Thursday -

Got a bit of catching up to do, guess Jason's motivator speech didn't hold. We've been pretty busy since Sat. We slipped on into WI and dropped our load at WalMart early Sunday and got our next work assignment for Monday morning. We were to pick up a load (41,000 lbs) of Aluminum coloring for ceramic mixing close to the Detroit OC so we headed over there and had a nice afternoon. Had a picnic and got our walk in - nice afternoon. We picked up the powder and headed for Kansas City, MO. On the way we dropped in on Andrea and had a great dinner at the Flat Top grill in Champaign and spent the night. In the morning (Tue) we continued on. We dropped into the Edwardsville, IL OC about 10 am and got fuel and took showers. I had planned to stop just east of KC and spend the night, but no the consignee needed the product for production the next day. So we hustled our butts on in. Well we figured we would spend the night in KC and hopefully get a load early Wed. Nope. Got our next W/A to go over to Procter & Gamble and pick up another 40,000 pounds of --- coffee.

I had a bit of consternation on this.... we woke up early and decide to hit the road about 5 am I had figured to be in Oconomowoc, WI (534 miles) by 5 pm and unload and then we could rest. Nope again. They only take deliveries after midnight. That's going to be tough since I can really only work 14 hours and then take a 10 hour break. You can't get that all in by midnight. What to do, what to do ? We checked into a Hilton Garden Hotel at 5 and ate, swam and other stuff and at midnight I ran over ( about 1 mile ). They finished unloading at 2:00 am so I ran back to the hotel and we slept in to about 7:30. I checked in with the office then and as I suspected the satellite didn't even know I had moved, since I had only traveled less than a mile, so they thought I was actually done at 5 pm. Works for me.

Then we headed into Milwaukee and picked up our next load and are now in St. Louis, MO with a load of cardboard headed for Springfield, MO.

We are both pooped out. The good thing is IF everything goes right we'll be done next Wednesday for a few days of well earned TAH.

I have a bit of trouble brewing... I have supplied the "mgmt" folks with my TAH schedule for the rest of the year. December includes two weeks so we can use our timeshares in Vail over Christmas and New Years. They didn't take it well. We can't figure what their real issue is. They have 15k drivers and it's unpaid time. So far they think they haven't approved it. What they don't realize is that I wasn't asking, I was informing. I'll give them a little time for it to soak in and figure out how to deal with it, but in the end, we're going. All the kids are coming, and we think we deserve it.

You figure on a normal year, getting weekends off you get 104 days off. They way we're working we get 5 days every 4 weeks. That's 65 days off. I think we're entitled to it.

Happy Friday 8/1, one week till the Olympics. Oh yeah, Dancing With the Stars starts in September and I'm told that I need to get Sat TV before then. Anyone got any poop on that ?

Bob