Interesting trip.  Full fledged sick at the moment, head and chest cold.  I still have a bunch of stuff leftover from the last time I had this junk, most notably this killer cough syrup (no codeine, just really effective stuff) so I'm using that to see if I an knock it out versus going to the Doc.  Of course, I always say this and always end up at the urgent care clinic perhaps I should just go. Last time they gave me a steroid shot and inhaler - the inhaler ran out last night and of course I can't just give myself a steroid shot.  Probably money well spent.  Yup, I'll probably go now that I think of it.

I have to get up at 3 am tomorrow morning.  I already know it's going to be along, hellish day.  It's 620 miles from the plant to the truck stop I now normally stop at for the night when I'm making this trip, so lots of driving, cold and getting up am equals hell on wheels.  Not to mention I'm going to have to figure out 3 or 4 days worth of eating and have that ready to go.  I most certainly can't eat truckstop food on this diet.  It wouldn't hurt met if I never ate truckstop food again. Probably at least 50% of the reason I gained all this fat so quickly. 

Anyway, I'm going to Mapleton, Illinois again, that's the place that more often than not, you get there and they can't unload you and you go take a night at a company paid hotel. Wouldn't bother me a bit to get up there and spend some recovery time in a hotel.  And get paid detention pay for it.  Not going to count on it tho.  If it happens, great, if it doesn't, not so great, considering illness.

Anyway, I drove almost the entire route yesterday. Started at my house - I was only driving the trator up there no trailer, drove the 344 miiles up there, got the trailer, immediately turned around and headed back. Felt like hell all day long.  I made it within 30 miles of the yard before I rant out of drive time. I had like 20 minutes left on the clock but there was no way I was going to make it back before the clock ran out.  Now, if I had started at the yard instead of my house, I would have had enough time.  I didn't know that when I did that yesterday, but no big deal, I was ready to stop driving.  I got into the sleeper bed and stayed there 10-1/2 hours before I forced myself to get up and drive out the rest of the miles. 

Now, when I got to the yard, I unhooked from that trailer and hooked up to the one I'm taking Monday morning.  I then got out, hooked up air lines and did a walk around.  Whoever pulled that trailer last apparently was trying to get away with a fast one.  He/she had smashed the trailer into something, bent the bumper with the lights in it and destroyed the lighting (brake, turn signals and running lights ) on the right side.  How the heck do you do damage like that and just try to get away with it?

So I took a pic and sent it to my manager. I had nothing to do with this and I'm not getting blamed for something I didn't do. She gave me another trailer to hook to. So, I uncoupled everything, pulled out from underneath that trailer and hooked up to another one.  When  I got out to go hook up the airlines, I found that someone had pulled out from that trailer and obviously forgot to detach their airlines. How do I know this? Well, their glad handle was still attached to one of them on the trailer - with the air hose obviously pulled off and on the other one, the glad handle had ripped out of the unit and destroyed it.  That was unusual.  Usually the airline rips off.  To see the trailer glad handle ripped out of there and stripping the threads? Never saw that before.  So now I'm taking more pics and sending them to my manager, who at first said she knew about it.

Huh? If she knew, why did she have me hook up to it? Then she texted again and said, Oh.

Lol, she gave me yet another trailer to hook to - but the interval between me texting her and her texting me back on the second trailer was too long, I had left the yard. I can only hope there isn't anything wrong with it in the morning.  Alright, I just looked up the weather up there, it's going to be 38 degrees in the morning. I'm taking thermals with me as well. My extra heavy winter jacket is already in the truck as are my gloves and other apparel, just need the thermals.  Of course, that will help my cold!

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Okay.  Got into a discussion with my manager. She texted me yet again, don't take the 3rd trailer she gave me to take, take yet another one!

I didn't bother to ask what was wrong with it.  I'm assuming we have hired some piss poor drivers that probably need to go. It's one thing to make a mistake, have an accident, whatever, it takes it to a much different level that you didn't report it.  Most trucking companies nowadays give you an assigned truck. Not true at all with trailers.  You very much have to inspect a trailer before moving it an inch.  Anything with it and especially damage, you take pics and you report it, again, before you ever move that thing. It's called covering your ass.  I've been dumped with someone else's screwups in the past, well they tried to dump it on me.  But I did learn that if you don't want to take the blame, document it with pics and contacting supervisor immediately.  I don't care what time of the day or night it is, if you don't, the company will very likely blame you and that's a ding on your record with them.

Let's say in the case of those broken airlines that the driver pulled out from under the trailer without unhooking them, which he/she obviously did unknowingly and drove off. Still going to count against them.  If you report it, tho, it's not as bad.  I'll tell ya right now, if I screw something up, I"m reporting it the instant it happens, with pics, big I'm sorry attached to it, now what?  Usually pulling out like that and breaking airlines is not a big deal, every shop in America has brand new lines for just such occasions waiting to be installed. Or you can purchase them yourself if you want to "get away with it" and just eat the cost.  I would do that if it were me.  But in this case?  The entire glad handle yanked out with it, much different problem. Much worse problem.

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Okay, I just bought airfare to Phoenix.  I'll be visiting for 5 days.  I haven't even asked my mom or son, I'm just doing it.  I'll contact them and see if I can come up with an itinerary.  I'm also wanting to visit one of my old best friends.  I've already got a standing invite, tho I dunno around the holidays.  It's just time to go back, visit, say hi and leave.

I wanted to leave out of local airport but the ticket prices were outrageous.  Tack on $25 each way per back - American Airlines and you have a hefty price tag.  I'll be finding parking fare in advance at the airport or parking facilities nearby and flying out of Dallas. Saved almost $200 doing that. I didn't want to drive to Dallas but I just couldn't find it within myself to shell out that much extra money just for the convenience of leaving locally. It's 158 miles, 2 hours or less (at the speed I drive).  I'll arrive in Phoenix at around 11:30 am, that was the other thing. I hate redeye flights and willing to pay extra at this point in my life to just fly normal daytime hours.  I'll have to get up early, but I won't have to stay at a hotel overnight and bear even more cost.  Phoenix has both Lyft and Uber, I'll be using one of those services to get around. 

I won't need to stay at a hotel but honestly? I'd love to spend a night at the Marriot Resort & Spa in Scottsdale. Been there twice and it's like a slice of heaven. Yes, pricey.  Just thinking about it at the moment.  Nix that idea. $250 for one night. Last time I was there it was $137. I'd pay that but definitely not $250 for one nights stay, that's ridiculous.

After this trip, my sites will be on a much longer trip. Longer as in distance, not time spent.  I'm looking to either get over seas or head over to hawaii.  Alaska would be nice too. 

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A nice long nap, got up, made food for the road, pretty much ready to go.  Still in ketosis, I'm hardly eating any carbs at all.  Just have to see how much weight I might lose in another week or two.  It was time to get away from truckstop food regardless.  Very unhealthy.  Some of it very tasty, but it's full of calories and everything to make a body nice and fat.  The future of trucking is quite uncertain.  I don't see many lean or even average truck drivers any more.  Most of them are obese or on their way there.  The feds have BMI standards now.  One of our drivers is facing losing his med card if he doesn't do something about it - which he stated he's a fat old man and not changing his ways. 

Another has some level of whatever for diabetes in his system that is too high by our company's standards.  If he can't get that down he is also going to lose his job.  Eventually you'll start seeing these stories in the news as the driver shortage grows. 

Well, time to get ready for bed. 3:00 am isn't exactly day break stuff,.

So, I contacted my manager.  Is the truck done yet?
She calls me, she thinks another driver will be able to take me to get it from the yard to the facility where it's at.
10 minutes later, she calls again, no-one's available, I'll have to take you myself.
Blew my dinner plans. I had a roast that was done but I was going to make low carb bread with it and homemade bbq sauce also low carb, yea that didn't happen.

Oh wait, I skipped a part.  She also told me on the first phone call that there was no work available this weekend.  Dozens of orders had been cancelled due to shut down plants.  There are 3 loads on Monday - yeah I'll take one of those.  She listed off a short run, a medium run and a way too long run that I didn't want. 6 or 7 days out on the road, no thanks. I want this run to count for next paycheck, Mapleton run wouldn't have me back until well after Thursday ,which is the last day to turn in work for the pay period.

The run I took is Mapleton, the place that more often than not gives me detention time and overnight stays in a hotel.  That would be nice right about now

Anyway, she looked at me and said, do you think you can run up to Oklahoma, pick up a trailer and bring it back here and still be able to do the Monday run?  Absolutely.  So, I got the weekend covered with some work. It pays the same regardless of the fact that I am driving the tractor only up there and pulling back an empty trailer.  Net loss for the company but the trailer is needed for a run to Palm, PA on Monday, that's the run I didn't want.

I decided to just drive the tractor home since I'm leaving early tomorrow morning and no sense in having to drive to the yard.  My manager said to start the trip form the truck repair shop, so that actually adds some miles, which is fine by me.

I'm not feeling very well tho.  Whatever I'm getting started yesterday with me clearing my throat and now, it's lung congestion and I also just feel kinda crappy.  But I can't afford any more time off. I'm taking this run up there and if I have to stop a few times and nap, I will.

Day 12 on diet.

No noticeable change in weight.  I check once a day, sometimes twice, once in the morning  and then again at night.  

The real deal is it appears I'm getting deeper into Ketosis.  As for carbs, I haven't cheated on this diet at all.  For calories? I've had a few additional snacks here and there, but stuff that is less than 200 calories and either no carbs or very low carbs and really hardly doing that at all.  Last night was an exception when I had a teaspoon of Almond Butter - a substitute for peanut butter. 

