Well he did it!

We got home and he got the car he wanted !

Sometimes dreams do come true!

This is a 2008 Ford Mustang GT Convertible that my husband just had to have!

John was like a little kid wanting to get home so badly so he could race down to the dealership and buy this car. He was so worried someone else was going to beat him to it.

Fortunately, it all worked out and he's a happy man!

The weather has been perfect for driving around with the top down.


He finds an excuse everyday to need to go to town, just so he can drive his car. Oh well, at least he's happy!

Parked in town at the Lakefront while we ate breakfast

We drove it to town and parked at the Lakefront and ate our breakfast. Just like old times. I'm just happy we got it so I don't have to go look at anymore cars or talk to anymore car salesman. That is the most painful experience. I hate it. They play too many games when it comes to cars. Just tell me the freaking price and let's be done. I do not want to spend my whole time at home car shopping. Luckily this time it was a half a day deal. I can live with that!

Truckers Paradise

We are still sitting here in Ripon. Unfortunately the delay caused by the repair made us miss out on a load for the weekend. Hopefully something will come thru by Monday. We need to get home for several reasons.

We promised our sons we would watch their dog while they go to Vegas. They leave next Sunday. John wants to buy the car he found online. I have family going to bikers week in Daytona that we want to visit.

Walking to the Taco Bell

Nothing we can do but keep our fingers crossed and wait. In the meantime we have been using the down time to start educating ourselves about the stock market and real estate. Coming up with some ideas. You tube can teach you anything and everything.

Almond Capital of the World

Everywhere we look we see these Almond Tree Orchards

We are sitting in Ripon, California. Not a bad place to sit actually. The weather is beautiful. The almond trees are in bloom. We have plenty of food choices from where we sit. Life is good at the moment.

After getting the turbo actuator repaired, again, we left the shop in Turlock, Ca and headed north to Ripon to visit the Speedco. We needed to get the maintenance done on our apu and figured we might as well do it now. We weren't going to go back in service Tuesday anyway since we had both been up all day while the repairs were being made. I'm still ticked about that whole deal, but I'm trying to move on.

After the apu was serviced we filled up the tanks at the Flying J. We were hoping to get a parking space there but they were all filled up. At 7PM local time. Amazing. We drove back across the street and hit the jackpot with a parking spot at the Loves that is pretty sweet. It's a straight walk into the Loves if I need to use the restroom. John can watch me walk in so he doesn't feel the need to accompany me for safety reasons. I'm a free woman! Haha!

The Loves has an Arby's. The Flying J across the street has a Denny's. There is a Sonic, a Taco Bell, a McDonald's, a Jack in the Box and a Carl's Jr. right next to us. All within easy walking distance.

So far in the three days we have been here, we've gone to Denny's twice, Arby's twice and Sonic once. These places are getting rich off of us! You know you're living a weird life when you base your location happiness on your available food choices. That, and whether or not we have 4G. Which by the way, we do not. And it's really annoying. Shouldn't 4G be everywhere by now?

Will this be John's Dream Car?

We've been using our downtime to continue car shopping. I think John has found the car of his dreams. It's right down the road from where we live. Now if it's still there when we get back home next week, he'll be a happy man. It's a 2008 Bright Red Ford Mustang GT Convertible. We used to have a 2005 Mustang GT Convertible and he's always regretted getting rid of it.

I applied for a Capital One Auto Loan yesterday. You can do it online and it's a pretty easy process. You should get an answer almost immediately, but of course, since we are self employeed, it required that we send in 3 months of bank statements. And since we have 4 different bank accounts, it turned into a lot of work for me. I finally got them all printed out today and faxed them in. 38 pages. Haha, bet someone's gonna have fun sorting through that!

We should get an answer within 3 business days. We've been preapproved pending the approval of the bank statements. They have a pretty sweet deal. 4% interest. They will mail a blank check to the house upon our approval and we do have to buy a car from one of their approved car dealerships but there are many of them on the list. Pretty much all the namebrand places. Luckily for John, the dealership that has the car he wants is on the approved list.

