Truck @ MindSay

Orientatio went as expected and other than a little suspense (they tried to put me back in the same fleet and under the same manager that I quit last year), all went smoothly.  I'm in the National Fleet running out of the Marietta, GA terminal and after 3 days of tests and reveiws of company and DOT policies, rented a car, drove to Greensboro, NC, and got into what appears to be a temportary ride - it must have been a team truck as its only 3 years old but has 510,000 miles on it - it should be up for trade in the next 6 months or so.

In the trade, we have what are called 'hot loads' (short period from pickup to delivery), but this appears to be more of a driver with a hot motor!

Some drivers LOVE their trucks.  They are like members of the family, or maybe more aptly, treated like a family pet : hugged, bathed, played with . . . LOOK! This guy taught his wittle bitty rig to roll over !

Here is a view of the Marietta terminal from the drivers lot in the rear.  Entrance and fuel islands are out of sight to the right, offices are downstairs on the far (front) side of the building, drivers stuff (laundry, lounge, kitchen, bunks, showers) are upstairs at the far side of the building, and there are 4 pull though bays for trailer inspections/repairs, 4 for tractors, 2 for body work, and 1 wash bay.  The opposite side of the building is the truck and trailer parking area.

Orientation over, the trip to NC in the rental was, um, uh, just, eh, PEACHY (sorry).

And finally, my new ride #29863.  Surprisingly clean and well maintained (must have been a husband and wife team!) except for that they were smokers.  New bedding though for every driver, so a can or ten of febreeze and all should be fine, LOL!  toot-toot!

Wow has it been a week!  Well almost!  I spent one night home Sunday night from our Fourth of July Camping Trip before I headed to Ponca for another camping trip!  I know some of this is going to be a repeat of an old blog get over it!:P

It looks like I am back for one night.  I get one last day to myself (cleaning and doing laundry) before I go pick up my kids from Goodwill Camp.  I really could care less if it is a Christian Based Camp.  It isn't a Bible Camp and it isn't a full on Church Camp.  I am worried about my kids to tell the truth.  Okay I am more worried about Coltin then DeLaney but I am still worried about DeLaney!  No News is Good News is the theory in our family.  Since I haven't heard anything, Randy hasn't heard anything, and my parents havent' heard anything, all is well!

Thursday the 3rd of July was a busy day of packing for camping.  Then lets add to that shall we!  Coltin and DeLaney were staying out of my hair by playing outside with the dog, the cats, and riding their bikes!  I was taking some down time before I had to get real busy by reading emails and on the computer!  All of a sudden Coltin comes pounding into the house screaming "MOM!  Mamma!  Mommy!  I fell off my bike!  My hand hurts!"  DeLaney is in the kitchen getting into something and then follows him upstairs.  I run half way down the stairs to meet Coltin.

His left palm is tore up!  Bleeding and full of gravel and dirt!  Not to mention some wood peices!  I grab his hand, a dirty jam jam top of DeLaney's off the steps and place over his hand and lift it over his head and then haul him like a sack of taters down the stairs to the kitchen!  I uncover his hand and it is still bleeding but I cleaned up enough with the jam jam top that I can see a good chunk is scraped, cut, and raw.  I tell him to take a deep breath and breath in via his nose and out his mouth and shove his hand under luke warm water and wash that hand up with dawn dish soap, hollered to DeLaney to get my saline solution off the sink.  I also told him no screaming in my ear!  He can cry all he wants but if he jerks his hand from my grasp or screams one bit it is going to be worse then what it actually is!  He listened thankfully.  DeLaney thankfully had the first aid kit ready for me (that is what she was doing in the kitchen when Coltin ran upstairs).  I get his hand cleaned up, the majority of the dirt, gravel and wood out and see that we can see fat at the base of his palm were the chunk is cut out of it!  GREAT!  The hand's skin is so thin anyway and he cut it deep. A trip to the doctor the day we leave for camping!

I call our doctor and talked to his nurse.  Sue (doc's nurse) thankfully said to just bring him in, no point in racking up an ER bill and doc was slow that afternoon.  It still took us 2 hours to get out of there.  Poor Coltin had to soak his hand in antiseptic solution for a half hour and then the doctor had to come look at it.  Doc decieded that it was pretty dirty still and had Sue resoak his hand for another half hour.  And you know they take forever coming in and out of the room between things!  Doctor wasn't going to put any stitches in just glue the flap of skin over since the other half of the wound was scraped up; until he found out we were going camping and then Coltin was going to Camp for a week when we got back.  So Coltin ended up in the Official Stitches and Staples Club of our family at age 8!  DeLaney entered into that club at 5 with staples in her head!