I gave up on looking for birth certificate yesterday, not altogether but I got started on the greenhouse project.  I can say that the directions were rather useless.  The frame kept falling over, I was starting to get - upset - with this setup.  I ended up coming up with my own plan to put the thing up and was successful after I did that.  However, before I went off on my own "instruction manual", I had tried fully 3 times in a span of a couple of hours trying to put the blooming thing up per the manual instructions. Fail, fail, fail.  

I'm likely not going to put the cover over the frame today.  The reason being that I am very likely going out on the road tomorrow - that truck better be done, it's been 10 days now - I want to be around at least a couple of days if possible to make sure there aren't any issues.  Of course, that may not happen anytime soon since I've been off so much, I'm going to push to get my share of road time in.  I got paid today - it's bi-weekly pay - and it was a much better paycheck than I expected.  If I can get the next 6 days worth on the road, I will have at least something on my next paycheck and including taking 30 hours of paid leave time.  I hated to do that, but it's I can't be having a half paycheck if at all possible. I'd like to find out how much it will be paid out at as well.

My manager isn't really good at answering questions like that.  She's overworked, I get that, but she should know what the pay is based on and how much that pay should be or find out.  Instead, well, "I think it's based on how much you've made thus far". That didn't answer my question at all.  What does that mean?  An average weekly amount?  That would be a decent amount if so.  I'll leave that to speculation land.

It's been raining here a lot, my firewood is soaked. It takes a couple hours to get a good fire going.  I mean, you have to have good coals going to dry out and then burn wet wood.  Plus, the remaining wood I have is rotting. I really got burned on that last load of firewood. Their claims of it being seasoned was a bald faced lie. But, they threw in a bunch of really old wood with it and some huge logs that weren't split and had already started to rot.  I got somewhere near a cord of wood, but I really got ripped off on that deal.  So, in looking for another cord of wood, I specifically asked a person selling split firewood on Facebook marketplace if his wood was seasoned and how long? He replied, oh yes, definitely seasoned, for two months!

This is what I'm referring to.  These people don't know anything what they are talking about.  Ask them if it's a full cord and the dimensions? Yes, a full cord! Then they cite dimensions that are anything but a full cord in measurement - or - they are cutting the wood at 18 or 16 inches and therefore you are being shorted a full 6 or 8 inches per piece of wood.  Add up a hundred or hundreds of pieces? Yea, that's getting shorted pretty good. At $190 and up per cord, that's pretty expensive for being shorted on the goods.  I'm just looking around until I find someone that actually knows firewood and is selling it in actual, full cords of wood. Yes, I'm on the road alot but in the winter, I'm sitting out back if I"m not doing anything else and enjoying a nice hot fire in the pit. 

So there it is. One of my credit card accounts already showed all this "negativity" on my credit score. It shows me using over 50% of available credit. That will change to 100% available credit as soon as the card companies report all of it.  Amazingly, my score didn't go down but a few points with this loan. Weird.  I'm guessing/hoping that they view this loan as just that, a loan with a definitive end date and not an open credit line and that all of this available credit on my cards is a separate thing.  That is what has been holding my credit back plus the late payments on the mortgage.  That's hurting my score as well. That was going on two  years ago now? Or longer?  I'll have to look but it's at least 3 years I think before all of that starts dropping off. I had thought it was dropping off one at a time per month, but that turned out to be a false hope. I'm hoping for all of them to increase my credit line, that will help even more.  

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Spent the morning going through boxes. No longer a "find the birth certificate" only thing, now it's just going through stuff and chucking a lot of it.  Not everything tho. Some Christmas cards from dad.  Other little notes and things.  Old clothes, stuff I don't fit into. Throwing out the "bad" stuff but keeping some of it in hopes I may eventually fit back into them. 2 sizes down from what I'm at now.  Which would basically mean losing all those extra 30 plus pounds and slimming up quite a bit.  I remain hopeful.  

No word about the truck yet.  It's 1 pm, so I'm going to contact my manager soon and find out what's going on.  I fully expect to get sent out for the weekend.  If that doesn't happen it should only be because the truck for some reason isn't done  yet, not because there is no work. After being off this long I should have precedence at the top of the list for a good run.  

Since I was asked, the reason I need my birth certificate is for future reference only. I just want to find it and get it in a place where I know where it will be.  If I needed it right now for some reason?  I'd have no clue.  But basically, the only foreseeable need I have for it is to renew my CDL, possibly my concealed carry permit, that's years off from now.  It's still annoying me that I lost it - or put it somewhere I can't find it - and can't find it even after spending a couple of hours now digging through all kinds of stuff looking for it.

So now, I'm just getting rid of old papers that I no longer need. Actually, I'm putting them in a plastic bag and will use it to help start fires.  We don't get a newspaper here, starting fires is kind of an ordeal without paper or cardboard.  Everything is wet, twigs, branches, the actual split wood. Getting one going is pretty difficult without paper.

Diet day 11.  At 220 this morning. Weight fluctuating all over the place, but coming up to nowhere near what it was when I first started this at almost 227 pounds.  I really need to go into full ketosis - it gets up to mid level and fluctuate down from there during the day. I'm not going to concern myself with the lack of full ketosis yet.  There's a lot of material on the web about this type of diet and I've been reading through alot of it.  No one expects to lose 30 plus pounds overnight or even in a month, as long as it's going down even a little I'm good with it. 

Today I got up early.  I've been off work for quite a while now.  It was a welcome vacation even if I've done much of nothing - mostly due to the fact that I've had little energy. That seems to be coming back, which is a good thing because I fully expect to go back to work on Saturday and I really need it to be a longer run to help offset what I've lost in this time off. 

My searches for cheap airfare to go home for a couple of days resulted in the cheapest airfare being around $450.  It didn't seem worth that much money for a few days worth of travel plus all the other expenses that would have been involved, so I decided to start looking around Thanksgiving time.  Very good pricing still available, I'm asking my manager if I can get some time off.  Not that I want to lose even more time, but I need to see mom and my son.  Visit some friends, look at the house, maybe some other things I have in mind. 

Meanwhile, a trip to Walmart is in order. I have old pics that mom gave me of dogs and me and various things from childhood.  I want to get picture books to preserve them in. They're still in great shape, thankfully, I was a bit errant and lazy on dealing with them when I first got them. Irreplaceable.  A few of them of a dog I had way back when named Jethro.  He was a cool doggy.  Not a Great Dane, I forget what his breed was, gonna have to think about that a minute, I got him from a friend that had a female that had lots of puppies. 

And Rene's coffee maker broke. I don't mind helping her here and there.  She lives on a fixed income and it's not very much money.  She pays her rent faithfully at least.  But little things like a coffee maker? She doesn't have money to replace that.  I can get on for less than $20 at Walmart.  I need more dog food as well. It used to be I could get a better price on automatic shipments through Chewy or Petco, but that price keeps going up and up, a little more than Walmart now. 

 I've been reading how to heat a greenhouse during the winter. I don't want to use electricity, we're not talking heating as in 70 degrees at night, just enough to keep any plants alive and certainly from freezing over.  There's a few ideas I will be incorporating such as barrels of water that absorb heat during the day and give it off during the night.  And bubble wrap apparently helps. Just line the inside of the walls of the green house.  I actually have a huge roll of that as it stands. 

Actually there are fuel heaters that would be nice, but this greenhouse is a temporary type of structure, not a permanent one. There are also solar heaters and underground natural heaters. All nice and fine but that's a project I would love to do if I ever get acreage somewhere and have the room to build a larger, permanent version and can build a pond environment inside of it along with all kinds of flowers and shrubs, maybe even vegetable plants. 

Things that cross my mind and stick to it.  Lol.

Decided to get up early today. 6:30 isn't that early to some people, however, work is looming and I will likely be getting up early for it and up all day long. 

Welll, the day isn't getting any younger.  A final cup of Keurig's - was drinking McDonald's version this morning - and then off to Walmart.

Diet Day 10.
Was at 217 this morning.  No more losses but I'm not going to worry about that unless it stays that way - or goes back up.
I am very hungry today.  Yesterday I wasn't hungry at all and had to force myself to eat, today I could eat a couple of ribeyes and think nothing of it.
I didn't do that, of course, tho steak is allowed on the diet, not much steak, too many calories.  Instead I ate a muffin this morning with my coffee with heavy cream and the rest of the mushrooms from yesterday and a brat link.  It was very tasty but after consuming it I was - and still am - quite hungry. 

And thirsty. Drinking lots of water. I would be afraid to go look at my weight right now after drinking 5 glasses of water/coffee/tea.  I'm doing a detox tea, one large cup every day.  Now I'm adding MCT oil - tho it comes in a powder - because most of the keto diets say it really helps.  Brain energy, easily digestible, can help to higher the ketosis level and fuel for exercising among other claims being made on numerous sites that pretty much are all saying the same thing.  So I'm adding a little to my drinks and on top of food a few times a day.  I dunno if that's made me hungrier or just the fact that I haven't been eating that many calories on a daily basis.

Anyway, my green house showed up.  Big box, heavy.  Got it out back, opened up and - found no instruction manual. Just a single piece of paper that identifies the parts and how many of each you should have. Wonderful  Well I at least inventoried the parts and it's all there, that was a good thing. I spent some time trying to find an instruction manual online and finally found it, printed it and ready to go.

