My sacrificed Saturday bit into my Sunday and Monday. Hopefully I have caught up. Needless to say, my day yesterday was spent between the home office, Fed Ex Office (formerly Kinko's), the post office, and other points of necessity.

In the best news of the young week, we got mail. Best part of the mail was it contained a payment from our #1 customer and covered three billing cycles! Thank YOU LORD!

I guess Krl had more faith than I did, prior to my going to the post office, she had removed and dated a deposit slip.

I continue to get calls concerning our decision not to sign the contract for the seasonal work. Most are wanting reasons. One thing I have noticed is that apparently no one likes the new general manager, and even fewer people trust him.

I guess I should feel sorry for him.

Naaaa! He deserves it!

The other night I had changed into my lounging clothes and noticed a small bump on my collar bone about the size of a golf ball. Closer observation confirmed what I thought. It is back.

As many family and close friends know, in '07 and '08 I had two surgeries removing 17 lipomas. They ranged in size from the size of a fifty cent piece to four by nine and a half inches. I had commented that all the locations continued to give me phantom pains after they were removed. There are several of these that made it very uncomfortable to sit with pressure on my back for extended periods, yet others seem to be painful when I stand for extended periods.

Closer scrutiny by Krl and I revealed that most of the removed lipomas are beginning to return. I may call the surgeon and ask him for some warranty!

Yesterday Pepa called me. A potential truck driver was at his house. Pepa seems to be waivering between wanting to run both his trucks and parking both his trucks. The employee candidate's name sounded familiar but try as I might, I could not place the man. Finally, after straining my brain, I finally recalled the man. He had worked for the family business when he was younger. In fact, Fred thought enough of this man when he was too young to meet the insurance minimum age, that he had requested a waiver. I am still putting together a timeline, it seems to be a year or two off though.

A few weeks ago, we had swapped one driver from Pepa's Volvo truck into his Kenworth. The Volvo was in need of some preventative maintenance. We had a list of thing that we needed to do, but had put them off hoping to wait until money was more abundant. When Krl's truck had a problem, I moved her driver into Pepa's Volvo until her truck was repaired. It had been used on a standby or spare basis. Yesterday, Pepa decided to put the potential driver to work and they took the truck to the shop.

One of Krl's primary vendor contacts had been on vacation, and the "fill in" seems to only want to dispatch half of the requested number of loads. Krl had secured one load for today and one load for Tuesday. I went on line to a load service and much to my surprise learned there were loads available in the area. We contacted the vendor and began filling out set up paperwork. Before it was over, Krl had another load and expanded our load base.

As our luck would have it, moments after she committed to the load from the new vendor, our regular contact called with loads for today and Thursday. So now she has a load for Pepa's new driver too!

Pete, our primary back haul contact, had been on vacation last week. Even though he was on vacation, he talked with Krl regularly. He has told Krl that we are his number one carrier and even when he was gone, he made sure her trucks got loaded. Yesterday, Krl dunned the man for a payment. She is very tactful, but she gets her point across. He told her he had nothing for her from their payables clerk, but would get something in the works, maybe for when the trucks return there Wednesday. She told him that they owed five figures, and had gone over the credit terms we agreed on. Last time she went through this, they paid totally up!

When Krl's driver called in to tell her he was loaded, he told her Pete was sending a check. It turned out he found a check that had been sent prior to him going on vacation all of last week.

That sure would have been nice to have last week.

Oh well.

Today I have the parts store on my agenda. Rian returns to work at school. He does one day today and then is off until Monday. His summer is over. I am still trying to understand his contract. Jimmy, the building Principal, is on a twelve month contract. Rian is on ten month contract, yet he worked eleven including summer school. Even last week he went on campus and sat in on a departmental meeting and earlier in the summer he helped conduct interviews for vacancies in the classrooms.

Rian had spent part of his day trying to get his pulling tractors ready. Before they went to camp he had taken his big tractor in to have some driveline work done. Yesterday he took it to McAdoo to let Cameron, another puller, teach him how to adjust his multi disc clutch. There they found some other damage from when he broke at Maxwell. It seems the pilot bearing in the back of the crankshaft was bad, the clutch input shaft was bent, and the bearing on the back of the clutch can was broken. Cameron made a quick call to Tim Engler, a leading equipment fabricator, who pointed them where to go to get a replacement shaft. It amazes me how the spline count and the length can identify what they needed. I guess when you are in the business you just get good!

K.O. and his brother went to Lindsay this past weekend. The had a good weekend, four firsts, two seconds and three thirds. Not bad. Worse thing was they hurt their motor in one of their two wheelers. Again. Last time out they had metal in the oil filter which ended up being a rod bearing problem. They ran Friday night and had a similar problem. And they had the engine freshened prior to. K.O. was singing the blues when we talked. He said they are going to check it out, but if it is too major, they will park it until later. I may have to go by the burger and give Larry a pep talk.

Well, I'm going to get a jump on my day. Hope you have one!

FATHER, thank YOU. We are so blessed. YOU continue to amaze me at how YOU meet our needs. I continue to lift up Tyler for YOUR gifts of healing. YOUR will be done.