So it's basically one of the shittiest dates in American history. Of course we all got tired of thinking about it somewhere along the way and decided to pretend like those 14th century savages were just misunderstood, but that's just what we do around here. We give people the benefit of the doubt as long as it helps us to feel like forgiving souls. Err, I mean... we actually overreacted (or something). Sure thing, jackass. Eventually our eagerly supplied 'benefit of the doubt' will lead to widespread death and destruction. Take my word for it.
I have no dignity and very little sensitivity, so I'm not above adding that today is also one of the shittiest dates in Notre Dame history. ♫ "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss..."♫ The offense shows signs of dominance but it relies heavily on a great quarterback. In his absence the offense becomes... well... offensive. The opponent carves up the defense until the offense gets all of its starters back and mounts a late rally. Then the defense gives up the go-ahead score in the waning seconds of the game and we fans sit here like pathetic losers trying to figure out what should have been done differently.
I also delivered some milk today. My FloTV was nice to have. Two more trailers tomorrow. Bah.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
9/10/10
I've mentioned before that I take online surveys sometimes when I'm bored. They help to pass the time and I get a few bucks out of the deal. Today, I think I spotted a potential problem.
One more year in the sun, folks. One more year.
After delivering my two loads of milk this afternoon, I had to kill some time. My regular gym was set to open at midnight and I was finished with work around 10pm. No problemo, I thought. I'll head to the store and get a birthday present for my niece. Since I have a late start time tomorrow, I'll be able to stop by her birthday party and surprise her. Once I wandered around the store for a little while, I was reminded that women aren't only good for one thing. They're also good for sending to the store when I don't know what to buy. What in the hell do seven year old girls like these days? I found some sort of clothing design kit thingamajig and a few plain shirts for her to experiment on. Good enough.
So I guess there's a game tomorrow afternoon or something. I only have one word to say about the University of Michigan - plumbing.
So that's all pretty basic stuff, right? They need to break down the survey results based on various demographic information, so they get those questions out of the way right up front. I did leave out one question though...
After delivering my two loads of milk this afternoon, I had to kill some time. My regular gym was set to open at midnight and I was finished with work around 10pm. No problemo, I thought. I'll head to the store and get a birthday present for my niece. Since I have a late start time tomorrow, I'll be able to stop by her birthday party and surprise her. Once I wandered around the store for a little while, I was reminded that women aren't only good for one thing. They're also good for sending to the store when I don't know what to buy. What in the hell do seven year old girls like these days? I found some sort of clothing design kit thingamajig and a few plain shirts for her to experiment on. Good enough.
So I guess there's a game tomorrow afternoon or something. I only have one word to say about the University of Michigan - plumbing.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
9/9/10
The man crush that refuses to die... (This doesn't make me gay, right?)
As a proud union member (or whatever) I'm probably supposed to think that Governor Christie is a real piece of garbage. I just can't manage to see it that way. Bummer.
Today brought a shareholders' meeting at the office, so that was somewhat interesting. The content of the discussion was actually rather mundane, but it was amusing to me that the suits felt the need to explain such things as the need to keep accurate logs and avoid rear-end accidents. I'm trying to avoid the temptation to draw premature conclusions here, but I get the sense that I work amongst a fairly myopic gang of drivers. CSA 2010 earned a lot of air time, as I'm sure those of you in the trucking industry could imagine.
After the meeting was over, I needed to knock out a chest workout before heading over to my parents' house for dinner. I decided to go ahead and drive out to Commerce Township again and give that place a try. (I did manage to remember my gym bag this morning.) The Commerce location turned out to be a little nicer than the Canton location, but not quite as nice as the Novi one. Perhaps this knowledge will prove useful at some point in the future. Perhaps it won't. I don't know. Novi is set to open for business after midnight tomorrow night.
I got my voicemail from the dispatcher this afternoon, laying out tomorrow's schedule. I'll have a two-stop load going to Lapeer and Imlay City followed by another two-stop load going to two stores in Monroe. We like two-stop loads here at Fenian Godfather Inc., so I have no complaints. Deep down inside I think we all knew that there wasn't going to be a Tennessee run this weekend.
Mom made lasagna for dinner and I got to visit with my sister's kids for a while. Pretty good evening, I suppose. Not too sure that the birthdays are worth celebrating at this point, but at 10:10am tomorrow we'll be able to check one more off the list.
In trying to decide how to wrap up tonight's post, I can't help falling back to my persistent man crush. A little over twenty minutes, during which I'm pretty sure I knew what message to expect, and what did I do? I watched the whole damned thing. Maybe there's hope yet, even for a cynic like me...
