Homeward Bound

Rollin through Kansas with nothing to tell. I feel like I've neglected my blog this past month, and I apologize. I guess my absence indicates a blessing because we've been staying pretty busy.

Kansas is cool and stormy today. Its only 59 degrees and we've been slipping between rain storms all day long. Just now there is one to the north of us, one to the west of us, and fortunately we're heading southeast. But I'm loving the look and feel of the weather. Its AUTUMN, and I love it!

Anyway, I thought I'd let you know that my blogging will be even more sporadic than usual for the next couple of weeks because we'll be home. We are scheduled to arrive home early next week, and then my parents arrive on the 3rd. We should be back at work sometime shortly after the 10th of October, and I promise you and myself that I'll do a better job of blogging when we return to work. Until then, I wish you all a safe and happy weekend. I will be posting off and on between now and then, including the Sunday Stills.

As Luck Would Have It....

Well here we are in good ole Tennessee! Having grown up in this state, its always good to be here. It's also a happy feeling, and also a little frustrating, to know that just a few scant miles from here my sister is curled up on her couch watching Monday Night Football with her man, and that my parents, who might not yet know I'm in Tennessee, are sitting at home doing the same, probably, just a couple hours away. Yeah, the frustrating part was knowing they are so close, and yet so far away!

We're sitting here unloading in Lebanon. It was going to be too late to see my sister, so I told her to stay home and rest. Had I known my Mom's school would be canceled today due to rain, yes you read that right, I would have alerted she and Dad sooner that we were going to be here and they might could have driven up. On the other hand, its 9:30pm and we still arn't unloaded, so its a good thing they didn't come up!

And on to the real point of this post.

In the situation where you are miles and miles from home, in a humongous vehicle that doesn't fit easily in shopping center parking lots, and have just run out of dog food...where is the best place to be?

Answer:
delivering to a pet food plant

Yes that's right! "Mom" forgot to bring the extra dog food with us. And ironically, as the bag became more and more bare, the Crested kids developed a rather ravenous appetite. Do they have a 6th sense that tells them the food is almost gone so they should shovel it in as fast as possible?
I've been watching for a PetCo all the way from California! Haven't seen one that I can get in yet, that was open! I know that I can get what I feed the girls at PetCo. At home I get it at a small, privately owned pet store, but PetCo does carry it.

Anyway, as luck would have it, we're sitting here unloading meat and bone meal at the Nutro Pet Products plant in Lebanon, TN and we are literally surrounded by pallets of stacked Nutro dog food. Its not my favorite food. I used to feed it, before I found better things, but I'll take it over anything I can get at Walmart, which was looking like what I was going to end up with! And I confirmed that choice with my puppy expert, Rachelle.

But Nutro saved us! We are now the proud owners of two 10 pound bags of small bite dog food. The girls are intensely interested in the new bags, and not understanding why I'm not dishing it up! I just figured, if a new food upsets tummies, like its prone to do, why not let that disaster happen tomorrow instead of tonight..the first night of a full night's sleep while PARKED since last Wednesday!

So anyway...Hurray for Nutro! Thank you for saving the day! Weren't we lucky! You can't convince me that God doesn't watch what's going on and take care of his creation...even if it is to provide dog food for three naked pups who have a absent minded "Mom."

Sunday Stills: Purple

This weeks Sunday Stills challenge was "Purple."

It has been a crazy week. I haven't done much other than drive and sleep. We've had two cross country trips, from Texas to California, and now we're headed to Tennessee from California, when we're used to short 600-700 mile runs.. By tomorrow morning we will have covered right around 4000 miles in just under 4 days. Needless to say....drive and sleep.

We did stop early this week to take a picture of the truck, because it had a bath, and at the road side pull off we were at in Kansas, there were, lucky me, a patch of purple flowers. So I stole the camera from Malcolm's truck photography project, and snapped a few real quick.

I didn't notice the little bug, till after I took the shot, but decided he was kind of cute in there. So he got to be featured in Sunday Stills.

For more Sunday Stills, follow this link.

CSX

I'm venting to you all, so bare with me.

Recently on TV we've seen a few commercials by CSX. In these commercials they are advertising that CSX railway can carry the load of 250 trucks, and wouldn't that make your drive so much nicer! The commercials are very nicely done, and I don't deny that when I'm in my car, I don't enjoy driving around the big trucks.
But it really bothers me because their add campaign seems to be suggesting that if more people would ship on rails, and not use trucks, then you wouldn't have to drive with trucks during your travels, and the road wouldn't be so congested.

