Friday - afternoon

I'm just not in the shape I used to be.  I can't do that kind of work for more than 4 hours, I just run completely out of steam. I haven't really had an active lifestyle what with trucking and just operating machinery on the property so it's really hitting me pretty good.  I'm completely worn out right now and it's only 12:20 pm.  

I started early, but I was in and out of the trench and having to face a serious problem.  The entire length of pipe I installed previously is either level or just a little sloping, nothing like what it needs for raw sewage to be flowing through it.  Lifting up on 150 feet worth of pipe to try and push dirt underneath turnout out to be a ridiculous, time and energy consuming exercise in futility.  

I only checked the existing pipe this morning, I'm certainly glad I did.  But there is so much minutia involved.  Weeds - very large weeds - over hanging the trench to the point I just got out my chainsaw and ended up cutting it all down with that. Then getting all of that junk out of the ditch.  The craftsmen battery pack running out of power so I had to go clear to the shed to plug that in, then decided to take down this evil tree growing right next to the shed. It has very sharp thorns all over it and if you touch it even lightly, you are getting stuck by these things.  

I had thought about this quite a while and decided the only way to do this without breaking my back is to get pressure treated 2x4's, cut them into 6 inch sections and use it to prop up the pipe.  I also got composite shims - the pipe has to continuously go up so each piece of wood will necessarily need shims on it to keep elevating it until I get to the point it will need 2 pieces of 2x4's on top of each other.  

Yes I did research on this to ensure this is an acceptable method and it is. The caveat is pressure treated rated for in ground wood.  Otherwise, the wood rots quickly and your pipe caves where the wood pieces are.   

_________

Long rest later, feeling better but still just have to remember not to try over doing it.  High temps are still hot but slated to come down substantially a week from now.  THAT will be good. I can drive the truck and then go work a few hours on the project and then go home.  

Right now, we have high temp forecast slated in the 90's until Thursday of next week.  As long as it's staying that hot, I just can't work out in that too long before I have to stop.  Definitely let myself get out of shape and now paying for it.  Well, the up side is that I'm getting good workouts!      

I have the methodology figured out, I just need to get it done.  Once I get to the end of the pipe, I can just fill dirt in to raise up the floor instead of using the wood. Trying to keep costs down here a bit....it all adds up.

I have work in the morning, first load. Haven't heard back from my manager since he got grumpy with me and declaring "yup, the load is in the system" and I'm replying, "Nope, the load is not in my table and I checked 4 times".  What are they going to do, fire me?  Let them.  I doubt they will do that unless something serious happens, squabbles with the manager aren't in that territory.  I don't know if he got someone else to do it or not and I frankly don't care.  They have left me hanging enough times it's all on them at this point.  

The lady of the house is leaving in a few minutes, she's going on a weekend getaway with her lady friends - all of which I know - they have rented an AirBnB somewhere near Dallas, I think.  They do this once in a while.  I will be home along until Sunday evening.  My only responsibility will be to feed the cats and the dogs, letting her dogs out but bringing one in because he's an escape artist. Not sure how that will go, it's not my dog and he doesn't listen to me.  She suggested using food as a lure. The dog is continuously ravagely hungry, it's insane.  I'll try is all I can say. 

I'm tired.  More like exhausted.  I hope that after a while of doing this I will start to get some semblance of being in shape again and get some of my stamina back.  I should never have let myself go like that, but I did. Again, it was almost shocking when I got on that scale some 4 or 5 months ago and saw it sitting at 241 pounds. It was an instant decision to go back on Keto, modified version, and get the weight off. I'm currently stuck at 32 pounds, it has been going like this for some time. Lose a couple pounds and get stuck there up to a month.

But, the fact of the matter is?....I'm losing weight and not putting it back on.  And now I'm getting some crazy physical exercise.  

I think I'm going to end this one.  5 hours until bedtime, not sure what I will do with my new found freedom of Home Alone, but I'll figure it out.  

 Thursday - evening

As far as the kids go, the entire schedule changed.  Again. Now, the grandparents are here now, the oldest will be home from school in about 30 minutes and they are leaving right away.  They will be gone for a week.  Considering the fact that the grandparents brought a pickup and taking their bikes with them, I'm assuming they are not going to allow the kids to play their games at all, ie: not even allowed to take them with them.  I mean, I'm no fan of kids sitting in front of video games constantly, but a little here and there? Not going to hurt them.  It's their week off, I just don't agree with that at all.  

But, I'm not the mom or pop and I don't get to make those decisions.  I will have a week off from kids, it is always nice tbh.  

As for today's work? I couldn't find the level. It's probably buried in the weeds somewhere. No matter, I bought a 6 foot long one to ensure I get the fall good on the sewer line, got some new blades for the sawzall, a pair of work gloves and a new shovel. Cheap stuff from Harbor Freight, didn't feel like spending a fortune on these items. 

I got 4-1/2 solid hours in before the heat fired up and I got a heat headache. Time to quit.  I only got one stub-up done, 2 lengths of pipe beyond that and a lot of digging both with the tractor and by hand.  

I was trying to get that guy out there that does the mowing but he was busy today. I needed help with the hand digging.  That 40 feet of pipe needs to come up and so, I will be dumping dirt down into that trench tomorrow morning - or not, the mower guy is coming, I'll make him do that work.  I'm guessing 4 hours with help and I'll have all 4 done tomorrow and can start thinking about the water line.  

It's still getting ridiculous hot, I'm just working until early afternoon and quitting.  

Work called.  Hi, are you having trouble getting moving today? I had no idea what he was talking about at first but it immediately crossed my mind that he thinks I was supposed to work today. It's happened so many times, it's not surprising.  I steeled myself, I had an agenda and driving a truck wasn't part of it. He kept saying yes, it's in the system and I kept saying I checked 4 times and it wasn't in my tablet.  Oh, you must have removed it when you finished the last load. 

I didn't remove anything and the next time I am supposed to work according to the tablet is Saturday.  I started going on the offense, I'm not having him telling me I am going to work after I'm deep into my project, he'll have to deal with it AND deal with their constant lack of communication.  I rely on the tablet to tell me when my next load is, they never tell me.  Well, once in a great while they will call and confirm.  I mean, almost never.  We went back and forth but I guaranteed him that I am in the middle of something else and I am not driving a truck today. 

I was in the middle of doing this expansion project, it wasn't a lie by any stretch and I just wasn't mentally there to drop everything and get into the truck. I don't work tomorrow either, I don't know how he dealt with it and I frankly don't care. This has been going on forever and I will stand my ground.  If I'm not in the middle of something, I might agree to drop whatever I'm doing and go drive, I've done it before, but it's definitely no fault of mine that they can't get their act together.  

I suppose I should discuss the nonsense with one particular individual at the park.  He has been letting his dog run free forever.  Since he moved in there. On at least a half a dozen occasions, I have told him to put your damn dog on a leash, stop throwing cigarette butts all over the place and clean up your dog's shit.  

But, the straw that broke the camel's back happened yesterday. I was done with it.  One person a week ago said the dog ran up to his daughter and started growling at her.  Another person texted and said he's tired of that dog coming onto his lot and pooping every day.  I texted the man and told him to leave.  GET OFF OF MY PROPERTY.  I went into great detail.  I knew he'd try to argue with me, I didn't allow it. I've had enough of it.  That dog has caused more problems being allowed to wander all over the place over the last 3 years than I care to even begin to discuss here.

But equally as annoying is his habit of throwing cigarette butts all over the blooming place. He'll do laundry in the shed and sit there smoking and throw them on the ground.  

I was alllllllll up in his business this time. I let him stay on the condition the dog is leashed and leashed from now on.  The only place it can be let run free is back on the trails where hardly anyone goes anyway.  We went back and forth and I simply told him to get out. He changed his tune when he realized I've had enough of his total bs.  "My dog is on a leash, I'm being compliant".  

We'll see where this goes.  

