8/9/10

If it's true that some of us fondly remember things that never actually happened, then it seems that someone like me should be a little better at remembering about the things that do happen.  For instance, I had completely forgotten that sometimes a day off from work is really pretty lame.  I spent my first handful of days off doing fun things or productive things and so forth.  One day it was a ballgame.  Another day it was a cookout with friends.  Another day it was a cookout with my parents.  Another day it was some grocery shopping and a few beers.  You get the picture. Not so much today though.  Today seemed like one that got away.

I was in bed until the afternoon, which is already enough to leave one with a sense that the day is half gone.  When you go to bed at 7:30am though, what are you gonna do?  I had shut off the ringer on my phone so that the inevitable call from my dispatcher wouldn't wake me.  As it turns out though, he never called.  Good deal.

Once I got up and moving, I drove over to a friend's house in Lincoln Park.  He knows some guys who run an auto shop and I trust mechanics about as much as I trust politicians, so he offered to ride up to the shop with me.  I'm not really concerned with the cost of getting my brakes fixed.  I'll pay whatever I need to pay.  I would just prefer to know that they're not charging me for a bunch of other shit that isn't necessary.  Since I hadn't made it to the shop until late in the day, there wasn't much of a chance that my car would be done before they closed.  Probably tomorrow, the guy behind the desk told me.  Fair enough.

So it looks like my buddy the reverand will be my transportation for a day or so.  He gave me a ride home this evening and offered to get me back to my car tomorrow.  If my car isn't ready before I have to go to work, then he'll drive me to the terminal at my appointed time and we'll deal with the car later.  I'm not sure exactly why it is, but I don't much enjoy having people do favors for me.  When it comes to that sort of thing, I'm much more content to be the one helping out a friend.  Anything that's being done on my behalf is something for which I would gladly pay.  I have no idea what the explanation is.  That's just the way I am.  More comfortable running a surplus in the goodwill department, I suppose.  Alas, the reverand is a dear old friend.  He and his father would do anything for me.  It would be an insult to turn down his generosity.  (And such generosity is always appreciated.  Don't get me wrong.)

The dispatcher at work, having kindly left me alone on my day off (once again), did call later in the day and give me tomorrow's assignment.  I have one straightforward two-stop run to Saginaw and my pull time is 11:45am, so that'll be a pretty easy day as long as nothing changes.  I'll earn just a little more than the daily minimum, meaning that we'll be far short of last week's pace, but I'm okay with that.  That $313 work load or whatever it was last Tuesday was a little excessive.

Once I got home tonight and listened to the ballgame for a little while, I decided that I would indulge a little OTR flashback and take a nap.  That really has been something that I've missed since leaving the sleeper cab behind.  After getting my usual few hours of sleep in the early morning, an afternoon power nap in the middle of my work day would always leave me feeling quite refreshed.  Whether that nap would come at a customer's loading dock or at a rest area along the highway, I very much enjoyed having a bedroom attached to my office at all times. Tonight, as it turns out, my bedroom was just down the hall, so close enough.

I just woke a little while ago to find that my day off was pretty much over.  A pretty lame conclusion to a pretty lame day off.  Now there's nothing left to do except bum around on my computer for a while and see what I can learn.  Such as... Shaq is a 12 year old girl named Tanya?  I'll be damned.  At the risk of sounding like someone who defends sexual predators, I'm not terribly comfortable with the notion of people being arrested for propositioning kids who don't actually exist.  Who's the victim?  I catch a bit of flack for that viewpoint, and for understandable reasons, but something about the whole notion of tricking people into thinking about maybe committing something kinda sorta like a crime, simply in order to arrest them, doesn't sit right with me.  I'd have no problem using modern technology to identify various perverts and watch for actual bad behavior, but I don't know... I'm a little leery of the Thought Police.

Of course, some of the day's news can make a fella stand up and applaud.  For example, Greg Gutfeld's latest missive is pure genius.  And Stephen Hawking's latest plan sounds like a real hoot as well.  I wanna land on one of those planets with the sexy queens or senators or whatever.  That's my only request.