Once we got home, Randy pulled in and we got on the road to camping!  Then we had issues with the Ford.  The fucked over rebuilt dodge or Driver Returns on Foot vechile!  I HATE Fords!  We ended up turning around and loading up my busted up van and Randy's work truck.  After that we had a grand time of camping over the 4th of July!  Coltin managed to get to go swimming once that weekend.  Having Grandma and Auntie as RNs, Daddy an ex EMT/First Responder, and Mommy and Uncle with First Aid Knowledge the boy's hand was covered and water proof!

Anyway, I dropped the kids off at Goodwill Camp at 7 in the moring on Monday the 7th, ended up having coffee with one of my cousin's (her boy was going to Camp also!) and then I came  home and busted ass on laundry from the weekend!  I finally got packed up and on the road at 4:30 PM for MY camping trip!  I had a blast even though my hubby showed up on Monday and Tuesday nights!:P

The plan was for me to go cold turkey smoking since I would have the week to myself.  Wrong!  Randy didn't want to be home by himself (but I get to be home by myself all the time when he is gone!)  That is okay.  Monday we just hung around the camp site because it was too late to go fishing and we were on the Northwest corner of the park in the Reserve only camp ground.  Tuesday while Randy was working, I took the Tomahawk class!  That was a blast!  I so want a tomahawk and Randy to build me a target!  He said he will do that for me this fall!  We got to learn how to hold it proper and throw it properally.  We also were told how to hit the target and what to step if we were to far or back or ifit hit a certain way!  Randy and I feasted on Steak, coal baked taters, and chips for our supper and then we went fishing.  The area of the Mighty Mo we were on is NOT channeled (part of the National River Rec area), boy we learned real fast fishing there was different then fishing in the river up at the damm where it is channeled!  We caught nothing that night but that is okay.

Wensday, I went to the archary class and got hit on by the Park Worker teaching it.  So scrawny and so blonde!  Randy isn't even that blonde!  Not bad looking just not my type!  Made me feel good though.  Oh by the way, I was about the only adult to take the tomahawk and archary class, but I still had fun.  Wensday afternoon, I went kayaking on the back waters of the Mighty Mo!  OH MY GODS!  I want a kayak!  That was soooooooooooooo much fun!  We didn't go straight into the river but into the back waters!  Calmer, not as deep (you roll out you can stand up in some places!) and the current was pretty much none existant unless you were near one of the sandbars leading out to the river!  I told Randy he had to buy me two, two man kayaks now!  And 1 one man kayak so I can go with out him and the kids!  He laughed his ass off!  After kayaking, I went back to camp, let the dog out of the tent, made myself an early dinner, cleaned up some of the tent site, and loading up the van with my fishing gear.  The girl teaching our kayaking class showed a few of us some of the newer trails that lead down to the river and back waters for better fishing!  I fished from 5 pm till 8 pm!  I only caught a White Bass but they were nibbling all evening long!  It was great!  I released the fish, since Randy wasn't staying that night and I dont' eat fish!

I got home yesterday afternoon.  Before I came home though, I got my rear windshield fixed, hung out with a friend for the day and when I got home I cleaned up my dinning room.  Today I am picking up the rest of the house, getting it spot less and running to my new Wally World ..........Dollar General!  I pick my kids up at 6 pm tonight and sometime today I find out if I am picking my nephew up today or tomorrow.  Regardless I get two nights home before I head out to Western NE to play softball mom for my neice!  We will be back Sunday afternoon (depending on how well my neice's team does in what they call state -it is jr olympics). 

I'll eventually post pictures and add lil bits of information here and there!  But for now my rambling post is done!

Hi,

Does anyone know of any Fire songs that can be downloaded on the Internet? Even Itunes would suffice. Maybe a Fire Man song or a Fire Safety or Fire Fighter song.

It's for a presentation at work. Please post a link if you know of any.

We didn't take any pictures of the major damage.  Simply because we didn't go near the major damage and the fact we were detoured around the major damage and accidents. 

The first picture is of down trees near someones house.  They got really lucky none of their trees went on their house!

The second picture is the back of my van!  It was luckly a clean shatter break!  The bad thing about it was all the glass was IN my van!

