4/14/10

Back when I had season tickets for the Tigers, I was working in a profession that allowed for a great deal of scheduling flexibility.  As such, I was able to attend around 50-60 games each year.  I had three seats so various combinations of people would attend the games with me, but most often I was accompanied by my girlfriend at the time and her daughter.  The daughter actually became quite a baseball fan, much to my surprise (given how young she was), but her mother said that she just liked to "people watch."  I would submit to anyone who shares this philosophy that the drivers' lounge at your local truck stop will get you far more bang for the buck.

After an uneventful drive across the rest of Oklahoma and all of Missouri today, I took the loop into Illinois and parked for the night at the Flying J off Exit 17A.  The temperature was around 90° and the sun was shining, so I decided to sit in the lounge for a while after I had some dinner and took a shower.  These heavy loads and mountains aren't doing anything to help my 'bad employee' status in terms of fuel mileage, so I figured I might as well kill some time inside the truck stop (rather than idling my truck) until the temperature dropped for the night.  The variety of people in these places is interesting.  From the outward appearances to the speech patterns to the topics of the cell phone conversations that you can't help but overhear... it's something.  I'd take a $9 beer and a seat behind the dugout any day of the week, but then again, I'm not the "people watching" type.

My cheap little power inverter stopped working last night, so I bought a new one at the service plaza in Oklahoma before I headed out this morning.  The only kind that they sold was rated at 100 watts, so I wasn't sure if it would be adequate to power my computer.  (The old one was a 200 watt model.)  What the hell though.  It was only $20.  Might as well give it a shot.  As I type this post, my computer's power display says that it's working just fine.  As an unexpected bonus, I can actually use the touchpad while the computer is plugged in now.  For the last month, since I headed out from home with this new computer, this has not been the case.  I'm not an electrical engineer but we'll have to proceed on the assumption that the old inverter, and not the new computer, was the problem.  Beauty.

Looks like around 75-80 miles from here to my consignee in the morning.  I'm gonna angle down on some state highways and hope to dodge the morning traffic for the most part.  Then, if my hunch is correct, I'll get to sit in line behind a bunch of other trucks (all with 7am dispatches) before I get unloaded.  The 34-hour restart that I got in Arizona should work in my favor with respect to this weekend so, assuming that there's actually some freight to haul, I may end up making a few bucks this week.  As long as I can get something to keep me occupied for a couple more days, the timing should work out for my upcoming home time request.  It has been time to head home for a couple of weeks now, I think.

Make sure you get those taxes paid, suckers.