IPOD
RADIO
Hey.
Well, I phoned Coke back on friday and left a message I'd like to know the status of my application please. Blows chunks to be waiting waiting waiting.
Been learning some stuff to play for the open mic/jam sessions friday nights at sam's in northampton. Coupla Dan Bern songs. Last night I'm sitting on a high barstool waiting for the action to get underway and the pretty girl who played with us last week comes up to me and says she learned Pink (aerosmith song) so she could play along.
Dammit. Why does she have have broad shoulders and nice breasts and a flat tummy with an navel ring and a cute dorky demeanor and learn a song to play with me and be maybe just over half my age. Why couldn't she be twenty-seven or something.
So we played my two songs from last week. Pink and Ball and Chain by social distortion. I was pretty overwhelmed by the response from all the other musicians playing along with us. We rocked tha house basically. Imagine you were one of Aerosmith while they were playing Train kep' a Rollin on their unplugged show. Kind of like that. I was also on the verge of a panic attack being center stage while playing social distortion. I literally felt like I was having a heart attack and I thought I was going to fall out of my chair. Hopefully next time I'll feel calmer. I wasn't able to get to sleep until sometime after 4am, I was so pumped, or whatever the word would be.
Well, I got the pretty girl's email so we could bounce song possibilities off one another for next week. Still never have asked a girl for her phone number.
It's interesting that good and bad things kind of enhance one another. Having found something I really like to do I'm really worried about how my job situation will work out, whether I'll be able to continue doing it. Being 37 isn't all that big a deal unless you happen to run into a college undergrad who's really attractive and has common interests with you and at least doesn't hate you. Whatever. It's entirely possible that I could be using my age to whine about someone not being that into me who wouldn't be into me If I were her age. Sometimes I can't make a call like that when examining myself directly.
Today I ran into an old friend Whom I've not seen in almost ten years. Got his email too. It's nice to get back into life once again.
Well, I phoned Coke back on friday and left a message I'd like to know the status of my application please. Blows chunks to be waiting waiting waiting.
Been learning some stuff to play for the open mic/jam sessions friday nights at sam's in northampton. Coupla Dan Bern songs. Last night I'm sitting on a high barstool waiting for the action to get underway and the pretty girl who played with us last week comes up to me and says she learned Pink (aerosmith song) so she could play along.
Dammit. Why does she have have broad shoulders and nice breasts and a flat tummy with an navel ring and a cute dorky demeanor and learn a song to play with me and be maybe just over half my age. Why couldn't she be twenty-seven or something.
So we played my two songs from last week. Pink and Ball and Chain by social distortion. I was pretty overwhelmed by the response from all the other musicians playing along with us. We rocked tha house basically. Imagine you were one of Aerosmith while they were playing Train kep' a Rollin on their unplugged show. Kind of like that. I was also on the verge of a panic attack being center stage while playing social distortion. I literally felt like I was having a heart attack and I thought I was going to fall out of my chair. Hopefully next time I'll feel calmer. I wasn't able to get to sleep until sometime after 4am, I was so pumped, or whatever the word would be.
Well, I got the pretty girl's email so we could bounce song possibilities off one another for next week. Still never have asked a girl for her phone number.
It's interesting that good and bad things kind of enhance one another. Having found something I really like to do I'm really worried about how my job situation will work out, whether I'll be able to continue doing it. Being 37 isn't all that big a deal unless you happen to run into a college undergrad who's really attractive and has common interests with you and at least doesn't hate you. Whatever. It's entirely possible that I could be using my age to whine about someone not being that into me who wouldn't be into me If I were her age. Sometimes I can't make a call like that when examining myself directly.
Today I ran into an old friend Whom I've not seen in almost ten years. Got his email too. It's nice to get back into life once again.
Well hello again.
Been feeling pretty blah as of late. I phoned my brother's boss at coca cola on thursday and he told me that they're still taking applications and he'll call me at the end of next week. I hate inconclusive phone conversations. I hate phones period. Also doesn't improve my mood that my car seems to be acting up.
Maybe I shouldn't have quit werner before I knew I had this next job, but on the other hand I was seriously hating what I was doing before, and If I hadn't quit It's quite possible I would not have been able to get the time for the interview and application so as to be able to escape my previous occupation.
Last night I went out and played some guitar again. The Smith chicks are coming back to northampton again after intersession, which is a fine thing. I could take two of them home and they'd add up to my age so that wouldn't be creepy, right? But anyway one of them played a couple of songs with us, and said she'd come back next week when someone asked her if she would, but I think she was looking a little exasperated at how disorganized it was. Actually last night two of the people who sort of form the backbone of the usual gathering weren't there so I was more or less one of the old guard after maybe my fifth time there. I did a couple of new songs I'd just learned. Pink by Aerosmith and Ball and chain by Social Distortion. I'm pretty sure noone's previously done Pink.
I've also been taking some photographs in my free time. My camera has a wide format setting that I really love, it's like shooting movie stills. It's actually a more efficient format, in my opinion, than the formats more toward square, because most things on the surface of the earth are more or less arraged laterally. But books have tended to have had a more vertical format, so as to prevent ink smudging. The SG format is also not great for showing parnoramic views given the fairly narrow window of active space. You could use the panoramic for verticals but they'd tend to run off the screen, and if you don't have perspective shift on you camera or feel like messing around in photoshop to correct it, you get what I find to be an awkward appearance
oh whatever.
I'd kind of like to get a 6x12 cm back for my speed graphic by my speed graphic just has a spring back that those kinds of backs won't fit. So I could get a different large format camera or just use the technique of cutting a darkslide in half and taking two panoramic photos on one sheet of 4x5. Which is of course way cheaper but a little awkward, and you'd have to work out some system for keeping track of which side of the 4x5 neg you'd already exposed.
For a couple of years now I've been wanting to take some pics of the ancient abandoned cars that are across the river from my house. I finally figured out how to get to them last weekend. I grossly miscalculated where I though they'd be from the road on the other side of the river, and bushwhacked maybe half an unneccesay mile before I got to them, and eventually found that they were fairly readily accessible if you know where they are. Which I guess makes me an "Experienced Photographer"
I also went out and got some pics in the latest, milder snowstorm. Driving drucks for family dollar, snow was something that caused me dread, and I hated that because I'm an aesthetically motivated person and I want snow to be an object of wonder and beauty. I guess now it may be both depending on what I'm doing at coca cola.
My brain like always still wants to run anxious and depressed, and like always, I'm working on it. playing out is actually therapeutic.
I have a feeling it wasn't the diamond sutra per se, or maybe it was, but there's a buddhist sort of thought-statement that every point in the universe is a diamond that reflects every other point in the universe. Everything mixes together freely and without distinction. The cars remind me of that, dissolving back into the dust that they were smelted from. Entropy is sort of a flow back into oneness.
Been feeling pretty blah as of late. I phoned my brother's boss at coca cola on thursday and he told me that they're still taking applications and he'll call me at the end of next week. I hate inconclusive phone conversations. I hate phones period. Also doesn't improve my mood that my car seems to be acting up.
Maybe I shouldn't have quit werner before I knew I had this next job, but on the other hand I was seriously hating what I was doing before, and If I hadn't quit It's quite possible I would not have been able to get the time for the interview and application so as to be able to escape my previous occupation.
Last night I went out and played some guitar again. The Smith chicks are coming back to northampton again after intersession, which is a fine thing. I could take two of them home and they'd add up to my age so that wouldn't be creepy, right? But anyway one of them played a couple of songs with us, and said she'd come back next week when someone asked her if she would, but I think she was looking a little exasperated at how disorganized it was. Actually last night two of the people who sort of form the backbone of the usual gathering weren't there so I was more or less one of the old guard after maybe my fifth time there. I did a couple of new songs I'd just learned. Pink by Aerosmith and Ball and chain by Social Distortion. I'm pretty sure noone's previously done Pink.
