Hey, ProATC, you like those shots of Herreshoff designs? F#%ng cool, huh? I still may wind up living aboard a boat, I'm sort of in this weird limbo right now with the house, the job situation, the cats, etc., and I'm not sure how it's all going to pan out. I'm just hangin' on till the election, since that will certainly affect my decision, but I can always flip this home and try my luck elsewhere... it's a primo place, but I'm not tied to it, ya know? I don't have any kids in school, wife with a job, or any of that, I just have my three cats but I'm reluctant to part with 'em, since they're like my kids. I reckon I can rehome 'em if necessary, but if I do that, I'll probably just flip the home, throw stuff in storage, go take a big ol' sailing vacay in Dago, and check listings for boats on moorings in CA, or other properties for sale here in Arizona. I could buy a sweet spread farther east, free & clear, but then I'd have to deal with all that humid slop every summer, and that sh!t sucks. Plus I already have my Arizona license, vehicle registration, etc., in place, so I'd be more inclined to buy property here, UNLESS I wound up living aboard a boat.
So, that's what I've been going through lately, racking my brain for the best possible solution. I *might* take a roommate solely to have someone here to watch the home and cats while I'm trucking, IF I go trucking again, but that seems like a tall order, finding the right person. Gotta be a non-smoking cat lover, for starters... no tobacco, I mean, I couldn't care less if the person does bong hits on the view deck. But I don't want my home reeking of stanky ol' tobacco, and I damn sure don't need to be picking up filters left by some butthead. I'd also have to find someone who isn't a friggin' SLOB, as I have little-to-zero patience for slobs. Might even be a negative reading, LOL. Last thing I wanna do is come off the road and discover that my home has been trashed by some slob... I'd wind up beatin' that tard to death with my bare hands, then I'd have to dump the corpse out in the brush where the mountains meet the high desert. And all of that would cut into my valuable time off, don'tcha know? Meh, I'm working on the right solution, it may just take a little more time before I know which course to choose.
Ideally, I get on with the county and I'm right back where I was earlier this year, making money and racking up PTO while dumping the maximum allowed contribution into the excellent ASRP, or Arizona State Retirement Program. It's a good retirement program too, the only one offering more is the one for law enforcement under the same umbrella, so to speak. Damn, I STILL can't believe I lost a good city job by calling out some friggin' inmate for smoking near fuel... that just blows my mind, especially after I worked so hard to clean up that filthy shop and get 65 gas-powered carts up & running strongly, go figure. But it's all part of that modern PC bull$h!t: God forbid I hurt the poor inmate's feelings as he endangers the lives of others in the workplace, AYE??? Frankly, I can't think of a more serious OSHA violation than smoking near fuel, unless it's smoking near EXPLOSIVES. Ah, well, there's no going back now, the damage is done and I've been struggling ever since to get my life back in order... f___, I could've already taken a paid sailing vacation in Dago if that whole fiasco hadn't happened.
It's enough to p!ss off the goddam Pope, and I've had a hard time processing it, ya know? I try to do the right thing and obey regulations... D.O.T. regs while out trucking, OSHA regs in the workplace, Army regs in the Infantry, gubmint regs to cover whatever else wasn't addressed, you name it. And I haven't always LIKED doing it either, but I did my best... well, I falsified a few logbooks out trucking, but EVERYBODY does that, or everybody used to do it, now they have electronic logs so maybe that cuts down on the "comic book" action. Brings back some funny memories... I passed Calculus in high school so I never had much trouble with math, which made logbook falsification pretty darned easy, and my logbook was golden too, so golden that I could roll up on a D.O.T. scale (or chicken coop) with no worries, and when the D.O.T. man asked me for my logbook, I'd reply with a straight face, "WHICH ONE???" That always garnered some strange looks & raised eyebrows, LOL, but I kept my truck clean along with my logbook, and I don't look like some tweekin' crackerhead, so humor usually won the day.