Here is what makes me mad. First of all, they CAN carry all those loads and many truckign companies are using the railways to get their shipments cross country. Thats all find and good.
But next time your out in your car, take a look at where the congested traffic is. Where do you feel most squeezed in and where are you forced to drive in close proximity to trucks. Its not out on the open road. Its in the urban areas, in the cities.
Shipping by rail isn't going to clear up any of that congestion! Sure you can ship by rail, but how does your stuff get from the train to the warehouse to the store???? Cause the train isn't going to be able to do that! So the trucks are still there, still on the road, in the city and urban areas where the congestion issues are!
And let me just say that container haulers...the ones that haul the containers from the rail and ship yards to the warehouses...are some of hte most rude, aggressive, dangerous drivers I've ever driven around. They scare me and Malcolm, so I assure you, you don't want to drive around them!
It just rubbed me the wrong way. I feel like they arn't telling the whole story and misleading the public, making truckers looks like the bad guys.
Thanks for listening!

National Honey Month

September is National Honey Month.

I love honey! Its a great natural food, satisfies the sweet tooth, and has so many benefits. Supposedly if you use local honey it helps with allergies, as it was made from the pollen of local plants. So it acts kind of like an immunization for allergies. Being a big allergy sufferer, in my Tennessee days anyway, I was all for anything that would help.

When we lived in Georgia, Malcolm and I had a bee hive. It was so much fun watching our little colony come and go in their busy bee day. We didn't harvest any honey because the first year they had to build their reserves to get them through the winter, and by the next spring they had died or left because we got infected with a fungus. My parents started a hive the same time we did, and they harvested honey a couple of times, getting several gallons it! Unfortunately, their bees moved away before they realized what was happening, so they are now honeyless too.

Store bought stuff, though still tasty, just isn't the same as local, home produced honey, and I haven't found a local producer yet. I need to ask around and find out if anyone has bees.

Anyway, in honor of National Honey Month, I'm sharing this recipe that I prepared this past weekend for breakfast. It was yummy, and perfect with a cup of hot tea to celebrate the coming of fall.

Oatmeal Apple Cranberry Scone

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup uncooked rolled oats

1/3 cup sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon

3/4 cup apple sauce, divided

2 Tbs butter

1/2 cup coarsely chopped cranberries (I just used 1/2 cup dried cranberries)

1/2 cup peeled, chopped apple

1/4 cup skim milk

1/4 cup + 2 Tbs honey

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and grease a baking sheet. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, oats, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Add 1/2 cup apple sauce and 2 T butter. Use a pastry blender to cut into flour mixture until resembles coarse meal. Stir in cranberries and apples.

In a separate bowl, combine the mild and 1/4 cup honey. Add to flour mixture and still until the dough forms a ball. Turn out onto floured surface and knead 10-12 times. Pat into an 8" circle, and place on prepared baking sheet. Use the tip of a knife to score the dough into 12 slices.

Combine remaining 1/4 cup apple sauce and 2Tbs honey. Brush over the top of the dough. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from baking sheet immediately and cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Serve warm or cool (its good both ways...I know)

170 calories and 3g fat per serving; makes 12 servings

And I thought I might add some chopped walnuts or pecans next time I try it!

Snug and Warm

Another lovely weekend at home!

Now, you probably won't understand this part, but....we got about 100 miles from home on Thursday evening, stopped for dinner, and decided that we were calling it a night. It was only about 7:00, so we could have easily been home by 9:00, but we were both a little tired, and quite frankly didn't feel like driving anymore. So we ate our soup in Big Timber, MT and went to bed.

I have to say that getting home at night is always tiring, because we come in and I never want to go to bed right away. There are things to check on, and do, and of course the girls are so excited to be home that I can't bare to put them in their kennel right away. (they sleep in a kennel at home) Granted it would have given us a few more hours at home if we had gone on in that night, but it worked out fine.

We got home around 9:00 Friday morning and I honestly think getting home in the morning like that makes it feel like you've been there longer. We were only there till Sunday afternoon, but it felt like we'd been home for several days!