I've also been taking some photographs in my free time. My camera has a wide format setting that I really love, it's like shooting movie stills. It's actually a more efficient format, in my opinion, than the formats more toward square, because most things on the surface of the earth are more or less arraged laterally. But books have tended to have had a more vertical format, so as to prevent ink smudging. The SG format is also not great for showing parnoramic views given the fairly narrow window of active space. You could use the panoramic for verticals but they'd tend to run off the screen, and if you don't have perspective shift on you camera or feel like messing around in photoshop to correct it, you get what I find to be an awkward appearance
oh whatever.
I'd kind of like to get a 6x12 cm back for my speed graphic by my speed graphic just has a spring back that those kinds of backs won't fit. So I could get a different large format camera or just use the technique of cutting a darkslide in half and taking two panoramic photos on one sheet of 4x5. Which is of course way cheaper but a little awkward, and you'd have to work out some system for keeping track of which side of the 4x5 neg you'd already exposed.
For a couple of years now I've been wanting to take some pics of the ancient abandoned cars that are across the river from my house. I finally figured out how to get to them last weekend. I grossly miscalculated where I though they'd be from the road on the other side of the river, and bushwhacked maybe half an unneccesay mile before I got to them, and eventually found that they were fairly readily accessible if you know where they are. Which I guess makes me an "Experienced Photographer"
I also went out and got some pics in the latest, milder snowstorm. Driving drucks for family dollar, snow was something that caused me dread, and I hated that because I'm an aesthetically motivated person and I want snow to be an object of wonder and beauty. I guess now it may be both depending on what I'm doing at coca cola.
My brain like always still wants to run anxious and depressed, and like always, I'm working on it. playing out is actually therapeutic.
I have a feeling it wasn't the diamond sutra per se, or maybe it was, but there's a buddhist sort of thought-statement that every point in the universe is a diamond that reflects every other point in the universe. Everything mixes together freely and without distinction. The cars remind me of that, dissolving back into the dust that they were smelted from. Entropy is sort of a flow back into oneness.
Yesterday I was up in Greenfield to talk to my brother's boss at Coca Cola. I am ultra superstitious about ever being optimistic, but that aside I guess it went reasonably well. My accident record may not kill me, as I don't have any DOT reportable accidents, and just a no point citation from when I got screwed up and put myself on the wrong level of the GWB.
I've been practicing the STP song "Plush" a lot the past three days. Having worked so much the past year I'm kind of mentally screwed up where I still have the lassitudinous streak I've always had, but it doesn't feel as good to indulge. So I'm practicing for much longer periods that I typically would have in days past. I'd like to play the song at the open mike tonight but I can't really do it well enough just yet. But next week I should be able to do it all right.
I've been playing guitar since 1995 off and on, and I really haven't come all that far. I got overspecialized in fingerpicking guitar to a ridiculous degree so that even the most basic plectrum-strumming pieces are damn hard for me. But I'm working on it. A long time ago a fried of mine observed that I don't like to exert myself, and that's true. Makes me rather behind in overcoming personal hurdles. Working on it.
I've been practicing the STP song "Plush" a lot the past three days. Having worked so much the past year I'm kind of mentally screwed up where I still have the lassitudinous streak I've always had, but it doesn't feel as good to indulge. So I'm practicing for much longer periods that I typically would have in days past. I'd like to play the song at the open mike tonight but I can't really do it well enough just yet. But next week I should be able to do it all right.
I've been playing guitar since 1995 off and on, and I really haven't come all that far. I got overspecialized in fingerpicking guitar to a ridiculous degree so that even the most basic plectrum-strumming pieces are damn hard for me. But I'm working on it. A long time ago a fried of mine observed that I don't like to exert myself, and that's true. Makes me rather behind in overcoming personal hurdles. Working on it.
Hey folks
Well, tonight I'm driving my truck back to Rome NY for the last time, and taking a bus back home tomorrow. I don't feel great about it but I wouldn't exactly feel great about staying either, so. . .
Time to get persistent with my brother's boss at coca cola so as to get started there asap. I wouldn't mind just doing merchandising for them until I get into grad school or become a successful photographer, but if they want me to drive the trucks, at least their equipment is smaller and more appropriate for the local delivery mission than the uber long kenworth trucks and 48 foot trailers I've been doing this family dollar shit with.
I see that I could keep doing what I've been doing, but it doesn't agree with me at all. If I had icewater for veins, no emotional reactions to super difficult high pressure situations maybe I'd keep doing this, but I'm not like that.
This past new years day when I made may last two deliveries, the first one was at a store where you could only get into the store from the parking lot of the funeral parlor next door. If there was a funeral at the parlor, you couldn't get in. Which is why that store always has 6am deliveries. Well, that's fine, but if a funeral starts up when you're in the loading area, and your KW W900L is too long to get out by pulling forward out of the loading area, especially when there are snowbanks up against the adjacent building right in front of you, you're stuck there until the funeral gets out, unless maybe you're cool with going into the parlor and asking the mourners to move their vehicles. Then at the second stop, the docking situation was a more reasonable, but I still couldn't get more than maybe 20 feet from the loading door, again because of snowbanks on the side of the paved loading area, in the exact spot where I need to start straightening the tractor in front of the trailer to get it to back up rather than just turn. A couple of days later I met another Family Dollar guy who lives in springfield, we were both waiting for our trucks to be jumpstarted, and he told me that he couldn't his shorter noses Freightliner Century into that dock either, even without snow on the ground.
So when I've been thinking about trying to stick this out another three weeks till my exact one year anniversary over the road, I've really just been dwelling on the presensce of massive snowbanks everywhere. My front bumper is bent in on both sides, and my mud flaps are torn off from trying to get that goddamned longnosed KW into places, that yeah, maybe you could do in the summer, if there were not cars parked in the exact wrong places that the owners must have been psychics who hate truck drivers to have parked them just exactly where they're parked.
The three accidents I've had with werner are also just the ones I haven't gotten away with. I've flattened at least two street signs that I know of, broken off at least one small decorative tree at its base, broke a good sized branch off another. If you look at the trucks at the Family Dollar DC out in rome, they're covered with scratches, dents, and gouges from all the other drivers who coundn't rewrite the laws of physics any more than I could. Oh and I scratched up the mirror on nice white acura in new york city, where I had to unload the truck double parked up against parked cars along the side of the street, because the store personnel did not see to it that there would be no cars parked there, like they said they would. Got away with that one because with my truck right next to it the owners of the vehicle had to get in on the passenger side and did not see what I'd done to the driver's side mirror.
I saw it as a gamble going in, on this account, that I would beat the odds, with respect to having an accident, in the hopes of making halfway decent money, and getting some home time. I've made a little better money that I was running 48 states, and the hometime I've gotten has only made me want more, there is so much to life that you can have when you're home. And as far as beating the odds with respect to accidents, the odds have completely kicked my butt.
It's just not cool to go into an area where you just don't know what the hell you're doing. Where I flattened that first street sign that I mentioned, it was on staten Island. I followed my directions to the letter, but as happens with directions all too often, I was pointed in the wrong direction when I got there. Which is just fucking ridiculous actually. So the store owner tells me that the truckers turn around "down the road up ahead" and whenever I get advice like that it invariably leads to major or minor disaster. I don't fucking know what's ahead up there and a longnosed KW with a 48 footer attached is really not a great thing to be improvising in. So I headed down the road to a T intersection where I could turn left out to the main road or turn right and head through a housing project. so of course I tried to turn out to the main road, and of course a car parked too close to the intersection made it impossible for me to do so. So I had just a jolly excellent time backing her up with cars behind me honking at me, and when I finally got it back on the road I'd come up, a couple of guys in an electric company truck told me how to get through the housing project. So I headed through there and out to the main road, with the idea of heading back in on the street I'd not been able to turn onto because of the parked car,, because I was pretty sure I could make the turn going the other way, and If I couldn't I could just head back through the housing project again.