I swear sometimes he is such a kid. He's spent most of the morning looking at pictures of that car on the internet. I think he's in love!

Quality Control. Anyone ever heard of that concept?

I really do not know what to think about the problems we keep having. A couple of weeks ago, our turbo actuator went out and we ended up driving 1300 miles under load without a turbo. It sucked, but on that load, our freight was only 200 pounds and the route was from Iowa to Florida so there weren't any mountains to deal with. What we thought at that time was a terrible drive, we now know was only a nuisance.

We know this because that new turbo actuator that was installed two weeks ago failed while we were on a load from Alabama to California. This time our freight was 6100 pounds and we had mountain after mountain to deal with. Our total trip was 2230 miles and the problem began when we were in Tucumcari, NM. That left us with 1160 miles to our delivery. Sheer torture. I think we drove most of those miles with our flashers on. Every time we encountered even the slightest incline, the truck would lose speed and there was nothing we could do except downshift and put the flashers on when we got below 45 mph.

It was a test of our patience and determination. We were not giving up that load if we didn't have to. We wanted the revenue from the load to cover any repairs that we were going to have to make to fix the truck. Of course, we didn't know for sure that it was the actuator until we were able to get to the dealership and have it looked at, so there was the possibility that our turbo itself would need replacing so we were preparing ourselves for a $2500 repair bill.

Fortunately, the load had plenty of time on it for delivery. In fact, it had an entire extra day. But because this was a weekend load, we weren't able to stop into a dealership and get the repair made on our way since they were all closed and at home nice and comfy and not at all concerned about us and our problems. Problems that it turns out is caused by poor workmanship. It was indeed a faulty actuator. Two weeks? Two weeks is all it lasted? How can this be? We pay dang good money for parts and labor and I expect more  than two weeks! Sure, it was covered under warranty. But what about our down time? What about the frustration of driving over 1100 miles through mountains with no turbo? What about that?

I asked the service counter guy if that was unusual to see a part go out after two weeks and he said no. He said unfortunately they get a lot of angry truck drivers who are upset because their parts aren't lasting. I asked him where these parts are coming from and he said Asia. I don't know if he really knows or if he made that up, but wherever they are coming from, it needs to stop. How about making them here in America? How about holding manufacturing companies responsible for quality parts? We would be money ahead if we had to pay a little more for a quality part that will keep us running rather than paying less money for a part that isn't going to last and is going to cost us downtime, potentially a tow bill and a loss of a load.

What do I know? After all, I'm just a driver!

Looking for a new ride

We are back to work again after a short (for us) visit home. We got a lot of things accomplished while there this time. We didn't have any company which allowed us to stay focused on getting things done.

International in Ocala repaired our broken turbo actuator. That was no fun driving 1300 miles with no turbo. They also replaced our ac compressor. Again. This is the 3rd compressor in 9 months. We had to pay for the first one (in El Paso) the last two have been under warranty. Makes me wonder what is going on with the parts we are getting from International.

We took the truck there to get the turbo fixed. Along with a clutch adjustment and we had a freon leak from the hose running out of the compressor. Those were the known problems that we had. In addition to that, while they  were testing things out, they said we had a low fuel pressure reading so they wanted to change the fuel pump and the fuel pressure regulator. We dropped it off late Thursday night. We rented a motel room for two nights. On Saturday we were told that it would probably be Tuesday before they would have the truck done.

We decided to rent a car and go home and come back and pick the truck up when it was done. I first called Enterprise since they will come and pick you up. They informed me that they had no cars available and no person available to pick me up even if they had a car. I tried another nearby Enterprise location and got the same answer. I tried called Hertz and was told no cars. Getting desperate, I called Avis and hit the jackpot. They had a car available.

I called up the International dealership and asked them if they could come and pick me up and take me to Avis. They said no problem. Someone was there within 15 minutes. He dropped me off at Avis and I left there with a very nicely loaded Chevy Cruze. Leather, sunroof, all the new gadgets, push button start and best of all, air conditioning that worked!