For those of you less inclined to view twenty minutes of right-wing racism and hatred (or whatever they call it these days), I propose that you buckle down and check out five minutes of this dude from Ohio. Awesome.
Can't figure out where you've seen this guy before? Oh... I'll bet you can if you try. You may have seen him in a van down by the river..
As a proud union member (or whatever) I'm probably supposed to think that Governor Christie is a real piece of garbage. I just can't manage to see it that way. Bummer.
Today brought a shareholders' meeting at the office, so that was somewhat interesting. The content of the discussion was actually rather mundane, but it was amusing to me that the suits felt the need to explain such things as the need to keep accurate logs and avoid rear-end accidents. I'm trying to avoid the temptation to draw premature conclusions here, but I get the sense that I work amongst a fairly myopic gang of drivers. CSA 2010 earned a lot of air time, as I'm sure those of you in the trucking industry could imagine.
After the meeting was over, I needed to knock out a chest workout before heading over to my parents' house for dinner. I decided to go ahead and drive out to Commerce Township again and give that place a try. (I did manage to remember my gym bag this morning.) The Commerce location turned out to be a little nicer than the Canton location, but not quite as nice as the Novi one. Perhaps this knowledge will prove useful at some point in the future. Perhaps it won't. I don't know. Novi is set to open for business after midnight tomorrow night.
I got my voicemail from the dispatcher this afternoon, laying out tomorrow's schedule. I'll have a two-stop load going to Lapeer and Imlay City followed by another two-stop load going to two stores in Monroe. We like two-stop loads here at Fenian Godfather Inc., so I have no complaints. Deep down inside I think we all knew that there wasn't going to be a Tennessee run this weekend.
Mom made lasagna for dinner and I got to visit with my sister's kids for a while. Pretty good evening, I suppose. Not too sure that the birthdays are worth celebrating at this point, but at 10:10am tomorrow we'll be able to check one more off the list.
In trying to decide how to wrap up tonight's post, I can't help falling back to my persistent man crush. A little over twenty minutes, during which I'm pretty sure I knew what message to expect, and what did I do? I watched the whole damned thing. Maybe there's hope yet, even for a cynic like me...
For those of you less inclined to view twenty minutes of right-wing racism and hatred (or whatever they call it these days), I propose that you buckle down and check out five minutes of this dude from Ohio. Awesome.
Can't figure out where you've seen this guy before? Oh... I'll bet you can if you try. You may have seen him in a van down by the river..
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
9/8/10
Back when I was a somewhat civilized fella, working for MetLife, I had a daily routine. I would stay up late at night and usually get by on four or five hours of sleep, as I've always done whether I wanted to or not. Then I would go to work in the morning and start on whatever paperwork and phone calls required my attention. Sometimes I would see clients in the morning, but most of my clients worked day jobs. After lunch I would take a nap in my car for an hour or so, then knock out some meetings to wrap up my evening.
I can't recall specifically, but I think that today may have been the first time I've taken a nap in my car since I left the suit and tie behind. My milk run was a pretty easy affair. The last stop took a little while longer than usual, given that I wasn't able to rotate any of the empties to the front of my trailer before I got there. As such, I had to pull off a bunch of empties before I could get to the milk for that last store. Then, after the milk was unloaded, I had to put away all of the empties. All in all though, it wsn't a bad run. I finished up in less than seven hours.
Finishing up quickly tends to be a good thing in my line of work. The only issue was my damned workout regimen. I'm not a big fan of going to the gym when it's crowded, as I've mentioned before. Added into today's mix was the fact that the Novi location is closed for a couple of days. This left me with Canton or Commerce Township as the closest options. Canton is actually closer to home than Novi is, but I really don't dig that location. So I decided to check out the Commerce location instead. I was ready to go at 7pm, right during the peak hours of the evening - no bueno. In addition, there would be plenty of regulars from the Novi location working out in Commerce tonight, adding to the crowd - no bueno. And I was pretty tired following a shitty night's sleep last night - no bueno. Only one thing to do in this case. Time for a nap in the car.
It's not quite the same as having a bed behind the driver's seat, but the old car nap turned out to be quite refreshing. Around 9:30pm I rolled up the road and pulled into the lot of the gym in Commerce. We'll just grab the trusted gym bag here and... son of a. I forgot to grab my damned bag on my way out the door this morning. That's becoming a pretty obnoxious habit. So I had to drive all the way back home and get my workout clothes anyway, meaning that the nap in the car was entirely pointless. I could have just come home after work and gone to bed for a while. Win some, lose some...
