Ah, three days off. The timing is tremendous.

Of course, any holiday affects revenues. While I am salaried, it makes no difference but since I am accountable for coordinating work for the company, it makes me look at the bottom line. It seems as though this year has been feast or famine. Feast while at the seasonal jobsite and famine ever since.

I suppose that I should be thankful that I have had the opportunity to observe first hand the major equipment used at the seasonal jobsite. It has seemed like two pieces are exceptional while the one has been a money pit. This past week saw me replace the air conditioner compressor for the second time in a month. Of course it was warranteed but the unit lost two days of work.

My week consisted of Abilene-Lubbock on #18, shop work on #222, Abilene-Fort Worth-Abilene, Abilene-Lubbock-Plainview-Abilene, and Abilene-Fort Worth-Dallas-Abilene. It was a pretty good week until the last day, Friday before a holiday. Any dispatcher who schedules appointments in the metroplex after noon on a Friday before a holiday should be shot! And that is exactly what my dispatcher did. I had a ten o'clock appointment to unload in Fort Worth Friday morning, but since I was the first company truck in, I had the luxury of dropping my loaded trailer and picking up an empty to expedite my day. I arrived in Dallas at eleven to pick up. I didn't have a load number but my appointment time was 2pm. (???) Turned out another company truck had finaled out nearby and beat me there, his appointment was for 5pm. but he had signed in under my load time. (Yuk!). A call to the office sorted things out, but I sat on the street waiting to enter the plant until my appointment time of two. Finally just after three I was loaded and out the gate. As soon as I hit Interstate 30 it was backed up with traffic, for almost the next ninety miles. All the way through Dallas, Grand Prairie, Arlington, Fort Worth, continuing all the way through and West of Weatherford to the 391 mile marker at Hillbilly Haven on the river. I have never seen such idiot drivers. No common sense, no reasoning ability. I saw drivers taking exits around bridges and enter the next entrance ramp trying to improve their positions by a couple of vehicles. An accident at the 413 mile marker was the reason for the extended backup to Weatherford and it seemed no one could drive for rubber necking. Another accident farther west of there ruined someone's long weekend plans. Finally, four and a half hours after I left Dallas, I arrived in Abilene. I'm not going back at least for three days.

Krl had made a deal with a man to do our yard. He began shortly before we returned from the jobsite in April. Every Friday, (with one exception) he showed up and mowed, weed-eated and edged. On occasion, his wife would help. Krl always had a big pitcher of ice tea ready for them to take a break. The fee was minimal, especially when you consider the cost of gas. Thursday evening before I got home the yard man called Krl and told her he was having elbow surgery this coming Tuesday and he was through for at least three months. Crudola. That meant the second team had been elevated to the game. I had total confidence in the equipment and Saturday morning I began to get it out and fuel and service it. A friend had called and volunteered to help, in fact he has been wanting to do the yard but we had refused since Krl had her other deal in place. As it turned out I spent all morning working on the mower. The gas weed-eater ran like a top but the mower kept faltering and dying. I finally determined it to be a fuel problem and removed the carburetor and cleaned it and repositioned a pin in the float. I assembled it and it ran like a top for just a few minutes and died again. I removed the bowl from the bottom of the carburetor and it was dry, no gas. In fact when I would work the float up and down no gas flowed. I reached up and loosened the gas cap and gas would begin to flow. Hummmm. A vent problem. I don't know what the deal is but once I had it back together and loosened the cap, the mower ran like a charm!

Of course we were racing the weather, we wanted to get done before the monsoon rains began. Of course the meteorologists were talking just to hear themselves. I am still waiting for the rain.
And to think, I whipped a poor turtle with Johnson grass so it would rain!

Dumb deeds. Yesterday morning I was on the cordless phone talking with my Mom when I walked outside and began rolling mowing equipment out of the garage. I finally sat down on one of the flower boxes and finished our conversation. When I had finally healed the lawn mower, I began to gather tools and such when I realized I didn't know where the cordless phone was at. I still don't. I have called it, I have paged it. I have listened to the dumpster to see if I threw it in there. I have looked in the flower beds, the shrubs, my pickup. I have looked everywhere. Only possibility is that I layed it on the bumper of my pickup prior to me going to get my tools from the big truck. Actually, I even re-drove that route. I would have liked to at least known what I did with it. Finally I unplugged the base unit and retrieved the company phone that goes in the travel trailer. If you see a black and silver cordless phone (I think it was a GE) and it is ringing, please answer it and if it is for me, leave me a message here.

Actually it was a piece of crap phone and if I had seen it on the roadway intact, I would have been tempted to run over it. But, now we'll never know.

I hate it when I do dumb stuff. My only excuse was I did catch a brief glimpse of Dumb and Dumber yesterday on the tele.

FATHER, is there a factory recall on me?