New Blog, New Thoughts

www.everydaythoughtsandramblings.blogspot.com I have started a new blog since I am not OTR any longer. Click on the above link if you would like to follow along!!

Cooler weather!

I am loving this cooler weather!! Here in Texas this summer we have had over 45 days of 100 degree temperatures and something like 34 of them in a row! Wow! This past week has been wonderful. Lows at night in the upper 50's and highs in the low 80's. Now that is what I am talking about!

Work is going good. I talked to my boss and I think he is going to be able to work it to where I can have every Friday off for a few months so that I can get my internship done. Our classroom work only has about another month but I have to get 50 hours of massage in before I can be finished.

We also have a semi at work now that we will be using every other week for one of our customers that will be ordering anywhere from 18-30 pallets of product each day. We have a 53' trailer also. Joe and I are the ones with the most experience driving the semi so that means we will usually be the ones that are taking that run. It is only up to Amarillo so we can be there and back in about five and a half hours so it is easy but we will have to find something else to do to get us our 40 hours. I took it up there on Tuesday and I have to say it sure was nice to be in a "big" truck again! Although it is going to take some getting used to the fact that it is a day cab! I'm not used to having a window behind me in a truck!!

We did some more work on our master bedroom. We got all of the trim stained for the walls and doors. We got some beadboard up on the pony wall that is separating the bedroom from the bathroom and we almost have the shower to the point that we can start laying down the tile. We haven't done tile work before and this shower is 6'6" long by 3'4" deep. We have decided to use big 20x20 tiles and will have to make some cuts. I guess we will figure it out and learn as we go. :-)

Today was a pretty easy day at work. I went up to Amarillo but I only had 9 stops so I was back and done by 1300. Granted I left Lubbock at 0500, but this was definitely a short day. I met Joe (he took the big truck and was back by 1030) and we got both of the vehicles inspected and now I'm back at the house. I have class tonight. Fun Pathology! (..<--- insert sarcasm there). I am thinking a nap is in order. I don't usually get one of those but I almost feel like I may be coming down with something. My eyes are itchy so definitely need to get a nap. I think I will do that now.......

Another new post!

Two days in a row! I think I am on a roll here!!

Ok, so I still need to give you more updates. We still have the houseboat and are still working on getting it finished. It is still in Atlanta and we are working on getting it moved to Texas. We will move it to Lubbock and then get the rest of the work done and then move it again to a lake. Still thinking about Lake Lewisville in the Dallas area but we will see what happens when the time comes for that. It is still quite a ways off.

I mentioned that I am going to school for Massage Therapy. I found a great school here in Lubbock. I have been taking the night classes which are every Tuesday and Thursday from 1800-2200 and then every other Saturday from 0800-1600. The night classes take a year so I have about 3 months left. Some nights it is all I can do to concentrate since I get up at 0330 for work. So nights that I have class are usually 18-19 hour days. I get home and get in bed by 2230 and am back up at 0330. This girl needs more than 5 hours of sleep a night! but I keep telling myself that it will all be worth it in the end.

One thing that I learned about Massage Therapy is that is is WAY more involved than I thought it would be. I mean, I thought, "Hey. I'm gonna go to school and learn how to give an awesome massage. No Problem!" Boy, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I probably would never have attempted this if I had known ahead of time how involved it was. But, here I am. Since you have to have a license from the state to be a Massage Therapist (or LMT Licensed Massage Therapist) you have to be licensed through the health department. A massage therapist is part of the medical field. So, I have to learn Anatomy and Physiology, Pathology, and Kinesiology. Holy Cow! And of course the business classes and technique classes and different types of modalities of massage. There is the most common, Swedish Massage. But then there are other things that you can do such as Thai Massage, which is more of a stretching type of massage, or you can do hot rocks, Reiki (which is energy work), Myofacial, Trigger Point and the list goes on. Crazy! So far we are all taught the Swedish, which is what all LMT's do. But then we can specialize in other modalities. I am really interested in Energy work and Thai massage. Both have to to with realigning your body. But there is more to it than that. It is aligning your energy and Chakras and auras. I find it all fascinating but a little out there. Kinda New Age-ish. But it is still interesting and I will say that I am skeptically optimistic about the kind of work that can be done in the Energy fields.