Well wouldn't cha know it, another tractor trailer, the shorter kind that could make those turns that I had just been unable to, had come up that street and situated himself so as to make it impossible for me to get down that street. So now what I had to do was keep going down that main street to find somewhere to turn around so as to go back through the housing project the other way and get to the docking area pointed in the right direction. For those of you unfamiliar with staten island as viewed from the perspective of a truck driver, it is not characterized by large areas of paved real estate sitting vacant for the use of truck drivers in need of someplace to turn around. There are parking lots, but the tend to be full of cars, and/or too small and/or fenced and guarded with cement posts at the entrances so as to prevent people like me from getting into them and turning around. So Eventually i had to pick a side street and just go, and wouldn'tcha know it it got a lot narrower all of a sudden and I found myself faced with turning a corner I couldn't make or backing up a longish ways and trying to back it back out onto a main road. I guess you're sposta call the police for help in these situations, but being an emotionally immature person I just said fuckit and flattened the street sign on the corner. Didn't scratch the trailer as the corner of the trailer knocked it out of the way.
Anyway, i guess maybe that's sufficient explanation as to why I'm not right for this. A lot of things could be different that would make this job doable. The trailers could be shorter when they need to be. The directions to stores could put you into the loading areas pointed in the right direction to get into them, really no kidding, it would be possible to do this with the technology available in the 21st century. You type them on a computer and it prints them out. They do this , but they do it with directions that are wrong, and it only takes just slightly wrong to really mess up your day when you're in one of these vehicles, and noone bothers to make sure that those directions are right. This job is not doable with the equipment I'm doing it with, and there are going to be more accidents that I don't get away with. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get any other driving jobs with a record of five accidents my first year, but I'm only going to slam the door further shut on any such prospects If i keep doing this and rack up more accidents. I would imagine that I'd be able to get a job driving a dump truck or a cement truck or some such staight vehicle. Those jobs tend to be seasonal though.
It also bothers me that almost nothing I was ever told about Werner Eterprises has proved to be true. What's true is that they use paperless logging and the split loads, one drive taking a load a ways and another driver taking it the rest of the way. Other than that, the average age of the fleet is a lot older than the 1.5 years that they tell you, and you don't get to pick out the truck you want, even when you do a dedicated account for which your longnose truck is grossly inappropriate. When I had that big fight with stephanie about not doing NYC anymore, she tried to tell me that all the drivers on the account have to do NYC, among other bullshit things she said. But when I was talking to that other springfield based driver, while we waited for jumpstarts for our trucks, he told me he doesn't do NYC either.
Well, tonight I'm driving my truck back to Rome NY for the last time, and taking a bus back home tomorrow. I don't feel great about it but I wouldn't exactly feel great about staying either, so. . .
Time to get persistent with my brother's boss at coca cola so as to get started there asap. I wouldn't mind just doing merchandising for them until I get into grad school or become a successful photographer, but if they want me to drive the trucks, at least their equipment is smaller and more appropriate for the local delivery mission than the uber long kenworth trucks and 48 foot trailers I've been doing this family dollar shit with.
I see that I could keep doing what I've been doing, but it doesn't agree with me at all. If I had icewater for veins, no emotional reactions to super difficult high pressure situations maybe I'd keep doing this, but I'm not like that.
This past new years day when I made may last two deliveries, the first one was at a store where you could only get into the store from the parking lot of the funeral parlor next door. If there was a funeral at the parlor, you couldn't get in. Which is why that store always has 6am deliveries. Well, that's fine, but if a funeral starts up when you're in the loading area, and your KW W900L is too long to get out by pulling forward out of the loading area, especially when there are snowbanks up against the adjacent building right in front of you, you're stuck there until the funeral gets out, unless maybe you're cool with going into the parlor and asking the mourners to move their vehicles. Then at the second stop, the docking situation was a more reasonable, but I still couldn't get more than maybe 20 feet from the loading door, again because of snowbanks on the side of the paved loading area, in the exact spot where I need to start straightening the tractor in front of the trailer to get it to back up rather than just turn. A couple of days later I met another Family Dollar guy who lives in springfield, we were both waiting for our trucks to be jumpstarted, and he told me that he couldn't his shorter noses Freightliner Century into that dock either, even without snow on the ground.
So when I've been thinking about trying to stick this out another three weeks till my exact one year anniversary over the road, I've really just been dwelling on the presensce of massive snowbanks everywhere. My front bumper is bent in on both sides, and my mud flaps are torn off from trying to get that goddamned longnosed KW into places, that yeah, maybe you could do in the summer, if there were not cars parked in the exact wrong places that the owners must have been psychics who hate truck drivers to have parked them just exactly where they're parked.
The three accidents I've had with werner are also just the ones I haven't gotten away with. I've flattened at least two street signs that I know of, broken off at least one small decorative tree at its base, broke a good sized branch off another. If you look at the trucks at the Family Dollar DC out in rome, they're covered with scratches, dents, and gouges from all the other drivers who coundn't rewrite the laws of physics any more than I could. Oh and I scratched up the mirror on nice white acura in new york city, where I had to unload the truck double parked up against parked cars along the side of the street, because the store personnel did not see to it that there would be no cars parked there, like they said they would. Got away with that one because with my truck right next to it the owners of the vehicle had to get in on the passenger side and did not see what I'd done to the driver's side mirror.
I saw it as a gamble going in, on this account, that I would beat the odds, with respect to having an accident, in the hopes of making halfway decent money, and getting some home time. I've made a little better money that I was running 48 states, and the hometime I've gotten has only made me want more, there is so much to life that you can have when you're home. And as far as beating the odds with respect to accidents, the odds have completely kicked my butt.
It's just not cool to go into an area where you just don't know what the hell you're doing. Where I flattened that first street sign that I mentioned, it was on staten Island. I followed my directions to the letter, but as happens with directions all too often, I was pointed in the wrong direction when I got there. Which is just fucking ridiculous actually. So the store owner tells me that the truckers turn around "down the road up ahead" and whenever I get advice like that it invariably leads to major or minor disaster. I don't fucking know what's ahead up there and a longnosed KW with a 48 footer attached is really not a great thing to be improvising in. So I headed down the road to a T intersection where I could turn left out to the main road or turn right and head through a housing project. so of course I tried to turn out to the main road, and of course a car parked too close to the intersection made it impossible for me to do so. So I had just a jolly excellent time backing her up with cars behind me honking at me, and when I finally got it back on the road I'd come up, a couple of guys in an electric company truck told me how to get through the housing project. So I headed through there and out to the main road, with the idea of heading back in on the street I'd not been able to turn onto because of the parked car,, because I was pretty sure I could make the turn going the other way, and If I couldn't I could just head back through the housing project again.
Well wouldn't cha know it, another tractor trailer, the shorter kind that could make those turns that I had just been unable to, had come up that street and situated himself so as to make it impossible for me to get down that street. So now what I had to do was keep going down that main street to find somewhere to turn around so as to go back through the housing project the other way and get to the docking area pointed in the right direction. For those of you unfamiliar with staten island as viewed from the perspective of a truck driver, it is not characterized by large areas of paved real estate sitting vacant for the use of truck drivers in need of someplace to turn around. There are parking lots, but the tend to be full of cars, and/or too small and/or fenced and guarded with cement posts at the entrances so as to prevent people like me from getting into them and turning around. So Eventually i had to pick a side street and just go, and wouldn'tcha know it it got a lot narrower all of a sudden and I found myself faced with turning a corner I couldn't make or backing up a longish ways and trying to back it back out onto a main road. I guess you're sposta call the police for help in these situations, but being an emotionally immature person I just said fuckit and flattened the street sign on the corner. Didn't scratch the trailer as the corner of the trailer knocked it out of the way.
