Flying South

As usual, there were "technical difficulties" on Monday during the pick ups ... I arrived early at the 2nd appointment ... so they made me an hour late for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th appointments. I was supposed to be at the 5th appointment by 4:00 p.m. I arrived at 5:00 p.m. ... Vitality Foods is vindictive when it comes to late arrivals. They said, "You will have to wait out on the street. We will come get you." I checked after 2 hours and they said again, "You will have to wait." 5 hours after arrival, they put me in a door ... an hour and 10 minutes later (11:10 p.m.) they gave me my paperwork and said I could go. The street was deserted ... no cars, no other trucks ... nothing. Appointment 6 was to have been at 6:00 p.m. ... closes NLT 9:00 p.m. So I picked it up at 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday ... and was 5 hours late for the appointment in Indianapolis. Which they didn't load after I paid them $100 for being late ... because they said the trailer was too full and they wouldn't move anyone else's pallets ... unless I paid them $10 per pallet ... expecting $200 so they could unload past the dry section and bulkhead to get into the frozen section where they would have to put their product.

And the load for next week is canceled ... flash impression ... I got the impression we weren't getting another load.

NOW FOR THE FUN STUFF:
I was fueling when another truck arrived ... a red Vovlo, from Council Bluffs, Iowa. The name of the company was "Old Buzzard Express" and the truck number was OU-812 (for those who don't get it ... pronounce each letter and number seperately) GROAN! But true!

A lady who worked at the highest levels of the U.S. Dept of Education ... wrote an interesting book on the dumbing down of America ... click on the link and go read it for free ...
link

There's a fascinating store called "Rosebud Antiques" in La Grange, IL that I drove past on Monday ... what got my attention was all the antique bicycles out front ...
link2

More gardening

Here's a shot of the garden mess ... we planted more than the square footage will sustain without getting overgrown. YES, we now have crook-neck squash. In fact, we'd better pick one today before it really gets huge. Little tomatoes we've got ... one white egg plant ... lots of basil ... and the squash plants are covering everything they can ... while the tomato vines go racing across the grass.

Delivery Appointment

Ha! Ha! You'll love this ...

I arrived in Jacksonville, FL last night for my usual Thursday morning delivery. This morning they tell me I am NOT on the schedule ... inside, I hear that I was supposed to have been here yesterday morning (Wednesday). NOT POSSIBLE.

I had a pick up on Tuesday morning at 0800 a.m. I arrived and checked in at 0745 ... they finished loading at 1018 ... and I got my paperwork at 1045. I drove for 3.75 hours before stopping for half an hour to fuel, get a sandwich, and go to the bathroom. I then drove for 6.25 hours to lower Alabama (657 miles total for the day) ... arriving at 2130/ 9:30 p.m. ... that leaves only 15 minutes of driving time out of the 30 minutes of work time left for that day. Add the 10-hr sleep period ... takes us to 0730 a.m. Central time on Wednesday. It takes an additioonal 5 hours to drive to Jacksonville, FL ... arriving NLT 1230 p.m. (1:30 p.m. Eastern) ... which is about 2 hours too late to deliver on Wednesday. Who in their right mind scheduled that appointment for Wednesday? ... someone who thought I have a 100 mph truck and there are no speed limits on the highways?

Adventures in Trucking

Heading North up I-65 near the AL & TN border ... I started hearing advertisements on the CB radio for the "Boobie Bungalow" at TN exit 6.
South of Nashville, two motocycle riders were heading South ... when in the middle of moderate traffic ... one of them popped a wheelie and drove 100 feet with the bike almost vertical.
Monday it took 15.5 hrs to deliver the peanuts ... then drive all over Chicago to pick up from 7 locations (really just 6, but the 1st location was the wrong address on my paperwork ... they redirected me to their other plant ... 15 miles away ... in morning "rush hour" traffic). Then drive on to Indianapolis, IN (for an early Tuesday morning pickup there) ... Monday was a LONG day.

