I find that I like my spot on the seniority list at work. I'm near the bottom, meaning that I'm less likely to get two loads on the days when a lot of drivers are working. I'm not all the way at the bottom though. Three or four guys were hired after me, meaning that I do catch a second load quite a bit of the time when those lower-ranked guys only get one. This seems to be a pretty good balance for me. Higher on the list, I would get two loads almost every day and work a lot more than I do now. Lower on the list, I would almost never get two loads and would make a lot less money than I do now. In addition, whenever I am among the low-ranking guys who only get one load on slow days, I always get the highest paying single load on my shift. Sometimes it becomes a matter of making thirty or forty dollars over the minimum while other guys have to settle for the $140.
In related news, I'm going to Midland and Mount Pleasant tomorrow. That's a nice and easy two-stop run, but the 301 miles are enough to bump the pay up to $164. Not early retirement kinda money or anything, but I really do like my easy shifts when I can get them. There's always gonna be a two-load day just around the corner, given the way my colleagues like to call in sick and whatnot, so I have no complaints on the light days.
As for today, blah. I slept until noon, got out of bed, felt sore, and got back into bed. That covered the first part of the day, but eventually I got hungry. And I needed some quarters in order to do my laundry. That routine is a little tedious, but it has to be done sometimes. Drive out by the airport, hit the ATM, drive over to the truck stop on Inkster, buy a fantastic Italian BMT with double meat (breaking a $20 bill in the process), drive back toward home, use the change machine at the car wash to get some quarters, then go home and wash my clothes. This is the height of fun and excitement, I can assure you.
It's really hard to top the thrill of such an entertaining evening, but I found a way to do it by golly. A nap and a workout. Woohoo! Seriously man, what a waste of a day. There's always tomorrow...
Monday, October 25, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
10/24/10
I listen to NPR a lot. In terms of political content the folks on those stations tend to be opposed to my views for the most part, but that doesn't bother me. I know who I am and I know what I believe. Hearing some self-described genius call me an idiot isn't going to change anything. When they get outside the political arena though, the NPR shows cover a breadth of topics that no other local radio channels seem to touch. I enjoy the variety.
One of tonight's NPR segments involved an author whose main point was that scientists need to learn how to speak to "regular folks" more effectively. The host of the show, in true NPR fashion, had a hang-up about climate change. In his view this is an area where the rubes among the general population simply haven't been made to understand. Obviously, as a right-wing reactionary hatemonger, I'm one of those rubes. I'm a Democrat now but, you know, I'm an idiot nonetheless.
The author guy, scientific expert that he is, said a few generic words about messaging. Then the host pressed him for an answer concerning how to make the unwashed masses fear climate change. The 'Climategate' situation was brought up as an example. Apparently, as nearly as I can tell from the ensuing conversation, it wasn't a problem that the self-described scientists were lying about their data. That was a non-issue. The problem was that they didn't react to the breaking news by taking control of the message. Instead of being a story about scientific fraud with global economic consequences, the story should have been about ILLEGAL e-mail hacking. That was the real scandal, according to the expert. I'm not an advocate for breaking into e-mail accounts or anything, but really?
This discussion, interesting as it was, didn't make me want to buy the scientist guy's book. He just sounded like a left-wing hack to me, which comes as no surprise given my status as a right-wing hatemonger. The discussion did, however, get me thinking about the scientific method.
You all know by now that my ass hurts quite a bit of the time. You also know that this seems to be the result of some kind of spine/nerve issue relating to my lower back. I've tried pain killers. I've tried anti-inflammatories. I've tried exercise. I've tried rest. The damned injury just seems to persist. (Obviously I haven't tried medical treatment just yet, but you would just have to understand my makeup...) Today's version of the experiment brought heat treatment into the equation.
I put one of those warming wraps on my back before I started work this afternoon. I was hoping to work a shift without pain, obviously, but the definition of success was hard to define. In terms of the scientific method that I'm trying to discuss here, the problem was that there's no control group. My symptoms are so random that I never know what to expect from one day to the next. One day I can walk without pain but can't sit. The next day I can sit without pain but can't walk. How would I know whether or not the heat wrap was working?
In the absence of any reliable measure of success, I decided to reduce the question to one of whether or not I would buy more heat wraps in the future. If my pain-free (or anything remotely close) shift were to occur, I decided, I would buy more of the wraps, even if they had nothing more than a placebo effect. Science can go only so far when a man has a painful ass, after all.
I made my drops in Lapeer and Imlay City without incident. I wasn't feeling like a million bucks afterward, but I was holding my own. I drove back down to Livonia and grabbed my second load. As I drove toward Toledo, I realized that I might be heading for another showdown with the supreme asshole of the dairy business. He wasn't there though, so I got to deal with the friendly old guy who has been there most of the times that I've gone to that store. That was nice.