Anyway, i guess maybe that's sufficient explanation as to why I'm not right for this. A lot of things could be different that would make this job doable. The trailers could be shorter when they need to be. The directions to stores could put you into the loading areas pointed in the right direction to get into them, really no kidding, it would be possible to do this with the technology available in the 21st century. You type them on a computer and it prints them out. They do this , but they do it with directions that are wrong, and it only takes just slightly wrong to really mess up your day when you're in one of these vehicles, and noone bothers to make sure that those directions are right. This job is not doable with the equipment I'm doing it with, and there are going to be more accidents that I don't get away with. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get any other driving jobs with a record of five accidents my first year, but I'm only going to slam the door further shut on any such prospects If i keep doing this and rack up more accidents. I would imagine that I'd be able to get a job driving a dump truck or a cement truck or some such staight vehicle. Those jobs tend to be seasonal though.
It also bothers me that almost nothing I was ever told about Werner Eterprises has proved to be true. What's true is that they use paperless logging and the split loads, one drive taking a load a ways and another driver taking it the rest of the way. Other than that, the average age of the fleet is a lot older than the 1.5 years that they tell you, and you don't get to pick out the truck you want, even when you do a dedicated account for which your longnose truck is grossly inappropriate. When I had that big fight with stephanie about not doing NYC anymore, she tried to tell me that all the drivers on the account have to do NYC, among other bullshit things she said. But when I was talking to that other springfield based driver, while we waited for jumpstarts for our trucks, he told me he doesn't do NYC either.
Hey there
If any of you guys are in the area and want to say Hi I am presently in a dead truck at exit 36 off I91 NB in connecticut. My truck wouldn't start this morning, so Having gotten to the truck at 8am I got underway at 1247 after some guys came to jumpstart my truck.
I noticed that my batteries weren't charging, and I was going the head for the TA in Maybrook NY where they have a shop, but my truck had no electrical power and I decided it would be safer to turn her around and try to get back to Springfield. Got maybe a mile or two back north before the truck quit. In the low teens outside and a not much warmer inside as the fan wasn't working to blow any heat into the truck before it stalled.
Popped the hood and I have a snapped belt.
I'm not sure whether it would feel worse to keep going in this job, since I have not been beating the odds very well, having incidents in places one should not be bringing these big trucks into, or to just wimp out and quit. I actually did a quick local online job search when I was waiting for the mechanics at the truck stop and phoned one place about maybe driving a straight truck locally. The kind of truck that doesn't bend and you can see what the fuck is behind you.
I'm not a religious person, but on days like this I find it not to get into a thought pattern that god is trying to tell me something, in this case that It's time to get the hell out of this situation. You could also interpret it as my perseverance being tested, I suppose. First my key won't open the door, then the truck won't start then the truck breaks down. All this so I can waste a day on not getting paid to head to a stupid safety meeting where they might suspend or fire me, in addition to wasting more of my time on computer training modules that are really of no help when you're trying to get your back end cinched around an illegally parked vehicle in an icy uuplowed loading area that's only marginally big enough for your truck under ideal conditions. fuck.
go me.
If any of you guys are in the area and want to say Hi I am presently in a dead truck at exit 36 off I91 NB in connecticut. My truck wouldn't start this morning, so Having gotten to the truck at 8am I got underway at 1247 after some guys came to jumpstart my truck.
I noticed that my batteries weren't charging, and I was going the head for the TA in Maybrook NY where they have a shop, but my truck had no electrical power and I decided it would be safer to turn her around and try to get back to Springfield. Got maybe a mile or two back north before the truck quit. In the low teens outside and a not much warmer inside as the fan wasn't working to blow any heat into the truck before it stalled.
Popped the hood and I have a snapped belt.
I'm not sure whether it would feel worse to keep going in this job, since I have not been beating the odds very well, having incidents in places one should not be bringing these big trucks into, or to just wimp out and quit. I actually did a quick local online job search when I was waiting for the mechanics at the truck stop and phoned one place about maybe driving a straight truck locally. The kind of truck that doesn't bend and you can see what the fuck is behind you.
I'm not a religious person, but on days like this I find it not to get into a thought pattern that god is trying to tell me something, in this case that It's time to get the hell out of this situation. You could also interpret it as my perseverance being tested, I suppose. First my key won't open the door, then the truck won't start then the truck breaks down. All this so I can waste a day on not getting paid to head to a stupid safety meeting where they might suspend or fire me, in addition to wasting more of my time on computer training modules that are really of no help when you're trying to get your back end cinched around an illegally parked vehicle in an icy uuplowed loading area that's only marginally big enough for your truck under ideal conditions. fuck.
go me.
Hey folks
Well, today I'm trying not to be a total jackoff and totally waste my day off. I tried to steel myself to try some drawing but the cats insisted on crawling into my lap while I was doing it. Then I tried working for a while on learning STP's "Plush" acoustic version from a youtube tutorial video. Most of it is not super difficult but there's a single string lead section that's kicking my ass, I'm getting tense with cold hands. I hate that.
I have a delivery in downtown springfield tomorrow morning. I went to the store to see what the entry was like. Sort of a good idea and sort of not. It won't be a problem to get into the store but might be a problem to get out. Hopefully there won't be a funeral at the funeral parlor across the street and I'll be able to back straight out.
I got an email back from a friend from forever ago, I had asked him about how to set about getting into grad school for american history. He gave me a pretty comprehensive answer actually. It got me thinking about the fork in the road I'm hypothesizing for my future. Do I try and head down and artistic career path, or try and get into academics. I think that if I went the academic route it would take a lot more of my time and leave less for outdoorsmanship and photography. But looking at that loading area I'm going into, and hopefully getting back out of, tomorrow, made me think real hard about the alternative to acedemia, driving trucks and trying to be an artist.
One disadvantage of acedemics is that I would probably have to leave this area again, which I don't want to do now that my year of trucking has so heightened my appreciation for how great this area is. But I also have an arm with metal hardware in it that might not hold up indefinitely in jobs that involve slinging boxes around.
It's also possible that I'll never enjoy any success as an artist or ever get accepted into an MA program. But I guess that's being unduly pessimistic. But at 37 and not doing all that great driving trucks I'm starting to worry about my life never getting anywhere.
Whatever. I hope the new year is peaceful and healthful to my readership, and non readership.
JBL
Well, today I'm trying not to be a total jackoff and totally waste my day off. I tried to steel myself to try some drawing but the cats insisted on crawling into my lap while I was doing it. Then I tried working for a while on learning STP's "Plush" acoustic version from a youtube tutorial video. Most of it is not super difficult but there's a single string lead section that's kicking my ass, I'm getting tense with cold hands. I hate that.
I have a delivery in downtown springfield tomorrow morning. I went to the store to see what the entry was like. Sort of a good idea and sort of not. It won't be a problem to get into the store but might be a problem to get out. Hopefully there won't be a funeral at the funeral parlor across the street and I'll be able to back straight out.
I got an email back from a friend from forever ago, I had asked him about how to set about getting into grad school for american history. He gave me a pretty comprehensive answer actually. It got me thinking about the fork in the road I'm hypothesizing for my future. Do I try and head down and artistic career path, or try and get into academics. I think that if I went the academic route it would take a lot more of my time and leave less for outdoorsmanship and photography. But looking at that loading area I'm going into, and hopefully getting back out of, tomorrow, made me think real hard about the alternative to acedemia, driving trucks and trying to be an artist.
One disadvantage of acedemics is that I would probably have to leave this area again, which I don't want to do now that my year of trucking has so heightened my appreciation for how great this area is. But I also have an arm with metal hardware in it that might not hold up indefinitely in jobs that involve slinging boxes around.