Yes, the people who scheduled the appointments for Monday knew that it would take longer than the legal 14 hrs to do the delivery (0600 a.m.) and pickups (last one scheduled at 1800/6 p.m. but realistically didn't happen until 2100/9 p.m.). Then a mandatory 10 hr rest period ... There is no way you can get from the NW Chicago area (Itasca) to the SE corner of Indianapolis by 0700 a.m. Central time ... and be legal (that's why drivers call the D.O.T logbooks ... "comic books"). By rights ... I should have been parked at pickup site #5 from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m. ... then drive to Itasca on Tuesday to pick up #6 ... then Indianapolis would have to be rescheduled ... probably for Wednesday ... followed by an illegal 18 hr drive to deliver in Jacksonville on Thursday ...
Just no winning some days ...
Intermittent blasting rain storms on the way South.
:-p

Fire Ants!

Friday, when I went to pick up this load of peanuts ... part way there I had to pick up my feet off the floor because I was being swarmed by fire ants!!! Seems the spot where the truck was parked for a week, was in tall grass that reached up to the sides of the fuel tanks. The little buggers thought that was a highspeed roadway to a wonderful place. There were thousands of them. I blew a hundred or so out using the air hose while loading. Then held my feet off the floor all the way back. Liberal doses of Amdro and Hot Shot Roach & Ant spry seem to have made them disappear somewhere ... maybe they are just waiting in the walls ...

There was a tall skinny person I talked with today who has been suffering with pain in his hip and down his left leg for the last 3 weeks. TIME FOR ACCUPRESSURE! I recommended Bonnie Prudden's books ... 1) Pain Erasure ... 2) Myotherapy. I'll bring him a bodo next week for his use to relieve the pain.

Spider & Fire

This spider has taken up residence outside of our screen door ... toward the corner of the wall.  You can see the zig-zag web ,,, but there is also some very fine webbing stretching in a wider area ... not very visible  Is it poisonous?  I have no idea.  

Out in the shop, the fiddle-back or brown recluse spider makes a web that looks like a dense but sloppy cobweb ... just kind of sticking things together (whatever is handy to connect it to) ... no beautiful symmetry to it.

The fire extinguisher is now empty ... it really doesn't hold a lot ... maybe enough to cool down your brake pads a little so they don't burst into flame ... igniting the tires ... and then burning down the truck & trailer.  It might stop an engine fire if you catch it real quick ... while it is still fairly small (the first little puffs of smoke) ... otherwise it won't stop it and you'll just end up with an empty fire extinguisher like this one.  And a burned out car sitting there.  It's a BANG! when the tires explode ... and there are one or two other things that explode putting silver bubbles into the air (I have no idea what they might be).  Very impressive ... if you aren't the teenager standing there crying because her Jeep Wrangler just burned to the ground.

Duh -- duh-duh --Duh

It was the usual visit to the V.A. today. You start with waiting ... and waiting ... lots of old magazines ... and waiting. Then step on the scale ... 237.5 lbs. (with my clothes on ... but subtracting shirt and jeans isn't going to remove much of that weight) ... Temperature ... normal ... blood pressure ... 141 over 94 ... hmmm. Then it was back to the waiting game. At this point some people with a cart brought us eclairs ... and your choice of apple juice, milk, or coffee. Subtle sabotage ... or is it drumming up work for the doctors? Then a visit to the doctor to answer questions, questions, questions, and more questions. All very important. Such as when did this pain first start? Has it ever occurred again? Why haven't you been to a doctor for treatment for it since then? (because in the military, if you went back again, you would lose $600 a month in pay ... and possibly lose your job. Outside the military, I generally have never had medical insurance ... so I only went to the doctor if it was spurting blood ... or something nearly torn off (like a foot)). Let's see, there was the head & neck injury, the lower back & hip pain (which things like "smash your body in the ground school" using a glorified umbrella to slow you down after you step out of a perfectly good airplane ... didn't help). Does this negatively impact your work or stop you from working? Why is it I feel impelled to put a good spin on things? ... when I work 2 weeks and then have to take a week off to recover ... before going back to work. It was another "stand in church" day, last Sunday. It's in their hands now to decide if what happened in the military is having a negative impact on my health now. The hot new things is TBI. Took a bunch of x-rays of head, neck, lower back, and hips. Only 5 hours from start to finish.

