When I think of living in a trailer, I think of places like this picture below. When Teresa started talking about moving to Pennsylvania and dropping a trailer on the front end of Jerry’s acreage, all I could imagine was the torn-up redneck trailer with her dogs living under the porch and being afraid to step into the bathroom for fear of falling through the floor. But, that’s not what trailers are anymore. They are pretty damn solid and well insulated now. The floor plans she got from the dealer look pretty nice. There’s more room than what we have now and the flow is much nicer. The kitchen is large and at the center of the house. I like that. Plus, we’ll be cooking on gas instead of electric so, I may be in the kitchen more that Teresa.
We are planning on excavating a full size basement for the foundation. Waterproofed and sealed. Teresa wants nothing to do with it because it’s dark and cold. I’m insisting on it (because it’s dark and cold) because we’ll double the size of our area without taking up any more of a footprint on the land. The less room we take up with ourselves and the more land we leave wooded and wild the better. So the whole basement becomes my lair by default. I told her I’ll rent her a small corner for storage of her stuff. I’m imagining something like the basement in Plainfield. Living/Den area, tool area, music room, storage shelves… Oh the plans I have for this space.
Speaking of space, Teresa is already starting to pack up stuff around the house. Now that the room mate is leaving soon, we’ll be able to pack it all up and store it in the middle bedroom and not spend the money on a storage unit. By the time Teresa’s done with going through the house, we’ll be able to move our entire house in the back of a pickup truck. She’s being ruthless about making me throw stuff out. I’m locking up my shed. She can’t make me throw out what she can’t see. Hey, I may need that scrap to fix something… I’ve used scrap wood for repairs, scrap metal for bracing as well as welding practice. The new basement is going to be a $27k hole in the ground filled with scraps! Somehow I’ll find room for all of ‘my stuff’ that Teresa has banished from the house and exiled to the new basement.
The road still sucks. Middle management types are starting to irritate the hell out of me. They just turned everything upside-down a few weeks ago, I guess things were running a little too smoothly? Bob doesn’t run us anymore. Ever since they took Bob out of the picture, I have started to think about just quitting the job and going to work in a McDonald’s or something. Bob knew what he was doing, Bob knew how to run a crew. When to push, when to pacify. I would (and did) work around the clock for a guy like that. The new guys just don’t have a pattern yet I guess. If you step into a situation like that, wouldn’t you be cautious about making sweeping changes to a region that was consistently, and by a huge margin, out-performing the rest of the country? Not these guys.
They separated Heffner and I as a team. Working with Heffner reminds me of working with Thom. We worked so well together that I guess they figured they’d pair each of us up with someone else and they’ll get better just by being around us? It don’t work that way. Hell, one of the only things that kept me happy out here was working with Heffner. He’s a good guy and we got along great. It kept the job from being one long road. Aside from that, he’s a solid worker. He and I get five times the work done in the same time as any other team. The new guy they teamed me up with just doesn’t want to work. Stalling all the time and breaking for lunch at the most inopportune times. Just when we get rolling, he wants to go to lunch. There are entire weeks at a time that I skip lunch just to get the work done. I’m just incompatible with this new kid and I’d rather work alone. I asked if the new teams are permanent, he told me that nothing is permanent yet. I told him I wanted “Team Chris” back together, he said he’d look into it. He better look into the numbers we were putting up. If they don’t team us back up soon, I think I may just start looking for work in Pennsylvania.
Today, one of the new middle/micro/managers pushed a button in me that I haven’t responded to yet. I have to think on it and maybe just let it sit. I called him to tell him that the FAA guy (TOR) I was with was altering his schedule and not going to Beaufort tomorrow. I still had work to do here in Myrtle Beach and it made sense to stay here rather than travel to Beaufort and not be able to get anything done but look around. He agreed and we hung up. Five minutes later, he calls the TOR and asks what he is doing tomorrow. The TOR says pretty much the same damn thing I told him five minutes ago! He was checking up on me? Making sure I was telling the truth? Did he just call me a fucking liar?! I don’t know. He doesn’t know me yet, maybe he has these problems with his other guys. This job is not the type where we have little children running around telling the manager anything they want to hear just to get out of doing a little work. I am insulted that he would check up on me like that. My word is good and my work is proof of that. If you question my word or my abilities then fire me, don’t treat me like a child.
I had to come up here on Sunday this time to be here for 8am Monday. I got here at 8am, completed my work by 11 and went back to the hotel to wait for NOCC security to do their job. I knew I only had 2 or 3 hours of work and the rest of the day would be a wash, why did I have to be here at 8am? Why couldn’t I just drive up Monday morning, be here by noon and do the same damn thing!?
So on Monday I ended up back to the hotel early. There’s nothing much to do here in Myrtle Beach during the off season. Everything is closed. There are roller coasters and rides for blocks and blocks but they’re dark and quiet. I went to ‘Medieval Times’ for dinner last week just to see if it was different from the one in Kissimmee. It was the same show but the castle didn’t look as nice. It may as well have been a strip-mall. As cold as it is, there’s nothing much to do around here but grab dinner and hit the hotel. The views are getting nicer now that I’m getting the room upgrades. Normally I’m looking out over the parking lot. Now that I was smart enough to enroll in the hotel’s points club, I’ve been getting the nicer sides of the hotels. I honestly thought I was only going to be on the road for two months, it didn’t make any sense to waste my time signing up for some points reward system that I had no intention of using. That was well over a year ago. I should have signed up for their points club back then. If I did, I’d already have the 26″ LCD TV they offer for 390,000 points! Oh well, better late than never. You know, now that I have signed up, Murphy’s Law says I’ll be taken off the road and never cash these points in… That’ll suit me just fine. Last week I was looking out over a river, this week I’m beachfront. I had Becca’s drum in the truck because I knew there’d be some down time this week and the drum needed re-stringing. I got it done yesterday and tonight I took the drum down to the beach to play for a little while. I love playing at night on the beach.
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