Everything else at the park beside the theft of my expensive weedeater is going pretty good. All the lots are full and tho there are some things that people are doing that are annoying me, some of it comes with have long term versus overnighters. My zero turn is in the back yard and it's not going anywhere. I hate to bring the tractor home since I'm using it, I've asked people over there to keep an eye on it whenever you remember to and please, if you see anyone messing with it besides me? They don't belong there.  Most of my guests are armed, btw.  This is texas and even the frail old ladies have a firearm on their person somewhere.  A purse, concealed carry, whatever, they have them.  I'm thinking to get another one of those solar cameras and just put it on the tractor 24 hours a day.  

But, at the same time, I am also thinking after I get what I need done with the tractor on the expansion? Take it home.  I've got it hidden in a corner behind the boat atm.  And that setup is right behind a trailer of a pretty responsible person who is making 6 figures as a supervisor for the power company.  He's got his own cameras all over the place.  

Well, anyway, the kids will be gone tonight and I can have a break from the constant noise.  I have learned to tune it out - mostly. Some of the stuff they play on tv is so incredibly annoying, I tell them to change it. Especially the videos where the people are screaming and yelling at the top of their lungs. Apparently kids like that kind of stuff, I absolutely despise it, it's totally and completely annoying.  

Enough of that. I have been half-heartedly paying attention to the news. It's mostly anti-Trump shit and I"m tired of hearing it. I don't care what people think about Trump, I literally don't care and I don't want to hear about it anymore. Between that and the anti-semitism, just don't much care to watch it.  I DO watch and read some of it just to try and keep up but only the bare minimum. I"d rather play my video game or watch a movie than getting bombarded with that endless nonsense.  The parrots speak this trash over and over and over and gullible people believe it. Ask one of the "believers" what, exactly, is the problem and almost to the last person they get  a blank look on their face.

Well, I don't know, but Trump is bad! Evil! Now he's a lunatic after his statement about Los Angeles and how it could be destroyed by Iran and a small price to pay.  I know he's not being serious, he's trolling the democrats and frankly, he's earned that right after the 10 year Russian collusion bullshit story that now even has Jack Smith in front of senate hearings. 

If YOU don't like Trump, fine! Don't like him! That's how politics goes. But ...don't....eeeeeeeven...think about coming at me.  I support a lot of what he's done. He's made the world a safer place, in my opinion.  And there's the sticking point: it's only an opinion. YOUR views are YOUR opinions. I'm not speaking to anyone in particular here, I'm just tired of hearing it.  It's not going to change my mind, Trump isn't some raving lunatic wanting to start a nuclear war and I firmly believe action needed to be taken actually a long time ago about Iran.  We should have stopped North Korea from getting nukes as well, but it's too late for that now.  Is the Iran war costing us? Of course it is.  Some wars are worth fighting and tho I am sad for the families and loved ones of the people who have died in it, especially military personnel, that's the cost of war.  

Trump ran on this, this didn't come up after he got into office. There is plenty of video showing him that he's going to blow the hell out of them.  This was him on his campaign trail, he didn't infuse this after the fact.  I've even got Republican friends who are opposing this war. They fall for the left endless pointing to higher prices of everything, fuel being at all time highs.  But the extreme inflation didn't start with Trump, it started with Joe Biden.  This is an indisputable fact and I'm tired of the press and stupid people trying to gaslight all of us into believing something different. 

Fuel prices have spiked because of the war, I'll grant you that.  But, as MANY articles have pointed out the sudden uptick in diesel came after Zelensky targeted Putin's diesel refineries.  Yes, the price of oil an then gas went up before then, but the price of diesel skyrocketed overnight after those refineries in RUSSIA were blown up.  But people don't want to see facts, they want to hear more anti trump shit.  I want not part of it so yes, I have backed wayyyyyy off from watching and reading the news.  

Well, the oldest kid is home from school so I'm going to go out and bid them all a safe trip and a happy vacation.  

Thursday - early

Sun just came up. Time to face the piper and get out there and see what I can get done.  I imagine it taking quite a while just to get everything located and set up - but maybe I'll get lucky. 

Nahh, lol, I have a while of going through both vehicles to find everything and get it all into one.  Namely, the ford.  The pickup has some stuff in it for the project and it has the 5 gallon fuel cans - the tractor is getting low on fuel and you certainly don't want to run a diesel engine out of fuel.  Like to take half a miracle from God to get the things running again.

But, anyway, the sewer is the job I'm going to tackle, we'll see. I have a little trepidation just because I left that trench like that for so long.  I have to wonder if I'll have to - well I don't know what I'll do really. I'll get down in there with the level - another thing I need to locate - and see what it's going to take. Oh, good thing I just remembered I'll need a shovel.  I may have to go buy one of those, I'm pretty sure I broke the last one.

Yeah, it's been quite a while since I was working on this.  The stigma of the water line catastrophe is basically gone out of my mind and the temps are much cooler, I'm out of excuses and I want to get that income coming in.

BUT, there is a LOT to do beyond sewer line.  I have to locate the water line which will be a pain in itself.  I have gone through thousands of photos and I can't find where the one I'm looking for is.  Hmm, you know I never checked my computer.  For some reason that start at 2016 and only go to 2019. I"d have to pull out my old desktop and take a look on there. And frankly? I'll probably do that.  If there is a pic somewhere of it, it would save a lot of trouble and potentially digging into the line.  

However, if it comes down to that, I'll just have a repair setup ready to go to immediately fix it and then install a T on the line, put a 12 inch stub into it and then put a 2 inch shutoff valve on it.  That way I only have to have the water to the park off once and I can turn it on and off.  

Well, I don't have time to sit here and write forever, while I'm motivated i'm gonna get busy.

G'day. 

 Tuesday - night

"I'm ramping it back up at the property.  I spent hours out there clearing out weeds in the area where the new lots will - someday - be installed. But I motivated myself today in raking over the piles of dirt where I had put them while digging out the trench many moons ago and just about clearing the back 4 acres - still more to go but most of it is done. Got much of the front 3 acres done, scraped the driveway with the new box blade - it works 1,000% better than that pile of trash I was renting at the rental place in town.  

I mean, maybe 3 passes and it was done. I was spending an hour going up and down just one portion with the rental unit.  I should have taken pics of that rental thing, it looks as bad as it works lmao.  Old pile of shit, frankly.  And at premium prices and they don't include the rippers. They never said why, they just said no, we don't want rippers on it. These are claws that hang down off the rear of the box blade and tear into the dirt.  Absolutely necessary to tear up the hardened dirt and get down into the softer stuff.  "

Put in parenthesis for I started that post last night and simply forgot about it.  

I've got Thursday and Friday off. Weather permitting I will be out there attempting to get this sewer line stuff done and over with or at least get a big chunk of it done.  

As for today, well, I got to the loading plant and there was another truck in our bay - but not one of our trucks.  In fact, I had never seen that trucking company before.  They let the system drain almost empty up there to the point that we can't keep up with it. Had they simply kept up the orders, it would be in good shape.  But NOOOOO, they had to wait until they had ONE truckload of product in there before realizing they are going to run out. 

Well, we only have so many trucks running this route and hence, they get outside companies to help along.  I only waited maybe 10 minutes and he was out of there, no big deal, but when is this dude showing up tomorrow? Early, like earlier than me? When I show up? Make me wait an hour plus? When these other companies get involved, they don't care about appointment times, they'll just show up whenever they want to.  

Now, I have a decent relationship with management up there and if this starts happening too much, I'm going to ask them to make those drivers wait.  They have enacted such restrictions in the past on people showing up well outside of their delivery time.  

I went and got my trailer today.  It needed a new set of springs and the entire lighting system replace.  I spent almost as much as I paid for the trailer. However, I bought that trailer when they were "cheap", nothing is cheap anymore.  I get somewhat irritated when I hear the term "inflation". If you start thinking about it, someone, somewhere, got greedy.  "The love of money is the root of all evil". 

It isn't some grand thing that happened. For example, something happens in the Iran war. Oil companies INSTANTLY jack up the price of fuel even tho the oil that current fuel was made out of was not affected by it. But it's literally everything now.  And the cost of trucking now? Look at the price of fuel! Trucking companies have surcharge agreements and they aren't going to be eating that cost.  

Oh, off on tangents. I think my trailer is worth around 2-1/2 times what I paid for it. Well, this repair guy has had some major health events happen recently which is why he isn't working his actual brick and mortar shop he once owned.  He just works out of his back yard as much as he can.  