Excepting it's raining.  I'm not getting wet to put this thing up.  Try again tomorrow. I do have a fire going out there, the wood is wet but using the cardboard from the green house box got some nice coals going and eventually the fire got going nicely. 

But, today is all about bombs being sent to CNN, Clinton, Obama, Holder and whoever else.  I think Cuomo and one was found in the Congressional mail center.  None of them went off, lots and lots of speculation as to who what and why.  CNN predictably blaming Trump for "escalating" hositilies - which I found laughable.  You have Hillary saying the left can't be civil until they are voted back into power, Holder saying kick them when they're low, Maxine saying her infamous words of pushing back and harassing cabinet members and spartacus (Corey Booker) making whatever stupid statement he made.  And they want to blame this on Trump. Let's spread the blame alllll around, shall we? 

And of course we have the gigantic caravan that's heading this way  -tho reports say it will take a month of walking for them to get here and more reports saying their feet are sore and they may run out of steam long before they make it clear up here.  Now here's the fun part: the closest border entry is Matamoros and you guessed it: Brownsville.  No one is saying they are heading there, but that's the closest one, the place I go down to frequently.  I dunno, but Brownsville would be, IMO, the worst place to come through.  There is literally BP every where and they patrol the highway going north up and down for about 70 miles worth?  I mean, they are a major presence.

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Well, I got the "problem" with Directv figured out. The extra $45?  Someone over there watching Biking blondes of sun, Hawaiian babes of whatever and 2 other pay per views that didn't specify what it was.  Yeah, no.  I immediately called Directv, got all that shut off and shut down the movie channels except for one block. 

Of course, that meant ... calling Directv. The lady in the Philippines?  No thanks.  I explained to her twice what I wanted done and she still didn't understand, ok, just give me your manager.  15 minutes later, the supervisor gets on the phone with the same results.  I give up.  Cancel the service.  What?  CANCEL THE SERVICE.  Oh, well we'll have to switch you over to the loyalty department to do that.  GOOD, MAYBE I'LL GET TO SPEAK TO AN AMERICAN IN AMERICA. 

Well that took care of the problem.  I didn't ask for freebies, I haven't been with them on that account that long. Maybe 4 months.  The lady removed access for anyone to order anything off the remotes, topped it off by putting it at a penny limit - in case they did figure out how to, they maximum amount they can spend is one cent.  She got rid of the movie channels except Showtime.  That's what Rene wanted with promise to pay for it for I'm not paying for movie channels and then, as an extra added bonus...well the lady got off the phone for a few minutes ..... she gave me $5 off for Showtime for 6 months and credited my account for the full amount for the nude showcasing of women. 

Again, I didn't ask for any of that, she offered it and I gleefully accepted it.  The Directv bill is now cut by $50 and no possibility of any more of this lewd nonsense. Sorry, I don't watch stuff like that, just not my cup of tea. Not to mention an expensive habit at $10.99 a pop - on my dime.  Amazing that dude would even do shit like that. I was going to demand him pay it back but since Directv credited my account for that crap I will refrain.

So there it is. 

My greenhouse?  Dragged that thing out back, took everything out and....no instruction manual.  I mean seriously, there are all these parts.  There was one sheet that showed what the parts are and how many you should have, so at least I did an inventory and found it's all there.  Found the manual on line, printed it and - it started raining. Has been raining ever since.  Maybe tomorrow if the rain stops. 

Had a nice hot fire going tho.  The coals are so hot that even the rain isn't phasing it, hours later it's still going strong.  But I've had enough of that for one day so that can smolder out. 

Diet Day 9.
I feel like a pile of death every morning.
It's terribly hard to get out of bed.  I still have
headaches, but only in the morning now. It's better than headaches all day long as was the case for the first 6 or 7 days of this diet.  The only good thing about the truck still being in the shop - and never hearing back from the mechanic  about when it's going to be done - is that I don't have to do anything.  That's a really good thing because right now? Even when the headache passes, once I start doing anything, I get drained of energy quickly.  I'm just holding fast to the sites that say it can take weeks for your body to adapt to feeding off fat instead of sugar intake.

Ok. Paid off all my credit cards, added up to more than I originally thought.  Almost 9k instead of the around 8k I thought it was at.  That's 9 accounts. Well 2 of them are credit accounts, one at Fingerhut - which I only owed a few hundred dollars and Paypal - which I had racked up 1k in debt.  I actually use Paypal all the time but I don't use the credit option anymore. I always opt to pay out of my bank account - now anyway.  I won't be able to put as much towards the care credit/dental card as I wanted, but it's fine.  I didn't expect that one to get paid down that fast anyway.  I owe them $5,100, I figured a couple years to pay that off when I got into that.

At least I had $1,500 paid by insurance and paid around $600 cash when I had all this stuff done.  The bad part is there is still other work I need done to my teeth, but the worst of it is done.  The bottom front teeth are all pushing together and are chipped. I think they can do that laminate bonding on there, no crowns needed.  Well let me put it this way, I'm not putting crowns on them regardless. They aren't that bad and I have no need to get another 4k or so in debt to get them fixed.  I will probably stay at this company until next year now that I've made it this far and use the next $1,500 to get all of that done.

Anyway, it feels good to have all those cards paid off.  A thing I used to hate every month because I didn't want to do auto pay on them.  I set this loan up for auto pay so I don't have to remember it.  In fact, almost everything I have going in terms of bills and payments is all set up on autopay now. There is simply too much of it to try and keep track of.

Now, I need to write down all my expenses.  The bank helps me with a generic version of that tho, it shows how much I've paid and how much I've deposited.
\
Now it's sit back and wait time. It should go something like: Credit score dive - 10k loan added to everything else.  I bet my score tanks to poor area, who knows but that's my bet.  Then, after credit cards finally report all of this, it will show all of my available credit - available.  No use of them at all.  That will at least bring my score up to where it is now, but I'm willing to bet it will go higher.  The random factor is whether the 10k loan, even after the credit card companies have reported, will still hold me back.  I don't think so, because it's going to show 100% of my available credit being available.  That's a very good thing in the eyes of creditors and credit scoring.

This is a gamble, but not really.  I am in no more debt than I was with the balances on the card and I'm paying a lower interest rate.  If I can get my score up into good range, I'll get another loan to pay off this loan and have lower monthly payments and pay less net interest at the end of the loan. Same with the SUV.  They refinance vehicle loans nowadays, if I could get my score up high enough it would be worth it.  Take 3 grand off of interest payments by the end of the loan? Heck ya.

Enough of that.  I weighed in at 215 pounds this morning. A bit shocking.  Weight dropping off as if I were taking a blade to my fat and cutting it off in small chunks every day.  I'm thinking of going and getting a new scale, I just don't trust that thing. I'd like 2 scales, one to back the other one up. If they are close in their weight then I will trust that they are somewhere in the ballpark of actual weight.

It's just strange that all of a sudden my weight is dropping that fast.  If that scale is correct, I'm down almost 12 pounds in 9 days.

And here: "The extreme carb restriction is often accompanied by adverse side effects. Commonly known as the "keto flu," the transition may cause a period of fatigue, weakness, lightheadedness, "brain fog," headaches, irritability, muscle cramps, and nausea."

Yes to all of that! Ugh. Well I don't have muscle cramps and maybe a little nausea but not too bad. Everything else? In high doses.  

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Okay.  The truck won't be done until Friday. I decided to take some comp time.  I'm not sure how that's going to hit next month when I'm supposed to get a full year's worth dumped into my account.  Wait and see but I've been off too long, I need to supplement it at least a bit.

I asked my manager about having too many drivers. She said she had sent some back  - those are drivers that have been sent here to cover the increase of work we had, they came from other divisions.  Plants have been cancelling orders - that happens all the time but sometimes it occurs that several will happen at the same time. These plants that use ethylene shut down rather frequently. They get all kinds of issues and the entire plant is shut until it's fixed. 

Anyway, bedtime.

This will be a short one.
I finally found my passport.
It was literally in front of my face.
A pile of papers I had placed into a cubby hole in a storage unit, right there in front of me.
I saw that USPS envelope sitting there and I thought, THIS is IT? RIGHT HERE?  I opened it up and sure enough, there it was.
Next time I am in Brownsville and have a detention opportunity I may very well cross the border.
Haven't done it in decades.  Feels kind of scary cause of the sites I've read about going into Matamoros. Stay in certain areas.

Well, when we used to go over there as missionaries, we didn't go alone.  There was always at least 2 people and often times 5 or 6 or more.  It was really just some of us that wanted to go over, find the needy people living in the cardboard shacks with dirt floors etc.  and give away food, blankets, warm clothing for the winter, whatever we had. 

And I am finally in ketosis.  I've been doing some work around the house and exerting energy, I skipped lunch, only had the muffin for breakfast and finnnnnnally it turned purple.  It's in the mediocre range of it, but it's FAR better than nothing.  All this time.  8 days of this diet and finally. 

Now to find my birth certificate.  I'm guessing it's in the same pile as the passport.  I got a bit excited finding my passport so I stopped searching lol.

So I did it.
I took out a 10k loan to pay off credit card debt.
Well how much debt do you have? Actually more than that, because I put 6 grand on the card that pays for the dental work.  I think I have around 14k worth of debt accumulated in credit card debt.
I've been wanting a loan that pays off this stuff in one fell swoop at lower interest rate instead of trying to pay down one card at a time.