I went back to the motel, picked up John and Cody and we drove the 100 miles home. It's always so nice to go home and walk in and find everything exactly like you left it. This time while we were home we had to find a plumber to come out and do some drain work for us. The thing I've noticed living in Florida is that getting any kind of contractor to do work for you is a challenge. They don't return phone calls. They're over priced. They work when they want to work and a lot of them do shabby work.

I had no idea who to call so I just googled plumbers and started down the list. We got lucky and one finally called us back two days later and we set things up with him. He ended up coming a day later than originally planned because we had major rain the day he was supposed to come but he did get the job done and did it very well. His price was reasonable also so we feel very lucky that we now know a good plumber.

On Tuesday we drove back up to Ocala to pick up our truck and return the rental car. We started the drive back home and stopped off in Wildwood to fill up at the TA. I put the nozzle in the drivers side tank and tried to set it to automatically fill so I could go to the passenger side and get it going. It kept clicking off and wouldn't stay running. I finally called inside and asked if there was a problem with the pump. The lady said not that she knew of. I went around to the passenger side and put the pump in and it started filling up like normal. I went back around to the drivers side and pulled the nozzle out and found the problem. The tank was completely full. The passenger side took 35 gallons to fill it up.

This isn't supposed to happen. The truck is supposed to keep both tanks equalled out. I called International back up and asked them if they had done anything that would have caused this. They said no they hadn't, bring it back in. We turned around and drove 30 miles back to them.

We only had to wait for about 20 minutes for a tech to come out and hook up with his laptop. He ran some tests and determined that the fuel transfer pump wasn't working. Apparently, our trucks engine pulls the fuel from the passenger side tank. The drivers side is just a supply tank. There is a pump that will monitor the level in the passenger tank and pull from the drivers side over to the passenger side to equal them out. He replaced that pump and we were good to go again.

Back home we headed with our fingers crossed that nothing else would happen. We also needed to get our translucent roof resealed. Because we had been in so much rain we saw a couple of spots that were leaking a little bit. We decided to get it done on Monday right before we went back in service.

Another thing we did while we were home was car shop. When we started this job 3 years ago, we sold our vehicles and our boat. When we are at home we use our sons car. John has recently gotten the fever to own a car again so now we are shopping. Something that I consider sheer torture. I couldn't care the less about a car, but he is a car fanatic.

Our first test drive was a brand new Cadillac ATS. It was nice, not as nice as I had imagined a Cadillac to be, but we were seriously going to buy it. However, as usual, they tried to play the numbers game with us and we told them no and walked out.

We also test drove a new Dodge Dart. It's a nice little car but too small for me and not enough power for John. We drove a slightly used Chrysler 300. That was an absolutely beautiful car. We really thought about getting it. The only thing that stopped us was John wanted a hemi and it didn't have one. Honestly, it doesn't need one. He's just being a power hungry guy. Our next test drive was a Dodge Durango. It was a 2011  like brand new. We both really liked it. It had a lot of room in it. All the fancy gadgets. But, again, no hemi. If it had a hemi, we probably would've left with it.

So, we are still without a car, which is fine with me. John can continue looking for his dream vehicle while we are out on the road. The internet makes dreams come true, so we will see what happens!

Final Countdown

Just about ready to hit the road again. It has been a LONG vacation. Not complaining...just saying. With the surgery, the ear infection, the sinus infection and the flu, it seemed like I was never going to be able to get back on the road.

With the extended time off, I have been able to get a lot of projects completed. Nothing major, just little things like organizing my online photo albums, working on this blog layout. Paperwork of course. Lots of little projects around the house. It's nice to have those things done so they don't eat away at you while you're on the road. It sucks that while you're on the road you have so much downtime but since you're away, you can't do the projects that wait for you at home. But, that just gives you an excuse to do fun things, like reading, watching movies, shopping.