He gets dizzy and has trouble walking. How he does the work I have no idea but he's really good at wht he does.  Anyway,  he got up from looking at the connector to my suv to hook up the lights, started walking and literally fell backwards. His head almost hit a tree. Took me by surprise. He was laughing I was seriously asking him if he's ok?  He's seeing doctors and such, he's just not in good shape at all.  But, he wants more work and my Caterpillar generator needs repaired.  I'll probably drag that thing over there on Thursday before going to the park to get down in that ditch and get some work done.  

I've got to do it and I'm finally motivated.  The mower guy will help me if I need the help.  I probably do, something is wrong in my left elbow, serious pain when I go to lift something.  I'm going to have to find a new doctor,  I typically just use the urgent care but stuff like this probably needs a "specialist" to charge me the arm that I need looked at : )

So, deliver tomorrow, whatever that entails and then off until Saturday where I will have to work the weekend and I think they have me working 6 days in a row.  

__________

As typical for me, time got away from me. Just wanted to post this before going to sleep. 

 Thursday - late afternoon

I was sleeping very well last night until this creepy dream hit me.  You see, I was standing in the hallway of a house - apparently I lived there tho I have never seen this place before.  It was the middle of the night, why I was up I have no clue, but I was looking in on someone for who knows what reason.  The next thing I know, there is this loud, crashing footsteps shaking the entire house.  It was on the other end of the house and it was making all kinds of scary noises.  Like something out of an extremely frightening horror flick. 

I couldn't see anything but it was getting closer and closer, so I ran to what appears to be my room, closed the door and stood next to it.  The thing got right up to the door and stopped.  Does it not know how to open doors? I thought.  What is it doing. It then started making ghastly noises, things you'd expect to hear from the pit of hell or something and the next thing I knew? I was standing on a hill with trees in an open area.  There was some person laying on the ground, a woman with a t shirt and blue jeans. 

She wasn't moving.  This voice called out from the heavens telling me I have to come to their planet and surrender myself voluntarily or they were going to kill her.  I have no idea who this woman was, never saw her before, either but that was enough. I woke up out of that and never got back to sleep.  

I'm not saying there is any viable real-life meaning to it, but it was truly terrifying.  

Anyway, completely changing the subject,  the zero turn was finished yesterday, no the day before.  It had an oil change and the repairman said the carb was full of water, where am I getting my gas from? Cefco I replied but if their fuel has water in it, I think I'll switch gas stations.  The machine had started running foul and that was definitely the problem.  

Yesterday I had the day off. It had been a while since I could just sleep in or just laying bed awake doing nothing in particular so I did. Until like 9:45 am lol. I got up and took the trailer back over to the repair shop.  Lights not working, a ticket waiting to happen.  The repair guy texted me later on saying he'd spent way too much time on tracing wires, he's going to get a new set of trailer wires for it.  Yes, please do, I don't want to spend a fortune in labor and if it had that many shorts in it already how many more would he have to find?

He then stated something I thought was wrong with it: You know you have a broken spring on it? I replied I didn't know for sure but I figured it was something like that because the trailer is leaning.  It came back that way after loaning it to a friend of the family - not a close friend - who kept the thing for 3 months and returned it looking like that. I've never had it checked out.  Well, it's getting fixed now.  A bit costly but necessary especially what with the idea of hauling that tractor around.  I want to bring it home and park it here for awhile. No one is going to steal anything from our back yard without dealing with a very large dog who isn't in love with strangers and goes bat-shit crazy if anyone comes close to "his" domain back there. 

After leaving that there, I went to the courthouse and renewed the registration on it, expired the end of what is now last month.  Over to the park, I installed a solar powered camera that I bought off of Amazon, I think it was.  I am going to get more. These cameras don't need a service (like the ones I currently have running off of T mobile) and they aren't expensive. I'm going to ditch the T Mobile junk - it isn't all that great anyway  and at $30 each per month, not a great deal - and just have several of those. They run off of WiFi so they have to be in range of one of my routers, but that shouldn't be a problem.  

I was looking at the long stopped project considering getting it going again.  It is very likely that in the next coming days I'll be down in that ditch and attempting to revive the project and get it going once again. There's still a lot to do, unfortunately.  It is what it is, I just need to get the ball rolling again and get some momentum going on it.  I have gotten over - I think - the drudgery of the chaos I created in accidentally digging up the existing park water line AND sewer line, what a catastrophe.  

The reason I am getting motivated is because the building I want to put in needs to have all of that finished first.  

I dunno, I'm just musing at the moment, it's still warm out tho it's supposed to rain later today. Well actually after looking at the weather forecast, it is supposed to start raining in half an hour.  We'll see about that.  Perhaps it will signal a change of the seasons that has already occurred but hasn't really manifested itself? You know fall?  They have a saying around here  that we have 2 seasons: summer and winter.  Lol.

As for work, today was a bit sucky.  I got to the plant and there was an entire crew of construction workers installing some new loading apparatus on the loading platform that sits right in front of the loading bay I have to pull into to get loaded.

2-1/2 hours of waiting and they finally - went to lunch and I was informed I could back down there. Fancy that, I have to wait for them to load a truck that brings that plant their income. No notification to our company, yes we are going to be doing this from x hour to y hour, your driver can come later.  Nope, just make me sit there for hours. 

I wasn't bored tho. I pulled out my Switch 2 and got on Fortnite. They just did a new update today and it's really cool. 

 Saturday - late

The day started at 4:45 am, tho I was awake long before that. I didn't sleep well last night and it just happens that way, tho I think the noise in my ears is definitely attributing to the even worse sleep mode.  

So, I drive up to Arkansas, unload, drive back and home in time to grab a sandwich, get my gear and head off to the swimming pool.  It's a rental pool in town.  We were there around 3 hours before we left to go eat at Chili's.  After Chili's, stopped at the house for 2 minutes to grab my shoes - forgot to take them as I was wearing sandals at the pool.

Off to Piney Park. The pool was in my plans, Piney Park definitely was no part of any plans I made today.  I figured after working and the pool I'd be worn out and would want to go home and relax.  Well who needs to relax, apparently, when there are families with kids not to mention 2 kids in my clan who have seemingly limitless energy to bound around this place doing all kinds of stuff.  Up stairs to slide down slides.  Run around a maze to play tag.  Walk around the entire wooded area to see all of the Fall stuff they had out.  Sit down with the kids and have an ice cream.

I did not have an ice cream, the kids were begging so I got them some.  $17 for 2 small cups of ice cream. Well, we did get in free through a friend and that is the only money I spent there. I am consuming no sugars of any kind and excepting for the 5 days of cheating, I haven't been eating sugar at all for many months.  

Also note that the maze was crazy.  I don't know where that energy came from.  I was running through this thing trying to get away from the tagger.  I not only got away from whoever was "IT!", I couldn't believe I was outlasting these kids!  They were bent over huffing and puffing, I was busy running around not getting tagged. 

No, I didn't want to run around a maze. Again, the kids were insistent I go through the maze with them.  This Piney Park adventure was literally non stop for hours.  

Got home around 30 minutes ago, it's after 10.  This has been one of the busiest days I have experienced in quite a while.  My ears are buzzing like crazy and I just remembered I was going to take a benedryl tonight. YES.  The doc asserted it would help with draining the fluid out of my ears and that's exactly what I intend to do. In fact, I'm taking one after I get done with this blog entry. 

Well I want to go to bed so I'm getting offa here. 

 Friday - afternoon

With getting horrible sleep, I started using a box fan to drown out the noise of the ringing ears at night.  I was informed it could take weeks for this stuff to go away.  I intend on taking a Benadryl Saturday night to see if that will help, I won't take it on a night before a work day.  But, the box fan helped the first 2 nights, last night? Not so much. Woke up at 3 am and never got back to sleep, giving me a "full" 5 hours of sleep. 

lol

Whatever. Today's work day is done.  I went and got my Ford out of the shop.  Lovely bill at almost $900.  They had to replace all the hardware for the driver's window to make it roll up and down, that was the biggest part of it at near $500.  Oil change and getting the low tire light to go off.  The ABS control module? No thanks.  $1,400 for the part!  I looked it up and found it "cheaper" elsewhere, but we're talking an older vehicle that has been running without all of that stuff for 3 or 4 years now, I am not spending that kind of money just to get some lights to go off.