Goldman Sachs helped me out with that.  I wasn't even looking for one when I stumbled across it, but after looking at it it's a really great deal.  No origination fees, no fees of any kind really to get the loan going.  The interest rate and the length of the loan are what attracted me.  I'll be paying 9 points less in average interest rate and I'll pay it off a year earlier than if I were to try to pay them off one at a time, which is what I have been doing but it's going at an abysmally slow rate.  I'm making a lot more money now, I don't rely on credit cards for anything excepting I used Care Credit to do the dental work. 

That needed to be done. It had been needing to be done.  My front teeth were gross. I had no idea how bad they looked until I saw the close up pics the dentist took of them before and after.  I mean, they were really bad.  What this loan enables me to do is pay off all of my credit card debt except the secure care, which I should be able to apply almost 2 grand of it towards. Note that the entire amount I'm getting is going to credit card debt, not toys or anything else. If I do anything else with it, it defeats the purpose and then I'm losing money on the deal.

So I'm kind of excited about that. I had to pay them off any way about it, this makes more sense.  It won't affect my net monthly output, it's literally the same.  Well no, it's less because I was making more than minimum payments on most of my cards.  And I can do the same on this loan without any prepayment penalties and anything over applied to interest. So I am going to try to pay $100 more every month. 

I don't have any temptations to use those cards, either.  I haven't been using them at all. I take that back, ATT has one card on file to make the monthly payment, but I always transfer that much over to that account every month to eliminate any interest.  I am much more disciplined on credit card use now simply by fact of making a lot more money, I don't need to use them.  But, some of these cards have rewards for purchases on them and I intend on doing some shopping on them on a monthly basis and then paying off balances before they accrue any interest.  Shopping as in stuff I would be doing anyway, such as fuel and groceries.  This what my mom has been doing forever and she gets pretty good rewards added up over time.  But then again, she is FAR better with money management than me. Perhaps because she worked in a bank in earlier times but probably the aftermath of the Great Depression.

Seems like people that went through that are much more frugal and expenditure conscious than the rest of us for the most part.  Of course, that and my mother is on a fixed income. Not that she's poor but she lives off of her monthly income and tries not to go over that at all.    I think my greatest learning experience with debt was going cash only for an entire year.  Actually I think it was a little longer than that.  That was the experiment I did with having no credit cards excepting a prepaid one to pay online bills.  I had to pay for everything by check or cash.  You learn a lot about yourself and your spending habits when you do something like that and you keep a daily tracker of what you are spending on everything.

Really changed my spending habits for life - except - that last job where I was going broke because of extremely low pow.  It was probably a God-send that they installed an arrogant, angry, egotistical manager to run the place that had frequent outbursts of rage over stupid stuff.  And took it out on everyone.  Literally bring a crowd of people together and ream everyone for one person's mistake versus taking that person aside and calmly discussing the situation with them. It was the prybar that finally unearthed my roots from that place and got me the hell out of there. I have no regrets.  I only miss the physical exertion of the job and home every day and no weekend work.  The physical exertion part I'm paying in terms of fat the home daily stuff I have learned to live with.

I don't like it, but I am tolerating it for the time being.  I will definitely be at 2-1/2 times the annual income by the end of this year if paychecks stay relatively the same as they currently are.  I'm already at more than double what I was making there for an entire year with 5 or 6 more paychecks to go this year. We're paid bi-weekly. 

Actually the truck is still in the shop and no word when it's going to be done, but I'm really hoping today. I need a good 3 day run to get on this next paycheck.  I get paid this week but I'm looking to the next paycheck after that.  Oops, I'm wrong. I'll be paying for this lack of work both this paycheck on Friiday and next paycheck 3 Friday from now unless she really gets m rolling.  Gonna have to suck it up and ask her to keep me busy to make up for 6 days off so far. 

My credit score is going to tank the first month and then hopefully go up beyond what it is now the month after after all the cards report that the principle amounts are paid off. Actually that may take a few months.  I'm fine with the tanking because I am confident it will actually go up. This is an installment loan, not revolving open credit.  And after I pay down these cards and keep them at zero balance, over time, they will increase my credit limit which will further help my credit score.  This move is not just to pay off cards, it's also an attempt to increase my credit score. 

I would love to be able to refinance my vehicle loan to a lower interest payment.  I have only made 2 or 3 payments on it so it wouldn't be a net loss versus if I had been paying for 3 or more years on it. The payment on it is pretty low tho, not really complaining about that but every little bit helps.  The gas bill is going to go way up here and my account is on that bill to pay it.  So I'm trying to bring other monthly expenses down to equalize it.  But, my monthly expenses in Phoenix are fixing to go way down.  Electric use will be cut in half - no cooling and water use goes way down - no watering plants.  That will help substantially in and of itself. 

Okay, onto the diet. Day 8. I got on the scale this morning and it showed 218 pounds.  I mean, how do you lose 6 pounds overnight?  A little googling and it's water weight.  I am drinking large quantities of water and some tea and of course my daily coffee.  My head was aching this morning when I woke up - 10 hours after going to sleep.  I was shocked to look at the clock this morning and see it at 10:00 am.  I mean, I woke up in the middle of the night for a trip to the bathroom but then I went back to sleep and didn't wake up again until the phone rang. No telling how much longer I would have slept if someone hadn't called.

But, getting up and moving around, dealing with dogs, getting a cuppa took care of that head aching.  I'd like to have hoped it would have gone away by now, but everything I've read is that this isn't abnormal.  Plow ahead.  Breakfast was almost nothing  - a biscuit made out of almond flour. Tasty but hardly filling.  Lunch will be a bit better.  This "new" diet we are doing is actually even less calories than what we were consuming.  I think down to around 1,000 calories per day.  That's not much for a 6 foot 2 tall person weighing in currently at 220 pounds.  But hey, if I'm not going to go into ketosis, at least I know my caloric intake is down which will hopefully have the same effect. 

Yesterday? I built the first fire of the cool season.  It was nice. I have some large logs I need to burn through that are starting to rot.  It took a while to get a hot fire going, but after I did get those nice hot coals I put a huge one on there and it's still smoldering out there this morning. Oops, it's not morning anymore. 

Well, I have things to get done.

Day 7 on diet.
Still not in ketosis.
I have been following the diet closely, rest assured I'm hardly eating any carbs at all.
They say it could take up to 7 days I think it was, to get into ketosis, well day 7 is here.
Haven't checked it yet tho.  There's a lot of cooking in this diet, way more than anything we
were doing here previously.  I've been doing most of the cooking since I've been home, but I'm ready to take a break from it.  I spent this morning making breakfast and lunch, it's their turn to
put out and make dinner and tomorrow's meals.  Or I'll help, lol, but doing it all gets old. 

That's a lot of what I've done today, I have other things to do such as tidying up my room and going through some boxes to see if I can find what on  earth I did with my passport and birth certificate.  I certainly do not want to go through all of that again, especially the ordeal of getting a birth certificate. They don't make it easy.  I suppose they shouldn't but it certainly motivates me to find it.  I can't believe I didn't just leave it in a place where I could easily find it when I was moving from one to another.  I assuredly put it in a "safe" space so it wouldn't get damaged, but that was too safe a space.  I am pretty sure I stuffed my birth certificate in an envelope with other important papers - but so far all of those envelopes have turned out no show. 

I'm sure I'll find both of them eventually and then I'm going to put it where I know I will find it and put it on a computer file names Passport, this is what you did with it! lol

But right now, I"m taking a break.  I certainly can't and won't claim that my energy levels are anything near pre-diet levels. Just get worn out quickly.  The only reason I'm glad the truck is in the shop and not earning a paycheck at the moment is for fact of this transition from carbs to fat/protein.

I will have tomorrow off, that's a given.  I'll get some of the other stuff I wanted to get done - done.  Well, I might have to go in and get a ride to get the truck, not really sure about that yet.

____________________

End of Sunday. I weighed myself a few minutes ago to get a grasp on my 7 days, but actually, we started on Monday now that I think of it.  Last Sunday we ate a bunch of junk because we knew we weren't going to be doing that again for quite a while if we manage to stay on this diet.  Down to 224 from 227.  I am not losing the higher amounts others have reported because I have not gone into ketosis. I am not cheating on the diet, it's very low carbs, so it's a bit perplexing.  But, there is always tomorrow. 

We also decided to venture off on our own.  Some of these recipes just don't taste that good. There are hundreds if not many  more recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner on the net.  It's simply a matter of finding the ones that have comparable calories and low carbs as what we're doing and that has been done. The menu for the entire upcoming week selected. Not cooked of course, but at least that much.  The misses here is missing bread, turns out there is a version of rolls made out of almond flour that you can make that is low carb. 

This diet may have more fat than I like - but that's how keto works if you ever get into ketosis - but it's still low calorie.  It's probably half the calories I have been consuming up until now. 

Anyway, off to bed. Hopefully work calls tomorrow saying the truck is finished so I can go back to work. 

Diet Day 6.
Saturday morning. 
I pretty much plan on keeping myself busy throughout the day both in and outside of the house.
Plenty to do around here, as we haven't raked the yard in a while and it's full of these things they
call gumballs - they all from the big trees.  I assume it's the tree's version of populating itself. They are nasty.  They have prongs that stick out in every direction and hurt the dog's feet.  They fill up the back yard.

