10/9/10

This post is a little late, but all you need to know about Saturday is that nobody killed me.  I wish someone had done so.  Oh, and also - If you think you'll eventually get some relief by ingesting various pain relievers throughout the day, you're mistaken.  You'll just end up getting out of bed in the middle of the night to puke a few times.  That's all.

10/8/10

The odds are that I won't be dying in my sleep tonight.  With the way I feel at the moment though, I'm not sure I would mind.  Nothing has proven effective at reducing the pain that has now centralized itself more in the upper ass area than the lower back.  Just for kicks, today's quick and easy two-stop run was supplanted by a much longer four-stop run.  While walking around and delivering milk I could hold my own.  While driving I could never get comfortable and endured a pretty good bit of pain.  While getting in and out of the truck, it was absolutely excruciating.  It ain't kidney stones though, which means that I can endure it.

The workouts are going to be on hiatus for a little while, for obvious reasons.  When I got to the gym tonight, even the slightest effort to turn my body or to lift a weight was enough to make me yell out in pain.  Enough's enough.  I'm gonna have to rest this thing and get myself back on track.

Tomorrow, thus far, should be helpful.  I only have one load and that load only has two stops on it.  My quick trip to the Flint suburbs and back shouldn't take too long, after which it's strictly bed rest time for me.  In the unlikely event that I do wind up checking out in my sleep tonight, I wish you folks all the best.  In the words of Bill S. Preston, Esquire and Ted Theodore Logan - Be excellent to each other.  And party on dudes.

10/7/10

I'm hurting pretty bad and I can't seem to find a reasonable resolution to the situation.  I must have pulled a muscle in my lower back somewhere along the way.  With muscle pulls, it has always been my experience that plenty of rest is the only cure.  Unfortunately I have a job that requires quite a bit of walking and climbing in and out of a big truck.  I also have an after-work routine that involves quite a bit of strength and cardio training, neither of which is very useful for resting a sore back.  Quite a conundrum, eh?

I did my best to take it easy today, given that I didn't have to work and by extension didn't have to do much walking.  Just basically sat on the couch and visited with my father for a while, then sat on the couch and visited with my elderly buddies for a while.  All this sitting around seems to have made the pain worse, so I'm not sure what that means.  I'm gonna head up to the gym here in a few minutes and see how it goes.  Since I started hurting a few days ago, the time that I've spent working out has actually been the least painful for me.  I have no explanation for that one either.  Endorphins or something, I suppose.

Ahh well, better get moving.  I have to start work at noon tomorrow.  If I don't get rolling soon, I won't have any hope of getting to sleep before 5am again.  If you're thinking of recommending some sort of prescription for this back pain, don't bother.  I already got one.

10/6/10

Yep. That's 89 hash marks. Assuming that I counted correctly (not a guarantee), I've been a Quickway employee for 89 days. This means that, at the conclusion of tomorrow, I'll be a real-life Teamster. And I'll get there on a day when I'm not working. That's kinda funny now that I think about it. 

Since there's no graduated pay scale, meaning that we start at full pay from Day One, the biggest difference for me will be that I'm now eligible for the monthly bonus.  An extra two cents per mile and a dollar per stop, in addition to the standard pay that we already receive, are paid at the end of each month.  A quick ballpark estimate puts that at around $200-250 per month in beer money.  Now if only I actually drank enough beer to enjoy it...

Other odds and end stuff comes into play as well.  401(k), health coverage, disability, personal days, paid holidays, etc.  Heh, maybe it's about time for me to start calling in sick on weekends.  Yeah, probably not.

Today's run was supposed to be quick and easy.  I had an afternoon pull and three stops in Toledo, then back to the dairy.  That's almost how it went.  Almost.  As I was doing my pre-trip inspection, I found that my loaded trailer had a big gouge in the side of one of its tires.  Then I noticed that the rim was bent, right next to the big gouge.  Lieutenant Columbo would conclude that someone ran over something at a fairly high rate of speed, fucked up the tire and the rim, dropped off the trailer without doing a post-trip inspection, filled out a false DVIR form saying that he did a post-trip inspection, and went home.

Unlike the last time that one of these peckerheads pulled this shit, the mechanics were still at the terminal today.  I pulled my trailer down the street, got a new tire, and then headed on my way.  We'll see how the pay situation works out with respect to the half hour that I waited for the repair.  The dispatcher gave me a detention number, meaning that I'll get my nine bucks or whatever it is for the half hour.  The catch is that my load pay was more than nine bucks below the daily minimum.  I was getting bumped up to $140 for a $127 run.  My guess is that the detention pay will mean that I'll now get bumped from $136 to $140.  This would mean that the half hour is just lost time for me.

Oh well.  Still a pretty easy day of work overall.  Toledo is under major construction, so my driving hours were a bit longer than I had anticipated.  From the first store to the second, the distance was three miles.  It took a half hour.  From the second store to the third, the distance was six miles.  Another half hour.  Sheesh.  The milk deliveries themselves went pretty smoothly, notwithstanding that I encountered the biggest asshole dairy guy in the Midwest at my first store.  (I haven't been to every store in the Midwest, so this is speculation on my part, but I think it's a pretty safe bet.)  As I left that store, I recalled something that one of the guys told me on my first training run.  "There's this one guy in Toledo..."  Yeah, I met that guy today.

