2/4/10

I haven't checked the data yet, but I would guess that 90% of the product reviews offered by the folks at Fenian Godfather Consulting tend to reach a negative conclusion. Thus I'm happy to report on a very useful product this time around. As noted a while ago, I forgot to pack my hair clippers the last time I left home in December. My head has been shaved nearly every weekend since I was 24 years old, so the shaggy hair that grew over the course of the last month was getting annoying. A few days ago I had a chance to stop at a Wal Mart, so I decided to pick up a replacment. Given that I'm not sure exactly when I'm going home next and I don't enjoy shaving my lumpy head with a razor, this seemed like the prudent thing to do.

As I perused the offerings, I saw a battery-powered beard trimmer offered by Wahl. This seemed promising to me, since the only power inverter in my truck is a little one that plugs into the cigarette lighter. It doesn't put out enough power to charge a hair clipper, so I often found myself sitting near a power outlet in a truck stop for a while in order to prepare for a hair cut. Compared to this process, shelling out a few bucks for some AA batteries didn't sound bad at all.

On to the point then - I had my doubts about the power and effectiveness of anything that ran on two AA batteries. Today I had the time and the motivation to trim my hair, so I broke out the new device and gave it a whirl. Two thumbs up, I must say. It cuts quite closely and puts out plenty of power. Through whatever period of time it took to shave my head, I detected no sign that the batteries were under any strain. Unfortunately I don't pay much attention to the cost of most things that I buy, but I'm under the impression that the price was somewhere around twenty or thirty dollars. In summary, the Wahl battery-powered beard trimmer has now received the full endorsement of the consumer products division at Fenian Godfather Consulting.

Shortly after submitting last night's blog post and trying to venture off into dreamland, I received a phone call telling me that my load was ready. In keeping with the plan, I got my paperwork and then hung around the shipper until I had been there for ten hours before heading out. Unfortunately I didn't manage to sleep much at all during my remaining few hours of break time. The little bit of added fatigue was worth it though, in terms of getting out of Southern California in the middle of the night.

I was struggling a little by the time I got to the Arizona state line, but the rising sun helped out quite a bit. I also got a little shot in the arm by stopping for fuel in Quartzsite and grabbing a bite to eat. I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted to set up the rest of the trip from that point in time. On the last occasion that I made this run, I spent ten hours in the Phoenix area and then ran another overnight shift to make the delivery. It worked out well in the end, but the thought of an overnighter this time around didn't sound very appealing to me. So I decided to scrap that idea. I wound up deciding to take a quick nap later in the morning, as the eyelids were getting a little too heavy, and then stayed on the road until I got down to Eloy and called it a day.

I should be able to get to our drop yard within six hours or so from here. My available hours at the time of my dispatch forced our benevolent computer to give me an afternoon arrival in El Paso, rather than an early morning one, so I think I should be able to get back toward whatever qualifies as normalcy in my little world. Since I'm in the Mountain time zone and I operate on Civilized time, the extra two hours will come in quite handy.

This week's miles are somewhere over 2,300, with the weekend still to come, so it goes without saying that last week's poor performance hasn't been repeated. My available hours are still not in overabundant supply so I expect a somewhat light workload for the weekend. Fine with me. Perhaps I'll have time to visit one of the Corleone Family's estates and take in a football game. Or perhaps not. We'll see.