If I can find a good used one out of a salvage yard, I might do that, but only if they, too, aren't trying to rob people blind with ridiculous prices.  I've had that vehicle 9 years now and it's served me well. I don't know how much longer I'll keep it.  I just hate to get into car payments and if I buy a building, that will be a payment in and of itself.  I have definitely decided on getting a structure, what I will end up getting is a different story.  Keep it minimalist and low payments? Or go for the gusto and just get a giant building that I will need if I ever get the park upgraded and will serve for multiuse?  

On another note, airfare has gotten pretty crazy.  $550 round trip to AZ ? Huh?  That's way up from the last time I flew over there.  WAY up.  I simply don't have the time or the desire to drive over there so I"m going to have to fly.  I just balk at the prices.  I'm sure some of it has to do with fuel prices right now.  

I got the zero turn turned into the shop yesterday.  The thing wasn't running too great - it needs to be used more than I use it - so he is going to clean out the carb along with changing the oil, sharpening the blade and one of the steer bars is a bit stiff.  The tractor - well, I really think I should bring it home. Experiencing theft gives me the chills.  Some person tried to steal gas out of one of my guests cars, sitting right in front of their trailer while they were sitting in their living room. RIGHT THERE.  Then there's the person - maybe the same one - who exchanged my rather expensive Husqvarna weed eater for the much cheaper one.  

If these people are that brazen, what is next? More expensive stuff, obviously. The zero turn was a no brainer: easy steal if no one sees them doing it.  Hidden from sight? Sure, right next to a guest's trailer in fact. However, she is gone most of the time as she is an OTR truck driver.  I know how that goes.  She does have a car parked in front of it tho so it at least appears that she's home - but - no.  I'm going to spend some time beefing up the video surveillance, I have a whole system I never installed because the wifi in the shed wasn't working, unbeknownst to me at the time until I tried to hook it up. 

After that? I gave up on it. The ordeal I went through to get that wifi router hooked up to T Mobile was incredible.  Incredibly insane and ridiculous, but incredible at best. I posted several blog entries about that quite a while back and not going into that again here, pretty aggravating stuff. But I have all of those cameras, I'm going to now see if I can hook the system up to the wifi and get it up and running. It will necessitate running power lines to all of them.  I bought the stuff to do all of that and put it ---- somewhere. 

The onus is on me to get a full scale video surveillance system going.  To that end, I received the Eufy camera yesterday. It has WIFI capability. It recharges itself with a mini solar panel.  It doesn't have a monthly fee and it is allegedly high quality. We'll find out about the latter soon enough after I get it installed where I want it and see what kind of clarity it provides. I'd like to be able to see license plates clearly on it. I am going to likely put it on a tree to catch vehicles coming down the driveway.  

The temps are getting lovely in the mornings. Afternoon temps a bit much still but I'm happy for cooler weather.  I am going to force myself  to start attending to the property a LOT more than I have been.  The stifling heat? No thank you.  

I dunno, if I leave this entry here and go do other things as I'm about to, I'll just not finish it and leave it hanging and either not publish it or publish it without finishing it, been doing a lot of that and would prefer to have an ending to this one.  

I have work tomorrow, I'm going to get up a bit earlier so I can get home in time for the pool I rented.  I think there's 14 of us going.  It's an app called Swimply. If there is a pool for rent nearby, you click on it, reserve it and all that entails and walaah, you have a pool for however many hours you want it. I opted for 3. Decent amount of pool time while keeping the costs down. The hotel we use? They already shut their pool down for the season! 

I since learned that a lot of hotels shut their outdoor pools down after Labor Day. Go figure. It's still quite warm out in the late mornings til evening.  There are a couple of indoor pools in this town, they're quite small.  If we do an indoor pool thing, it won't be with all of those people. Hotels monitor such things and likely they all require every person to be in a room in their establishment.  Except this one we've been using. We know because the manager came out and we were honest.  She said, it's ok as long as someone is staying here.  Yup, we were. 

It isn't a compelling reason to get a pool at my park but is - A - reason.  Lol.  Nahh, I'm thinking this building is far more important at this time. Or a loan big enough to cover both. But if I'm going that big, I need more income so finish the 4 lots at least?  That should make a payment for another loan, easily.  

This is enough? I think so.  At least I'm finishing this one lol. 

G'day

 Tuesday - evening

 I finally caved and went into the urgent care. The noise is ridiculous.  Ringing in my ears that is.  The doctor found problems in both ears, amazingly enough. Somehow, I have fluid behind the ear drum in the ear that did not have the tick.  The ear that did also apparently has fluid in there and she is saying that that is the cause of the ringing.  She prescribed ear drops which I still have to go pick up but she actually recommended taking Benadryl for the fluid build up.

Benadryl.  My history with that stuff is that it knocks you clean out and you have serious trouble waking up the next morning.  I'm looking at a box of it sitting on my shelf right now.  Maybe if I go to bed early?  I want this ringing gone.  It's ridiculous. 

The 30X70 steel building will cost around 20k.  That's delivered and installed.  I've had several places pricing it, pretty much the same price everywhere. I'm going to give a local person a chance to give a quote - but not yet.  

The thing is, I will have to either put the building behind or near the shed, or, put it in a location closer to the front of the property.  In order to do that, however, I am going to have to run the power line. A couple of places I wanted to put it? Can't, there's underground plumbing for the park it would be sitting on the top of.  No thanks.  

Whatever the case, I had totally forgotten about adding the tractor to the park insurance policy, getting that done immediately and probably add the zero turn as well.  I am also going to go to T Mobile and get trackers for both of them.  I don't know who the thief is, whether they live in the park or not, but I do have eyes looking out for people. One person said a green volkswagen comes back there daily, no one knows who they are. I really just need to get a good, wired video system going.  

With high quality cameras?  

Sitting in my truck Wednesday morning at the loading plant. I stepped on the scale this morning annnnnd… finally. I lost all the weight I gained doing that 5 day cheat episode and now 2 more! I’m at 209 pounds, haven’t been this “light” in a long, long time. I can taste the day I hit 199. 

I just won’t do that many cheat days in a row unless warranted. I’m tentatively going to see mom for thanksgiving so there’s definitely going to be some cheat days there. But before then? I might do one cheat day just to get my potato fix but not any time soon. I want to get down to say, 205 before I do another cheat day  that way I might go up a couple pounds but I won’t leave the single digit range. It will probably take over a month if not longer to lose another 5 pounds. 

Anyway, just wanted to report that. 

 

 Monday - night

Mondays - are Mondays.  Work was a bit slow but nothing too terrible.  I got to the plant to load, they had me back down into the bay but the loader came out and said I'm going to have to move, that other truck needs in the bay right in front of you here. I normally just load them as they come, first come first served but they said you are early. Yeah, I'm early, that other driver is late I thought but didn't speak.  I just smiled and moved out to the parking load, an hour and 15 minutes later they were loading me.  So, I was there like 2-1/2 hours.

I've had to wait much longer than that there before, so I just let it go.  

Parents are within their right and reason to monitor their children's activities online and using cellphones.  So it came as a shock to me today that the mom sent screen shots of the oldest going off on another person in some sort of chat room or the phone or whatever I don't really know.  It looked funny.  

Many hours later and the truth came out.  That thing monitoring him just posted up everything that was being said between the two, it didn't delineate who said what.  The child went and got his phone and showed how he had said none of those thing, it was all the other kid.  

I have been looking at various sheds and steel structures to get something over on the property to have a lockable storage facility.  I started small, then realized I could have a small office in there.  Now, at those prices, I'm thinking go much bigger and just get it over with. I've needed and wanted a building over there for some time now.  The front portion of  my 25 acres doesn't have a lot of extra room on it if I ever get these other lots put in.  Putting a small building in makes no sense after thinking about it.  Just go for the gusto and get a bigger one - a 50 footer I'm thinking now. I was quoted 12k for a 40x30.  That's a steel building and it costs about just as much to have a concrete pad put down, which I would want. 