It's also possible that I'll never enjoy any success as an artist or ever get accepted into an MA program. But I guess that's being unduly pessimistic. But at 37 and not doing all that great driving trucks I'm starting to worry about my life never getting anywhere.
Whatever. I hope the new year is peaceful and healthful to my readership, and non readership.
JBL
Hello again.
Well, the day after my last post, I went out to make my delivery in the boston area, and it was one of the worst days of my life, in trucking, and that's saying something. I got the truck stuck in an icy loading area where I didn't have room to get to where I needed to go, or to get back out again. I ended up denting a vehicle as I was cinching my truck back and forth trying to escape the impossibly tight spot I'd gotten myself into. So that's my fifth accident this year, which you you would be correct in surmising is not a positive development.
I don't know if I've completely torpedoed my future in trucking or not. Whatever.
On a positive note at christmastime my brother mentioned that his boss had mentioned thinking about calling me. So I need to get back to him. At least if I can do merchandising at coca cola and not completely suck at it I'll have a job, at least, if I can't get another trucking job.
Christmas was all right. Just wish I'd had more than about 40 total hours off from work. I have this cousin Cindy, who's now in the eighth grade, and is changing from a little girl into a young woman. Her voice is changing, which you usually say about boys but it happens to girls too. Thing about it is that about half of the times I see her are at relatives' houses at christmastime. I have photographs of her as a newborn infant from 12 or 13 years ago, at a christmas party at the same house. It's just weird how much time has passed, so quickly and without my feeling it.
I'm pretty tired right now, unloaded a truck today. Sick of McFood, but too often it's all that's really available at the places that I want to stop at for time management reasons.
Well, the day after my last post, I went out to make my delivery in the boston area, and it was one of the worst days of my life, in trucking, and that's saying something. I got the truck stuck in an icy loading area where I didn't have room to get to where I needed to go, or to get back out again. I ended up denting a vehicle as I was cinching my truck back and forth trying to escape the impossibly tight spot I'd gotten myself into. So that's my fifth accident this year, which you you would be correct in surmising is not a positive development.
I don't know if I've completely torpedoed my future in trucking or not. Whatever.
On a positive note at christmastime my brother mentioned that his boss had mentioned thinking about calling me. So I need to get back to him. At least if I can do merchandising at coca cola and not completely suck at it I'll have a job, at least, if I can't get another trucking job.
Christmas was all right. Just wish I'd had more than about 40 total hours off from work. I have this cousin Cindy, who's now in the eighth grade, and is changing from a little girl into a young woman. Her voice is changing, which you usually say about boys but it happens to girls too. Thing about it is that about half of the times I see her are at relatives' houses at christmastime. I have photographs of her as a newborn infant from 12 or 13 years ago, at a christmas party at the same house. It's just weird how much time has passed, so quickly and without my feeling it.
I'm pretty tired right now, unloaded a truck today. Sick of McFood, but too often it's all that's really available at the places that I want to stop at for time management reasons.
New update time I spose.
I had a load out to boston today. I was not feeling real keen about heading out into my second major winter storm in a row. I got about a mile from my house in my car and I decided it just wasn't worth the risk of getting into an accident to be on time with few tons of dog food and bleach. I turned around under a bridge that didn't have any snow under it and phoned in that the delivery would have to be scheduled for tomorrow. I made up a little lie about getting my car stuck in a snowbank on my way to the truck stop where I park they truck.
On the other hand what is not a lie is that I did just that in the big rig during the storm on friday. I was heading from a delivery in western ct to another in west hartford. I got into standstill traffic where it took me about 2 hours to go about a mile. At one point i had to lock my rear axles; for those of you non truckers, normally only the rearmost of your two tractor axles is driving the truck forward, but if you need extra traction you can lock your axles and have both of them live. So at one point I locked them to get started going uphill, and then, because you're not sposta run continously with your axles locked, I stopped and unlocked them. Well that was pretty fuckin stupid cuz then I couln't take off again even relocking the axles. There ended up being nothing to do but to spin the wheels with the truck in third gear, the truck literally inched forward with the wheels spinning and the engine roaring and getting really hot. But I did make it to the top of the hill and got going and eventually made it to my stop in west hartford. I almost got her stuck turning onto the road my stop was on, I wanted to turn but the truck wanted to keep going straight, but fortunately my momentum carried me through and I got around the corner. then I got stuck twice in the parking lot at the store. Couple days before i was talking to the safety guy and he asked if I was ready for the winter months. I said i didn't have chains, he said don't even worry about chains you don't need them. Took me four hours in all, to get from the western ct stop to west hartford. maybe 30-40 miles.
Anyway It wouldn't suprise me one bit if in fact I were the only guy who didn't make a delivery today because of the weather, but fuckit. There were multiple trucks stuck in the harftord area on friday including me for while, though I was able to get unstuck. passed another guy who couldn't. There are diametrically opposed viewpoints of what people tell you to do in such situations. Back right when i started up with the family dollar account I was talking with another Werner driver at a truck stop, about gps nav systems, when an old timer just wandered by and started talking to us. at some point said that if the roads ever get bad, get off of em, i don't care what you're dispatcher says. some guys at trucking school seconded that, but the job placement person in particular said " you will drive on sheer ice " your dispatcher is never going to say "I'm not going to deliver that freight" he's going to have you rolling, whatever the conditions. when you're loaded you sink into the snow anyway. but not so much when you're empty.
Well, at least today noone got killed as a result of any decisions or actions on my part. Tomorrow I've got to be on the move as of 5am for a 7am delivery, but that should at least be in rather more civilized road conditions.
Felt a little self conscious this morning when my boss called me back on my cell phone, both my cats were sitting on me and purring.
Some decisions have big negatives either way you go.
_____________________
Last week I saw the move "Ratatouille" which I recommend. Or rather I don't recommend because most people seem to hate things I recommend.
The main character, Remy the rat, deals with a lot of exactly the same problems that I deal with in dealing with other people. His problem is that he has rarefied, sensitive tastes, and therefore a sense of and taste for the exquisite, which his kindred do not understand. He therefore has desires and ambitions that his father Django and brothe Emile do not understand or support, and they want him to do boring work that they understand, being a poison sniffer, to detect rat poison in food.
So being me growing up in the household I grew up in, i learned not to talk about art or music or ideas that noone else would understand. I didn't assimilate real well with other groups either, artistic musical types, people interested in ideas often are not real into hanging up dead deer in the garage in the fall or having a shitload of guns, or any of that sort of thing. Whatever.
In some ways you could say it makes me a judgemental elitisit bastard, if you want to take a negative view of what I'm like. I actually hate it when I instantly judge someone based on what their voice sounds like on the phone and I turn out to be exactly right. My boss brandon is an example of that happening. His voice is about like two rocks being scraped together.
When I got my arm broken in the auto accident a few years ago I had to get an orthopaedic surgeon to oversee the boneknitting process, and on a form that he filled out for my insurance company, there was a paragraph on me indicating that I was a 33 year old male of normal affect. Affect turned out to mean how expressive you are as a personality in interactions. My boss brandon has very little affect. About as much personallity as a rock. As I see it his being that way is exacltl;y why he has the job he has and is able to do it. He able to tell people to do things that are really annoying, and his perspective is always 100% that of the company. When the storm was going on on friday, he sends out a group message " we need to make our appointments early to get the freight delivered safely" nothing, about getting off the roads if they get dangerous. Stephanie my other boss, to give her due credit, did phone me to make sure I was safe when I was in that 2 hours/one mile section of my drive on friday. Anyway, back to brandon; AS IF there were any way in hell we could possiby be early driving around in a major winter storm, you asshole.
