TIs a hot one today aye? ;)

So I'm still in route to Laredo from Colorado, but I'm almost there. Before I go into that, for whatever reason (i don't know honestly, it could be that while out here on the road, my mind goes into these random fits of randomness and weirdness.....yes..i know i'm already weird so how much more weird could i get right? well as my beautiful wife would say..shaddup!.. JK! you don't have to.. Well anyway, what I was saying was randomly today there was something I planned to start my blog entry off with tonight. Here goes..

Letter To the Site

Dear Blogspot,

First of all, I wanted to say how fast you are going today. I never seem to have any trouble with the site lagging when I'm trying to write my entry, and for that I thank you. My computer is slower anyway being that it is a netbook, so when I'm trying to type something and there's a delay between when I hit the keys and when it appears on the screen, as you might imagine, I get quite anoyed. Of course it's not directed at you, so no need to worry. Also, just, thank you. I understand very well how I can be, and how when others might be telling me their problems, I might not quite hear them and instead I go on about my own problems. Not you though blogspot, you have always been there, always listening, and I appreciate that. No matter what, I know I can come here to this safe haven and write about anything that is going on in my wacky head, and what I love about you the most is, you won't leave. You never judge. You never criticize. You never tell me that I should have done things a certain way, or that I need to parent in a certain way. Nope, not you, you simply are there for me and listen when I need you, so Thank you.

Sincerely, one of your biggest fans!

Chris

Yes people, like I said, I'm all sorts of weird and I don't care if anyone reads this and goes "omg, he's like so totally weird!" Well i say to that "well, like what-eva!" :P

So an update on the current trip. I finally got out of colorado around 10AM, and I had figured that I would stop at one of the same truck stops I stopped at when I was going from texas to colorado. But when my time was getting down there to the last hour and a half, and I was getting closer to where the truck stops were, following the directions down to laredo from co, it took me on a different highway. Once I realized I was like "oh shit..." And lucky me! The highway I was on didn't have ANY truck stops for about oh,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, about 120 miles, which I didn't have the time to get to, so I was driving down the interstate looking at my time, and at my gps, and at the exits and thinking "ok, I have to find a safe spot to pull over". USually as long as the service road beside the highway, or the onramp or something have enough of a shoulder, I can usually find a place. So when I had 10 minutes left on my DOT time, I finally said "i'm getting off on the next exit and seeing what it's like. It was this farm town exit with wide open fields near by, no houses, no vehical traffic really, and the on ramp was about half a mile long with a couple of curves. So I curved two or three times and got on a 50 yard straight stretch, and got out and walked over to the grass on the side of the road to see if there was a dip or if it was solid. Thankfully it was solid, so I was able to pull off the road to where there was still a space and a half beside me on the road. The only concern i had was that I was leaning a few degrees to the right, but it turned out fine. I covered my windows up, and talked to erin and the girls on video chat, and went to sleep. Got up this morning around 7 *since that was when my 10 hours were up*, actually i woke up around 6:30, so I put on another episode of Vampire Diaries on netflix *since that is the current series I'm working on now since I finished doctor who and they aren't putting new ones up for a bit... But I figured I'd watch one episode while I was waiting till my time had reset, and till my 15 minutes for doing my pretrip were logged, and then I took off. I am trying to use my time sparingly so that as I get however many hours back at midnight each night, i'm hoping I will always have an ok number of hours so that I can get loaded and take off. I could have taken off in colorado the previous day, but I was only getting 3 hours back that night and when i stopped, I had 2.5 hours from that day, so basically I would have had 5.5 hours total to work with for a load until getting 10+ the following night, so my dm (driver manager) figured it would be better for me to just deliver that load in colorado and then get loaded the following day when I had better hours. So tonight, I had enough time to make it all the way to my drop, but two things were on my mind that I was taking into account. 1) the hours, trying to use about 8 hours yesterday and today to let a few extra hours trickle into my 70 hour limit. Obviously last night because of not being able to do anything about the truck stop issue, i went longer than 8 hours, but today, around my 8 hour mark I saw a sign for a loves with a Mcdonalds. Haven't had mcdonalds in forever. *God Bless the Dollar Menue! especially when you only have a few bucks on ya!* ;) So I looked on my app on my phone to see what other truck stops were coming up since I figured I wasn't going to drive all the way tonight, I saw that after this loves, there was not another truck stop for another about 70 miles, which was fine, but it really came down to either stop at loves earlier than at the other one, and be able to get a few dollar menue items for dinner, or wait, stop at the flying j, and be able to take care of the showering and all that fun stuff tonight. So, I decided to stop at the loves and that there's a flying j right next to laredo that I stopped at last time. I will take care of business there. Food was the bigger motivator here! ;) The #2 thing I considered was my appointment time isnt until 7am tomorrow. I thought I had to be there by 7 am, so when I backed into a spot here at loves and was doing my 15 minute post trip inspection, i looked at my messages and saw that the appointment time is between 7AM and 10AM. So i had already set my alarm for 2:45, because I'm 3 hours away, but since I don't have to be there until between those two times, I put my alarm for 4:45 and figured that would get me there some time just after 8AM, which works out fine for me, plus it gave me time to get online, do my school posts, come on here and do this blog, and eat, and I plan to watch a few episodes of vampire diaries when I get off here. Unlike erin, I haven't read all the books from this series. The main ones I HAVE read were the stephens diaries, which I thought were awesome, but it definitely left me wanting more. However, when watching these last few episodes, I know what they are talking about when they backtrack to the 1800's and i can go "i remember that!" lol..

So on that note, I will let you all go! Talk to you guys again soon. Be safe... God Bless!

C

PS One other thing that i find interesting. People (either friends or family) telling other people what they should be doing better with raising their kids. While I was driving I was having this weird little convo with myself as if I was talking to someone who had made suggestions to us about our kids, and in my mind, it was a relative and I sat down with this person, and said "look at ally. What do you think of her, is she a good kid?" "well yes of course, she's wonderful." "ok, then is she dirty?" "no." "is her hair a mess?" "no." "Ok, well, does she get to school?" "Yes of course, what kind of questions are these?" "just bear with me. now, is she involved with extra curricular activities or sports or anything?" "You know that she is...shes in soccer!" "alright, well, does she get fed?" "Yes." "And does she have clothes that are in good shape and are clean?" "Yes." "And what about her attitude, for the most part do you think she's respectful?" "Yes she is. Obviously she has her bad days, but she's respectful." "Ok, well then my last question, does she have a place to live?" "Of course she does." "ok, then my question to you after all that would be, you basically pointed out that she has everything she needs provided for her, she's respectful, she's already grown so much into a beautiful young lady, she's respectful, clean, taken care of, etc. So why do you think it's necesary for you to give us advise on things you think she should do less of, or what we are doing wrong, when you just pointed out that we aren't doing it wrong? Can you do me a favor and not worry about our kids and if they do too much of things like chores, or anything like that? Obviously, being the loving and responsible parents that we are, we are doing what we have always done, which is to do our best to make sure that not only are our children loved and receive the best that we can possibly give them, but we are also teaching them about responsibility so that when they get older and begin their own lives outside of the home, they will have the basic knowledge. Please just let us worry about how to raise our own kids the way that we have been doing, which is obviously doing the trick. Ok?" "alright. I'm sorry." "Thank you." Keep in mind, this convo didn't actually happen anywhere but in my daydreaming head. :P But, that's the kind of stuff that when I'm out here all alone, I find my mind wondering circles and i can easily stress about the smallest things, but hey,that's why i'm here! ;) Have a good night you guys and talk to you later.