The front yard is covered with acorns.  They have always wanted to take that tree down - the thing is scary frankly It's huge, 80 feet tall anyway, unknown amount of weight but in the tens of tons at least.  One branch broke off of it and did $11k worth of damage to their house.  These old trees don't live forever and poor choice for planting around a home.  But it will cost 3.5k to take it down, the exorbitant cost due to it being right next to power lines.  You'd have to bring a crane in here, literally, to cut that thing down.  one piece at a tame with cables to safely put it on the ground. 

They could recover a portion of the cost by cutting it up, splitting it and selling the wood.  I'm guessing there must be 8 cords of wood at least in there.  At $200 per cord - the going rate around here - that's half the cost of cutting it down.  Okay, they'd have to buy a chainsaw and rent a splitter.  Lots of work, too, but when you are financially strapped, you figure out ways to do things on the cheap and still have good results. Been doing it my entire life.  Tho looking back, I should have taken the steps I took last year much sooner and I would be in very healthy financial shape right now. 

But that's a different subject.

It's the diet I'm focused on right now.  It's not necessarily the easiest thing.  Sometimes I get cravings for sugar and it's hard to resist.  I have some water I got from Walmart that is sweetened with Aspartame that actually tastes like you are consuming a sugary substance. Drinking it sparingly, but it's a go to when the cravings hit.  I'm not a big sugar eater, but obviously the normal diet I have been eating has some sugars in it.  It's sort of like an addiction in itself.

Seems like the headaches I have been waking up to are tapering off. 

Anyway, I have several projects that I will be engaging myself with this weekend. They will kill 2 birds with one stone. First, just to keep my mind off of eating - this is a pretty low caloric intake diet - and 2 - get some exercise. Raking and picking up stuff and digging and such is definitely a good output of energy.  I'm trying to gear myself up for the eventual trip to the gym, a thing I need to start up and get into the habit of again. 

Dieting alone can reduce weight and fat. That's science.  But not near as effectively as with a cardio program and also a weight training program. 

I think it's best to do this in steps. The diet is a very good start and just getting into this habit will take some time.  My morning weight and evening weight are a bit odd.  4 to 5 pound difference I've noticed.  I'm not eating 5 pounds of food, tho I am drinking large quantities of water.  I can only assess it's the water for the weight gain and subsequent weight loss the next morning.  If I go by the morning weight, I'm down around 5 pounds. If I go by evening weight, I"m down a pound.  I'll take any down weight over a slowly increasing weight and fat gain. 

So that's it.  I have a closet to clean out that I was using while they were in Georgia.  Not that much in there but they are waiting on me to clean my stuff out of there to put the pool in there.  I'm not sure the reason it can't go into the storage shed.  She doesn't want bugs and stuff to get into it.  Okay.  Well that's interesting I guess. It's time to take it down, that's what I know for sure. 

I'm clearing out the space where I will put up the greenhouse.  And I'm going to do a lot of raking and cleaning up.  Might be a waste of time since it's fall and the leaves on some of the trees haven't even started falling yet, but again, this is to keep myself busy and distracted.  There are other things I could do to that end, but I am trying not to spend any money except on bills right now because I am having 5 days off, apparently, to get the truck fixed. 

THAT is an untenable situation.  If I had a new truck as they promised at the beginning, I wouldn't be having all of these problems. 

No sense in going into all of that, it is rather annoying. 

One thing I can't complain about with this job is the pay.  Yes I've had to fight for detention pay on several occasions now, but they pay up once they realize their mistakes.  I wasn't keeping track of it until I noticed on a pay stub that I was short something like 15 hours of detention and now? I keep track of all of it.

Anyway, I've made almost double this year already than what I made at Ferguson for an entire year.  There's still 5 paychecks left to go in this year so I'll likely be  close to double and half what I made there.  It's one thing I am considering in attempting to decide whether to stay or go with their new rules after the company was merged with another one and brought under a newly formed parent company.  I'm pretty sure most drivers won't be getting any safety bonuses now, which is bunk.  No accidents, no moving violations, no warnings or tickets for roadside checks? THAT is what it should be based on.

Not some nefarious data sent via Quaalcomm that shows you going 2 miles an hour over the company speed limit because you went down a hill "too fast" at 67mph.  That's just purely ridiculous and in my view, obviously a sign that they just want to cut costs by making up outrageous rules that mostly no-one is going to keep. I honestly don't care how fast the truck goes down the other side as long as it isn't going too far over the speed limit, it makes up for time lost going 45mph going UP that same hill. Sounds minuscule but when you are climbing up and down hills all day long, it adds up. 

So, without safety bonuses every quarter? I dunno, I need a summary of how many I got before this new rule and how much it adds up to.  Oh, it's right on my pay stub.  It wasn't that much anyway.  Kind of lame actually, I got much more in one lump sum at my previous employer than several of them here, but then again, my previous employer wasn't paying me jack squat so there is that little point to take into consideration.  I know companies that give out thousands of dollars a year in safety bonuses based on the real criteria I listed above. 

But I'm seeing all kinds of new job opportunities being posted locally now. As the driver shortage continues, the rate for drivers pay is going up with it, whether it's mileage pay, hourly pay, percentage of haul pay -etc., lots of ways they can formulate your pay.  I'm not joyfully happy with this current company but I'm not upset, mad and aggravated with it either, such as I was with previous one when they brought in that a-hole manager with the temper problem and dumped him on us, knowing he was going to be an issue from the outset.  His manager didn't care and I frankly hope that particular store goes under because of it.  The only criteria they looked at was his job performance, not whether he is true management material. 

No sense in going into all of that and bringing up bad memories. Anyway, there are irritations, I'll call them, with current company such as the trouble it is to get them to fix things.  The truck is in the shop and the freaking thing can stay in the shop until all of it is fixed.  That's my assessment, tho if it sits in there too long I"ll be dumped into a temp truck, a thing a very much dislike. I've got my truck set up the way I want it.  They could give us a bigger sleeper tho.  It's not like we need the room for the trailers. There is at least 5 feet between the back of the sleeper and the front of the trailer, a couple more feet of space would be very nice considering how much time is spent in them.  That's another thing, this company outruns a truck's usefulness, by hundreds of thousands of miles worth. Whereas many or even most major trucking companies get rid of trucks after 300k, 350k, 400k miles, this one seems to have no limits.  Mine is at 655k and it's doing the stuff that trucks with mega miles do. Things start failing.  That's why major trucking companies get rid of them. They can't afford a bunch of trucks with a lot of down time.  And this one can? No, they are promising to buy something like 1,500 new trucks in the next coming months. 

I won't hold my breath considering the promises they made when I came on board and the fact that a recent news report I read says that orders for trucks are up so high that manufacturers are having trouble filling the orders.  We're in a booming economy, dunno how long it will last, but we are in "high times" right now and one should take advantage of it if one can.  My friends I live with, wish they could find something better locally.  They just aren't getting paid that much money and they really struggle with bills and trying to make ends meet.  Not a slam on them, really if I were their age and had to do this all over I would definitely get into college - even if student loans, finding a career that is in high demand and pays well - or get into a trade school. 

As for my desire to try and get a business degree, I may just dump that notion.  It's just not worth that much money this late in life.  2 year degree, minimum puts me at almost 56 years old and then you start at the bottom if you go into management.  Tho that isn't my goal, my goal was get some real business knowledge and  education to learn how to run a business. 

Day 5 on diet.
About 1,200 calories on the menu today, all low carb/no carb stuff.  I finally saw a change in the keto strip tester to the first stage of ketosis.  I read that exercise helps and so I was digging up dirt and hauling it around front. That's pretty good exercise.  I checked after doing that and that's what set it off.  But it needs to go to the dark purple range to really have fat burning going on.  I wore myself out - really great lack of energy so far - but I'm going back out there in a few and doing some more of that.   

Day 4 of diet.
Woke up with worse headache than yesterday. 
Whatever is cleaning out of my system - I'm detoxing as well - it's not really all that fun. I'm glad I had yesterday off and today.  By virtue of a broke down truck. 
When it's going to be done, no clue.  It always depends on how long it takes for them to get to it and then to start attempting to figure out all the problems it's having.  I'm not really interested in driving it again until all of it is fixed, done and over with.

Then again, I can't be off too many days or my paychecks suffer, obviously. Still, right now, this diet is kicking my butt and I'm glad to be home doing much of nothing.

The upward spiral of weight gain has been stemmed, apparently.  I actually lost a pound since yesterday. I took my weight after eating and having my coffee so I wouldn't be deceiving myself lol.  There's some high fat stuff in this diet but it's not that much calories when adding them all up for a day. 

Okay.  Just "negotiated" the movie channels at the other house here.  I told them I was going to get rid of them because it's too expensive - it adds $54 per month to the bill.  Dunno how I got $63 last time but that's what it is.  So they had the option of either antying up for those movie channels or having them eliminated.  Well, 2 of them are there all the time. Rene and this other disabled dude who is on all kinds of medication.  He mostly sleeps from what I'm told. 

They want to keep the channels and are willing to pay the extra to keep them on.  That takes me below what the total rent receipts are for the house - which is a good thing because gas use is going to go up and electric use will go up slightly.  Taylor told me the electricity would go up, but I had to disagree. Donny was literally there, all the time, running a computer and large screen TV literally 24 hours a day.  This new disabled guy doesn't run it all the time and the other new guy is hardly ever there. 

The 3rd one is basically using it as a place where he can have his daughter over on his appointed time with her.  You know, divorced and all of that wonderfulness?  The great thing is currently I'm going to be paying nothing for that house, whereas I had been paying over $200 per month in exchange for Rene watching the dogs.  This deal just got a whole lot sweeter for me.  And so far it appears they are all getting along.  All of them have my text number so if there is an issue they can get a hold of me directly, of which I encouraged them to do if there happens to be a problem. 