We spent this trip home getting things ready for winter. It is just around the corner you know! The biggest project was cleaning up Malcolm's shop. It took the better part of a day. It had been totally trashed during the whole truck swap, with all the projects that had to be done to the old truck, the new truck, and a few tweaks on the trailer while we were at it. My parents are coming to visit the first week of October, and so we had a little extra incentive to get it done. When we were finished, it was such a great sense of accomplishment and it looks so nice. No pictures, because there is still a little to be done, but its a different world out there! You can walk around and not worry about tripping on something!

Part of cleaning the garage involved a trip to the dump with some garbage. And since we were out with the trailer, we swung through the lumber yard and bought a pallet of wood pellets for our stove. This hefty stack weighs about 1 ton, give or take pellet or two. Pellet stoves were a new concept for me, but the house had one when we moved in. Apparently they are quite common in these parts, and rather ingeneous contraptions too. I'll have to explain in more detail about it sometime, if anyone is interested.

We have electric heat that we leave set on about 50 to keep the pipes from freezing while we're gone, but when we're home we pretty much heat with our pellet stove. It does an amazing job. We also have a wood burning stove upstairs that takes normal wood logs, and we use it when its really cold to knock the chill off when we get home. Nothing like looking winter in the face, knowing you have your wood supply put in!

Also, the girls new clothes arrived while we were there! I had ordered these, and thought I'd have to have the neighbor get it off the porch for me, but the FedEx guy showed up Friday evening. Perfect timing, and it was cool enough that the girls wore their new clothes all day Saturday. These are light cotton for cool weather. When its super cold, they have fleece jammies that Rachelle makes for them. She has the cutest fabric! She has a link on her website for her doggy clothes at http://www.darlingpoodles.com/

Don't they just look thrilled!

This is my girls going to "Daddy" to show him what "Mommy" did to them, assuming he's going to sympathize and take the clothes off for them. Little do they know it was he that told me to dress them. I was going to let them go naked, but they looked so cute in their jammies, he wanted them to wear them, and it was cold enought that Paris was shivering, so she really did need them anyway.

Found time to do a little project I've had in mind. Last winter when we got a load of wood for the stove, Malcolm picked out a nice piece of cedar for me. And this weekend, we finally got around to making the bird feeder I had seen pictures of. I like mine even better than the photograph I'd seen. It has holes drilled in it and you stuff the holes with suet.

Its supposed to draw in wood peckers and nut hatches, but since we have more finches and sparrows than anything else, Malcolm added some perches to it for those little guys. I had actually not seen any woodpeckers, but the next morning, ironically, I caught a little Downy woodpecker inspecting my porch railing (no no no little one!) and then later this Flicker took a sip out of my front birdbath. Never saw anyone use the new feeder, but it takes a few days for them to find stuff.

Left Sunday around 4:00pm and drove about 400 miles to deliver this morning in Powers Lake, ND. We then drove back to Montana, just on the border, and reloaded with peas.

Dallas said "Peas please!" and so we're on our way. We just stopped here in Mission, SD which is on the Rosebud Reservation. We'll camp out here for a few hours and then start again, landing in Dallas on Wednesday morning.

Till then, here's a parting shot of the hood ornament on the truck as we sail down the road.

Sunday Stills: Mechanical Transportation

This weeks challenge was Mechanical Transportation. Ed said if it ran on fuel and you could fit two people in it, then it qualified. A couple of these....well they take fuel, and you can get two people in them, even if it is a squeeze.

This old relic used to provide transportation, but now sits in a pasture in Idaho, watching modern day vehicles fly by.


Its small...but there is a plane in this picture.

Its a squeeze to get in two people, but I've done it. Also, he's driving down the road, kind of, so technically I'd consider it a vehicle of transportation, at least for the moment.

N0, I did not hang our the door to take this. I just took a picture of the image in the passenger side mirror. The new truck has so much power, we get to pass everyone on the hills. This is going up the 7% grade called "Norris Hill" between Ennis and Norris, MT. We passed them all, even fully loaded at 80,000lbs.
Also a squeeze to get two people in, and I considered it transportation because they used to have to walk to harvest grain, swinging their scythes. But now look....riding in comfort around the fields.

For more Sunday Stills, click here.

Trucker Buddy

Last summer when we stopped to fuel, I noticed a sticker on the side of the truck next to us. When the driver came around to our side of the fuel island to top off his tank on that side, I asked him about it. The reason it got my attention was because it was for a program called "Trucker Buddy" and the logo included the stick figure of a child.

