12/8/08

A certain football team has a former quarterback guru as its head coach. This team has a defense that isn't great, but is good enough to hang around with most opponents. The team's offense started out the season very strongly and the team got out to a good record through the first month and a half. Then something happened. The team started to play without any fire. The offense went down the toilet. The quarterback, despite his obvious talent, started to look lost. The record crept downward toward the .500 mark as the head coach appeared befuddled on the sideline during games. Touchdowns became a rarity while breakdowns on the offensive line became the norm. What team is this? Notre Dame or the Redskins? Take your pick, I guess.

I stayed up and watched the game last night and then tried to get some sleep. I had my alarm set for 7am, so I fully expected someone to wake me before then. Much to my surprise, the alarm woke me at 7am. Beauty. I found a locked door at that time so I hung around until 8am and tried again. My dispatch stipulated that I was to arrive by 8am so I guess that's when the place opens. Shortly thereafter, I was unloaded and ready for another day. I pulled off to the side for an hour or so until my next assignment came through.

This trip had me deadheading up to Waterville, Maine and grabbing a load bound for Michigan. By the time I headed north, the traffic around Worcester and Lowell had subsided for the morning so the drive was nice and easy. After checking in with the shipper, I was told that the load would have been pre-loaded if they had known that my company was the carrier. Yeah, probably could have kept that information to yourself there, bub. Since I would have to be live loaded and there were three trucks ahead of me, I had to wait at the shipper for a while. They won't load a trailer while the truck is running and it was 14 degrees outside. This did not sound like a workable situation for me, but they told me that I could drop the trailer at the dock and bobtail to the other side of the parking lot. As long as I wasn't at the dock I would be allowed to run my truck while I was waiting. Fair enough.

As I sat patiently awaiting my loaded trailer, I was browsing around the good old interwebs. I got my daily e-mail from one of the employment listing aggregators and decided to click and see what's going on back home. I think I found a pretty sweet job posting. I would have thought it paid a little better, but you know... Personally, I'm not qualified, but they haven't named a replacement yet. If you've always dreamed of living and working in lovely Ypsilanti, I suggest that you send your application soon.

Once I was loaded and rolling, I had time to get to the T/A in Milldale, Connecticut before my 14 hour clock ran out. Now I'll have to keep a pretty brisk pace in order to make it to Jackson, Michigan by Wednesday morning. Oh well. A brother's gotta eat. We've almost caught up with last week's miles and it's only Monday. The extra $47 so far in northeast pay this week won't hurt either.