Sunday

So - I skipped a few days of journaling. I'm not opting out of journaling, I'm just going through a phase here.
First, I've been driving all day every day this last week and - it takes it's toll. We have hardly been busy for quite a long time now - I get home from work and just want to go lay down. Driving doesn't just entail driving, it means pulling orders, palletizing and shrink wrapping them, loading the truck and helping offload the truck. When we're busy, I have a very physical job, actually.

The truck is loaded for an early Monday a.m. job. It's a new job starting up at an Intel plant - they are building some sort of brine pond - whatever that is - and there is a lot of pipe and fittings involved with this job. There was another job that is in our territory that I also would have gotten - but they want the material out there first thing, so I couldn't talk my way into it. My boss is gone on vacation and - they just don't contact us with what's going on so I basically inserted myself to help insure our store isn't losing any sales in the process.

Today? It's going to start heating up quite a lot. Prediction of 95 degrees today, 98 degrees tomorrow and breaking 100 on Tuesday. :(
I'm not ready for this. Of course, anymore, I never am. I have grown weary of living in a desert with hell-hot conditions and look forward to the day when I can more out of this town and entire area. My son and my mother are the only things that are keeping around. Mom's not getting any younger and I wouldn't even think about moving away from her at this point. I would love to hope that she can stay mobile all the way up until "The Day" - certainly there are people who DO stay mobile until that day.

I have thoughts of getting out there and digging some holes - and I guess I'll force myself to do at least one trellis worth of holes today.

Mary just came out and invited me to breakfast.
How can I refuse that?
Ummm, I won't.
Have a Great Sunday!
ben

Thursday

Today - was going to be a totally slow day, but I ended up driving all over the place instead. There are, apparently, some huge orders going out next week - I picked up 10 fire hydrants from a place I had dropped them a few weeks ago to get repainted and those are going out next week, I believe. There is a 16 page order in the system for a Monday delivery - that is a good deal of money and there are other deliveries allegedly going out next week that will also bring in the bucks for our store.
Today - a driver came to take our 10-wheeler away. A dealer in Tucson bought a bunch of our trucks that we are ridding ourselves of - they must have been selling them things cheap for a dealer to want to pick them up. I actually liked that truck - but - we only need 1 truck for our store since there is only one driver - me - and in this kind of business, you MUST have a semi with a flatbed trailer if you have nothing else. We simply haul too much pipe and heavy stuff and larger orders to be able to get by with a smaller truck only.

I picked up 2 1X4X8 sheets of styrofoam today and also another trellis. Just buying the stuff as I can afford it. I also sent out 2 payments: child support and the mortgage. Those 2 payments will leave me with less than $100 in my checking account - but fortunately, Mary paid me this morning and I expect 2 more tenants worth of rental payments tomorrow. My car payment is due today - so I'm now only a week out from paying it on time. It does not affect my credit score - has to be over 30 days late for that. In fact, I have it close enough that I don't even get dinged with a late fee.

Ummm, yes, I had the exterminator out today. It's been 3 months. I had cockroaches in here - but "Roach Prufe" has already done away with them. There have been dead roach cockroaches laying around in the last few days. The exterminator sprayed this place inside pretty darn good - just in case - but he said he couldn't find any evidence that there are any still around. In other words, the problem was nipped in the bud. I do NOT tolerate that kind of nuisance around my house. He stated that warm weather is going to necessitate him coming every month. This guy is pure gold - he would not tell me something that isn't fact. His rates are quite reasonable at $40 per visit and he totally saturates my entire property with the poison. His treatments are quite effective - just that I let it go for those 3 months because they never called me to come over, I ended up calling them.

Turns out they have a new secretary and it was an over-sight. I don't really WANT to pay for pest control every month - but my hands are tied, I have no choice. It's that or have bugs.

Oh - and it's going to start warming up considerably. In the 90's this weekend. Fun fun. Not looking forward to the 90's/100's/110's and up. NOT at ALL.

Ummm - nothing much else. I got my water bill today - $98.00 for ONE month? Oh - that's because Mary spaced out and left the hose running for about 12 hours at full blast one night. I'm going to show her the bill and politely ask that that doesn't happen again. Well, it's not just water - it covers sewer and trash as well, but that is about $38.00 higher than my normal bill. I guessed when she left the water on that night that it will probably cost me at least $30 on my water bill - I was almost dead on.

Okay, I'm done. Just the daily report.
Hope everyone is doing well.
ben

Wednesday

The last 2 days have been extremely busy work-wise. Show up for work, load the semi and take off.
Today I was running at an incredible pace - and all over the place. By the time I got back to the yard from my first run, which took over 7 hours, I was already bushed. I had to go out on yet a second run - and then I started feeling bad.

Something hit me and took the wind right out of me. I was very glad to get home today, sit down and take a load off my feet.

Switching gears had the small cans of tomato sauce on sale this week - 7 for a buck. That's a GREAT deal - and for my storage program, I'm going to buy at least 70 cans. I just buy things here and there and dump it into my food storage. Whatever is on sale, I buy a lot of it. I have been using some of it - but still - I have accumulated quite a lot of canned and boxed food in there. We are most certainly not out of the woods yet as far as this economy is concerned - I am not stopping my food storage plans for a while to come. You can do quite a lot with tomato sauce - a very versatile food and has about a 2 year shelf life span. Fry's does not put a limit on the number of cans you can buy when it comes to vegetables, tomato sauces and stuff like that. They definitely put a limit on meats.

I ended up confronting the tenant - via written notices as I have found that the best way to deal with such things versus in-your-face confrontations - I do believe the situation may work itself out.

Anyway, I'm just not feeling well right now, so I'm ending this one.
ben