10/2/10

I'm not one of those people who sits around and wishes America was more like Europe, but I am suddenly a big fan of Lithuania for some reason.  (Kudos to you if you were previously aware that Lithuania is a member of the EU.  I would have guessed otherwise.)

I started work at 1pm today, so it looked like I would get a chance to catch the second half of tonight's football game.  I fully expected my Irish to lose again, but I was gonna watch anyway.  (Man bites dog.  They won.)  As I drove over to the dairy to pick up my trailer, I got a call from the dispatcher.  Of course.  Some dude called in sick and I caught a second run.  The whole 'sick call' routine has slowed down considerably as of late.  In what I'm sure is completely unrelated news, things haven't been all that busy lately so the mid-seniority guys aren't making quite as much money.  (The senior guys are still getting two loads on most days.)  It's funny how that works, eh?  Make a bunch of cash early in the week and you get sick on the weekend.  Make less money and you manage to stay healthy all the way through.  Weird.

Anyhow, the second run that I picked up was a quick one-stop deal down to Dundee.  It took me exactly two hours round-trip and added $89 to my day's pay, so I had no complaints.  For that matter, the first run wasn't bad either.  One stop in Midland, two in Saginaw, and one in Livonia on the way back to the dairy.  Aside from the fact that I had to wait for a bread truck at two of the stops (~15-20 minutes each time) everything was pretty flawless.  But of course the two runs took just long enough to prevent any football watching.

My pull time for tomorrow is noon, so I've decided against a late workout tonight.  I'm feeling a bit sore and run down as it is, so this was probably as good a night as any to give it a rest.  Working out until 2:30am or so would mean that I wouldn't manage to fall asleep until probably 5am.  I like to leave home an hour before my pull time and I had a few little things to do at home, so you can do the math from there.  We'll get back at it tomorrow.  Maybe I'll back into a second run and make some extra money again.  I'm gonna need a few bucks in the bank if I wanna get to Lithuania, dontcha know.

10/1/10

If the internet and this blog were around in the 50's, I would have observed that some naked Chinaman was a little closer than he should have been while I was getting dressed after my workout tonight.  Nowadays I'm probably not supposed to say that.  I'll just refer to some nondescript dude and leave you to picture whatever sort of fella comes to mind.  In either case - creepy.  People should keep their naked asses to themselves, and this cuts across all ehtnic lines.

I'm pretty tired.  273 miles and four stops tomorrow.  Guess it's bedtime.

9/30/10

Dude.  I'm all in favor of everyone having delusions of grandeur and such.  Lord knows I try to gin up a few of my own every now and then.  That being said, did The One™ really compare his legislative agenda to the freeing of the slaves?  Why yes, it appears that he did.  I'm the unwashed rube and he's the Harvard man, so maybe he's right, but I don't know man.  Immense deficit spending with no tangible results to show = 500,000 dead Americans who fought for the most basic of human rights?  I'm sticking with my 'delusions of grandeur' assessment for now.

No delusions about my day though.  It was pretty dull.  Some sleep, some reading, some lunch, some more reading, some more sleep, some dinner, some weight training, some cardio, some more reading, and now some typing.  But hey, it took time to write War and Peace, right?  Maybe I'm working on something major... or whatever.

One load tomorrow, three stops, afternoon pull, pretty typical sort of Friday I suppose.  We'll have to see if that mechanic fella calls before I head to the office.

9/29/10

Can't blame that one on the UAW. It's the white-collared geniuses who decided to put the cup holders up against the climate controls. Every time I wanted to take a drink, I wound up switching the A/C to defrost by accident.  And apparently, unless they're each drinking a can of soda or something smaller, the driver and passenger aren't allowed to have simultaneous beverages in a Chevy Cobalt.  My iced tea from Wendy's was enough to take the adjacent cupholder completely out of play.  One more thing to hate about that piece of shit car, I suppose.  Hopefully I'll have my own ride back within a few days.

Given that today had all the markings of a royal pain in the ass, I guess I would have to say I was pleasantly surprised when it was all said and done.  Waking with a hangover is never the best way to kick off a work day, but that's just what I did this morning.  A few Advils and half a gallon of water were helpful with the headache and dry mouth, but only a good nap would be enough to shake the crappy feeling.  Unfortunately I wouldn't be taking a nap any time soon.  There was milk to deliver.

Speaking of milk, that was one more bad news aspect of the day.  My three stops today were in the Flint area and two of them were at stores without loading docks.  Peachy.  Moving the milk to the tailgate isn't terribly difficult, but getting everything rotated and dealing with the empties can be tough at certain stores.  Today was one of those days when I didn't feel like doing any physical work at all, so I wasn't looking forward to any part of the assignment.  It turned out that my first store received seven pallets of milk and only gave me five pallets of empties.  The second store (the one with a loading dock) received six and gave me three, plus had plenty of room for me to pull all of the milk out and rotate the empties to the nose of the trailer.  This meant that the last stop was relatively easy.  The trailer wasn't very full when I got there, so I had room to spin the pallet jack inside the trailer without any difficulty.  The dairy fella pulled his milk off, gave me some empties, and sent me on my way.

All told, I only worked for five and a half hours today.  That was pretty nice, given the way I was feeling at the start.  I thought I would enjoy a nice pre-workout nap once I was done working, but I never managed to get comfortable enough to sleep in that damned car.  So I did some reading instead, as I had intended to do yesterday before I was corrupted.  Good enough.  Tonight's workout certainly wasn't the most impressive one I've ever had but, all things considered, it will have to do.

Anything fun to do in Michigan tomorrow?  Probably not.