What if I went 50X30?  Half of it can be for equipment storage and work room, the other half can be a bathroom, laundry facility, small office and whatever else I want to do.  But, I'd have to design the thing first. If you are putting in a bathroom and laundry facility, you have to run the plumbing before they pour the cement. So now I'm in sort of a conundrum about that.  

So I'm going to put the brakes on that for a minute and think about it and go out and mark a 50x30 piece of land to see how it actually looks and if that's even enough.  Right now, it's around 23k for the 40X30 with concrete pad.  It isn't anything that would have to emerge overnight into a usable facility for an office and such, it just needs built and locked, put my stuff in there and keep it all under lock and key.  

Well, I just saw a 70X30 for 20 grand.  3 roll up doors, 2 walk in doors and several windows.  Note that none of these from any of them include any electrical or plumbing.  Hence the idea that it wouldn't have to be an overnight thing. Build it, get my stuff in there and then either do it myself or find someone to do it for me.  I prefer the latter. I wired up my shed and it's worked perfectly well, I also plumbed it and haven't had any problem with that....

....however...it's not my line of work and I had to make endless trips to Lowe's to sort through aisles worth of plumbing and electrical stuff and spent countless hours researching how to install all of it. Now, I haven't exactly forgotten all of that. Quite to the contrary, I remember how much of a pain in the ass it was, to put it bluntly.

If I got a 70 footer, this would allow for a one room hotel style room (not for rent, for me, others I know who need a break in some other world where they can disappear), a bathroom with shower, maybe 2 actually for male and female delination instead of a one size fits all, the storage an offce and a small C store.  

 Saturday mid afternoon

It isn't shocking that someone decided to "replace" my $400 Husqavarna weedeater with a much cheaper version of one and think I or others that use it wouldn't notice.  There are a couple of people that come to mind, the leeches that kept saying they would pay rent and never did are one of the suspects.  They had stated to the neighbor that they couldn't get theirs to run.....I don't doubt for 2 seconds in my mind that those lying trash people took it. But, there is another individual I could suspect as well.  Poor people that have limited morals often times excuse their thievery because they are poor.  

In their minds, they deserve what they need because they can't afford it. It isn't just food that they steal, it's anything they want or need. I know this because I was poor for quite a while and tho stealing never entered my mind, the neighborhood was full of other poor people and MANY of them had no problems with theft.  I never understood that for in all the years I was barely making it, stealing stuff wasn't a part of the equation.  I toughed it out and I made things happen - eventually. 

It has forced me to decide to buy a large storage shed on payments.  I can't afford to keep losing more stuff. Ladders, chainsaws, tools and now this.  Get one installed, get the thing loaded up with security measures - cameras and stuff - put it near people in the park and lock it up.  I want one finished this time with electrical outlets and flooring and walls already in it. I do not want to do all that work again like I did in the laundry room one. It took wayyy too much time and in the end, it would have been worth it to just have paid to have it fully completed in the first place. 

The only thing about that one tho is that it is big and it was a good price.  Still, a couple thousand more for the wall, outlets and flooring to be in it would be easily worth it and hopefully some insulation.  

 Monday - late afternoon

Where to start. Well, I had the weekend off. And per the tick in my ear, I haven't had any ill side effects - yet anyway - so I'm just letting it go until/if/when something arises out of it.  Crazy thing to have a tick inside of your ear. Never even heard of that in a human. Dogs, yes, all the time but humans? Yikes

The non-payers heeded my warning - it wasn't fake - if they hadn't have left by today, I was going to have them physically removed out of there. They must have left yesterday afternoon or night, their trailer and all of their stuff was gone.  I'm out $1,150 and I am promising myself to never let it go that far again.  A month at most. I've had pretty good luck helping people out when they are down on their luck, usually people pay it back.

I'm half considering suing them. They have a nice car, the trailer was a bit old but I don't think they owned it and at least one of them has a job.  Just decided to lie to me on 4 separate occasions about making a payment - they never did.  It was the last time they made that promise and it didn't come to pass that I started becoming very irritable with them.  But, I kept it in and just taped the notice to their door. 

Then and only then did they magically find my phone number, texted me claiming they "have been trying to get a hold of me". LMAO.  The number is posted on a large sign out front if nothing else.  Liars. "Well i can give you some money on " whatever day, I don't remember, I wasn't falling for that again.  I'd rather have that lot empty than have leeches sucking out my electricity and giving nothing but grief back in return. 

Whatever the case, they are gone and that headache is gone with them.  They completely cleaned up their lot, I'll give them a weeeeee little bittle of credit for that.  I have a person that wants to move in, but I have 2 lots empty now so I need to find another one.  I'm not running any ads, calls have been coming in several times a week, I'll see if someone will just call without doing all that other stuff. 

Saturday was the Octoberfest - in September. The explanation they gave was that there were too many scheduling conflicts with everyone in October - you know, Octoberfest? yeah, that one... - So we went. I don't think we stayed even 2 hours. It was hot as blazes out there which is why I wondered why they were doing this in the hot hell of summer.  We weren't even there 30 minutes and firefighters were already treating a person with heat exhaustion (or whatever stage she was in).  That was what we did Saturday, the rest of the day was spent at home.

Yesterday was the baptism. It was pretty cool.  The kid and mom and I went up to the top of this church, they have an entire complex of rooms up there, one set of them dedicated to baptisms.  They have a big tub with a foot anchor - to help people from having their feet/legs pop up when they're dunked.  I had never baptized anyone before so it was a  special thing for me.  I baptized the child first and the entire congregation erupted into a huge amount of applause, yelling, whistling - good stuff - for him.  It was great.  Then I baptized his mom and the same thing afterward.  The whole thing started with the pastor giving a short preface and then 2 videos they had taken of them being asked questions about their lives and why they wanted baptized. 

It was pretty special. Nothing more amazing yesterday/Sunday excepting the AC? Went out again!  Amazingly, they had a tech come out within a couple of hours and he was questioning what the other tech had done and why he hadn't checked the entire system? How should we know, we aren't ac techs? LOL.  It does, actually, need a new motherboard.  I kind of thought it strange that it could get wet and then start working again, but I zipped on that when the first guy was out from the second company.  He somehow got it working again, the parts - more than just the mother/control board - had to be ordered. He told us that the ac could go out again at any time, sorry, just the way it is. It's worked so far.  

Today just work.  Got up early, got down there, got the trailer washed out, the truck loaded - tho that took quite a while they were having problems yet again with their system.  Unless another load gets canceled, I will be working through Saturday.

My 5 day cheat is over. 6 pounds gained.  OH well. I am water-only fasting today and will try to make it through tomorrow as well. If I'm really motivated, I'll go through Wednesday.  I usually get motivated by watching youtube videos of doctors explaining the multiple benefits of fasting. Yes, I already know all of this stuff but hearing it coming out of their mouths sort adds a different element to it, like yes you should do it because it will help you.  

 Friday - night

Last night, trying to sleep, I'm awakened by what I don't know. I have my ear plugs in.  I become aware of a scratching sound inside of my left ear.  What on earth is that? I wondered.  I took the ear plug out and didn't hear anything else.  

Fast forward to about an hour ago. I start hearing this noise in my ear!  Am I hallucinating?  No, there is something IN my ear!  I get home from what I was doing, get out the Q tips and start digging.  About the  4th try, ear wax with a TICK attached to it came out!  

Disgusting.  I start hearing a lot more noises.  What?!!  My friend says take some peroxide and fill your ear up with it.  So, I turned my head sideways and filled it up.  The noise got  even louder.  Is this baby ticks in t here? Or is is the noise of  the probable opening the tick made with the noise the peroxide makes on such things? Or what?  

Got distracted just posting it anyway. 

 Wednesday night.

Short here. 

We took the kids to church but I ended up getting them. 

I've been doing it for years, mom wants more involvement which is okay. I just don't want to be eliminated from this deal.  Which if it happens, I'll just let it go and relish in the fact that the kids have been exposed to the Gospel and teachings of Christ and that's enough.  

She was busy anyway.  I got there to pick up youngest from the children's church. Retrieving him I was walking out of the church when the pastor - who was leaning up against the wall - made a comment.  I didn't quite get it at first.  Huh?  