I had a lengthy workout on the agenda for tonight, so I headed straight over to the gym and got after it.  Fun times.  Fun times.  Given the way that the last day and a half have unfolded, it's safe to say that I'm looking forward to getting a good night's sleep in my own bed pretty soon here.  Bonne nuit.

10/5/10

These blog posts don't have titles.  They're just named after each day in this aimless voyage of mine, each containing some small tidbit of something that I felt like saying on a given day.  If today's post had a title, however, it would be called Return of the Swede.

My Swedish buddy Sjoe hasn't been seen around here in quite some time.  A straightlaced routine of delivering milk, reading books, and lifting weights doesn't seem to appeal to him.  He finds himself more drawn to the leisurely and perhaps questionable pursuits in life.  Without any of that to be found in Michigan lately, the Swede has been spending his time in... I don't know... Sweden or something.  Until tonight.

I was on my way back to the dairy with my empty trailer when my brother called.  Tuesday night trivia again, in case I was interested.  I was wrapping up my shift nice and early, so I headed down to the bar and joined the gang.  We got our asses kicked pretty thoroughly.  Then I headed home to relax and prepare for another day of work tomorrow.  It wasn't very late though, so a stop at a local pub on the way home seemed to be in order.  And guess who I ran into at the pub.  That silly Swede.

It turns out that he had no intention of wrapping up his night any time soon.  Sjoe sat at the bar and made a few new friends (at least for the night).  One was a rather attractive gal, despite her total lack of conversational capacity.  Ole Sjoe is a perfect gentleman, or something to that effect, so he hasn't chosen to say a whole lot more, but the dude wound up getting back to my place at 6am.  Oy.  Long night.

My pull time for tomorrow is set for 3:45pm so, even if I hadn't been home resting peacefully all night, I would have plenty of time to get my shit together before heading back to work.  I'll have three stops in Toledo and nothing more, so it should be about a five hour shift.  Works for me.  The scheduled pay for the load is well below the daily minimum, meaning that I'll get my $140 unless another load turns up.  It's only Wednesday though, so I'm pretty sure I'll only have the one run.  The guys don't usually start calling in sick until the weekend.

10/4/10

Ahh yes, it's election season.  One of the things that I was able to avoid while I was on the road was the barrage of political advertising leading up to November.  I don't watch television, so I still don't see the majority of the ads, but today I received a letter.  It came from the Michigan Republican something or other and it left a particularly bad taste in my mouth.  I only read the first couple of paragraphs, but it wasn't good.  The letter was made to appear as if it had been handwritten by some lady.  The gist of it was that her son was murdered and the Democrat running for Attorney General refused to bring the killer to justice.  It covered the front and back of the page, so there was probably more detail to it.  I don't know man.  I'm sure that this guy is probably one of those candyassed rehabilitation-oriented bleeding heart types, but seriously, a plea from a grieving mother?  That's a little over the top.

Here's what we need to do.  Instead of electing these clowns every year, we need to be like Brazil and elect... a real clown.  Just do away with the damned pretense already.  The jagoffs in D.C. may be smarter than this illiterate Brazilian dude, but I am pretty sure that they're no smarter than your average well-read neighbor.  In fact, I'd be willing to bet on it.  I know a couple of people who came out of the Ivy League echo chamber.  Pretty good at regurgitating stuff that they've been told.  Not so good at walking and chewing gum.

Anyhow, what went on today?  Not a whole lot in my little corner of the world.  Laundry, reading, and weight lifting.  That's pretty much it.  Tomorrow I'll get the additional joy of delivering milk, so that's pretty exciting... or something.

10/3/10

The research department here at the Fenian Godfather Institute has the weekend off, so I won't be able to provide the research here, but this may be the first time in fifty years that the Irish, Redskins, and Tigers have all won games within a single 24 hour span.  (Probably it has been more like a year or so but, like I said, no research tonight.  It feels like it has been a long time.)  The Tigers' win was a bittersweet one, given that it marks the end of a disappointing season and all.  As for the other two... yeah, we'll see.

Since I skipped the gym last night and I didn't take a nap before Friday's workout, today was the first chance to get reacquainted with the simple comforts that come with having my car back.  Good riddance to that piece of shit Chevy, I say.  I finished up my work a little early this evening (four stops, lots of miles, no issues), so I had plenty of time to do some reading and then catch a nice power nap.  My car ain't a luxury machine by any stretch of the imagination.  It's a simple and fairly inexpensive ride, but it seems positively lavish when compared to my most recent rental car.

After a quick but intense workout, it was time to head back home and put the finishing touches on yet another day in paradise.  I walked out of the gym and noticed that my car is now missing a hubcap.  It's always fucking something, isn't it?  Always fucking something.