There's a bunch of highway construction around Monroe, where my last stop was to take place, so I'm never quite sure which exits I can use and which ones are closed. I chose to drive into Michigan on Telegraph Road and then hop over to Dixie Highway, running the latter all the way into town. This worked pretty well in terms of routing. I'm not even sure that it would have been any quicker to take I-75. As I rolled toward town, my dispatcher called to ask if I had pulled my second load yet. Sure thing, sister, I'm headed to the last stop right now. Apparently the folks at the Monroe store were running out of milk and wanted to know how soon I would be there. I arrived about fifteen minutes later.
As I started to get everything situated for my fairly huge milk delivery (13 pallets and ~27,000 pounds), I noticed that something was missing. Umm, where's the power jack? Broken, as it turns out. Fuck, that's a lot of milk. I'm not a total weakling or anything, so I have the ability to pull milk from a trailer with a manual pallet jack. Throwing one more wrench into our attempts at scientific observation, however, is the fact that this particular activity doesn't seem to be good for my spine. By the time I got all 13 pallets out of the trailer I was feeling awful. Today's experiment in pain-free work had gone terribly awry.
Since I was set to do a back workout tonight and it was painful for me even to move, I chose to skip the gym and head home. We'll try getting back at it after some rest tomorrow. Seems to be the pattern, eh? Hurt - rest - work - hurt - rest - repeat. This doesn't lend itself to very effective science, but we're gonna figure out something that works, sooner or later.
One of tonight's NPR segments involved an author whose main point was that scientists need to learn how to speak to "regular folks" more effectively. The host of the show, in true NPR fashion, had a hang-up about climate change. In his view this is an area where the rubes among the general population simply haven't been made to understand. Obviously, as a right-wing reactionary hatemonger, I'm one of those rubes. I'm a Democrat now but, you know, I'm an idiot nonetheless.
The author guy, scientific expert that he is, said a few generic words about messaging. Then the host pressed him for an answer concerning how to make the unwashed masses fear climate change. The 'Climategate' situation was brought up as an example. Apparently, as nearly as I can tell from the ensuing conversation, it wasn't a problem that the self-described scientists were lying about their data. That was a non-issue. The problem was that they didn't react to the breaking news by taking control of the message. Instead of being a story about scientific fraud with global economic consequences, the story should have been about ILLEGAL e-mail hacking. That was the real scandal, according to the expert. I'm not an advocate for breaking into e-mail accounts or anything, but really?
This discussion, interesting as it was, didn't make me want to buy the scientist guy's book. He just sounded like a left-wing hack to me, which comes as no surprise given my status as a right-wing hatemonger. The discussion did, however, get me thinking about the scientific method.
You all know by now that my ass hurts quite a bit of the time. You also know that this seems to be the result of some kind of spine/nerve issue relating to my lower back. I've tried pain killers. I've tried anti-inflammatories. I've tried exercise. I've tried rest. The damned injury just seems to persist. (Obviously I haven't tried medical treatment just yet, but you would just have to understand my makeup...) Today's version of the experiment brought heat treatment into the equation.
I put one of those warming wraps on my back before I started work this afternoon. I was hoping to work a shift without pain, obviously, but the definition of success was hard to define. In terms of the scientific method that I'm trying to discuss here, the problem was that there's no control group. My symptoms are so random that I never know what to expect from one day to the next. One day I can walk without pain but can't sit. The next day I can sit without pain but can't walk. How would I know whether or not the heat wrap was working?
In the absence of any reliable measure of success, I decided to reduce the question to one of whether or not I would buy more heat wraps in the future. If my pain-free (or anything remotely close) shift were to occur, I decided, I would buy more of the wraps, even if they had nothing more than a placebo effect. Science can go only so far when a man has a painful ass, after all.
I made my drops in Lapeer and Imlay City without incident. I wasn't feeling like a million bucks afterward, but I was holding my own. I drove back down to Livonia and grabbed my second load. As I drove toward Toledo, I realized that I might be heading for another showdown with the supreme asshole of the dairy business. He wasn't there though, so I got to deal with the friendly old guy who has been there most of the times that I've gone to that store. That was nice.
There's a bunch of highway construction around Monroe, where my last stop was to take place, so I'm never quite sure which exits I can use and which ones are closed. I chose to drive into Michigan on Telegraph Road and then hop over to Dixie Highway, running the latter all the way into town. This worked pretty well in terms of routing. I'm not even sure that it would have been any quicker to take I-75. As I rolled toward town, my dispatcher called to ask if I had pulled my second load yet. Sure thing, sister, I'm headed to the last stop right now. Apparently the folks at the Monroe store were running out of milk and wanted to know how soon I would be there. I arrived about fifteen minutes later.