Funniest moment ever when dealing with the D.O.T.---I rolled up on the Joplin chicken house on I-44 while dragging a load of lead solder waste from Dago to western PA, it was a glorious spring day so I was dressed in baggy field shorts, black Vibram-soled Danner Commander boots, and $400 prescription (pre-Lasik) sunglasses. There's a camera by that scale, so the D.O.T. man told me, "Park around the back and bring in all your paperwork." My reply: "Okay, let me put on a shirt!" So I pull around and park, then grab a primo Hawaiian shirt made entirely of hemp, a shirt I bought at 'The Hemporium' in Springfield, MO, on a previous trip. This was a very nice $60 hemp Hawaiian shirt, black with little green dope leaves edged in silver, 10-4? The thing was good-looking too, the best Hawaiian shirt I've ever seen, and quality hemp construction to boot. Anyway, I don this shirt and grab my stack of paperwork: logbook, permit book, tall stack of Uniform Hazardous Waste Manifests, etc., a stack of bull$h!t about 6 or 8 inches high, and I hold the stack on one forearm as I enter the chicken house.
As soon as I enter, I look over to see one D.O.T. man grilling some Mexican driver, questioning him about how long it took to drive down from Chicago. The Mexican mumbled some b.s., and the D.O.T. man made a loud denial buzzer noise, saying, "WRONG ANSWER!!!" I turned to see another D.O.T. bear sitting at a desk, this was obviously the guy in charge, so I stepped over and stood before his desk, patiently waiting as he ignored me for awhile (just to put me in my place). I now had that stack of paperwork and permits & whatnot resting on my right hand, my elbow crooked so I looked for all the world like an Italian waiter in a restaurant. The D.O.T. bear kept reading whatever he had in front of him on his desk, then he finally glanced up at me, to see this ex-Infantry soldier patiently waiting, stack of paperwork in hand. After looking directly into my eyes, his gaze wandered back down toward his desk, like he was gonna keep me waiting a little while longer... somewhere along the line, the shirt registered with him, and he did the CLASSIC WIDE-EYED DOUBLE-TAKE, only to ROAR:
"GET THE F#% OUT OF HERE!!!"
No lie, he actually said this, and of course I was in such a good mood, it being a fine spring day and all, with my trip from CA to PA going quite well and fully ahead of schedule, that I leaned forward over his desk, holding the stack of b.s. out toward him in my hand the same way an Italian waiter would present a tray full of food to diners in a friggin' restaurant, and I asked him:
"WHAT, YOU DON'T WANT TO CHECK MY PAPERWORK?!?!?"
Classic f#%ng moment, with the D.O.T. bear roaring (again) in mock offended dignity:
"GET THE F#% OUT OF HERE!!!"
It was goddam hilarious... but by that time, I figured I'd better not press my luck, so I straightened up, turned around and beat feet for the door, before the guy had a chance to change his mind, LOL. I hustled out to my truck, leapt aboard, fired the ignition and put her in gear, to promptly roll around the chicken house and across the scale again. Maybe the D.O.T. bear had his big boss coming to visit, and he didn't want some @$$hole trucker standing around while wearing a Hawaiian dope shirt... I'll never know, but it was a classic moment in trucking, back in the late '90s when things were a little different than they are today, and two hands on opposite sides of that industry could share a hilarious moment. Meh, my truck was brand-new, the lease wagon was new, and the guy probably remembered me from a previous trip, as I used to roll across that scale on a regular basis. But it was pretty darned funny, and I never got through that scale any quicker, thanks to that Hawaiian dope shirt, LOL. Ah, yes, the memories... I might go trucking again, but this sort of hilarious moment belongs to the past.
WELL, I SEE I'M RAMBLING HERE, BUT I'M JUST ENJOYING A QUIET DAY IN THIS LITTLE BURG... NICE WEATHER TOO, WHICH IS A PLUS. GUESS I'LL GRAB A BEER AND SIT OUTSIDE FOR A BIT, ON MY VIEW DECK UNDER THE METAL AWNING ON THE EAST SIDE. CHEERS!!!