After driving all the way home I certainly wasn't in the mood to drive way out to BFE again, so I had to bite the bullet and go to the gym in Canton. I'm supposed to have dinner with my parents tomorrow evening and I have a shareholders' meeting at work tomorrow morning (on my day off, of course), so it looks like I'll probably end up in Canton again in the afternoon. Bummer.
Hey, maybe I'll get lucky and catch a Tennessee run leaving early on Friday. That would get me back in time to watch plenty of football on Saturday. A fella can always dream. (Yes, for the record, I know that it's pitiful when one's dreams have been reduced to this. I've made my peace with it.)
I can't recall specifically, but I think that today may have been the first time I've taken a nap in my car since I left the suit and tie behind. My milk run was a pretty easy affair. The last stop took a little while longer than usual, given that I wasn't able to rotate any of the empties to the front of my trailer before I got there. As such, I had to pull off a bunch of empties before I could get to the milk for that last store. Then, after the milk was unloaded, I had to put away all of the empties. All in all though, it wsn't a bad run. I finished up in less than seven hours.
Finishing up quickly tends to be a good thing in my line of work. The only issue was my damned workout regimen. I'm not a big fan of going to the gym when it's crowded, as I've mentioned before. Added into today's mix was the fact that the Novi location is closed for a couple of days. This left me with Canton or Commerce Township as the closest options. Canton is actually closer to home than Novi is, but I really don't dig that location. So I decided to check out the Commerce location instead. I was ready to go at 7pm, right during the peak hours of the evening - no bueno. In addition, there would be plenty of regulars from the Novi location working out in Commerce tonight, adding to the crowd - no bueno. And I was pretty tired following a shitty night's sleep last night - no bueno. Only one thing to do in this case. Time for a nap in the car.
It's not quite the same as having a bed behind the driver's seat, but the old car nap turned out to be quite refreshing. Around 9:30pm I rolled up the road and pulled into the lot of the gym in Commerce. We'll just grab the trusted gym bag here and... son of a. I forgot to grab my damned bag on my way out the door this morning. That's becoming a pretty obnoxious habit. So I had to drive all the way back home and get my workout clothes anyway, meaning that the nap in the car was entirely pointless. I could have just come home after work and gone to bed for a while. Win some, lose some...
After driving all the way home I certainly wasn't in the mood to drive way out to BFE again, so I had to bite the bullet and go to the gym in Canton. I'm supposed to have dinner with my parents tomorrow evening and I have a shareholders' meeting at work tomorrow morning (on my day off, of course), so it looks like I'll probably end up in Canton again in the afternoon. Bummer.
Hey, maybe I'll get lucky and catch a Tennessee run leaving early on Friday. That would get me back in time to watch plenty of football on Saturday. A fella can always dream. (Yes, for the record, I know that it's pitiful when one's dreams have been reduced to this. I've made my peace with it.)
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
9/7/10
In a world where guys like me are always posting links to stupid information that they find on the internet (ahem, ladies... just so you know), it's worth noting when something worthwhile comes across the computer screen. This one from Marco Rubio is an excellent read. No kidding.
I'm also compelled to share my first day's experience as a FloTV customer. In short - I'm pretty impressed. I drove to Target when I got out of bed yesterday, dropped my $133 (after redeeming a $25 gift card), then came home and put the thing on the charger. I opted for one year of service at $99 instead of doing the $15 monthly bit. If they go bankrupt, then I guess I lose. Otherwise it is quite a bit cheaper to pay that year in advance.
After about ten minutes, my account was active and I started watching various channels. Even in my apartment, which can be a bit of a black hole for cell phone and television signals, I got uninterrupted service on my little TV. (And I do mean little. About the size of an old iPod Touch or something like that.) At 5:15pm, I unplugged the unit and brought it with me as I went to buy groceries for my Labor Day cookout. The broadcast continued without interruption as I drove around. Good deal. The manufacturer claims that the battery will last up to five hours on a single charge, so I wanted to see for myself. I left the TV running non-stop for the rest of the night. At 2:30am it finally quit. That's over nine hours. Dude.
I wasn't feeling too thrilled about getting out of bed this morning, but apparently I still have to earn my own living. Probably shouldn't have finished off those beers before I went to bed. My day of work turned out to be pretty easy though, so it wasn't so bad. I had stops in Flint, Essexville, and Bay City. No major traffic issues and no major delivery issues arose, so I have no complaints.