I commend you for everything you've done for that family.  This wasn't any type of confrontational situation here, don't let it fool you the way I'm saying it, I'm just getting to the point without a lot of "stuff" added in. I think it gets boring (or even irritating) and I don't like doing that.  I mean, I engage in conversations as they are fluid, but going into extremely specific details isn't my thing unless the situation really warrants it when writing about it.

Hmm, perhaps that's not too great thinking about it, some or a lot of context can be lost. The pastor is in his 70's and apparently he's not doing 2 services on Sunday now, he's doing 3. I didn't know they had kept the 8 am service. 

Anyway, I really didn't know what he was talking about for sure, I just figured it had to do with the baptism. Oh yes, that's it, he started out with "I hear you are baptizing people on Sunday".  When I got down to what was on his mind, he said he had seen the video of it and it made him cry.  The youth minister - she's the head of a huge children's network and in the church the programs for the children and intensely involved with everything - came in on that one. 

I was saying I wanted to see this video before Sunday, please.  She asked why, do you think it's going to make you cry? Well yes.  It made the pastor cry I want to be prepared. Well it's supposed to be a surprise. Ok, I'll watch it after service on Sunday when I get home - they post all of it on Facebook. 

There is no issue here. I'll see it eventually. I tried to show up on time to see the taping of it on Sunday, but I arrived as they were leaving and it was already over with.  I'm going to do what I have been tasked with, I want to do it and I think  it will turn out great. I have never baptized anyone but it's a pretty simple process - still - I started praying about it today, this  morning to be exact.  

If God wants to speak to those 2 through this, I don't want to hinder it and I want to facilitate it if that's what He wants me to do.  I'm open, God's will be done here.  

The pastor is a really great guy and he just kept going on about how great it is what I've done with that family.  

I do get what other people's perspective may be of it, I had no idea what they were saying in those interviews but now I have an idea - ugh. Sorry, I'm not in it for accolades, that all goes to Christ, all glory, honor and praise to Him!

HE is the one orchestrating all of this in my view of it, I don't want to piss on anyone's party or parade, I just want the real thankfulness to be directed to the King of Kings, the Lord of lords, the Prince of Peace. That's Jesus : ) I'm sure these people know that, I just feel uncomfortable with that kind of verbiage being directed my way. What can I say. 

I'm going to be early tonight, I"m worn out for whatever reason and want to try and get in some "extra" sleep. 

Editing here: if it made the pastor cry, is the whole church going to be crying too? Oh myyy. 

Nite. 

 Wednesday - morning

Since the last post a few things have developed, the most annoying of which was the central AC in our house went out.  It literally went out just before everyone closing (AC repair) on Friday afternoon, guaranteeing us a headache for the entire weekend.  I called a local guy over who apparently didn't know what he was doing even tho highly acclaimed locally for he misdiagnosed the problem.

I'll circle back to that in a second, but the situation developed that he said the mother board was fried and probably the fan motor. I mean, it's whatever, it needs fixed especially in this heat but that sounded like a lot for a newer system that's only been in there what, 2 ..2-1/2 years?  I'm not an AC person so I took his word for it. He said it would take 2-3 days to get the parts in.  

Well, the lady of the house went and bought a portable ac unit for her room, my room already has a new one in it that worked beautifully I might add.  It kept it as cool as I wanted it to be in here.  My room has always been warmer (or colder in the winter) than the rest of the house and I had to make up for it long ago using a window ac.  

But it's been so hot that the rest of the house was miserably hot.  So, I went out and bought a "new" window unit to help bring down the temp in the dining/kitchen area.  It is an 8,000 btu unit, not big enough to sufficiently cool it to whatever temp you wanted it to come down to but I figured it would help out.  It did, immensely.  It was $200, it was still in original box and packaging, you could tell it had never been opened, the owner brought it to our house amazingly enough. She said they had had it sitting in storage for a couple of years.  I just had to hope it was going to work and it did and does, thankfully.

It was fairly nice in there after overnight of it continuously running the compressor.  It actually brought the temp down in the dining room, kitchen and the rather large laundry and pantry room. That room is about 8 feet wide by 30 feet long. 

So come Monday, the father - who is on the road and they are firmly on their way to a divorce - called Lowe's I guess it was to have someone out.  I had contacted the company that came out and they hadn't ordered anything yet!  Lowe's is who contracted out to have the system installed. This dude shows up - he looks to be all of 20 years old - but he knew what he was doing and figured out the problem quickly. I had mentioned that the motherboard and the inside of that area had been completely covered with a lot of condensation and thought that didn't look right for the area they had the motherboard in (control board). 

He went and turned the thing on!  The entire unit fired up and started pumping out cold air.  He just looked at me. It had to be that water got on that board and temporarily jinxed it from carrying out it's duties and once it dried up it got back to work.  He agreed with that assessment and then said "you need to replace the drain pipe, it's clogged up".  He was absolutely correct.  When I cut into that thing, it was completely filled with gunk, there was no water going through it at all. This is the pipe that carries the condensation from the evaporator to the outside. 

Where was all that water going besides the mother board area?  I thanked him - everyone else was at the lake, I had had to work that day and I didn't feel like driving clear over there after they had already been there a while, I wouldn't have been there too long and then time to go home.  It was late afternoon. I went to Lowe's bought the stuff I thought I needed and then was going to put it all together when I realized I needed a few more parts.  No. Not today, I thought.  I rigged up the line to simply drop the water into a 5 gallon bucket and would fix it the next day.

I was amazed at how fast that bucket was filling up!  Too fast to the point we decided to leave the ac off for the night and I would fix that line system when I got home from work.  BUT, I would turn the ac back on in the morning and she would empty it as necessary.  It filled up 3 times I think during the day. 15 gallons of water!  That gives you an idea of the humidity in the air around here.  

That was yesterday, I got home from work, one of the kids decided they were going with me, went to Lowe's got the materials, stopped to see a friend for lunch at Chili's - he works there, went home, got it all put together and walaah.  No new motherboard, no new motor.  The Lowe's rep was $89 service fee call and that was it. And I've already been repaid for it, I wasn't waiting, let's get this done.  I contacted the other company and told them it was just a clogged up drainage system, nix the parts. They still  hadn't ordered them.  I mean, if I see anything asking for who to use for ac in this town again and someone mentions that company, I'm going to tell them NO.  

Anyway, I worked the entire weekend and Monday and Tuesday. I was supposed to work today and through Saturday.  But, my manager called yesterday while I was driving back from Arkansas and said they had cancelled tomorrow's (now today) load and he was rescheduling me.  That was alarming because I have something very important to do on Sunday: baptize 2 people, namely one of the children and the lady of this house.  The kid wanted to get baptized but then the mom wanted to too and they both decided I should be the one doing it.  

The church has already done the interviews on both of them.  They do a video taped production - they have experts that donate their time at this church - of them asking them questions. Lots of questions. Afterwards they edit it and come up with really a nice video, I've watched dozens of them now over the years of going there. They play that video before the actual baptism is done.  I haven't seen it yet but I definitely want to.  I only have to baptized them, the ministry does the rest. So, I ask each one if they have believed in Jesus Christ for everlasting life?  They say yes and they get dunked, separately of course I can't baptize 2 people at once.  Then the audience erupts into clapping, whistling and cheering - they really do and are really happy for the moment - then the pastor prays and that's it.  It's pretty cool actually. 

Well, back to the manager, he had put me down for tomorrow (Thursday) which runs into Friday and Monday/Tuesday run, but nothing on the weekend.  He knows me.  He said, well I could put you on a weekend run but I don't know if you have plans.  Yup, I made plans alright, it is the baptism that I confirmed with the lady of the house who confirmed it with the associate pastor.  I'm not bowing out of that one, to me that takes far greater precedence over working.  I said yes, I am committed to doing a baptism. But he already knew and I am 99% sure he had already handed out weekend work to other drivers who want the work anyway.  Once I came back into the lineup, their workload must have either decreased or they get dumped on the Ennis run.

I mean, if you're looking for a bigger paycheck, I would think they would want the Ennis run anyway? I'm not young anymore, I don't care about driving literally all day long like that, endlessly. I'll do that run once in a while if they get into a pinch, but I don't like it because they always put me on at least 2 of them in a row.  I have to demand to get back into the Gurdon lineup. I literally have to tell them I'm not doing anymore Ennis runs, please find someone else to do it, thanks.  I think that kind of irks them sometimes, which bothers me not. I have seniority over all of those drivers excepting one who has a weird schedule he does and doesn't conflict with anything I do at all. 