I had not heard of this program before, but after talking to the driver, I was thrilled. Trucker Buddy International is a non-profit organization which works to mentor and educate children in grades 2-8 through a pen pal relationship with professional truck drivers. The drivers are paired up with classrooms across the country. The driver, once a week or so, sends postcards, pictures, or letters to their class. The students write letters to their Trucker Buddy about once a month. The students skills in geography, math, and writing are enhanced as well as learning about truck drivers.

Last year I thought about participating, but at the start of the fall, I was considering getting out of the truck, and didn't want to commit to a group of students when I might not be driving. But this summer I went ahead and sent in my application. I've been assigned to a 2nd grade class in Minnesota. The teacher and I have already been in contact with each other, and I'm looking forward to visiting with them all this year, being involved with kids again (even though its long distance), and also helping to build better relationships between the truckers and non-truckers. I think it will be fun. I already bought my first postcard to send to them. And I maybe next spring towards the end of the school year, we can work out a load to their area and I can go to the school to say hello in person and let them see the truck.

If you're interested in Trucker Buddy International you can follow this link for more information. I think there are many people who have never heard of this program, so if you think you know a teacher or driver that might be interested, let them know about it!

Sunday Stills: Rule of Thirds

This weeks Sunday Stills Challenge was "Rule of Thirds." Its a photography rule, and since Ed explains it so well in an abbreviated version, I hope he won't mind if I quote him so that my blog readers will understand what the "rule of thirds" means.

"As any good photographer can tell you the subject, unless macro should be in the top or bottom third of your viewfinder or the right or left third. so this weeks challenge is to use the rule of thirds." Sunday Stills

You can visit the link above to see more Sunday Stills.

I took these this morning as I sat at the kitchen table. Its the only place in my house where the Internet will work, so I was sitting here a while ago catching up on email, and noticed that it was Grand Central Station at my feeders today.

These were taken through window screens. Sorry for the fuzziness.

We've had a few bluebirds hunting in our front yard all summer. This morning they indulged in a cooling bath. I was surprised to find that I had 6 or 7 of these little guys squabbling to take baths. If they weren't in the bath, they were perched on the porch railing just above it preening.
I wanted to go get Malcolm from the shop so he could enjoy it too, but was afraid if I got up they would leave.

And then we had this little patriotic fellow! I love a guy with a heart for his country!


That wraps up my Sunday Stills for this week. Now I have a few pictures to post from our journey on Thursday and Friday.

I left you in central Washington near Prosser I believe. From there we traveled to the eastern side of the state, to Clarkston, which is right on the Idaho border, by Lewiston. Eastern Washington is very open, with very dramatic hills. Unlike central Washington, full of orchards and vineyards, eastern Washington is the place for dry land farming. Lots of wheat, barely, and such are grown here. This particular farm was nestled down in the valley...and I would gladly call it home.

The valleys are more moist...with the help of irrigation...and there are a number of hay farms.

We've loaded in Clarkston several times. We load at Columbia Grain and we always load cull peas. These are the broken peas that they cull out and we take them to a pet food factory in Illinois. We discovered this little place, down the road, the first time we were here last summer.
We make sure to stop in whenever we pass through. Its a little tiny jewel of a place where we discovered really great Barbeque, REAL sweet tea, and yummy cornbread! The owner is also the cook, wait staff, and bus boy! She's a real character and we enjoy visiting with her. If you happen to be in the Lewiston/Clarkston area, look her up. She's on the north side of the river, almost to the state line.

We traveled a bit before stopping, and enjoyed the full moon reflecting on the Clearwater River along US12, a beautiful beautiful drive! We were rolling along so I couldn't get a clear picture of the moon. But I think the picture provides enough of an image that your imagination can do the rest.

The Columbia River Gorge is a famous drive, and it is amazingly beautiful! But I almost recommend US12 along the Clearwater over the Columbia, simply because it is less populated, through an almost wilderness area, and so much more private and peaceful. Plus I'll always take a 2 lane over the interstate!

Got home Friday evening and rested. So nice to sit on the couch and watch TV, sleep in our bed, and wake up to a cup of coffee on the porch. Saturday Malcolm did some work on his truck, while I puttered around inside. I made a delicious roast for dinner, and baked bread that actually rose this time! I loved this recipe! It was so good, with the sweet taste of honey, and one strange ingredient...cottage cheese!