It seems to me that brandon's voice is so extraordiary unmusical specifically because he is a nearly emotionless toad. Ox. He looks just like mr potatohead made flesh. a blob of flesh with no capacity for any appreciation of beauty from any perspective.
So I was thinking that people could be viewed from the perspective of viewing them as "exquisites" or "mundanes" or Oxen. I guess a lot of the time I feel like I'm almost exquisite, I can appreciate music but I have vexingly little talent for making it. Same with art. I can throw pottery on the wheel and cook and I'm a great lover. I don't know if these things are as difficult or exquisite as painting or playing the piano, but maybe they are to people who don't have such ability to do them as I do. You might say that being exquisite or mundane is like how many megapixels are in a digital camera. The higher the pixel count, the finer the detail the camera can resolve, and minds are much the same. In a certain sense a higher megapixel count can be a curse if you have trouble finding a nice where your particular mixture of interests and abilities has a particular place. A curse that many artists have had to live with. Van Gogh only ever sold one painting, though picasso could walk into any restaurant, order anything, and pay with a drawing scribbled on a napkin.
One thing that's real noticeable though is that successful artists tend to have a bigtime work ethic. Zak smith puts in 14 hours 7days. I am a lazy bastard, and there's no escaping that my lack of being successful in the things that I love is my own damn fault, but to be fair to myself, even if ultimately it doesn't count as an exuse, is that growing up as an exquisite among mundanes my vison of work as being something that could be a vehicle for the expression of my passions. was utterly destroyed. Oxen view work solely from the perspective of what oxen can understand, and if they see you doing something they don't understand, they tell you to get to work, and teach you that work is something standing in opposition to your passions, which are meaningless.
Wish I were just a little more relaxed right now. Will have to get up ass early to make my delivery, and I hate that. I know that nothing about werner or family dollar is worth getting into a state of mental agitation over, but I can never feel just ok about the things I need to do to keep the pitiful money supply trickling in.
Well, gotta get some christmas cards done up and sent out. Feliz navidad, amigos.
JBL
I had a load out to boston today. I was not feeling real keen about heading out into my second major winter storm in a row. I got about a mile from my house in my car and I decided it just wasn't worth the risk of getting into an accident to be on time with few tons of dog food and bleach. I turned around under a bridge that didn't have any snow under it and phoned in that the delivery would have to be scheduled for tomorrow. I made up a little lie about getting my car stuck in a snowbank on my way to the truck stop where I park they truck.
On the other hand what is not a lie is that I did just that in the big rig during the storm on friday. I was heading from a delivery in western ct to another in west hartford. I got into standstill traffic where it took me about 2 hours to go about a mile. At one point i had to lock my rear axles; for those of you non truckers, normally only the rearmost of your two tractor axles is driving the truck forward, but if you need extra traction you can lock your axles and have both of them live. So at one point I locked them to get started going uphill, and then, because you're not sposta run continously with your axles locked, I stopped and unlocked them. Well that was pretty fuckin stupid cuz then I couln't take off again even relocking the axles. There ended up being nothing to do but to spin the wheels with the truck in third gear, the truck literally inched forward with the wheels spinning and the engine roaring and getting really hot. But I did make it to the top of the hill and got going and eventually made it to my stop in west hartford. I almost got her stuck turning onto the road my stop was on, I wanted to turn but the truck wanted to keep going straight, but fortunately my momentum carried me through and I got around the corner. then I got stuck twice in the parking lot at the store. Couple days before i was talking to the safety guy and he asked if I was ready for the winter months. I said i didn't have chains, he said don't even worry about chains you don't need them. Took me four hours in all, to get from the western ct stop to west hartford. maybe 30-40 miles.
Anyway It wouldn't suprise me one bit if in fact I were the only guy who didn't make a delivery today because of the weather, but fuckit. There were multiple trucks stuck in the harftord area on friday including me for while, though I was able to get unstuck. passed another guy who couldn't. There are diametrically opposed viewpoints of what people tell you to do in such situations. Back right when i started up with the family dollar account I was talking with another Werner driver at a truck stop, about gps nav systems, when an old timer just wandered by and started talking to us. at some point said that if the roads ever get bad, get off of em, i don't care what you're dispatcher says. some guys at trucking school seconded that, but the job placement person in particular said " you will drive on sheer ice " your dispatcher is never going to say "I'm not going to deliver that freight" he's going to have you rolling, whatever the conditions. when you're loaded you sink into the snow anyway. but not so much when you're empty.
Well, at least today noone got killed as a result of any decisions or actions on my part. Tomorrow I've got to be on the move as of 5am for a 7am delivery, but that should at least be in rather more civilized road conditions.
Felt a little self conscious this morning when my boss called me back on my cell phone, both my cats were sitting on me and purring.
Some decisions have big negatives either way you go.
_____________________
Last week I saw the move "Ratatouille" which I recommend. Or rather I don't recommend because most people seem to hate things I recommend.
The main character, Remy the rat, deals with a lot of exactly the same problems that I deal with in dealing with other people. His problem is that he has rarefied, sensitive tastes, and therefore a sense of and taste for the exquisite, which his kindred do not understand. He therefore has desires and ambitions that his father Django and brothe Emile do not understand or support, and they want him to do boring work that they understand, being a poison sniffer, to detect rat poison in food.
So being me growing up in the household I grew up in, i learned not to talk about art or music or ideas that noone else would understand. I didn't assimilate real well with other groups either, artistic musical types, people interested in ideas often are not real into hanging up dead deer in the garage in the fall or having a shitload of guns, or any of that sort of thing. Whatever.
In some ways you could say it makes me a judgemental elitisit bastard, if you want to take a negative view of what I'm like. I actually hate it when I instantly judge someone based on what their voice sounds like on the phone and I turn out to be exactly right. My boss brandon is an example of that happening. His voice is about like two rocks being scraped together.
When I got my arm broken in the auto accident a few years ago I had to get an orthopaedic surgeon to oversee the boneknitting process, and on a form that he filled out for my insurance company, there was a paragraph on me indicating that I was a 33 year old male of normal affect. Affect turned out to mean how expressive you are as a personality in interactions. My boss brandon has very little affect. About as much personallity as a rock. As I see it his being that way is exacltl;y why he has the job he has and is able to do it. He able to tell people to do things that are really annoying, and his perspective is always 100% that of the company. When the storm was going on on friday, he sends out a group message " we need to make our appointments early to get the freight delivered safely" nothing, about getting off the roads if they get dangerous. Stephanie my other boss, to give her due credit, did phone me to make sure I was safe when I was in that 2 hours/one mile section of my drive on friday. Anyway, back to brandon; AS IF there were any way in hell we could possiby be early driving around in a major winter storm, you asshole.
It seems to me that brandon's voice is so extraordiary unmusical specifically because he is a nearly emotionless toad. Ox. He looks just like mr potatohead made flesh. a blob of flesh with no capacity for any appreciation of beauty from any perspective.
So I was thinking that people could be viewed from the perspective of viewing them as "exquisites" or "mundanes" or Oxen. I guess a lot of the time I feel like I'm almost exquisite, I can appreciate music but I have vexingly little talent for making it. Same with art. I can throw pottery on the wheel and cook and I'm a great lover. I don't know if these things are as difficult or exquisite as painting or playing the piano, but maybe they are to people who don't have such ability to do them as I do. You might say that being exquisite or mundane is like how many megapixels are in a digital camera. The higher the pixel count, the finer the detail the camera can resolve, and minds are much the same. In a certain sense a higher megapixel count can be a curse if you have trouble finding a nice where your particular mixture of interests and abilities has a particular place. A curse that many artists have had to live with. Van Gogh only ever sold one painting, though picasso could walk into any restaurant, order anything, and pay with a drawing scribbled on a napkin.