As I started to get everything situated for my fairly huge milk delivery (13 pallets and ~27,000 pounds), I noticed that something was missing. Umm, where's the power jack? Broken, as it turns out. Fuck, that's a lot of milk. I'm not a total weakling or anything, so I have the ability to pull milk from a trailer with a manual pallet jack. Throwing one more wrench into our attempts at scientific observation, however, is the fact that this particular activity doesn't seem to be good for my spine. By the time I got all 13 pallets out of the trailer I was feeling awful. Today's experiment in pain-free work had gone terribly awry.
Since I was set to do a back workout tonight and it was painful for me even to move, I chose to skip the gym and head home. We'll try getting back at it after some rest tomorrow. Seems to be the pattern, eh? Hurt - rest - work - hurt - rest - repeat. This doesn't lend itself to very effective science, but we're gonna figure out something that works, sooner or later.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
10/23/10
I sure hope there's something in those Wikileak documents about our navy secretly using NFL players on its football team. Otherwise I'm pretty sure we've reached a new low in Fighting Irish history. It was bad enough to see the 43 game streak end a few years back, but Notre Dame was playing a bunch of freshmen at the time and the game was close. Then last year was frustrating, but again at least it was a decent game. Today a bunch of 300+ pound men got pushed around by a bunch of 240 pound men. A bunch of guys who run the 40 yard dash in 5.2 seconds ran circles around a bunch of guys who do it in 4.4. Absolutely humiliating.
Adding insult to injury, today was the first time all season that my schedule allowed me to see a whole game. My youngest brother had given me a gift card to Hooters for my birthday, so a buddy and I went there for lunch today. Believe it or not, I've never been all that impressed with Hooters (at least not with the capital 'H,' if you catch my drift, and I think you do). I went there several years ago with a friend and found that the food sucked, the prices were high, and the women weren't any better than those at many of the local dive bars around here. Today I found that not much has changed over the years. A gift card is a gift card though, so there we were. Getting back to the 'insult to injury' part... I had to work tonight so I didn't even get to knock back any beers to dull the pain. Woe is me.
Adding injury to insult... or something... my ass hurts again. I got a lot of bed rest on Thursday and then didn't have to do much walking at work yesterday. So by the time I skipped last night's workout, my back had been rested better than at any point since it was injured. Whenever I went to bed last night I had almost started to forget about the pain and such. Almost. Then I got out of bed this morning feeling pretty stiff. Not too bad though... yet. The pain started to kick in between my first and second stops tonight and kept building as time went along. By the time I left the gym after my workout, it was hard to get into my car. Shit.
I stopped at Meijer on the way home and grabbed a heating pad and a couple of boxes of those ThermaCare heat wrap things. I'm grasping at straws here, but I ain't ready to quit the fight just yet. I'm sitting on the heating pad as I type this and the pain seems to be easing a little bit. Maybe there's hope for tomorrow then. I'll have two loads, each with two stops, so I should be at work for around eleven hours or so. If today's pattern gets repeated, only with double the working hours, it's gonna be ugly. My hope is that those heat wraps, combined with some Aleve, can get me through to my day off on Monday. That's my hope.
Adding insult to injury, today was the first time all season that my schedule allowed me to see a whole game. My youngest brother had given me a gift card to Hooters for my birthday, so a buddy and I went there for lunch today. Believe it or not, I've never been all that impressed with Hooters (at least not with the capital 'H,' if you catch my drift, and I think you do). I went there several years ago with a friend and found that the food sucked, the prices were high, and the women weren't any better than those at many of the local dive bars around here. Today I found that not much has changed over the years. A gift card is a gift card though, so there we were. Getting back to the 'insult to injury' part... I had to work tonight so I didn't even get to knock back any beers to dull the pain. Woe is me.
Adding injury to insult... or something... my ass hurts again. I got a lot of bed rest on Thursday and then didn't have to do much walking at work yesterday. So by the time I skipped last night's workout, my back had been rested better than at any point since it was injured. Whenever I went to bed last night I had almost started to forget about the pain and such. Almost. Then I got out of bed this morning feeling pretty stiff. Not too bad though... yet. The pain started to kick in between my first and second stops tonight and kept building as time went along. By the time I left the gym after my workout, it was hard to get into my car. Shit.
I stopped at Meijer on the way home and grabbed a heating pad and a couple of boxes of those ThermaCare heat wrap things. I'm grasping at straws here, but I ain't ready to quit the fight just yet. I'm sitting on the heating pad as I type this and the pain seems to be easing a little bit. Maybe there's hope for tomorrow then. I'll have two loads, each with two stops, so I should be at work for around eleven hours or so. If today's pattern gets repeated, only with double the working hours, it's gonna be ugly. My hope is that those heat wraps, combined with some Aleve, can get me through to my day off on Monday. That's my hope.
Friday, October 22, 2010
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.
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.
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