Hello all, John here.

I am happy to report that Derek made it Safe and sound this AM. First, let me back up a bit and tell you how the week has been.

I arrived into Milwaukee Tuesday, about 6:30. I had secured a reservation for the Milwaukee Ambassador Inn, on Wisconsin Ave. It is the small motel across from the Art Deco Ambassador Hotel. It was snowing and cold, I parked, and grabbed al my stuff to go check in. I get to the door and there is a sign that says "If this door is locked, please check in across the street". Sigh. Just what I needed to do is trudge across Wisconsin Ave with no signals at that intersection in the snowy weather, with all my gear in tow. Ugh. The Ambassador is a very nice place, and I found out that they bought the place across the street and basically use it for overflow. The reservation I had made on Hotels.com was for the "Inn" but they upgraded me to a room at the Hotel. Cool.

Wednesday I got a ton of work done at the office, and met with the account rep of our Drug and Alcohol Consortium. All went well. Then Thursday I was able to observe one of our drivers working with our pneumatic bulk tanker. We are hauling plastic pellets for a company who makes injection molded packaging. I have never had the opportunity to haul pneumatic bulk in my trucking career, and really don't know much about it. I was surprised to see how the truck worked with vacuum and air pressure to load and unload itself. It isn't as easy as it sounds, but still some pretty interesting technology. Afterwords, I stopped in a visited with a customer. That is one part of my old job I really miss, is the customer interaction. Jason does seem to be warming up to me some, and again, it was good I got to spend some time in the office. After work, Tom bought me dinner at Cafe Lulu's, which is this little trendy spot in Bayview. Very cool spot, and food was good-- so was the beer. We spent most of the evening arguing about politics and other things. Tom is fun to be around outside of work too, as you can hold an intelligent conversation, and even have rational debate with him and still walk away as friends.

Today, I went in the office for a bit, and then went to grab Derek at the airport. We then came back to the hotel, and went to grab breakfast. We went to a little dinner just a block down the street from the hotel called Micheal's. It was good. I had dinner there Wednesday. Our intention was to head right down to the County Hall, and got in the Jeep to head that way and Derek said "You have the paperwork right?" and I turned white as the blood drained out of me. All this work and expense planning this trip, and I forgot our damned birth certificates. This is the second time in the last year I pulled a good one like this, and am really frustrated about it. In my haste to get going Tuesday I didn't even think about it. Derek has been extra nice to me today because he knows how horrible I feel about it... as I am normally the one that has all this shit in order. Argh!

Since we can't really do anything about it, we decided to just enjoy our time here in Milwaukee. We booked tickets to come back in two weeks, we are just going to fly up, get it done, and fly back. If we waited two weeks the plane tickets were really cheap. It just burns me that Derek missed work today, and will again in two weeks, and the extra cost all for me being stupid. Anyhow... We decided to go tromp through Mayfair Mall since we haven't been there in years. Walked past the theater and Derek wanted to see Avatar in 3D again, so we did. The movie had just started, and the theater was mostly empty. We found seats right dead center, and looked like it would be a good showing. Now, I am not a big one for seeing movie multiple times, especially in a theater, but last time, we had some very rude and annoying people around us, and this is just one of those movies that seeing it again you see more of it. I really enjoyed it, however-- It seems that rude people followed us. There was maybe 12 people in the theater. Of course, we got the two chatty Indian girls sitting 2 rows back and to my left. I motioned to them once to keep it down, and Derek kept looking back, and finally made a hand gesture. Then all the sudden, he jumped up, jumped over me, got right up in their face's and told them that he was "trying to watch a god damned movie and you need to shut the fuck up." After the movie ended the one girl had the gaul to tell him "He doesn't know how to talk to a girl" and he basically responded that she was bothering him and it was rude. As we walked out another patron thanked Derek, and said he was just about ready to do the same. After 12 years, I have never seen him get so aggressive with anyone. I think he did it mostly because he knew I was pissed about the last time we saw it and those girls just weren't gonna ruin it for me again!

After the movie we stopped at Teavana in the mall for Derek to get some more tea. Then went to our favorite little Mongolian BBQ place. And now it will probably be a early evening... Maybe we will head down to the Hotel Bar for a beer, but then the TV and Bed is looking sorta comfy too.

So that's the excitement here in the big Brew City...

Goodnight

John

Hello all John here.

Weather here in STL has been much warmer. Seems the cold is behind us at least for a week or so, unfortunately it brought overcast and dampness with it.

Derek pretty much summed up the RV Show, but I can report that Bern and Mike made it safely back to Naperville. It was good to see them, and hope they enjoyed their short visit. We did.



Sunday we didn't do a whole lot, went to breakfast with Rich, Rich, Paul, Bern and Mike and Chris's. T'was good as always. The rest of the day we just loafed around. I did go gossip some with Lynn, and got the rest of the story on the guy in site 100.

Seems we were having some problems with him running water all over the place. He was warned 3 times to fix it, and then Van and Diane fixed it for him (bad hose). The following day he left something running again (we think it was one of his low point drains he would leave open to keep the water flowing through, and not freezing in his trailer). Not only was it a huge waste of water, but with the cold weather made a really nice ice flow down through the driveway. Lynn had enough and told him on Monday he had till Sunday to leave. She clued me in on Thursday that she kicked him out, and he would be stopping in to pay the two weeks he owed, and for his propane. Of course, he stopped in, but played dumb, and wanted to pay for the entire month. I really hate being put in the spot, so I said, I would have to call Lynn to confirm, since I was told a different course of action. He wanted to talk to her, and got huffy. Hung up and then threw the phone back at me. He said then he would settle up when he left Sunday. Yeah right, I knew he was gonna ditch. So, Friday, he comes home early and hooks up his trailer and pulls out without paying. George see him and takes of in his pickup after (Yeah, imagine that, an 81 yr old man, speeding down Jefferson Ave after this low life)... Well, He got in front of him and tried to stop him, and the guy rear ended him. Thankfully no one got hurt out of all that stupidity. Other than George's pride, as the police responded and promptly wrote him a ticket for an illegal lane change, and explained that it was a civil matter, and he just can't take the law into his own hands like that. Needless to say Lynn was not amused, and George has been spending a lot of time out in the shed. The drama never ends...

On to other things, my mail packet of work arrived, so I spent most of the day working on that. I actually got it all done today, so I was pretty impressed with that. Work itself has been going fairly well, and even though Tom seems to be in quite a foul mood lately, he seems happy with what I am doing. Jason is even opening up to me some, and starting to rely on utilizing me for information and advice. At first I had some major concerns that the guy was just too stiff to be in a front line management role, but I think his positive attributes far outweighs any personality deficiencies. I think he is more detail orientated than I am, and hyper observant. We have been working on re-writing the Driver's Manual, the one I wrote in 2004, and I am really sick of it already, and only about 1/4 of the way through it. I have most of the tough revisions done, now it is just a matter of getting it all entered in, and formatted nicely, so it should start to go more quickly.

Derek has been sorta under the weather a bit. Seems like he is coming down with a cold. He said he started feeling better after his work out, but then his legs started to burn some on the treadmill. I made him dinner tonight, TJ's stuffed pork chops, which I overcooked. Sigh. Dinner hasn't been my focus lately, and I really should just stop working while I am cooking, but I hate just waiting when I have other things to do.

Other than than that, not a whole lot going on... So that's all I have.

Have a good evening....


John