One thing that's real noticeable though is that successful artists tend to have a bigtime work ethic. Zak smith puts in 14 hours 7days. I am a lazy bastard, and there's no escaping that my lack of being successful in the things that I love is my own damn fault, but to be fair to myself, even if ultimately it doesn't count as an exuse, is that growing up as an exquisite among mundanes my vison of work as being something that could be a vehicle for the expression of my passions. was utterly destroyed. Oxen view work solely from the perspective of what oxen can understand, and if they see you doing something they don't understand, they tell you to get to work, and teach you that work is something standing in opposition to your passions, which are meaningless.
Wish I were just a little more relaxed right now. Will have to get up ass early to make my delivery, and I hate that. I know that nothing about werner or family dollar is worth getting into a state of mental agitation over, but I can never feel just ok about the things I need to do to keep the pitiful money supply trickling in.
Well, gotta get some christmas cards done up and sent out. Feliz navidad, amigos.
JBL
Hey
Well, right at the moment I'm in the projects outside of downtown buffalo. It would have been a good time to have my bike aboard but since the weather's turned bad and I decided just to park my car behind the motel next to the truck stop near my residence, I've gotten lazy with respect to the bike. I could walk into downtomwn buffalo from here and I'd kind of like to, but walking through this neighborhood, either carrying my computer or leaving it on the truck strikes me as rather more of a risk than I care to take. When I got this store and took walk around the building to see how to get to the loading area, there was this guy following me and watching me. His manner gave off more of a village idiot than threatening vibe, but still. If I had my bike though I'd just hope on and ride very quickly out of this area into downtown.
No matter. I'm holed up, tomorrow I'll unload and get the fuck out of here. This is still infinitely preferable to entering a comparable neighborhood in NYC. The streets are wide and all but empty. There was this inconvenient median in the road obstructing my entrance to the truck pass through, so I just crossed over before the median and drove on the wrong side of the road for a truck length or so. No problem at all.
I got confrontational with one of my bosses last week. I wanted to get that way with brandon more than with stephanie but B wasn't in. Explained that due to the shit that went down with my last NYC load I would not be entering NYC ever again. Stephanie said she would talk to brandon about it but that I probably could not stay on this account if I wouldn't do NYC. I said that was fine, I would just go back to running 48 states. She tried to tell me that there aren't any openings in 48 states right now.
Which of course is total bullshit. The only thing limiting the number of 48 state drivers is how many trucks they have and drivers to put in them.
But to make doubly sure about that I phoned placement; there are a couple of other accounts I could get on if I were to get my hazmat endorsement, as well as an unlimited supply of 48 state positions.
When I was at the DC today I noticed a missed call from the bosses mentioned above, I phoned them back but got a busy signal and did not bother trying them again. I don't like confrontations even though I guess I'm not the worst ultrawuss that ever existed.
I would prefer to stay doing this family dollar thing until i hit my year of experience at the end of january, as I'm use to the hometime I've been getting. On the other hand it wouldn't be so bad to get in a last hurrah and see a few distant places before I set this over the road shit aside for good.
A new motivation I have for wanting to be home is that I'd like to start playing guitar out with people. Friday night I was up at Sam's, the former Bart's in northampton, and ran into two old friends, one whom I've know since the seventh grade, about 1983 or so, and one who was a housmate for a few months in the nineties.
I was listening to the folks playing the open mike acoustic set, and they asked me If I played anything. I said I could play House of the Rising Sun and a few Mississppi John Hurt songs. So they handed me a guitar and I did HOTRS and "Don't Follow" by alice in chains. Apparently AIC is not a common selection amongst that set and they asked me if I had written that song. They tried to accompany me while I was playing but I'm not really used to playing in groups and what I was doing didn't really lend itself to accompaniment, but still I got an applause, even though I screwed up a bit, and was invited to show up next time with my Larrive. I hope my schedule will permit. There's also a group lesson group I'd like to join at some point.
I guess that's what's reportable for the moment.
Aleikum salaam
Liz
Well, right at the moment I'm in the projects outside of downtown buffalo. It would have been a good time to have my bike aboard but since the weather's turned bad and I decided just to park my car behind the motel next to the truck stop near my residence, I've gotten lazy with respect to the bike. I could walk into downtomwn buffalo from here and I'd kind of like to, but walking through this neighborhood, either carrying my computer or leaving it on the truck strikes me as rather more of a risk than I care to take. When I got this store and took walk around the building to see how to get to the loading area, there was this guy following me and watching me. His manner gave off more of a village idiot than threatening vibe, but still. If I had my bike though I'd just hope on and ride very quickly out of this area into downtown.
No matter. I'm holed up, tomorrow I'll unload and get the fuck out of here. This is still infinitely preferable to entering a comparable neighborhood in NYC. The streets are wide and all but empty. There was this inconvenient median in the road obstructing my entrance to the truck pass through, so I just crossed over before the median and drove on the wrong side of the road for a truck length or so. No problem at all.
I got confrontational with one of my bosses last week. I wanted to get that way with brandon more than with stephanie but B wasn't in. Explained that due to the shit that went down with my last NYC load I would not be entering NYC ever again. Stephanie said she would talk to brandon about it but that I probably could not stay on this account if I wouldn't do NYC. I said that was fine, I would just go back to running 48 states. She tried to tell me that there aren't any openings in 48 states right now.
Which of course is total bullshit. The only thing limiting the number of 48 state drivers is how many trucks they have and drivers to put in them.
But to make doubly sure about that I phoned placement; there are a couple of other accounts I could get on if I were to get my hazmat endorsement, as well as an unlimited supply of 48 state positions.
When I was at the DC today I noticed a missed call from the bosses mentioned above, I phoned them back but got a busy signal and did not bother trying them again. I don't like confrontations even though I guess I'm not the worst ultrawuss that ever existed.
I would prefer to stay doing this family dollar thing until i hit my year of experience at the end of january, as I'm use to the hometime I've been getting. On the other hand it wouldn't be so bad to get in a last hurrah and see a few distant places before I set this over the road shit aside for good.
A new motivation I have for wanting to be home is that I'd like to start playing guitar out with people. Friday night I was up at Sam's, the former Bart's in northampton, and ran into two old friends, one whom I've know since the seventh grade, about 1983 or so, and one who was a housmate for a few months in the nineties.
I was listening to the folks playing the open mike acoustic set, and they asked me If I played anything. I said I could play House of the Rising Sun and a few Mississppi John Hurt songs. So they handed me a guitar and I did HOTRS and "Don't Follow" by alice in chains. Apparently AIC is not a common selection amongst that set and they asked me if I had written that song. They tried to accompany me while I was playing but I'm not really used to playing in groups and what I was doing didn't really lend itself to accompaniment, but still I got an applause, even though I screwed up a bit, and was invited to show up next time with my Larrive. I hope my schedule will permit. There's also a group lesson group I'd like to join at some point.
I guess that's what's reportable for the moment.
Aleikum salaam
Liz
How about a nice story of the last few days of my fabulous life?
Well, last week I had two loads, and my second load got a little behind schedule because I had to head down to allentown PA for a meeting with a safety twit after my accident taking out the telephone pole earlier this month. I told my boss Brandon that I didn't think I'd be on time with the load I was assigned for after my meeting in allentown. He dismissed my concerns as unfounded. I did in fact get behind schedule on the load but not too terribly so and I got reasonably caught up. So on thursday I was headed back up to the DC in Rome Ny when I get some beeps on my qualcomm, the satellite communication, that my preassigned load had been removed. The load that was removed had been a pretty sweet one, four stops, two in a couple of towns south of albany, then Pittsfield Ma and Bennington Vt. Decently paying load that got me home. The load I got instead was to deliver on sunday and monday, instead of thursday and friday as the removed load had been. It was also for Poughkeepsie NY, the Bronx and Brooklyn, three of the worst areas that the Family Dollar account has to offer. And to top it all off, the new load wasn't even ready for me to pick up. I wasted an afternoon sitting on my ass at a rest area waiting for the load to be ready to pick up, and I finally got a message on my qualcomm that the load would not be ready till after midnight. So then I faced the unhappy dilemma of wasting a night sitting at the rest area, or wasting time and possibly catching hell wasting fuel, running home and running back to pick up the load on sunday and deliver it. I chose the latter, just because It worked out to an extra night at home with my cats.