Day 3 of diet.
Rather spartan breakfast considering 2 very tiny pancakes made out of well I dunno what they are made out of. They were good, but tiny and a couple pieces of bacon.  Oh and  a cup of coffee is allowed. Actually I couple probably drink as much coffee as I want, but I have been slowly scaling back on that in the last couple of months.  Not a diet thing, just trying to cut back to a moderate amount.  I get into this phase where I"m drinking 3 pots of coffee a day and that's just too much.  I'm down to 2 sometimes 3 cups a day which isn't even a pot of coffee.

Of course, i didn't say anything about quitting coffee altogether lol.

I weighed myself pre diet, I figure I'll weigh again after 7 days and see if there is any change.  Everyone that has done this diet say they have lost at least 5 pounds the first week.  I guess that's nice but to lose 35 pounds is going to take an extended period of time, it doesn't happen overnight and I don't have the mindset that it is going to happen quickly  We can talk about that in 6 months if we're still doing it.  I can foresee some "failings" at Thanksgiving and whenever I go back to Phoenix, I'm just going to put the diet on the shelf for those 2 things and not feel bad about it at all.

I have to say that I kind of threw Taylor for a loop when I started talking about the need to buy new clothing.  She's like, wait I didn't think about that!  Meh, she undoubtedly has clothing from the past when she was thinner.  I should have kept my mouth shut, lol, but I was thinking out loud.  I want to get back down to 32 waist as I had all of my adult life until this fat started piling on. I'm in 35's right now.

No smoked meats for a while.  Not even any point to cooking that much meat, this isn't really a protein diet, it's a mostly fat diet with some protein and almost no carbs.  Unfortunately, Taylor is having a problem staying away from the soda.  She had one the first night.  I didn't want to "lecture" her, but to get into ketosis carbs must be kept at a bare minimum. An entire soda probably will throw that off. Like 25 carbs in a can, that's too much.

________________________

Okay, trip to Walmart.  This house has no blender and several recipes are calling for a blender.  You can improvise without one, but why bother.  You can get a blender for $30.  Got ingredients to make smoothies - like very low carb versions of maybe around 3 to 5 carbs worth.  Do one of those here and there.  And some detox tea since I haven't really detoxed in a long time.

Oh and rye grass seed cause it is on sale and there are bald patches where grass should be growing.  It's the time of year to plant that kind of grass anyway.

Ok, this diet is a bit time consuming cooking these dishes.  Tomorrow won't be any better cooking for tomorrow's meal and likely making Friday dinner in advance.  Oh and Friday lunch.

Anyway, I went ahead and ordered a low priced greenhouse that had rave reviews.  It comes ready to put up and not needing a lot of set up time.  It will be a place to hang out for me anyway and enough room for dogs to be in there as well plus a lot of potted plants and of course the pond.  Minimal outlay for enjoyable relaxing.  I don't want to spend too much money on stuff here, but I will spend some for the things I like as along as it's agreeable with them, which they have no problem with it. The back yard is in a shambles.  It's way too time consuming to continuously rake it up.  Acorns, leaves, dead branches, gumballs (round things that have spikes in them), the junk falls year round, constantly.  The kicker is that none of those trees are on their property, it's all neighbors trees.

I suppose they could get a tree person to cut the limbs back that are hanging over their property but that would cost a fortune. These trees are 75 to 100 feet tall.  I love trees, not in love with these particular variety of trees.  I'd much rather have to deal with pine needles and pine cones than all of this nonsense.  Anyway I won't have to deal with all that junk falling into the pond for fall and winter, as I'm putting the thing up as soon as it comes in - and I have at least a day off to do it with.

Umm, started that last post and totally forgot about it, got busy with getting ready to leave for Brownsville.
We're on day 2 of the diet, well eating is over with for today.
It's really not a bad diet. It's certainly not starvation though it adds up to lower calories than what I've been normally eating at around 1,200 to 1,500 calories per day.
I don't eat much sugar to begin with so a sweet tooth isn't really my problem.
Just eating too much calories at meals, eating truckstop food, not getting enough exercise, but mostly needing to get my eating, what I'm eating to be specific, under control.

Fortunately, the other 2 here are full fledged into this even tho James has no need for dieting.  It's a good thing to be supportive of your wife in such endeavors.  There's absolutely no alcohol on this diet either, even tho some versions allow it.  No beer, no liquor,  no wine.

Anyway, day 2 wasn't bad and tomorrow doesn't look too bad either except spaghetti squash? Stuff looks weird.  Not sure if I'll like it or not, but I get to make the dinner tomorrow.

Oh, the trip. Well, the AC went out on the truck and I just put my foot down today.  Time to fix ALL of this, not just the AC.  They're sending it to the Peterbilt shop tomorrow to fix stuff that the mechanic can't - he doesn't have the software/computer system to do that kind of diagnosing.  So finally get this beeping noise turned down, get the cruise control working, get the blower on the fresh air going again and of course fix the AC. That truck has 655,000 miles on it but's only a 2016, lol.  No, I didn't have anything to do with putting all those miles on it in that short of a period of time. I've put almost 90,000 on it, the rest was a team that must have just done nothing but drive drive drive.

The thing about today was, I was asked to get that trailer back up here as fast as possible, they wanted to have it loaded today.  I was like, well, it's going to be at least 2:30 this afternoon before I get it back.  I wasn't wrong, got up at 3:45 am, left at 4:12 from the yard down in Browsnville and showed up at our yard at 2:41 this afternoon.  I find out that they had nixed the order, didn't need it back that fast, I got up early for nothing I definitely could have slept a couple more hours.  Oh well.

I ended sitting with another driver that's been working there for 20 years about all things truck and trucking, not sure how I got so carried away with the time spent, but it was an interesting conversation.  Coming home was to a rather small meal compared to the rest of them, just about a link of sausage, some broccoli and = oh and nothing, we ran out of lettuce hearts and so I had a boiled egg instead.

And looking online, I've found some recipes for smoothies. Like, different kind of smoother than one would think lol, but I"m going to experiment with almond milk, unsweetened yogurt, raspberries and various spices.  I mean, they had spinach version which for a smoothie sounds - not so great. I like spinach, don't get me wrong, but in a smoothie?

Ahh,  a little more looking into this keto diet stuff. It appears that not only do you not eat hardly any carbs at all, you also don't eat that much protein in comparison to fat.  That was what was throwing me off, why am I supposed to eat so much fat filled stuff?  Because, it appears, once you go into ketosis, that's what the body consumes.  Well, we're following the diet and the only straying I've done is a few very small tastes of turkey pepperoni and some cheese.

Diet was not going so great.
It's kind of hard to diet when everyone around you is eating whatever, whenever, however.  In other words, dinner is a lot of high calorie, fat laden greasy stuff that tastes wonderful but in no way, shape or form is anything even remotely associated with the term "losing weight".

So, we discussed going on some sort of diet weeks ago. Maybe months actually.  You see, I'm just getting fatter and fatter and I am literally disgusted with myself.  I haven't ever been this fat, ever.  I'm a good 35 pounds over weight, but if you go by my most-of-my-life-adult-weight, it's more like 40.

I never thought I'd even have an issue with weight considering my entire life up until just a few years ago I was in pretty good shape weight wise and fat wise.
The thing is, at least for me, the Feds have this fat program, I call it that anyway, they call it body mass index, for truck drivers. Go over a certain amount and you are disqualified. Or you have to jump through hoops to stay qualified temporarily, I think, while you deal with it.

Trucking is mostly a very sedentary lifestyle.  Unless you are doing flatbeds or some sort of version of it that gets you out of the truck and doing physical work, you are likely going to get fat unless you really adopt a disciplined lifestyle, something I have struggled with in recent times.  I mean, you are on duty for 14 hours and driving for 11 of those, getting out of the truck and doing much of anything after a day that long isn't really the first thought. The first thought is get something to eat, brush your teeth and go to sleep if it's late, which many times it is.

The last trip was a prime example of that.  Late load - 12:30 pm at the plant, always means a late night end. In that case, it was 2:00 am, or just a few minutes before, before I got done with the "day".  I didn't eat tho, I just went to sleep.  The next night I was done at 11:00 and didn't get home until after midnight.  Again, I didn't eat, but still, it's just an example of the hours.  Tomorrow morning will be reversed, get up at 3:00 am but means I can't work later than 6:30 pm.  It's actually optimal the first load, it's just that I feel like crap all day long because I never get enough sleep that night. Going to bed at 7:00pm just doesn't work for me.  9:00 at the earliest and then, I always have difficulty sleeping on this early rise nights - I don't know why, I can't explain it, it just happens that way almost every time.

Anyway, there was a point not all that long ago where the fat accumulation seemed to multiply at an exponential rate. No increased eating of junk or sweets, no change in eating habit at all. That was mystifying, but it's not like I was trying to do anything about it, either.

Anyway, I pushed the issue for starting this weekend.  Money issues and such came up, no thanks, I'll buy all of it, I don't care about spending a few dollars on getting myself to a healthy weight again and I certainly like the idea of doing it with other people for accountability.  She needs to lose at least 50 pounds according to her, he doesn't really need to go on this diet at all - he has a very physically demanding job - but she basically pushed him into it.  I mean, what were we going to do, make 2 different meals at dinner time?  Nahh bro, we can't do that.  Not like the food we are going to be eating is nasty, just a lot of prep time and advance thinking for what you are going to eat for dinners and lunches.