The third picture is of one of the down trees at the zoo!

the fourth picture is a destroyed bean field and the fifth picture is a destroyed corn field.  The bean field MAY have a chance of coming back on it's own but nobody knows for sure!

The sixth picture is one of the rural fremont NE fire trucks we followed into Fremont!  That truck doesn't get used much and is usually for parade routes only but they keep it operational when something like this happens if they need more trucks like yesterday. 

The seventh picture is someone's house on a country road we attempted to take.  They had down trees all over the place, busted out windows, and all that tin in their yard is from someone's tin shed.  There was no houses near them and that tin lined their tree line and one peice of the tin was up on their roof! 

The eight picture is of the Platte River.  Looks real pretty huh!  Well this is a very rare picture of the Platte.  Most of the time the Platte is NOT this high and is full of sandbars.  As you can see it is very high and yes a few sandbars but you are careful you can usually ride a dirt bike, fourwheeler or even walk across the platte in certain areas!  Not this year!

The ninth picture is someone elses farm/ranch!  their over all house was okay but their field and picket fence that lead up to their house and their corn field destroyed!

The tenth picture is of the detour stop sign!  As you can see it was broken in half!

The eleventh picture is not a very good picture but it shows an over turned upside down irrigation system.  Every other field had one like this but this was the closet we could get to one!

We decided to go shopping before the zoo, my sister and I!  What a great day we had planned.  And it was going so well!  Out of the six major Thrift World Stores in the Metro area of Omaha, we hit two.  The two nicest ones with the Brand Name clothes!  One on the Northwest side of Omaha and one on the Southeast side of Omaha near the Zoo.

What a great way to end our mini camping trip that just turned in to being a mini stay at my sister's house due to the varying weather that kept popping up!  Instead of staying at the really nice free camp grounds we stayed at my sister's house for a few days, I wasn't going to chance being caught near a big man made lake that had extermly high levels near the banks of the camp ground!

Anyway, after a GREAT haul of a summer woredrobe for both kids from two different thrift shops and then treating the kids to lunch, we headed to Henery Dooley (sp?) Zoo for a nice afternoon.  It started out great!  We hit the Jungle, the Sea Lions, the Garden of Senses, the Cat House, part of the Avaiary, the Gorrila House, the Cat Complex, the feeding time for the smaller tropical birds, the Desert Dome, and the Giaraff House.  With smaller enclousers along the way of course!  Of course pictures are on here!  Enjoy!

While we were just ouside of the New Butterfly House and the Aquareme deciding which one we were going to go in first before we started heading to the town were my van was sitting so the kids and I could head home and my sister and her kids could head home, we heard the tornado sirins go off!  Now I know why so many ppl get killed in public places during storms!  The tornado sirns go off and the majority of the Zoo visitors head for the Goddess Dayum parking lots!  I kid you not!  Well being country girls, my sister and I herd the kids to the aquarememe (sp?) house under the canapoy and bust out our cell phones.  Each of us respectively calling our hubby's, asking them why the hell neither one of them called to tell us there was a storm system heading straight at Omaha!  We informed both of them that we were heading for the storm shelters in the Fish house and we would call once the storm passed.  Then we hearded the kids towards one of the Zoo Workers holding a door open to the basement of the complex leading to the exective offices and we were one of the first groups down. 

There were a few other ppl down there already but what we found the most funny out of this was that everyone single person down there including us, were NOT from Omaha persay but from the surrounding communities and areas!  We are NOT fools!  While the main secruity guy was telling us and the few zoo workers what the plan was, he was getting reports from the weather radio and the few of us that stopped and made calls.  Then he asked us to sit tight, while he and his other crew went outside to go round up the rest of the Zoo visitors and get them inside various zoo complexes till the storm passed.

We had a couple of upset kids of course, my daughter being one of them, and a lot of upset ppl, including ball players that stuck around after the College World Series before they went home.  Those of us from the midwest were laughing and joking and calming the kids down.  We kept telling everyone that we are in one of the safest buildings and don't worry about the animals they know what to do and the zoo workers were making sure they were safe also.  Once all the zoo workers got in the main secruity guy came back in to our basement and said it was pitch black out and winds up to 90-100 miles per hour and they would not know if a tornado hit till after it was clear out.  The lights did go out and thankfull the generator kicked on right away.