Well, it turns out that on Saturday, there is also the Reuggenfest festival.  It's supposed to be an Octoberfest thing so why they are doing it in September is beyond me.  It's going to be hot as blazes out there, it's kind of bewildering.  Yup, just checked again.  There's a slight chance of rain on Saturday the high temp will be 97 which will put the heat index into well over the 100 range. Gag. I mean, we're going and it's usually fun but this decision over doing a traditionally October-held even in September is not registering with me, I'm going to ask the guy that produces it when I see him Saturday.

Anyway, the AC is fixed, the cancelled load worked out in my favor for the weekend and all is well in this world.  Well, ok all is as well as it's going to get lol. 

What else is going on? Well I just figured that the wiring for the expansion project is going to cost around 3 grand.  It's very expensive per foot, it's expected and that's that.  I want to get that sewer line installed and ready to go.  It's so hot I've been putting it off but at the same time, I want to get it done, gag.  Electric is one of the most expensive portions of this project but the septic system was 10k so there is that.  

I'm going to put in much more heavy duty wiring than that contractor put in the park originally.  Way too much load on that line, I'm wondering if it's not the source of the breakers burning out last month.  I'm going to ensure no problems. Aluminum wiring, yes but that's acceptable and pretty much a requirement in underground stuff.  Copper costs way too much money to even think about using it.

Temps will start to drop near the end of this month, that's when I'm shooting to get restarted on this thing.  I will have help - hopefully anyway - that will motivate me to get this thing rolling.  I have one open lot right now, a person was supposed to show up but their work plans cancelled on them so now I have an open lot. And I'm still dealing with these people who are non pays, I am going to give them a 3 day notice today. It's not a pay or leave notice, it's a leave now notice and if they aren't gone in 3 days, they will be trespassed and the Sheriff will be called to escort them off the property.  If they refuse, well that's up to the Sheriff, but they can be arrested for criminal trespassing.  

\

 Friday - morning

Probably the last day of "freedom" I have from trucking for a while.  They promised to have the thing done today. The holdup? The spindles.  I don't  know what's wrong with them but they apparently aren't holding the bearings tight coupled with bad king pins made for the drive I was experiencing.  It wasn't drifting all over the highway, it was jerking.  You'd be driving along fine and then the next thing you know the whole truck would shift to the left or the right.  

Well, they couldn't get the spindle expert to come until today.  I've encountered this before where the person that is doing spindles or axle straightening is on a very busy schedule. Whatever the case, I guess after that person does that work they can just put it all back together and be done with it.  

The good news is that I had a huge paycheck.  My manager informed me the other day he was going to "give" me money, basically, well beyond what certain things were worth. For example, moving the from the yard to the shop - that's only 5 or 6 miles but the pay was definitely disproportionate to the "work" done.  I dunno, but it's my friend giving me the rides so I'm going to give her some of that.  Only fair, at least in my view of things.  I was really quite surprised at the paycheck.  

In a week, my mom moves up into her 90's with a 9/11 birthday.  I wish I could take a few days off to go see her but I've been off for so long. I mean, yes, I worked 8 days in a row before this latest shop visit but after this? I doubt there will be much of any of the words "time off" that will be occurring.  I'm planning on going for Thanksgiving. I have no idea how that will turn out, I haven't seen my brothers in many, many years.  I don't miss them, at all.  Sounds kind of harsh but we all grew away from each other after we grew up, became adults and went about our business adulting.

And there were clashes, most notably when I went to the mission field for five years and my brother was at the time working for Boeing producing those Apache helicopters.  Their security wanted to know where I was stating that I could be kidnapped and held for ransom in exchange for information about those helicopters.  I'm not sure what the extent of that was but my brother was angry that I was out of contact.  There were no cellphones in those days and at the time I was traveling around Mexico.  I didn't care, he told mom that one day those people showed up at his doorstep demanding to know where I am and he couldn't answer any more than "traveling around mexico".  The entire family thought I was involved with a cult and had loosely made plans to come extract me from it. 

Good luck.  Some of that ministry was WAYYY off, yes, but I was serving the Lord, preaching the Gospel and feeding hungry people.  Mexico is definitely a 3rd world country.  

But the thing that really got me was when my dad passed away and my brothers refused to come to his Memorial service. They had vague reasons about it, that he had "abandoned" them. My dad informed me before his mind went out the window to Alzheimer's and then died of complications related to it that he had tried emailing, snail mailing, calling, etc.  I remember him lamenting to his then-wife that "I bet they won't even come to my funeral". Chilling prophesy in my mind that came true.  I was disgusted with both of them and I let them know about it.  

So what would a Thanksgiving dinner with these people look like? Awkward at best.  A riot at worst.  I am not going to go there to start a fight, not at all, I'm going to see my mom  and my son, I really don't care about seeing them at all, but the the dinner will undoubtedly be held at my oldest brother's house.  I'll give him and his wife credit that they are helping mom deal with finances and the day to day stuff in her winter years.  It's the only reason I would want to live there now.  But, that entire area has grown to the point of insufferable, constant traffic, pollution with frequent pollution advisories and a lot of hate and anger in the populace. 

Pretty much what happens when a city and it's surrounding suburbs grows to millions of people.  I'm well acclimated to country living now and I don't want anything to do with big cities. Well, I do like to visit them once in a great while since they have stuff we don't out here, but that's a mini vacation type of thing and usually Dallas/Fort Worth area.  

Anyway, I have been contemplating when I'll start back on that expansion project.  I'm just not going to work out in this ridiculous heat.  It's supposed to be 102 today and who knows the real feel, 110? It's the humidity that gets me coupled with intense heat.  Closer to the end of September it will start to cool down tho I wouldn't exactly call it "cool" by any stretch of the imagination, at least in the afternoons.  Still, morning temps will be nice and carry to the afternoon hours.

I'm basically just going to have to force myself to endure the heat in the afternoons since I won't be able to work in the mornings - trucking takes all of that up. But if I could do a couple hours per day, I could knock it out in - several weeks I guess.  I want to get that done and get at least 3 or 4 more lots going.  I've got the septic, I've got the electrical started, I just need to get with it.  

 Tuesday - afternoon

Well, no word from the shop yet, but then again they told me yesterday that they generally have to have it a day and a half to install king pins. They usually find more wrong with it when they replace them and it takes longer to do, of course..  having to get the parts and do the labor.  And getting parts for an older truck isn't impossible at all but it does usually have to be ordered. 

I don't really care, I'll be ready to go back to work whenever it's done and they need me.  Of course, they'll need me right away and I'll likely go on another 3 or 4 consecutive run trip.  It's just that it's easy to not go to work.  I've been working almost my entire life time, I'm ready for something different.

Well I got totally distracted and now it's late.  Since they didn't contact me, there is no work for me tomorrow, I am guessing the truck will be done sometime tomorrow and I'll have to go pick it up and probably work the next 6 to 8 days.  Lol. 

Because I figure I'm going to be working - forever - I just did nothing today.  I never even left the house.  

And one of the kids came home sick.  99.7 fever, severe headache, no energy, etc.  Foregone conclusion he isn't going to school tomorrow which is something he doesn't like, he likes to have "perfect" attendance records.  Not gonna happen, never happens really.   

I'm getting offa here. Maybe I can write a full entry sometime tomorrow and discuss the ongoing war theater - well it seems like it's still a war anyway - over in Iran and all the rhetoric both Iran and democrats are pumping out about it.  Propaganda in other words. 

 Sunday - night

Friday night, the kids went over to a friend's house to spend the night.  I went to work Saturday morning and didn't see them again until Saturday mid afternoon.  The oldest was so tired, he passed out on my bed as soon as he came home. He was going to play games but sleep called his name. Why? Because he admitted to literally staying up all night long. Like until almost 6:00 am

Well, we had already decided we were going to rent a hotel room nearby to get access to the semi-large, 9 foot deep pool.  You don't see pools that deep around much anymore. It's old school, the hotel is old but it has been completely upgraded. They apparently just resurfaced the pool.  I honestly didn't know they even had pools that deep anymore, all of the pools I have been to in many decades time have been anywhere from 4 to 6 feet at most deep and 6 feet isn't even that common.  