And my zinnias are still here, blooming their little hearts out. They're being enjoyed by a nice population of honey bees and bumble bees and one large and beautiful yellow and black spider who has spun her web just behind a large cluster of flowers.

We're leaving in the morning and will deliver the peas in Mattoon, IL on Tuesday morning. Hope you all have a very relaxing Sunday afternoon, and a great Monday to start your week.

Followers

I'd like to welcome Sharon TheEggGatherer to my followers list. She sent me the sweetest email to let me know how much she enjoyed reading the blog.

I'm on FaceBook. I'm on there too much, because I'm addicted to that Farm Town game. Its really sad. I even have Malcolm farming full time now, as well as my sister-in-law. We all three spend way to much time farming. In fact, that's what I was doing when Malcolm got put out of service yesterday (see post below).
Anyway, if you are on FaceBook and want to be friends, send me an email at the address listed in the right margin, and we'll get hooked up! Just make sure you say who you are, because most of you I only know by your blogger names!

Covering Ground

We're here in Prosser, Wa getting the trailer washed out after delivering fertilizer this morning in Harrah. In this part of Washington, along with the fruit, they grow large fields of hops. Hops is used as a bittering agent in the brewing process of beer making. Driving in last night it smelled really good...almost minty, and they were out there in one of the fields harvesting even though it was well after midnight.

Washington and Oregon...and even Idaho...amaze me. Drive through the uncultivated areas and its a dry grassland with not much grass. Mostly dirt, rock, and sage. So I always ponder who exactly was it who came along and thought, "just add water." Because, literally, it seems if you just add water this land becomes a lush Eden. The areas that are farmed, and heavily irrigated, are a virtual cornucopia of produce. Orchards stacked one on top another up the hill slopes, vineyards, hay fields....and so on. I never tire of the smell of fresh cut hay. I still say they need to make a candle that smells like that. I'd keep the factory in business single handedly.The truck is celebrating its week and a half anniversary. We left the house Monday last (8/24/09) and I just glanced over at the odometer and it reads exactly 6000. We had 66 miles when we left home so do the math....that's 5,934 miles in a little less than two weeks. Whew! I also did some mental geography and we've taken it through 15 states in that time period. We've covered some ground!

We've also had a couple of issues. DOT requires that your business name, DOT number and VIN number be printed on the side of the truck where it is easily read. Last Thursday, Colorado pulled me in to their scale in Cortez to inform me that the VIN number on the side of our truck didn't match our registration. He was really nice about it, and walked out to the truck to check the VIN printed on the inside of the door. Sure enough, the last three numbers of our graphics don't match the factory VIN. He didn't give us a ticket or anything, just told us to get it fixed, and you can bet the next morning our graphics shop heard about it. They are mailing us the replacement numbers and Malcolm's going to fix it when we get home this weekend. I'm surprised we hadn't caught that ourselves, but it slipped by us. Fortunately we haven't been asked about it again. We were worried we were going to be harassed about it till we could get it changed.

Nothing stays new for long. On Monday, our one week anniversary with the truck, I was driving south through Oregon admiring the scenery. A road service truck passed me going north and threw a rock up onto the windshield.

Isn't it lovely? We don't seem to have much luck with windshields. We went through three or four with the old truck and it seemed like every time we got one replaced, we'd have a new ding or crack in it within weeks. Oh well...its ugly, but doesn't warrant replacement yet. If it cracks through our line of vision we'll have to get it changed, but for now its ok, and probably this winter we'll get all dinged up anyway. The windshield always looks awful after coming through the winter, with all the dirt and grit they spread on the roads.

Saturday, before the plague hit, I went boot shopping in Winnemucca. I'd been to several stores in Billings and found pairs I liked, but I had my heart set on square toes. Don't know why, but I just wanted squared off toes. I like the way it looks. Problem is there doesn't seem to be a lot of them around in women's boots. Add to that that I wear a larger size...it complicates things. So anyway, while Malcolm went into the auto parts store, I went next door to Boot Barn. Normally I'd take my business to a "mom and pop" place, and not a national chain, but I was just stretching to find what I wanted. And I had some luck!

They aren't exactly what I had in mind, but the problem is I didn't know exactly what I had in mind. That makes it hard to find it! They have blue decorative stitching. I think they are pretty...

...and Paris approves.