Tomorrow? We haven't got that far yet.  But they have frozen meals made for this kind of diet.  My truck has a small freezer and I can get a small microwave. The truck has a 3,000 watt inverter, easy enough to plug it in, heat up my food and be done with it.  But I'm going to have to have some sort of nibbling food.  I mostly don't eat that much while driving, but here and there I feel hunger pangs, having something - anything really - in hand's reach is what I need that works with this diet.

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We're full fledged going into this now.  I went with Taylor to Kroger's and we spent 2 hours in there. Taylor is an extremely organized person that looks stuff up and prints stuff out in advance.  The entire week's worth of dinners are going to be made - today.  It was a chunk of change spotted to get this started, but if it works, it's money well spent It's a version of the Adkinson diet - a keto diet - where you're eating almost no carbs/sugars.  I'm not trying to get into eating a bunch of fat either tho.  Anyway, we spent over 2 hours walking up and down the grocery aisle looking for everything that we need.

Of course, once we got home, we found out we don't have everything we need. So, put the boys to bed, I said I'm not going anywhere, they left to Walmart to get other stuff we don't have.  I also need a small microwave for the truck that they are going to pick up. I'll have 2 days worth of eating in advance, put it in the truck refrigerator and have the microwave to heat the stuff up, avoid truckstop food altogether and get this thing rolling. I"m all in on this.  ALL in.  I'm tired of this incredible fat gain and willing to do just about anything to get this nonsense reversed.

It's just wonderful that there are 2 other people living in the same household doing it as well.  We can crank on each other if there are "failing" moments.  I guess I could get away with whatever on the road, but I'm really committed to doing this and getting this done.

So this is consuming the entire day. First cleaning up yesterday's mess -- I don't like that kind of stuff but I tolerate it cause' this ain't my house and I want to stay at peace with everyone - but I cleaned all of it up when we got back from the grocer's, got the dishwasher cranking and then got started on putting everything up.  I didn't do the putting stuff up alone tho and she is definitely putting out to get this going too. She has her own weight loss issues that have crept up on her over time.

My God I'm up to 225 pounds.  I just weighed myself a few weeks ago at 222.  This is insanity. Like someone said hey, let's dump a bunch of fat on this dude and just let it accelerate at a ridiculous rate! Note again: I haven't changed any of my eating habits, but the weight accumulation has accelerated exponentially in just a month's time? What the heck.  That just motivates me even more.

NO.

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We spent the entire day with the beginning of this project.  The beginning meaning a rather large spot of money on food, cooking, bagging/prepping/putting into containers, cleaning dishes - we're on our 3rd trash bag full and second load of dishes not to mention those that are cleaned by hand - and getting this ready to roll. I'm set for the two days out on the road.  If I have to go a 3rd day, I have enough snacks allowed by the diet to keep me eating.  This isn't a starvation diet. You eat, you just don't eat carbs/sugars.  It cuts out a lot of different types of food but it also cuts caloric intake per day significantly.

If anything experts agree on - consume less calories than you are expending.  I will up my workouts and force myself to do a minimal amount of exercise even if I have driven all day and don't feel like it. This isn't an instant thing. I don't expect that. I do expect to see some kind of results after the first week, but I know I'm not going to lose the amount of weight I want to in a few weeks. Try 6 months.  Maybe more.

Saturday.  I didn't go to bed last night until 3:00 am, so for me to be feeling as good as I do right now is actually quite amazing - to me anyway.
I only got 5-1/2 hours of sleep.

Ok, I didn't get back from Brownsville and to the yard until around 11:30 and then didn't get home until around 12:30 am.  I don't just go to sleep when I get home, usually, I sit down and relax and get on the computer and just check things out.  I mean, I didn't even realize it was that late until I looked up at the clock lol.

So, anyway, got up and went to the Fireant Festival. Some thing they have yearly.  Their 2 kids were in it, and the nursery had borrowed my trailer to use for the parade.  I figured I might as well go take a look.  Pretty amazing actually. A lot of people out there, a lot of stands with all kinds of different things being proffered.   I couldn't find James and I knew Taylor and the boys were on the float, so I just wandered around looking at everything.  Signed up for 2 different raffles for guns.  They weren't free, but what the heck, see if my luck is any good.

The parade started at 10:00 am and was pretty amazing actually. It's a small town and everyone is happy to be a part of this parade. I almost felt like I should have brought my Great Dane, he would have been a show pleaser lol.  The float with Taylor and the daycare came along, it was pretty cool. They had made the word "HEROES" out of pics of servicemen and women both alive and passed on.

It won the best float award later on.  Never did find any of them after that, wandered around a while longer and decided to come home.  Having had not received any marching orders for the weekend, I was about to text my manager when she texted me.  She's changed her modus operandi as of lates. Instead of giving out assignments for the weekend on Friday, she just does it whenever.  So I found out my next load is the first load, Monday morning. Not at all excited about getting up at 3 am, but at least I won't be out until past midnight trying to get down there.  Seems it's one or the other lately.  But, when I start on the clock at 4:30 am, I can't be on that clock later than 6:30 pm.  The day ends early, if there's no trailer I can get a bit of detention pay.

That, however, is dwindling down for the Brownsville run.  They mostly have a trailer down there now, it's getting pretty rare that there isn't one.  The organization down there came under new management and new management wants costs down.  Understandable, it was a nice gravy train while it lasted. It still happens here and there but not near as often as it used to.  It's still a good run anyway, good miles so I'm not going to complain.  I just like free vacations lol.

Well anyway we were going to go back up there but - I didn't feel like it. 2 hours was enough for me.  I mean, okay, I was thinking about going back up but it's pouring rain now, which is a bummer for them.  It's a big production and it's supposed to go on well into the night.  But it's raining cats and dogs and I can't imagine families staying out there in this mess.

Ahh, well now we have tornado watches.  Lol.

A rather nice, relaxing day off.  Got a haircut, went over to Lowe's to see their end of season sales on plants, to Chili's for a bite to eat and then Walmart to get some dog food and yes, some more fish. Small Goldfish and Koi.  They don't have large fish there and I don't like buying large fish.  I'd rather get them really small and watch them grow over time.  I have that pond loaded with fish now.  Probably won't get any more unless I see Koi that I really like, I far prefer Koi over goldfish but a mix of both in a pond is nice.  I'm going to buy a cheap greenhouse and cover the pond this winter and not have to worry about excessive cold freezing up the pond. Koi and goldfish can actually tolerate very cold temps, but I want my plants to live as well and the greenhouse effect keeps it warm enough in there to keep them from freezing over during a frost event.  It's frost that kills them.  Small investment.

Meanwhile, I was looking into business degrees online.  The prices are not cheap.  I mean, much more than I expected.  "Cheap" being 11 grand and expensive being almost 100k.  I guess I figured I could find something at a reasonable price in the "thousands" range, not the tens of thousands of range.  I don't want to go into debt to go to school, especially at my age.

I'm not really sure what to do about that, just keep searching I guess.  I can't do a regular classroom setting since I have no regular off time.  Maybe it's a pipe dream to go back to school. I just have to keep looking, perhaps something will turn up.  I could do classes out on the road, just get myself a new laptop with a larger screen.  And switch to unlimited internet.

Anyway, after all that came back home, put the fish in the pond -they are all doing nicely and none of them died off - got dinner made early, sat back and ignored the news lol.  Just insanity, pure, utter insanity.  Eric Holder proclaiming to "kick 'em" referring to all of the right.  The left is asking it's base to engage in hostilities - if they think that is going to work, wait until they pick on the wrong person or group of people.  It's going to get ugly, quickly.

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Thursday morning. Mixed feelings about late loads. Nice to not have to get up rushed and fly out the door, sit and sip coffee for a few hours, watch some news - adjusting that - the hurricane news is unbelievable.  I mean, there was some serious damage done by that storm. 

Ugh. So Rene shows up right before I'm leaving - like the hour before I leave I have a lot to do, messing around with lawn mowers and Taylor loaning out tv's isn't on my list of things to have to do.  Then I found the pond pump quit which got me going, but turns out the dogs probably just ran by the cord and unplugged it. I just dumped a bunch of new fish in there plus the ones that were already there, I can't leave for 2 days without having fresh water being pumped to oxygenate the water. 

Anyways, all taken care of, a few precious moments remaining. It's going to be a long day trying to make it to Brownsville after I get loaded at the plant. it's 10-1/2 hours and I won't be out of the plant until at the earliest probably around 3:00 pm, I dunno if I'll even make it down there today.  I'd prefer to but that means being up until 1:00 am or even later.  Guess I'll figure that out when I get south of Houston and whether it took too long to get through there.  Hmm, better call my manager and see if the loading is going smoothly.

Well, off to the races.

Congratulations to Brett Kavanaugh!

He stood up to left democrats, just the same as Clarence Thomas did, endured the hell of being accused of unthinkable acts and now is already sworn in.  Dems pipe dream of impeaching him? Maybe if they actually do win enough seats to take control, I have serious doubts that's going to happen and I am relatively comfortable with the idea that by the time the next election after this one occurs, they won't care anymore. Hirono and all the rest of them are still wanting "justice" and impeachment! lolol

So enough of that.

