Day 79

Good evening everyone. Well tonight is going to be interesting. Tonight is the night of my half shift. I'm only working till midnight, and then Aaron, the guard that has now replaced Randy, will be coming in from midnight till 6. Then sunday, monday, and tuesday are his days, and then I come in Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and then when I come in next saturday evening it's only 6 hours because then thats the half shift again.

The truck window is replaced! I'm so not messing with it right now. The guy that is fixing Erin's transmission was supposed to have the car done Friday night originally. Then he called friday and because of not being able to get the parts in time, he said it would be done saturday. Then he called this morning and talked to Erin. The company he gets the parts through still hadn't gotten them in, so he said definitely monday. Erin asked him if he knew where we could get a window installed in the truck if we were going to have to drive the truck down to pick Lex up. He said he had a window and if we brought the truck by, he would put it in for us while we waited. He did, and I asked if he would look at my battery connection because I was not able to disconnect it. Apparently the bolt holding it on was corroded, so he got it off, grabbed one from the truck he was using for parts, cleaned the corrosion off the battery and hooked the new bolt up.

When he was doing that, I noticed the interior lights were on, and then I noticed my trip odomotor was not showing anything. No numbers what-so-ever. Then I tried to turn on the radio and nothing. We checked the fuses and found the culprit, replaced it, and we were on our way. Erin asked him what we owed him and he said he wasn't going to charge us. I'm guessing it's because of Erin's car not being finished yet even though he said it would be, and that he knew we were driving the truck to pick Lex up because of it.

So, up until today, we didn't know what the plan was. We had talked about Erin leaving today with her car and going down there while I stayed here and worked my half shift, then stayed home so that Teagan was taken care of. Another possibility was getting someone to watch Teagan while we were away, and we would go together in her Escape. But of course, the car didn't get repaired in time, and so we knew we were going to end up driving in the truck..

Plus another thing was if we were going to drive the whole way and stay the day with them, we thought about leaving just after midnight tonight when I get off so we'd get there roughly at 7 AM, go to bed for however many hours, get up and hang out. But we found out that they won't really have too much time because their getting ready for a trip, so we agreed that we would just meet them in the middle some where. Well, it's so not in the middle. We used to meet in Des Moines, IA, which is about 3 hours from here, and I think that was closer to half way, but where we met them last time is an hour and a half closer to them. Oh well. We will deal.

So anyway, in closing, I'm nearing the end of my first week at the University of Phoenix. In the mail today, I received a check from the government. It was only for like $87.00 but that's additional money we didn't have before. It said "treasury" on it, but I didn't know what it was for. It also said "VA ED" which leads me to believe that the check was a partial payment from the GI bill. Woohoo! If thats the case then that is really good news. It means I won't have to wait months till I start receiving all the GI bill benefits. Basically it should cover most of my school, and then I'm certain we will receive checks at home every month to help with living expenses. The fact that we got the check today makes me sure of it. So anyway, I will call that it for tonight. Talk to you all again tomorrow.

Thanks for being here.

CB