Confessing to a huge trucking sin:

We fib on our log books. The law says you don't drive over 11 hours without a 10 hour break, and your 11 have to be within a 14 hour period. Since there are two of us, we just switch when we get tired. Its kind of safer that way, in my opinion. What's the point of pushing yourself to drive 11 hours, when your exhausted, and in the mean time your co-driver is sitting in the back twiddling their thumbs in boredom, because quite frankly, I can't sleep for 10 hours anymore, and I just run out of things to do back there? So if we get tired we switch, and we just make our logs look right to make the powers that be happy.

So yesterday, that's what we did, and when Malcolm got up from a nap, he took over, but I put off "fixing" things till when we stopped to eat. Except when we left dinner, I forgot to change it, and 25 miles down the road the scale that is rarely open was indeed open...and MAD! It was FULL of trucks! And suddenly, as he was pulling in, I remembered the log, felt sick, and commenced to pray. Is it wrong to ask God to help you cheat the law? Probably so...but I did it anyway. But He didn't take my side. The first thing the DOT officer asked for was the log book, which showed Malcolm being 30 minutes over his 14 hours. Ooops....in a big way! Again, they were super nice about it, joked around with us, were really friendly, and put Malcolm out of service for 10 hours. That's what the other trucks were doing there. They had at least 7 trucks lining the ramp, parked out of service. Luckily, Malcolm has an excellent co-driver who, according to the log book hadn't worked all day! So she sweetly slid into the driver's seat and drove the remaining 250 miles to Harrah.

Don't hate us for cheating on this law. We do it for safety reasons really, because as a team we are able to be safe all the time. We never never drive tired...ever! Why do that when you have someone to take over for you? And if we are both tired, we just park it! Anyway, in Malcolm's almost 7 years of driving, that his first ever "out of service." It goes on our safety rating, but the officer said it shouldn't affect it much. We have an excellent safety rating and its something we're proud of and strive to maintain. We've been admired by more than one DOT officer for having such a high safety rating.

Anyway, that was something else that happened recently, and since part of my purpose for this blog is to educate the world about "all things trucking," I decided to just be honest and include it, even though it involved admitting to being law breakers. I sincerely hope you don't think less of us because of it.

Happy Today

Please don't laugh but I caught myself humming a Christmas carol this morning. I know I know....way too early for that! I don't even know where it came from! I was just sitting here feeling happy inside and suddenly realized I was singing about Christmas.

In all seriousness, I can't believe that its already September 1st! Where has this year gone?

Is it possible to be hacking and coughing and still be having a marvelous day? I think I had a fever again last night, but today after a little while to wake up, I'm feeling much better despite the gravely voice, sore throat, and cough.
For breakfast I had orange spice tea with lots of honey and it felt delicious on my throat. I followed that up with a warm bowl of oatmeal done up perfectly. Sometimes at restaurants its been cooked so long and thick you can hardly fling it off your spoon. Either that or its so obviously the microwave version. But today's was nice and warm, the perfect consistency, with the perfect amount of brown sugar added in. Anyway, I walked away from breakfast into the crisp Oregon morning out in the pine forests of La Pine. It was so much like a fall morning and I'm just loving it!

Down the road aways, I read my friends blogs. Small Farm Girl shared about her new neighbors that plan to homestead like she and her husband are doing, and also about her desire to get some dairy goats. Oh...a kindred spirit! Other's look at me funny when I talk about it, but I know she would just sit down with me and chat up a storm about dairy goats. And then Jennifer at Ramblings of a Country Wife was showing off her new jars of home canned salsa and shared her recipe. It looks yummy. Between these two lovely ladies, I'm living my farm girl dreams. They are all the time sharing about their gardening, animals, and all sorts of things I'm looking forward to doing one day. It seems strange, but even though I've never met either of them, I feel like I've been friends with them for a long time. Who knows...maybe one day we'll get to meet in person!

Then the day got even better. Mark, our broker called, and changed things on us. We were delivering tonight, reloading in Sacramento, and then going to Nebraska for Thursday. I was looking forward to that. I like Nebraska. But things are even better now. We're reloading going to Washington, and from there going to Illinois. That's not what's exciting. The exciting part of that is the load goes past the house, and since its a holiday weekend, we can't deliver till Tuesday. So we will just have to stop at home for a couple days to kill time. Aww....I hate that...don't you?
Home to enjoy fall, eat some good home cooked food that my friends have inspired me to get busy on, and to see how my zinnias are doing. Now I have all sorts of reasons, as if I needed some, to get better fast. Because who wants to be sick when your on break at home?