10/22/10

My car is fixed.  That's pretty good, I suppose.  You know what's funny though?  The Mazda dealership put in a new thermostat and housing.  The cost for the parts - $62.75.  The friend of a friend of the family who replaced my engine also put in a new thermostat and housing.  The cost of the parts when he did it - $120.00.  And he did it wrong.  That's pretty funny.  I always thought that the dealerships were the most expensive place to have repairs done.  You live and learn, I suppose.  I never have trusted mechanics, so this just confirms that I've been prescient... or whatever.

Work was work.  I had to wait a little while on the Grand Rapids end of my first trip as they were loading a trailer with cheese for me to bring back to Livonia.  Then, between the first and second trips, I wound up shuttling a few of our recently repaired trailers over to the dairy.

Once I finally made my way down to Monroe for the one milk delivery of the day, things went relatively quickly, if not simply.  That loading dock is one of the tougher ones that we have to use.  The building originally had no loading dock, then this one was added as an afterthought.  To back in, you have to come around the back of the building, then back to the blindside from a skinny alley with a guardrail on the left, down into a pit, with a storage trailer on one side and a concrete wall on the other.  It's pretty difficult.  I got in there without too much trouble, then found that nobody had come to the back door yet to let me in. 

I tried opening the door, as sometimes the Kroger people will unhook the latch but leave the door itself shut until I get to it.  The door started to open.  Beauty.  Then it stopped opening.  Huh?  Must be stuck on something, I thought.  So I lowered it down and tried again.  Same thing.  Huh?  Finding that there still was nobody to let me in, and wanting to get my milk delivered so that I could finish my shift, I took an unconventional approach to the matter.  I lifted the door as far as I could, then held it up with one arm as I slid my ass underneath and into the building.  That worked.  It turned out that there was a bungee cord holding the door shut.  Not exactly the most effective security approach if a fat dude like me can shimmy inside, but whatever.  Not my problem.

The stock room at that store is quite tiny, so I started looking for a way to move enough shit out of the way so that I could get to my trailer.  At this point a young guy came into the room and explained that nobody could find a key to the bay door for the loading dock.  If they weren't able to track down someone with a key, he continued, I would have to come back some other time.  I'm not sure if the youngster is aware of how this little arrangement works, but I most certainly was not going to come back another time.  As I hung out in the back room awaiting word about the key situation, I decided to do something else unconventional.  I checked to see if the bay door was even locked.  It wasn't.  Derp.

I got my eight pallets of milk unloaded and grabbed their three pallets of empties, then headed back to Livonia.  My unfortunate lodger had retrieved my car for me this afternoon, so he got the additional pleasure of driving out to Livonia and picking me up from work.  After I drove home and dropped him off, I found myself unable to summon to motivation to turn back around and go all the way out to Novi for a workout.  So I just stayed home.  Screw it.  I'll get back at it tomorrow.  I have a 5:30pm pull time and a few stops out along I-96, so I should be done somewhere around midnight.  That should work pretty well.