So Sunday I headed out pick up the load, driving through a pretty shitty winter storm, and brought it down to the first stop in poughkeepsie. No big problems, I had driven past that particular store on a previous occasion and I knew where it was. Then today my first stop was in the bronx. Not too bad either. The store was right were it was supposed to be. As were the exits and roads that were supposed to get me there. Yay!
Then comes the crappy part. Part III of this load is the exact reason why I cannont enjoy my weekends before I head into NYC because of the anxiety I feel about going there. First I got kind of fucked up heading down to 278, the bronx-queens expressway. Then I managed to get on it. I kept seeing signs telling my trucks over 12'6" couldn't pass, they had to take exits 40 or 41. Initially I chickened out, even though I know that the whole state of NY posts underpasses a foot lower than they acually are. A map persusal revealed that that wasn't going to work, So I got back on the BQE, encouraged by the other big rigs I saw coming the other way.
A problem was now about to come up. My directions indicated I was to take exit 30 onto flushing ave. I discovered, to my dismay, that at least westbound on 278, exit 30 does not exist. Oops. I also discovered later on that Flushing ave is a one way and even if exit 30 does exist like if you were headed eastbound, you still could not take it from 278 to the place I needed to get to.
So having little other alternative I took exit 29 and fucked around until I got onto atlantic ave, after missing streets that I couldn't see, some of which my GPS showed me and I missed because I was too stressed out trying to not go down some street I wasn't supposed to bring a big rig down, and passing streets that I couldn't take because they were either one ways, or because they had construction barriers that would prevent me from taking the corner. I did some very improper things to get onto atlantic ave, from which I was able to navigate to the store. then I had to take another half hour to get the truck around the block. So I got to behind the store at 430 pm when I had been scheduled for 2pm. So I got into the store and talked to the manager and he refused to unload the truck because he is forbidden by his district manager to have his back door open after 5pm because it's a bad neighborhood.
So right now I'm at the vince lombardi service area waiting to go back to the store tomorrow morning. Total of about four days I've wasted on this load.
I'me feeling very stressed out and disrespected right now, I do not know NYC and those directions completely fucked me up. and then I couldn't deliver the fucking load. I'm going over the conversation I want to have with my boss brandon over and over again, I'm planning to tell him that I will never ever again do an NYC load. The extra 40 bucks for entering NYC is not even close to worth it. I might not be able to keep doing the family dollar account, but if that's the case I'll run 48 states until the end of january, when I'll either get some local job or if my accident record prevents that, I'll deliver fucking pizzas.
Mmmmmm, pizza.
It's still possible that coca cola will come through. But they take fucking forever to do anything.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Couple nights ago I dreamed that I was having sex with Angelina Jolie. I was so horny I thought I was going to come just from her touching me. But we actually started doing it, until someone walked in and interrupted us. Damn.
Right now my life just feels like stupidity and stress and nothingness. Sure would have been nice to have had halfway supportive parents, no ADD. Just have some ordinary job and ordiary life.
Well, last week I had two loads, and my second load got a little behind schedule because I had to head down to allentown PA for a meeting with a safety twit after my accident taking out the telephone pole earlier this month. I told my boss Brandon that I didn't think I'd be on time with the load I was assigned for after my meeting in allentown. He dismissed my concerns as unfounded. I did in fact get behind schedule on the load but not too terribly so and I got reasonably caught up. So on thursday I was headed back up to the DC in Rome Ny when I get some beeps on my qualcomm, the satellite communication, that my preassigned load had been removed. The load that was removed had been a pretty sweet one, four stops, two in a couple of towns south of albany, then Pittsfield Ma and Bennington Vt. Decently paying load that got me home. The load I got instead was to deliver on sunday and monday, instead of thursday and friday as the removed load had been. It was also for Poughkeepsie NY, the Bronx and Brooklyn, three of the worst areas that the Family Dollar account has to offer. And to top it all off, the new load wasn't even ready for me to pick up. I wasted an afternoon sitting on my ass at a rest area waiting for the load to be ready to pick up, and I finally got a message on my qualcomm that the load would not be ready till after midnight. So then I faced the unhappy dilemma of wasting a night sitting at the rest area, or wasting time and possibly catching hell wasting fuel, running home and running back to pick up the load on sunday and deliver it. I chose the latter, just because It worked out to an extra night at home with my cats.
So Sunday I headed out pick up the load, driving through a pretty shitty winter storm, and brought it down to the first stop in poughkeepsie. No big problems, I had driven past that particular store on a previous occasion and I knew where it was. Then today my first stop was in the bronx. Not too bad either. The store was right were it was supposed to be. As were the exits and roads that were supposed to get me there. Yay!
Then comes the crappy part. Part III of this load is the exact reason why I cannont enjoy my weekends before I head into NYC because of the anxiety I feel about going there. First I got kind of fucked up heading down to 278, the bronx-queens expressway. Then I managed to get on it. I kept seeing signs telling my trucks over 12'6" couldn't pass, they had to take exits 40 or 41. Initially I chickened out, even though I know that the whole state of NY posts underpasses a foot lower than they acually are. A map persusal revealed that that wasn't going to work, So I got back on the BQE, encouraged by the other big rigs I saw coming the other way.
A problem was now about to come up. My directions indicated I was to take exit 30 onto flushing ave. I discovered, to my dismay, that at least westbound on 278, exit 30 does not exist. Oops. I also discovered later on that Flushing ave is a one way and even if exit 30 does exist like if you were headed eastbound, you still could not take it from 278 to the place I needed to get to.
So having little other alternative I took exit 29 and fucked around until I got onto atlantic ave, after missing streets that I couldn't see, some of which my GPS showed me and I missed because I was too stressed out trying to not go down some street I wasn't supposed to bring a big rig down, and passing streets that I couldn't take because they were either one ways, or because they had construction barriers that would prevent me from taking the corner. I did some very improper things to get onto atlantic ave, from which I was able to navigate to the store. then I had to take another half hour to get the truck around the block. So I got to behind the store at 430 pm when I had been scheduled for 2pm. So I got into the store and talked to the manager and he refused to unload the truck because he is forbidden by his district manager to have his back door open after 5pm because it's a bad neighborhood.
So right now I'm at the vince lombardi service area waiting to go back to the store tomorrow morning. Total of about four days I've wasted on this load.
I'me feeling very stressed out and disrespected right now, I do not know NYC and those directions completely fucked me up. and then I couldn't deliver the fucking load. I'm going over the conversation I want to have with my boss brandon over and over again, I'm planning to tell him that I will never ever again do an NYC load. The extra 40 bucks for entering NYC is not even close to worth it. I might not be able to keep doing the family dollar account, but if that's the case I'll run 48 states until the end of january, when I'll either get some local job or if my accident record prevents that, I'll deliver fucking pizzas.
Mmmmmm, pizza.
It's still possible that coca cola will come through. But they take fucking forever to do anything.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Couple nights ago I dreamed that I was having sex with Angelina Jolie. I was so horny I thought I was going to come just from her touching me. But we actually started doing it, until someone walked in and interrupted us. Damn.
Right now my life just feels like stupidity and stress and nothingness. Sure would have been nice to have had halfway supportive parents, no ADD. Just have some ordinary job and ordiary life.