Well, I had class last night, Kinesiology, and I worked this morning. I delivered in Amarillo and Plainview today. I got up to the Hastings Distribution center in Amarillo around 0730. I had 10 pallets for them. In Amarillo, we usually have two drivers. It is divided into East and West routes. Today I had West but it was a short day. After Hastings I only had 5 stops in Amarillo. then I headed back to Lubbock stopping in Tulia for fuel and in Plainview for my last 3 stops. I was back to the warehouse by about 1225 and doen with cleaning my truck and doing my paperwork by 1245. That means I made it home by 1300 and my short day was only an 8 hour work day! Usually they are 11-12 hours, so I will take an 8 hour day whenever I can.

Tomorrow they have me doing what they call the Shuttle Run. I will be going to Turkey, Silverton, Floydada, Ralls, Crosbyton, Lockney and Petersburg. Turkey is about 2 hours away so I think I am going to leave Lubbock around 0700. I have one of the new guys riding with me tomorrow. He isn't the newest and he is kinda already trained but tomorrow is a slow day so I guess they are just trying to give him hours to make his 40. Joe will be going up to Amarillo with Jason. Joe hasn't done Amarillo a whole lot so it will be good for him to go with Jason. I don't think it is a lot of stops, or they could have split it up and given Joe West and Jason East, but I guess they figure it will take longer if they go together and do all the stops instead of splitting them so they can get their hours. Sometimes I wonder why I bother guessing why they do what they do. Because they never do what you think they will do when it comes to scheduling.

One thing I do really like about this job though is that I don't have anyone watching over my shoulder. I was dreading having to report to someone after being my own boss for the last 4 years. But they really don't do that here and it is nice. For instance, each evening I line out my stops for the next day. That means I put my tickets in the order that I want to make my deliveries, and then that night the warehouse loads the truck. They next day I show up, get my truck and go. When I am done, I come back, clean out my truck, do my paperwork and leave. Of course I get the occasional calls but I don't have anyone telling me how to do my job. It is really nice.

I guess that is all for today. Hopefully there will be more to come tomorrow. I do have class so whether or not I blog will depend on my schedule. Have a great evening!

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!!" :-)

Springfield,MO

Another day with the truck in the shop! UGH! But as soon as we are done with this we will be back on the road again. We had to bring the truck into the shop Thursday night for an 0800 appt with the APU shop on Friday morning. It is too darn hot out here to be without an APU. Especially when we are at shippers/receivers that don't allow you to idle the truck while we are being loaded or unloaded.

We also had to get a PM done, which we are getting now, and get two new drive tires. Picked up a nail in one that must have had a slow leak because it never actually went flat. Just lost enough air that it caused both tires on that side to wear extremely fast. So now that we have that taken care of, I am hoping that we will be good and ready to roll.

We have a load that we broght with us and we will hook back up to that one and deliver it out to Apple Valley,CA on Monday. From there we aren't sure where they will send us. We are supposed to be in Lubbock,TX on Saturday July 24th. That gives us about 5 days. I don't know if they will send up to the east coast and then to Lubbock or maybe something to the Chicago or Midwest area and then on down to Lubbock. My birthday, the big 4-0 is Sunday the 25th so we are celebrating on Saturday the 24th. So we HAVE to be back for that!!

Not much else going on. We have been fairly busy. I just keep forgetting to blog. I have to tell J that he needs to start reminding me! After almost three years of daily posting, I have seriously fallen off the wagon!

LasVegas,NV

Do you see my location?? Finally got the truck fixed and got the heck out of Atlanta. We were there a total of 20 days and only 9 of those were working on the boat I think. UGH! Small blessings though, I did find out that I was getting breakdown pay so we will about break even, even with the down time, so I am very thankful about that!