Monday morning.
I have a run to go on but they are replacing the windshield in my truck this morning so she gave me a really late load time - not really in love with those but it is what it is.  Would rather have the second or third load.  But, this particular plant has changed everything, having us just drop and hook and leave immediately after getting there, basically.  It's still a 2 day trip, there's just too much traffic and slow areas you have to go through to get it done in one.  Well, I dunno, I could probably get very close.  That last trip I caught up with another driver so that really added minutes to the drop and hook time.

How do you catch up to a driver that is going the same speed and left 2 hours earlier than you?  Lol.  It's about 680 miles round trip.  I have made 677 miles in a day's driving with this company and that was not on a day where I had to load the truck.  That was a wake up, start driving and get as much as you can get done day.  In this trip, even tho it "technically" would be doable, you've got 2-1/2 hours at the loading plant and at least 30 minutes at the receiving plant.  Plus a forced 30 minute break and 20 minutes to fuel. There's almost 4 hours, which eats into the 11 driving hours, which makes a one day trip - impossible.  Okay, the plus side is it's more miles than Cheniere which is almost always a 2 day trip so in that regard I guess it's better. 

New tenant is allegedly moving in today.  He has said that twice now but then said he had to do "other" things.  The only reason I"ve let it go this long is because he put down a deposit to hold the room.  But, if he does not move in today, I will let him know that if he doesn't drop the rest of the rent off by tomorrow, he will forfeit his deposit and I will find someone else.  Several people have expressed high interest in the room. That's the point of a deposit, you are guaranteeing you are going to move in and if you don't, you understand you will lose that deposit.  I'd rather not have to go that route but there is a maximum amount of days that deposit covers for monthly expenses and after that, I run short.  Meaning pay out of my pocket and no thanks. 

My mind got all tangled up again in the thought of having a larger rental property with either mobile homes or small apartment complex.  I'd really love to get out of trucking eventually and just have rentals bringing in the dough.  Or perhaps a scaled back trucking version to supplement my income.  I suppose I'd have to be an owner operator to be able to do that tho.  It would be cool to work that out with current company, stay here long enough to get into that position, but I doubt they'd allow a "part time" driver.  And all the rules they have implemented - and a lot of stuff.  Lol.  I think next month marks a year, I will be taking my paid time off and will spend that time travelling and also thinking about my next move, if there is one.  I won't have enough money saved up to do anything about getting into a larger rental property for at least a couple of years.  And, I'm still trying to get my credit score up - I have no idea how long that is going to take. 

It's been quite a while already and still in the fair range.  It just went up 6 points, but that isn't enough to really do anything.  I really need to be in the good range to be able to qualify for some sort of loan for a venture such as that plus a significant down payment and I may need to take some business courses. 

Online, thanks.  I can't do mortar based college with this driving job - or any other driving job for that matter.  Just doesn't work.  It would be far better for me to be in a classroom, if I do decide to do that I'll have to find the motivation from within to stick to it and get it done. 

Yes this little venture is still very much in my mind, I have to find a way to get it done.  Save save save to start with, I have already upped that significantly starting last night.  I've just reduced my expenses and I expect to reduce them even more with getting rid of all of those movie channels over there.  That is around $60 per month and that money is going to be needed to cover the increased gas bill come this winter.  Going to have to discuss the temp everyone can handle having it at over there and definitely asking that no one uses space heaters.  It would be cheaper to just heat the entire house up to a higher temp with natural gas than sucking up huge amounts of electricity in those heaters. 

I think what I'm going to do is attempt to schedule a BBQ over there on some weekend and we can all discuss ways to save money while still being comfortable.  I've found that if you don't have that discussion, the people who aren't paying the electric and gas bill pretty much don't care how much excess they use, cause they aren't responsible for the bill.  Heaters, window ac units, leaving computers one, running hot water and not using it, stuff like that. 

Life goes on.  I wish I owned the property I'm living at so I could do some major improvements to this place. But, I'm not dumping money into a place I don't own. The only exception has been my bedroom and especially the bathroom that had an old toilet that was leaking, the sink was disgusting and the shower valves were leaking. All of that replaced/fixed at my own expense.  I just couldn't live like that.  They aren't making enough money to do upgrades and repairs such as that and I've been here a while, so I figure I"m getting my money's worth out of it.  I''m still paying all the bills over here besides the mortgage, which sounds excessive but it really isn't that bad now that we negotiated the Direct TV bill down to $94 per month - it was at $215.  My cost is around $450 per month but it will go up in the winter with increased gas use to heat the place.  I do hope they will consider pitching in for that, after $500 per month I kind of think the price tag is a bit excessive.

The flip side is living with friends and we all get along, we never fight, we take little snips at each other but all in good fun.  Still, I think $500 is a good ceiling to place my "rent" at, which is having all the bills coming out of my account automatically.  James took a huge pay cut in moving back here and finding a new job. Steady employment, some weeks he gets a lot of OT, but on those weeks he doesn't it's pretty slim pickings.  But they're both employed so at least they're making it.

Well I still have a couple of hours before I have to leave lol. I'm burnt out on news - its the same stuff day in and day out. Kavanaugh this and Kavanaugh that. Dems are looking for "revenge".  No surprise there.  And of course all things Trump, which Kavanaugh is a by-product of.  It's just getting boring and I have started tuning alot of it out now that the hearings are over and done with.  Perhaps the next new outrage the democrats invent and dump on it's constituents I'll take a look at - it seems this crap happens on a weekly basis. 

With that, I'ma end this one and make some breakfast. 

G'day. 

Ok, quite the interesting trip.
First was Wednesday morning. I get to the plant and they come in and tell me after attempting to start loading the trailer that it has a broken internal cable. Internal valves are there for emergencies - if something goes haywire, you pull a lever and walaah, the product stops flowing.  I had no way of knowing that that cable was busted and it came back from Mexico, it likely occurred there and they didn't bother to say anything to anyone about it.

It cost me hours - I knew right away I wouldn't be making it down there that day and that it would drag this out to a 3 day deal.

Well this is outrageous. I was scrutinizing the Settlement Sheet for my Washington trip, they paid me ZERO for the entire time I sat up there babysitting that trailer and spending countless hours blowing off pressure to keep it from automatically doing so - and causing a helluva lot of problems.  With it heating up that much, those safety valves would have just kept open and there would be hell to pay.  I immediately texted my manager.  I have no problem asking her to give me phone numbers for these idiots that run this show above her and speaking to them directly. I have been asking around about other cryogenic companies - one of which pays 75k per year with NO weekend work. But if you DO do weekend work, it's paid at a rate of $56 per hour.

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I kinda of got into a back and forth with my manager, tho not in a heated type of thing, sharing info on my 36 hours or so of tending to a trailer.  Ridiculous that this company isn't going to pay for that.  I wrote all that stuff down, she says she is going to get into it on Monday. 

Meanwhile, I'm headed to Oklahoma today.  I don't really like that run because it's not that much miles for 2 days but the same is true of Cheniere which is even less miles.  BUT, CHeniere apparently is realizing that no drivers like that run - everyone says it  to them - and is attempting to get drivers in and out of there quickly.  If they continue on with that I wouldn't mind it quite so much.  I do like the Oklahoma run for the stop in Bartlettsville - if I do indeed decide to take that route.  The best route tho is to take the trailer to the plant yard, drop it in the yard and then wait in the parking lot outside of the facility.  Ohyes that's why I don't like that place.  You either stay in their parking lot all night long and get the trailer unloaded earlier or you don't and have some fun in Bartlettsville eating fine Mexican food and bowling and then show up at 8:00 am and hope another trailer isn't ahead of you to make you wait for hours. 

They can only unload one trailer at a time.  I guess I'l make that decision when I get to Tulsa and decide whether to head to Bartlettsville or go straight to the plant in Barnsdall.  There's a Quick Trip right at the exit to go to Barnsdall - it's just a gas station convenience store but Quick Trip does have some pretty decent, fresh sandwiches.  I actually parked there one night when I first started going up there and didn't know where I could park. 

Well I'll be.  I'm glad I have texting to 10 other drivers.  We no longer have to wait, apparently they changed the whole set up up there, we drop a trailer and pick up an empty. Didn't used to be that way.  No more Bartlettsville, just drive straight there, drop the full trailer, pick up an empty and head back as far as I can get with whatever drive hours I have left.  Nice.  If the plant loads me normal tim frame this morning, I should be able to get at least a couple hundred miles back towards the yard. 

Anyway, my weekend is not a weekend at all, just another couple of days.  But I'll be back at a decent hour on Sunday if all goes as I'm thinking it will - it's not possible to do the entire trip turnaround in a single day but I'm pretty sure you can get within a hundred miles of the yard at the end of it.  Meaning I'll have a lot of Sunday to kick back - do laundry - and then back at it Monday afternoon and back up there again.  2 trips back to back up there.  Cheniere cancelled all of their loads - plant must be having issues again.

Meanwhile, I'm just going to start looking at jobs that are completely out of the trucking realm.  I don't qualify for much of anything but that isn't going to stop me from trying.  I would really like a much more normal schedule back.  And really, now that I know I can rent out rooms here without that much problem - so far anyway, the third dude is moving in today - I am feeling a bit more comfortable about doing a small mobile home park or possibly a small apartment complex.  One that already exists tho.  I"m saving money, it's going into a savings account, I'm going to try to double what's going in there.  I also upped the amount being taken out for my 401k. 

Anyway, close to time to leave. Judge Brett Kavanaugh circus almost over. At 4:54 pm today, they are expected to take the vote and he is expected to be voted in.  Get this over with and then watch the sparks fly!!!