Now that we're preparing to get back at it, I feel like the New Year is finally starting for us. I never really make resolutions but this year I am going to try and get healthier. That includes losing some weight, which I have never had to do in my life, and trying my very best to get some excercise, something I have done very little of in my life. Getting older stinks. My metabolism is finally slowing down. I've always been able to eat whatever I want and never had to worry about gaining weight. My body just seemed to maintain itself at the weight it thought it needed to be. I still pretty much eat whatever I want, but I also am not happy with the weight that I am right now. I don't like having a little fat roll around my middle. It's disgusting. I also don't like seeing the loss of muscle tone, what little I had anyway.

Tomorrow will probably be a pretty busy day. Our last one at home for awhile. We'll have to get the truck packed back up and the house locked down. We're planning on only being gone at most 3 weeks before coming back home this time. If we can get back home after two weeks out, we'll do that. We're definitely not fans of winter weather and the more days we can be at home during the winter, the better. We can always make more money during the summer and fall and be safer while doing it!

Sick of being Sick! I wanna go back to work....

Today I went back to the walk in clinic to see about getting help to put this sickness to an end! Seriously! I usually never get sick and since Thanksgiving, that's all I've done. First, what seemed like the flu, then the thyroid surgery, then the middle ear infection, then what seemed like the flu again. Now, I have a sinus infection.

This is the first time I've ever had a sinus infection and I hope it's the last. My entire body has been aching for a week. I've been living on Tylenol for the pain. I have to blow my nose nonstop. I have a horrible cough that scares me to death and makes me think I'm going to cough up a lung. I can't take it anymore!

The Dr. today prescribed two medicines and I'm really hoping they work fast. I didn't get any sleep last night and very little all week and I'm becoming a real bitch because of it. I took the first dose of medicine and laid back down hoping that it would knock me out and I could finally get some rest, but that didn't happen. Ever since I had the thyroid surgery, my body clock has been out of whack or something. I'm not sleeping much at all. When I'm not sick, it doesn't seem to be a problem, but now I really need to sleep and give my body a chance to heal.

Our company that we drive for today called and asked when we were planning to come back to work. Boy, did that dispatcher pick the wrong to call! I had just gone into Walmart to pick up my prescriptions that the Dr's. office had called in, only to be informed that they were marked "pickup tomorrow". I nearly snapped. I told them to cancel it, called the Dr's office back and told them to send the order over to CVS. I am not dealing with that Walmart pharmacy's stupidity anymore. The last thing a sick person wants to do is sit and wait for hours on their medicine. By the time we drove across the street and pulled into the drive thru at CVS, they already had my prescriptions ready. They will be getting my business from now on! Job well done CVS!!

Right after I got back into the car in the Walmart parking lot after learning they messed up my order, dispatch called and wanted to know if we were enjoying our vacation. I kinda went off on his and feel bad about it, but this sickness is kicking my butt and I'm really not being nice to anyone right now. Hopefully he understands as I explained to him all that's been going on.

It sucks that we've been home this long and I haven't been able to make more progress on projects that I want to get done, but that's the way it goes I guess. I still have some bookkeeping work for the business to get done. Need to thoroughly clean the house. Especially with all the germs in here. Need a big bottle of lysol for that!

Guess I've whined enough for now. Can't wait for bedtime...

Jo Koy Rocked It!

John, the boys, and I went to the Orlando Comedy Improv last night and watched Joy Koy. We know of him from watching Chelsea Lately. He far exceeded our expectations. He is seriously funny!

Loved his jokes about "parent sex" vs "couples sex". His routine is a bit on the vulgar side, but that doesn't bother any of us. If it did, we probably wouldn't be able to be truck drivers!

I was the designated driver for the night. After the show, we hit up the Fat Fish Blue Bar and then Hooters. Hooters was quite disappointing. Pretty empty and the Hooters girls were kind of lacking in the looks dept. Normally I wouldn't be so judgmental, but isn't that kind of the draw for Hooters?

Paper Work Never Ends

I've spent all day trying to catch up on paper work and trucking related stuff. I'm still not done, but I put a good dent in it. The rules and regulations for trucking are unbelievable. I got the mail yesterday and there was a piece of mail telling us about a new requirement for cdl holders regarding self reporting for our medical cards. Not exactly sure what that's all about, but I followed the instructions and got it taken care of.