Once we had the truck back last Thursday evening, we picked up a load in Calhoun,GA and ran it up to Plainview,TX and dropped it off Saturday morning. We picked up a load in Plainview fron EXCEL but I had to make a stop in Lubbock because the reefer was having issues. Luckily that was a 2 hour fix and we were on the road again. We have two deliveries on this load. We delivered the first in Casa Grande,AZ on Sunday morning and now I am sitting in Las Vegas,NV waiting to drop the last of it here at Sysco which is about half a mile away from the Petro that we are parked at.

When we delivered in Casa Grande yesterday, they unloaded 32,ooo lbs of beef which left me with only 3 pallets weighing about 3,000 lbs. I am so glad things worked out that way and that I was super light, almost empty, because losing that weight saved me from being in an accident yesterday and most likely saved me from killing some people.

I was driving west on I-10 on the west side of Phoenix. It is a really long stretch of road for at least 60 miles I bet without a single curve in the road. There was a truck on the right shoulder that was broke down and he had his triangles out. There was a black Camry and a brown Toyota Tundra passing me in the left lane and as soon as they passed me, I got in the left lane to pass the broke down truck. As soon as I got passed the truck, I signaled to get back in the right lane and out of nowhere, a black Honda comes flying up to pass me on the right. So I stay in the left lane to let the idiot pass. I swear he was doing at least 90 mph. Anyway, he goes to the shoulder, even though I am still in the left lane, to finish passing me. Meanwhile, the Camry, which was in front of the Toyota, signals to come back to the right lane. As far as she can tell, the lane is clear because the idiot in the Honda is still on the shoulder. At this point, they are about 100 ft in front of me and I start to merge back to the right again. Well, as the Camry comes to the right lane, to let the Toyota pass, the Honda decided to swerve into the right lane behind the Camry, but he is going to fast. So he jerks it back to the shoulder to pass her on the shoulder! He gets a little loose and tries to get in front of her but he clips her on the right front quarter panel and he comes over. This basically means the Camry did a pit maneuver to the Honda which sent him spinning into the left lane. The Camry bounced to the left, and hit the Toyota, which then made the Camry go spinning onto the right shoulder down a ditch. The Honda was now spinnng in front of the Toyota and the push from the Camry into the Toyota had the Toyota and the Honda spinning, side by side, into the center median. And all of this was no more than 100 ft in front of me!

Anyway, I manage to get stopped and pulled to the right shoulder just past where they went off the road. In my rearview mirror, I couldn't even see the road because of all of the dust and sand from the wreck. I was sure that all three cars had rolled. I grab the CB and tell everyone to slow down and that the lanes were clear, even though they couldn't see, because of the sand, and that the cars had went off the road. Then I call 911 and jump out of the truck while I am still on the phone to go check for injuries. I don't know how, but the good Lord was watching over everyone, because none of the cars rolled and there were no injuries. Amazing. But like I said earlier, if I had not unloaded that 32,000 lbs earlier that morning, there is no way I could have stopped and I would have rammed right through those three cars when they got together. When I say the Honda slip in behind the Camry and slam on his brakes, I started shutting the truck down because I just knew this was going to be bad. Since I was almost empty I was able to get slowed down enough to not hit anyone.

So, lesson for the day. Don't be an idiot and try to pass on the shoulder!! Get your head out of your ass and pay attention. Slowing down for 5 seconds to let someone slower that you pass BEFORE you go around them, in the left lane, could save your life or someone elses life!

Atlanta,GA

Trying to be optomistic, this is our last day in the hotel. We are keeping our fingers crossed that they will give us the release tomorrow so we can get the heck out of Dodge.

So for our last day, we are being extremely lazy. Went to bed last night around 0300 and got up around 1100 today. Had some coffee, warmed up some left over pizza and now we are enjoying and NCIS Marathon on tv. It is shaping up to be a great last day! Now to just get a nap in at some point. :)