So, we get to the hotel and the boy then passes out on one of the bed. We're trying to go to the pool and he's just laying there.  

Well, the pool woke him up and other families came and we all spent quite a bit of time socializing and swimming and horsing around type of stuff. 

We get home around 10 pm and he wants to play some video games with me. Cool.  What does he do? Face plants himself into the bed and completely and instantly passes out.  I just shook my head and got about putting stuff away and laundry, things I had started earlier but didn't have time to finish.  

About an hour later, I woke him up telling him to get into his bed.  Did he wake up? Sort of.  I've never seen anything quite like it. Between staying up all night long and playing hard in the pool for many hours, he was toast.  He sort of stood up and walked face first into the corner wall, smashed his head into it.  Did this phase him? No. He was wandering around in circles, headed towards the bathroom and basically was the closest thing to a real zombie I think I'll ever see.  

I ended up guiding him to his bedroom, taking his shoes off for him and hoped he could crawl up the bunkbed stairs and get into his bed. He managed to do that and again, he passes out instantly.  11 hours later, he comes into my room and says he doesn't know how he got to bed last night?  Lmao.  I told him the entire story, I KNEW he wouldn't remember any of that stuff. BTW, how's your head?  

It's fine, why? Because you smashed it into the wall last night!  He was trippin'.  

Anyway, yes we went to church but he didn't want to go to the student life thing at church, he was not feeling all the well.  Perhaps you'll think twice about staying up all night long? lol.  

After church the normal Applebee's routine, home, played a few games but got bored with it and then just watched movies.  The game I play started a new season and I don't much care for it. It's got a few interesting things I like on the map - the game plays out on  a large island and everything is mapped out. I kind of get bored with it after a while and just shut it off.

Tomorrow is also a day off as is Tuesday. :They want the truck there on Tuesday morning, I want to take it there just as they're closing tomorrow afternoon.  I think they close at 5.  I don't want them getting started on it tomorrow, I'll happily take Wednesday off too if it could work out that way.  Foregone conclusion I'll be working next weekend so I might as well get what I can off. 

There isn't much else going on, at least nothing I feel like writing about right now, it's kind of getting late.  If there is one thing to note of interest here, it's the absolute lack of rain. The grass is all dark brown everywhere.  I mean, we go from flooding to near drought conditions.  But, summers are like that here, hopefully the grass will come back if we ever do get some rain. 

There are slight chances of it coming in the days ahead, nothing reported as a day of raining.  

Anyway, that's it.  About time to go to bed. 

 Friday - afternoon

Well, kids out of school for the weekend soon, I kind of like the peace and quiet of having afternoons with no children until school is out, but, oh well.

I have to deliver tomorrow and then I'm for for a minimum of 4 days - allegedly.  Basically, they have 4 drivers now for this account and that's too many.  At the same time, I'm on my 4th run having worked 7 days in a row and finishing off tomorrow will be 8.

Welcome back to work life.

The kids want to go swimming this weekend, all well and fine but you have to find a place that has a pool and that they would like to go to.  And not spend a fortune.  There are no public pools in this area. Well, correction: there IS a public pool in this town, it's a huge one too. And it's been out of service for many years. It is covered with thick, green goop and is in a state of abandonment.  

It's actually not that far from our house, but it's quite useless.  People complain all the time about it but no one will actually do anything. The city can't afford it, that's no joke.  They have their hands full trying to keep up with just current day expenses and the only thing I can think of is perhaps local businesses could band together and create a funding pool to fix that public pool and get it up and running.'

But, who will run the operation?  

 Thursday - afternoon

I've been hitting it nicely with loading and unloading times and getting home at very reasonable hours.  Third load done since I went back to work and going smoothly. Another run starting tomorrow, I hope for more of the same.  

I'll have Sunday through Wednesday off.  I think.  It's because Sunday only one load is going out and they already have someone to do that and Tuesday the truck goes into the alignment shop and the shop already told them that truck is going to need to be there 24 hours.  No idea what they're doing beyond king pins and shocks.  

I'm almost back from the run today and get a text from my friend.  She is trying to locate the person at the church who wants to ask her about getting baptized but found everything locked up. Try the office.

The next thing I know,  I was being asked to come in as well.  The situation is that they want me to baptize them - they both asked for me to do it specifically, I did not prime the pump and suggest it at all, I figure that needs to come from the Lord.  So, they asked the kid about his faith at church on Sunday and now they had a conversation with her today in their office.

I came strolling in a short while later after getting the truck parked and doing post trip inspection and got into a fairly heavy conversation about my relationship with the Lord - Jesus Christ that is, I like to name His name for there is "no other name given among men whereby we must be saved" and "the name above ALL names" and so on and so forth.  Lots of scripture pops into my mind when I think about His Name and what He has done for all of us.  

Well, all of us who choose to believe anyway. 

I discussed my salvation and how I got to that point and then discussed my missionary work after the fact and traveling all over Mexico. He was surprised. I have just been going to church and I don't announce myself in any given way. I'm just another man in the crowd as far as I'm concerned, nothing special here.  But I gave details that he apparently didn't expect to hear from me and scripture? Is always running around through my head. 

I really mean that. It isn't often that someone says something to me and some scripture doesn't come to mind that applies to it.  I don't announce that at all either, I just think about it. 

It turns out the kid is really driving this thing here. He wants to get baptized with his mom, ok! But he also wants to do his video with mom as well.  Remember, they are both going to be baptized sort of at the same time. I don't see how anyone can baptize 2 people at once so I'll have to do them one after the other.  

The video is something they do before any and every baptism at the church. The person gives a sometimes long statement about who they are, what they like, what they are doing etc.  

  Tuesday - too late, lol, well not bad bad just I should l have gone to bed a little while ago.  Such is life, I'll hit the sack after this short entry.  

I finally went from 213 pounds to 211.  It was sitting at 213 forever.  I mean, I don't know that it will stay at 211 right off, it typically goes up and down and then will sit at 211 at some point and then, wait a long time and it'll go down again.  It took a long time to get this heavy, it'll take a long time to get rid of it. 

We booked a trip on the Polar Express!  A little pricey but it's fabled to be a glorious if short train ride replete with Santa Clause and dancers and singing chefs and such.  We'll find out.  Kind of waited too long to book tho. There were other seats I would have liked better and I would have liked to go in the dark.

Or would have I?  Hmmm.  I have never ridden on a train.  I've been on them but no rides.  I read that the scenery is beautiful so a day trip isn't going to be bad at all. The kids will enjoy the theme, they both love the Polar Express movie anyway, it's a yearly tradition to watch it together.  The oldest makes his own version of tickets and everybody has to have one to watch!  I won't go into the year 2 years ago when a certain adult in this house rejected it and gave the boy a hard time about it, we're talking kids here, they have imaginations and I just thought that wasn't so nice. 

But whatever.  I don't want to get too involved in this entry since I need to go to bed,  a few items in politics that have caught my attention, nothing major. We also need rain around here badly.  Yes, it's the time of year we don't get any but the grass all over the place is dark brown, dying and we're in a burn ban.  Not that I would want to light a fire anyway, the heat here has been very high.  

So that's it.  Mostly just finally got past a roadblock on my weight loss journey.  

Oh, I delivered today and was supposed to take the truck in tomorrow to have the rest of the work done on it. Yeah, no.  I was called today and informed that two more trucks are in the shop, they need me to work tomorrow.  Whatever.  I don't really care at this point, I'm fairly back into this wonderful routine called work and certainly I want the money so my savings don't go down.     

But, I have to get up at 5 am and get out here by 5:30 am, they want me there "earlier" so that I don't run into another driver who is constantly running. Unlike me, he doesn't go home every day, he just keeps driving until he has to take his 10 hour break.  Good for him! But his paychecks are nice! And whoopdedooo!  Hey, if my situation  gets bad somehow, I can always ask for more work.  Either Gurdon or pop me on Ennis runs temporarily.  

No thank you.

And good night : )