It ain't Purple ...

Here's the eggplant that I bought and planted. When it bloomed, the stem with flower was sticking up ... then it dropped down ... thickened ... and starting growing this ...

It looks like some kind of mutant eggplant ... white ... not purple. Hope it tastes the same.



Despite the bees crawling in and out of the squash flowers ... no squash! And there are plenty of flowers. Hmmm.

Kalamata Bread

I've been saying for weeks now that I was going to make some Kalamata bread ... Dan asked, "So when are you going to do it?" Well, I finally did it.
The reccipe I used made a lovely 2 lb. loaf in my Sunbeam bread machine that we got a couple of years ago from WalMart. Tastes really wonderful ... Dan & his mom agree!
I bought the pitted kalamata olives at World Market. Some recipes call for chopped rosemary or garlic in the bread ... maybe next time ... Here's the recipe I used:

Ingredients:

• 1/3 to 1/2 cup brine from olives
• Warm water, enough to make 1 1/2 cups when combined with brine
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 cups bread flour
• 1 2/3 cups whole wheat flour ( heaping cup of wheat kernals freshly ground to flour in my Vita-Mix)
  
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt (I only used a slight teaspoon)
  
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried leaf basil (fresh chopped would be yummy too)
  
• 2 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1/2 to 2/3 cup finely chopped kalamata olives (about 2 dozen pitted olives)

Preparation:

Put brine in a 2-cup measure; add warm water to make 1 1/2 cups. Put all ingredients except for the olives in the bread machine according to your manufacturer's preferred order (mine is liquids first). Choose wheat setting; add olives at the beep.

After it is done ... a dip is made by putting a generous amount of olive oil in a fry pan, add chopped sun-dried tomatoes, chopped onion, chopped garlic ... and a little Italian Seasoning with salt & pepper to taste ... cooked until the onions are clarified ... pour into a bowl ... and dip chunks of fresh bread in it!!

At a Stand-Still

The truck owner hasn't been paid yet for the last couple of trips ... so can't afford fuel to run next week ... and can't afford to pay me either.

He's waiting on payment from the Company he leased the truck to ... they are waiting on payment from the load Broker ... who is waiting on payment from the Client we hauled the load for (SYSCO).

In the meantime everything grinds to a halt ...

Lab results

The Doc called me up to tell me the bad news about my latest lab results ... blood & urine samples ...

Cholesterol ... why do they keep bringing up cholesterol? Just because I eat bacon & eggs for breakfast? And REAL BUTTER too! Okay, so it was a whopping 120. (4 those like seestor who don't know or worry about these things ... that' really low). And the bad LDL was only 50.

Then she had to tell me that I'm eating too many pretzels in the truck ... as I'm driving down the road ... too much bread-stuff ... my triglycerides are over 200. -- sigh.

Veggies1

The squash plants have put out LOTS of flowers ... but no squash is growing. There are a few round small red tomatoes, but they are either split or partially eaten by something. Then there are these kind of pear-shaped ones growing on this other tomato plant.

To the immediate right is a white eggplant that is growing. And Lastly, we have a contest going on between the zuchini plant on the left and the white potato plant on the right ... let's see who takes over the most territory. I doubt we'll get any potatoes ... but we may get some zuchini.

A Walk in the Park

While wandering in the park today, I took some fotos of children. Some kids had interesting t-shirts: "Aunt Nae's the Greatest", "Warning ... I'm not listening", "My name is Trouble ... and I've earned it", "School Vacation ... a three month recess".

What a wonderful opportunity to see families interacting ... to observe children maturing. They even let me hold a couple of babies!

The Medical Appointment ...

Remember that all important medical appointment ... I only drove 860 miles yesterday to get home for it. The doctor decided that he needed an extended holiday (4th of July weekend) ... so the doctor canceled. Re-scheduled for the 15th.
Argh! ... :-p

Prisoners of Freightliner - Gary, IN

These are some of my fellow prisoners ... held captive here in Truck City Freightliner in Gary, IN ...