After we got the okay to clear out and leave the zoo, we got some pictures of the damage done in side the zoo.  Down trees and one of the heavy glass safety entrance doors to the Wild Kingdom Palliviallion was completely blown off and laid gently down in front of the Pavillion!  I missed that picture! There was hail everywhere!  We had to make our way out of the Eastern Side of Omaha back towards the I-10 exit so we could head to Freemont NE which is an hour Northeast of Omaha, where my van was sitting!  Damage everywhere!  While driving the news said, the Art Festival got hit hard downtown Omaha, there was a boat taken off of a dock in the Missiouri and was dropped on the roof of a house, trees blocking roads, and down electrical poles all over Omaha downtown/metro area!  We stopped on the outskirts of town to feed the kids and the Taco Johns we hit had running TVS.  The area heading to Fremont NE was hit hard also and a semi rig was entangled in electrical wires!  Cars of the road, rigs off the road, and major damage.  This system worked its way into IA and massive damage and two killed on the IA side.

We got detoured outside of a town between Omaha and Fremont due to massive damage and accidents.  Where I got a phone call from Randy when he got home.  My dog Spud died during the day yesterday!  Randy was upset and of course the kids and I were very upset also, but we also knew the dog was going to end up dying on us.  Spud was the dog with the unknown seizures.  At first Randy thought he somehow choked while he was outside on the chain but when he went up to examine Spud, there was plenty of slack in the chain and the collar would have slipped right off of his neck (we made sure that it could slip off if he was caught up when running or on the chain if something would have happened).  The way Spud was laying and his facial features, you could tell he had a massive siezure.  So trying to find our way on back country roads and county paved hiways we didn't know to get back into Fremont, we had upset kids and nobody was out directing the traffic.  My sister and I again being country girls said fuck it and got on a country road and started heading towards the sun because Northwest was where we wanted to head.  We picked up a truck in front of us from our home area just a different county and he had the same idea.  We got rerouted via the roads with no help from anyone due to big trees, silos, fencing, and other debries in the mushy gravel roads!  A normal 1 hour drive from Omaha to Fremont took 2 hours!

Once we got to a lil town Southeast of Fremont which would have been the quickest route we got denied by a State Trooper directing traffic.  Nobody was allowed into town where a small lake was surrounded wiht houses and such due to the damage!  They weren't letting anyone through not even family members of the town or land owners with no houses.  Ambulances and Fire trucks were all over the town and two of the rural fire trucks were making their way towards the other road leading to Fremont.  We just turned around and followed the fire trucks into Fremont.  Finally!  Fremont NE had no major damage.  Some trees down and some windows broken but no major damage.  Then we pull up into the truck stop where we left my van.  I got a lovely suprise!  My rear windsheild was blown out or a rock got kicked up in the storm!  I have no rear windshield now!  Nothing was stolen.  But everything was glass covered clear up to the front seat and everything was water logged!  Thank GODS I had what ever paperwork I did have in there in sacks and covered up!  My Leadership Manual alone would have cost me 100 some dollars to replace if it got water logged or damaged somehow!

So I called Randy yet again and told him we FINALLY made it into Fremont but I would be still a lot later because we had to clean up the glass and find places for the kdis to sit with out getting cut up!  Thankfull we were able to pull a couple of the pillows from underneith my tent that dind't have glass on it and give those to the kids to sit on.  My sister handed over one of her towels so I could sit on it while driving.  And then we rearrange the back so none of my Thrift shop finds, my tents, sleeping bags, blankets, pillows, or other camping gear would go flying out for my hour drive home!  I ended up pulling over twice on the way home to rearrange my back but FINALLY my normal two hour drive ended up being a 4 hour and 45 minute drive and we made it home at 8:45pm.  where we promptly unloaded the van and shop vaccued it out so I could get some plastic on the windshield due to more storms coming this weekend.

After we got that done, we gave Spud my Fat Man Dog a burial worthy of a King.  See we couldn't bury him.  The ground is too wet and his smell would draw the local wild dog pack and the local coyote pack.  Not to mention all the other wild critters int he area.  So we took my lovely burn pile Randy made up for me this weekend and gave Spud a Funeral Pry.  We didn't want any other anmals digging him up and eating on him.  Randy loaded him on the bonfire and I threw some sage, cedar chips, and sweet grass all over Spud and we said a lil blessing for him and said our goodbyes.

Now today, I get to call his old family and inform them that he is gone.  I am doing laundry from the back of my van and going to take the kids down to my girl's house because they are still stressed from last night.  A lil fun down at Aunties house and coming home about the time Daddy gets home from work will do them good. 

Now I am off to throw another sleeping bag into the wash!  Pictures to come after this post!