In point of fact, I finished a little too early, so I had to kill some time before heading over to the gym. There's plenty of equipment for everyone to use at that place. I'm pretty sure that you could get a workout in even during the peak hours, but I have a severe distaste for shithead teenagers so I prefer to wait for them to clear out before I get started. Once I got going my shoulder workout was brief and intense, just the way it ought to be.
Tomorrow is looking like another relatively easy day at the office. I have one run (so far) with stops in Saginaw, Bridgeport, and Frankenmuth. It's twenty miles shorter than today's run was, so consequently it pays ten dollars less. Otherwise it's a pretty similar deal. Probably seven hours or so if nothing goes wrong. We'll see...
I'm also compelled to share my first day's experience as a FloTV customer. In short - I'm pretty impressed. I drove to Target when I got out of bed yesterday, dropped my $133 (after redeeming a $25 gift card), then came home and put the thing on the charger. I opted for one year of service at $99 instead of doing the $15 monthly bit. If they go bankrupt, then I guess I lose. Otherwise it is quite a bit cheaper to pay that year in advance.
After about ten minutes, my account was active and I started watching various channels. Even in my apartment, which can be a bit of a black hole for cell phone and television signals, I got uninterrupted service on my little TV. (And I do mean little. About the size of an old iPod Touch or something like that.) At 5:15pm, I unplugged the unit and brought it with me as I went to buy groceries for my Labor Day cookout. The broadcast continued without interruption as I drove around. Good deal. The manufacturer claims that the battery will last up to five hours on a single charge, so I wanted to see for myself. I left the TV running non-stop for the rest of the night. At 2:30am it finally quit. That's over nine hours. Dude.
I wasn't feeling too thrilled about getting out of bed this morning, but apparently I still have to earn my own living. Probably shouldn't have finished off those beers before I went to bed. My day of work turned out to be pretty easy though, so it wasn't so bad. I had stops in Flint, Essexville, and Bay City. No major traffic issues and no major delivery issues arose, so I have no complaints.
In point of fact, I finished a little too early, so I had to kill some time before heading over to the gym. There's plenty of equipment for everyone to use at that place. I'm pretty sure that you could get a workout in even during the peak hours, but I have a severe distaste for shithead teenagers so I prefer to wait for them to clear out before I get started. Once I got going my shoulder workout was brief and intense, just the way it ought to be.
Tomorrow is looking like another relatively easy day at the office. I have one run (so far) with stops in Saginaw, Bridgeport, and Frankenmuth. It's twenty miles shorter than today's run was, so consequently it pays ten dollars less. Otherwise it's a pretty similar deal. Probably seven hours or so if nothing goes wrong. We'll see...
Monday, September 6, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
9/5/10
I'm sure a lot of people have thought about moving to another country for one reason or another. (Picture related. I'm tempted.) And plenty of people do in fact move to plenty of countries for plenty of reasons, of course. Yet, in my egocentric view of the world, I've always pictured the United States as a destination and not a departure point. You know, yankee arrogance and so forth.
There has been a new dispatcher around the office for the past week or so. Since I work at a place with around forty drivers and only five operations people, I assumed that someone must have quit or gone on leave or something. It's not the kind of place that would just add an extra dispatcher for the hell of it. I hadn't seen one particular guy all week, so my guess was that he was gone.
After working my twelve hours today without any major issues or delays, I rolled back into the terminal and dropped off my truck. I headed inside to drop off my paperwork and saw the dispatcher dude that had been gone all week. As I was wrapping up and getting ready to leave, the guy who was on yard dog duty came in and sat down to take a quick break. He asked the dispatcher - "Hey man, when's your last day?" So someone was indeed quitting, it turns out.
The dispatcher replied that his last day is tomorrow. I headed over and shook his hand to wish him the best of luck with things, since tomorrow is my day off and I won't be around. In passing, I asked where he was headed from here. "UK," he replied, in his usual terse fashion. The U.K., as in Great Britain? "Yep. My wife and I are moving over there." I'll be damned. It's like 1620 in reverse or something. At least he should be really safe over there... you know, from silverware... or whatever.
As tends to be the case by the time Sunday rolls around, I'm sure as hell looking forward to a day off. Fridays and Saturdays had been on the lighter side for me in recent weeks, but not this time. Between catching that second run on Friday and pulling two loads each on Saturday and Sunday, not to mention this gym nonsense afterward, I'm a bit tired.
Whenever I manage to drag my ass out of bed tomorrow, I think that something involving charcoal and meat will be in the cards. Gas grills (aka outdoor stoves) should be reserved strictly for women. And this, of course, is only if we're willing to consider the patio as part of the kitchen. I don't make the rules. I'm just the communicator.
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