I'm back!!!

Ok, not back out on the road, but back to blogging! I can not believe that it has been over a year since I last posted! A lot has changed in that year and we are not OTR drivers any more. Let me start at the beginning and go from there.

Last year I had decided to come off the truck in October after our vacation in Honduras so that I could go to massage therapy school. I came off the road and settled down here in Lubbock,Texas. I started school November 1st. This coming November I will finally be through! I am taking night classes and working full time during the day.

I am still driving a truck though. Although not a semi. I got a job with a local company doing delivery. It is called Empire Paper and we deliver mainly paper products, but really anything from Bic pens to 55 gallon drums of chemicals. Having a Class A and my Hazmat has come in real handy! Even though it is considered "local", we usually cover an average of 350 miles a day. I usually deliver in Amarillo every day and every other Monday and Tuesday I go to New Mexico and deliver in Tucumcari, Santa Rosa, Santa Fe and Albuquerque. That trip I spend the night in Albuquerque. I don't have the hours to legally drive back home. It has been quite an experience. I am the only female driver they have and the first they have ever hired. Mainly because it is a very physical job. It is all hand unload and I can have up to 30 stops a day dealing with full pallets or one or two items. And boy has it whipped me into shape. I have lost all the weight I gained sitting behind the wheel of the semi and I'm now down to 118 pounds! It sure beats going to the gym. One thing that does suck though is doing these deliveries in temps over 100 degrees in the summer and below 0 in the winter. Oh, we did have some runs to some schools a few weeks ago that I got where I actually got to drive a semi again. It was a lot of fun! :)

Joe finished our lease with Prime at the first part of May and he came back home. We bought a house here in Lubbock where we are planning to stay so that we can be closer to my parents. Dad's health isn't great. Joe also got on with Empire Paper. About 2 weeks before he turned in the truck we had a driver quit and my boss hired him over the phone. Of course, he had met Joe before, but what a blessing that Joe didn't have to go hunt a job. And the supre great thing about this is that it is a Monday-Friday job. Off weekends and holidays. Granted it is usually a 12 hour work day and I get up around 0330 and leave town around 0500 to get to Amarillo by 0700, but it is a nice gig. Lots of overtime and I only work 4 days one week and 5 the next. So every other week I get a three day weekend. :)

I have lots more that I can post, but I have to get ready to head to school. I have to be there in about 30 minutes. I can't post a lot about being over the road anymore, but if you are interested in what we are doing now, stay tuned!

Oh, Smokey is doing well and says "Woof!!" :-)