.  Whatever the case, came back inside, finished the dinner with everyone and that was that.  They all left, George, the tenant, was going over to his girlfriend's house and the lady I was visiting with also lives there temporarily.

Friday.  Yesterday was a rather long day at work, but only because things have slowed down considerably.  It has been the same across the board for all of our region's branches - I can tell that looking by their sales numbers for the month, not to mention when I go downtown, at least one driver is there begging for something to do.

Which invokes the "time to leave for work" excuse.  It is, literally, time to go to work!

G'day.

ben

350 Man

A couple of days ago, I came home from work only to be informed by Mark that I had left the east gate open the night before and the dogs got out the next morning.

I flatly denied that possibility, even though I am the only one that uses that gate.  I make quite sure that gate is closed when going through it every single time.  Mark was all shaking his head and saying no, you must have done it.

No, I did not.

Fast forward to last night.  4 loud bangs on my door at around 10:30 pm.  Woke me right up out of a nice dream. Whatever it was, I was never to return to it, that's for sure.  Went out and heard a conversation going on between Lynnette and someone else about 350 man and then informed me Mark was outside, the person that had banged on my door.  JD was also out there.

Turns out that 350 man had entered my back yard through the west gate.  WHAT he was doing there, I have no idea, Mark had gone out to find out who was there and apparently 350 man had walked around the other side of the house, through the east gate, through my front yard and then was finally seen by Mark walking back to his house.

Mark started arguing with Lynnette about him actually having had been in the back yard, he must have only been out front.  No, she stated because she heard someone walking along the side of the house where the east gate is.  Pretty easy to hear, makes a crunching sound walking on the decorative landscaping rock and their window is right there.  Since their window was opened, she heard him walking through there.

I admittedly became enraged and marched down to this freak's house. His blinds were drawn on the sides of the house, but you could see right through the front window.  I did not, however, go on his property.  But I did yell loud enough to get the attention - of the entire neighborhood I am guessing.  The "man" did not come out of his house.  This is the answer to the gate dilemma.  What befuddles me is that fact that this guy is walking into my back yard with seeming impunity.

He knows I am armed and since he has threatened to have me killed in the past and since this guy is so big, I would have no other choice but to shoot him if he decided to go after me in my own back yard.  Further the complication that I have already had a restraining order against him. What is this guy doing back there and  does he not even have a tinge of fear of the homeowner, me, who already does not like him?

   I didn't call the police.  They aren't going to do anything, as I have found before when I have called them concerning this man's lunacy.  If you want to protect yourself and your property, you are pretty much charged with the "do-it-yourself" method.  If that guy thinks he's going to come into my house.  Well, no point in going there with this.  Of course, if I catch the man in my backyard, the police will have no choice but to do something about it as I will hold him there until police arrive.

As for my vacation days, completely changing the subject, I found out that I am not getting today and tomorrow off, instead it will be next week.  I was, frankly, looking forward to this weekend being the 4 day weekend that I had asked for.  The problem is I asked for this time off and didn't know I didn't have it off until a few days ago.  Everything I had heard told me that I would have Thursday and Friday off this week.

Whatever.  Blind date tonight.  Not really a date, more like a sit down at my kitchen table and eat dinner with this lady and my tenant and his girlfriend.  Sort of a date I guess - but not going out anywhere.  I have no expectations and if I don't like what I see or if she doesn't like what she sees, oh well, no biggies.  In fact, I haven't really been looking except for Christian Mingle site online.

More, yes, but no time to go into things now.  Have to leave for work in a few minutes.

I have been weaning myself of my son's presence for quite some time now.
Not because I don't love or like my son, but it's only natural that sooner or later, he is going to depart on some adventure in life.  He is going to go out and find his own way.

So, the news that he is going to spend a year in Hawaii didn't come as a shock to me.  It's a Salvation Army training place, I think, and it raises up young men in discipleship in the Lord.  I know, you think they are going to be on the beach and catching waves and I am sure on their off time they probably do do some of that, but that's not what it's about at all.

Regardless, this is what he has chosen to do and in whatever he does, I will support him.  Well, if he was a drug addict and selling meth I would support him in finding help, lol.  But, he's leaving in September as long as he is approved by the administration and he will be gone for an entire year.  I will definitely miss him, but I do not need to "brace" myself, I have been mentally preparing myself for this time for some time to come.

His mother?  Dunno. Probably ain't gonna like it.  At least not the separation.  She's used to having him around half the week.

But whatever.

I came home from work today to find 3 items of furniture from my son's room out on the driveway.  No idea.  He is, after asking, transforming his room to a more adult theme.  Not sexual, lol, but just away from the "kid" type of stuff to an organized, nice looking room. We were having a discussion when offered this: "then after I leave, if you want to, you can rent the room to someone".

It took me tenth of a second of thinking, if that and I replied: no, I won't be doing that.  Even if he never comes back, I would like to have some sort of guest room.  Not a rental room, but a place for any guest that might come to visit.  And of course, a place for him if/when he comes back.

The end.  Gotta git to bed!

ben