John went out to put the new visor clip on the truck and found out that International sold us the passenger side clip instead of the drivers side. Not surprised. Even though they double checked it, they still got it wrong. Guess we'll have to go back there tomorrow and see if they have the correct one.

I'm getting my hair cut and highlighted tomorrow and then tomorrow night me, John and our two sons are going to the Improv in Orlando to see Jo Koy. We're pretty excited about it. We see him quite a bit on the Chelsea Lately show and he's always funny. We've never been to the Improv, so not sure what to expect, but I know it'll be a good time!

The weather today was absolutely perfect! Not that I did anything outside, but where I sit and do paperwork I'm surrounded by windows and I had them all open with the breeze blowing in. It was in the 80's today and is supposed to be the rest of the week. I love Florida weather in the winter time!

The boys got their Vegas trip booked for March and we agreed to babysit their dog, so we will have to be home in March for that. I guess I'll go ahead and do our taxes then. With all this fiscal cliff talk, I'm dreading that. Don't know what to expect.

Went to the endocrinologist yesterday and got great news. My blood work was so good that they didn't put me on synthroid. At least not yet. I have to go back and have it done again in 8 weeks and see how that goes.

A Productive Day at Home

I got the house completely and thoroughly cleaned today. Mom and Dad are coming tomorrow to stay for a few days. While cleaning, I found some old pieces of jewelry that I haven't worn in years. I took them to a jewelry store and they ended up paying me $240 for them. I was shocked. I doubt if I paid that much for them new. Gold must be really high right now.

Tomorrow I am going back to have a follow up visit with the lady who does the permanent eyeliner. Cant wait to get it done!

Also today, I am trying out monovision with contacts. So far I think I like it. Only thing is, I'll have to get some glasses made for driving because it would be too much eye strain without them. It's nice to be able to read without putting on reading glasses.

That's about it, feeling really good still since the thyroid surgery. Wish I would've had it done sooner now!

Full of Energy Today

It's been 5 days since I had my left half of my thyroid removed and today is the first day that I have felt really good since. I woke up today full of energy and spent the whole day cleaning. I hauled out 8 garbage bags of stuff. Went through every cabinet, closet and drawer and pitched anything that didn't seem necessary. Why do we save some of the things we save? Empty boxes, clothes we haven't worn in years, kitchen utensils that I don't even know how to use....

 Yesterday, I went to a walk in clinic and found out I have a middle ear infection. Got a prescription for amoxicillin and another for some kind of steroids. Must be doing the job because I feel awesome now. Still can't hear 100% out of my left ear, but much improved over how it was. The whole weekend it felt like the left half of my head was stuffed with cotton.

 Tomorrow, I will need to go get a blood test done and then Monday I will follow up with the surgeon and on Tuesday I will see the endocrinologist who will have the results of the blood work from tomorrow and then he can decide what dosage of medicine to put me on. Hopefully he gets it right because I am not looking forward to any side effects from too much or not enough synthroid.

 I don't have much experience with drugs of any kind since I hate taking anything, but I do have a prescription for vicodin that they sent me home with. The best benefit I found from it so far is yesterday I took it and on the way home from the Dr. we stopped at Walmart to stock up on some groceries and other household items and by the time we got there, the drugs had kicked in and I was able to shop without being in misery the whole time. I absolutely hate shopping at Walmart and wish I was rich enough to never have to go there again. But since I'm not rich, yet anyway, I still go to Walmart. Anyway, for once, thanks to the effects of the vicodin, I was able to shop and still be happy.

 I plan on more cleaning and organizing tomorrow and then Friday, Mom and Dad will be coming to spend a few days. My Christmas gift to them this year is taking them, us and our two boys to see the Blue Man Group at Universal. Every year I take them somewhere different. Last year we went to the Polynesian Luau at Sea World and the year before that we went to Cirque De Soleil at Disney. All have been wonderful. I love going to the parks just to walk around, they are always so beautiful and have such a wonderful atmosphere. Always feels like you're on vacation when you're there.