6/4/10

I think we might have us a true 'man bites dog' story developing today.  Two days in a row where everything went perfectly according to the script?  Could it be?

I managed to sleep for a few hours last night.  That's always a good start.  Then I got past Burlington before the traffic kicked up, reaching my consignee in Essex Junction shortly after 6am.  By 6:45am I was empty and ready to roll.  Beauty.

My pickup in Champlain, New York was scheduled for noon (according to my dispatch), so I had plenty of time to take a long break and get some lunch at a little truck stop along I-89 before heading over there.  I rolled into the shipper's lot at 11:15am, learned that my appointment was actually for 1pm, and rolled out of there with my full trailer at 12:30pm.  Not too shabby.

Another ride down through the Appalachians is normally sure to include a heavy payload, especially since my last two loads have been a little more reasonable.  So upon seeing the pallets stacked floor to ceiling and all the way to the back of the trailer, I was prepared for the worst.  A quick peek at the bills showed a total weight of 10,000 pounds though.  Excellent.  That'll be sure to save me at least a little bit of frustration before all is said and done.

An afternoon appointment in Georgia on Monday means that there won't be any alarms in my future between now and then.  Since I was a little tired today, following this morning's early wakeup call, I didn't do a whole lot of driving after I picked up my load.  I stopped off at the big truck stop in Wilton, New York and tried to take a nap.  No luck getting to sleep, so I basically just had a lazy day of filling out online surveys and listening to mp3's.  I think I completed about an hour and a half worth of surveys and earned $8.50 in the process.  Yeah, that's right, I'm a high roller.  I do have a $50 focus group tentatively scheduled for next week though.  Spend an hour telling people that their products suck?  I can handle that.

Hanging around and waiting for the ballgame was getting pretty boring, so I did some reading on various financial sites.  Oy.  I can't really fault the president for trying to put a happy spin on that debacle of an employment report.  He has to try and save his congressional majorities by whatever rationale he can muster.  My beef is with the damned economists.  I've spent the last four days hearing that there would be at least 200,000-250,000 new private sector jobs and a minimum of 500,000 including the temps for the census.  Epic fail on both projections.  I'm not talking about political hacks here either.  I'm talking about respected economists.  And then today, after a shitty jobs report, these so-called experts go straight from "Happy Days Are Here Again" to "Sell Everything?"  What changed fundamentally in the last 24 hours?  Absolutely nothing.  That's what.

The long and short of it is that they don't know anything.  You don't know anything.  I don't know anything.  We're dancing on the edge of a razor here and there's really no way of knowing which way things are headed.  I'll just echo what was once said by one of the most brilliant analysts of the modern age - "I would encourage everyone to do as much reading as possible regarding the relationship between financial risk and financial reward. I would venture to guess that the historical correlation isn't quite what you've been led to believe over the years."   Damned near two years later and, in my opinion, the other shoe still hasn't dropped.  I hope I'm wrong.  Still hedging against both directions though, just in case.

Speaking of hedging... it's a good thing we didn't go full tilt with ole Max Scherzer's campaign for the Cy Young award, eh?  He's back to his true form, stinking up the joint tonight.  Luckily he's facing Kansas City so there's a chance he might win anyway.  Not looking too good at the moment.

I can't end today's post on that note though.  Today was a good day, by golly.  So let's talk about juice for a second.  I'm not much of a juice drinker, to tell you the truth.  I can handle an occasional glass of OJ but it's really not my thing.  Too sweet for me, generally speaking.  I grabbed a bottle of juice this afternoon and I am thoroughly impressed.  The folks at Naked Juice have a product called Red Machine.  Fan-freaking-tastic.  No sugar or any of that nonsense.  Just a wicked good blend of various berries and other fruits.  Not too outrageous on the calories either.