That’s right, don’t I look good? Light up like a giant Christmas tree. Hey, that lab tech told me this morning this stuff is in my system for 4 freakin’ days.
They make you lay on a bed that slides under a square “camera” that’s a little less than 2 foot square. They then crank that thing allthe way down to your face, maybe an inch from your nose and then basically you are laying under it like that for the next 20 plus minutes. This tech was extremely unhelpful with my questions about all of this. She either didn’t know anything or doesn’t like to answer questions, I don’t know which.
Tomorrow morning the second videoing session, but no more pills. Which is a good thing, thank you.
No work again tomorrow because of all of this. Well what am I supposed to do, it’s just part of life. I am using personal hours instead of vacation hours. Last year, I ended up losing personal hours because I didn’t use them when I should have - there are only limited reasons to be able to use them, and this is certainly one of them.
Hopefully I do not have to lose any more hours at work because of this situation, I am quite sure that is totally dependant on what the prognosis is. If we’re talking surgery, well then. I had a communication with a woman on Facebook today who said they did surgery on her, removed a nodule but that she did NOT have to go on the drugs. Interesting. I guess I won’t speculate about any of this until I hear from the doc. Oh, and this time, I won’t be waiting for the doc to call me, since I never got the call in the first place about this situation, I’ll be calling them if I don’t hear back within a few days.
Nothing else new on the home front. At least not worth mentioning. I’m just going to kick back, relax, do this again tomorrow, be done with it.
Last year, I believe it was, I was looking around the net at dating sites. I go through phases where I will “desperately” seek out a woman and then, after endless emails, I just give up, only to start the process over again sometime again down the road.
Well, I had signed up with this site, don’t remember the name, and I got an email from a Russian woman. She sent pics - a very beautiful woman indeed. She wrote about a 5 paragraph email introducing herself, telling me what she is looking for in a man and what was I looking for in a woman?
I saw right through this person’s email. It was a scam, a scheme to get me to send money. I knew, if I played along with this, somewhere down the road this “lady” would eventually ask for dinero. I decided to play along with it, see how long “she” was going to go on with this ruse and how long it would take before she actually asked for money and also HOW she was going to do so.
Regardless that I saw through the scheme, it was a very elaborate and well thought-out process this person was taking me through to get me softened up a bit for when she was going to ask the big question, and it wasn’t about marrying her. We communicated back and forth for over a month, maybe closer to 2 months. This woman gave me a daily update about how she was planning on moving over here and moving in with me, sight unseen. I was to be her mate - whether I liked it or not. What was there not to like? Beautiful, talented, passionate, kind and caring. Oops, forgot about the part that this was all make-believe, so that’s what was not to like about it.
The updates included her getting her paperwork and then trying to obtain enough money to take a train to the airport and then, of course, attempting to come up with the money to buy the airplane ticket. Even the most nieve person on the planet would have or at least should have questioned how this woman wants to come and live with a complete and total stranger that she has never met, never even seen a pic of and never ASKED for a pic, either. When we got further along in this scam, I figured when she “got” to the airport, that’s where the money scheme would come in and I was not wrong about that assumption.
I was actually having fun playing along with this. I was playing along very nicely, always genuinely intrigued (or so I said to her, anyway) with her progress of getting her paperwork and everything in order to get here. She never asked me my name or address, though she did ask what state I lived in. I gave her Arizona, that’s all she would have ever gotten out of me.
Well, she started on this fake journey, leaving whatever small town she was in, getting on a train, stopping at different cities along the way and finally arriving at the airport. When she got there, she was in distress.
The price for the airplane ticket had mysteriously risen. By over a grand. Of course, here came the request: “Oh, my love, my mate, my this that and the other thing, I desperately want to come and be with you, but I don’t have enough money for the plane ticket, could you send me (I think it was $1,200)? ” Wanted it sent by Western Union. I was tempted to play this out a little longer, but considering I was dealing with a low-life scumbag I decided to let’er loose.
My next response was something pretty close to this: “No, I will not be sending you any money. I have known all along this was a scheme to get my money and I just wanted to waste your time so you would have less time to lure more gullible people into your scam. You are probably not even a woman, but instead a low-life asshole who can’t seem to find it in yourself to get a job and you probably don’t even LIVE in Russia”. That wasn’t all I wrote, in fact I have the emails still, but you get the jist of my reply. I do not appreciate scammers - which this world is full of - attempting to steal people’s money, regardless.
Anyway, tomorrow morning I get to drive to a lab, take a pill, irradiate myself, leave, come back 5 hours later, get my neck photo’ed by who knows WHAT that contraption uses to look through your skin and then come back the next day for more of this fun and games.
I think I’ll stay up late tonight, exhaust myself and then get up at 7:00 am, drive out to that place, thank them for the wonderful time and hey, it was so grand, let’s do it again tomorrow, come home and crash out.
And none too soon.
What gets me is the 2 phone calls I just received - after having had rented the room several hours ago - from people that said they had come over (which they did) and have decided they wanted the room.
Snooze, you lose. I ALWAYS tell people first come, first served, got cash? Here’s the keys.
Whatever. This situation with this person is - sort of temporary. She is an Army Reservist - she is going on a training mission for 70 days starting 2 or 3 months from now. She asked if it would be a problem for her to move in - but have to deal with that? In other words, 70 days where she is not paying rent. Yes, I replied, if you will agree to letting me do temporary rental while you are gone, which is definitely doable.
She agreed, handed me cash, that room just brought a small facelift to my bank account. It isn’t enough to overcome the deficit, but it’s FAR better than nothing.
Have gone on 2 trips today with Caleb. In the car. Him driving. With his new learner’s permit. Scary. Scary. Terrifying. Wow.
You know, my experience with new drivers is they are far more prone to hitting the brakes early and stopping too soon. Not Caleb. He got to the end of my street where it T’s into another side street and stopped with the nose of the car 3 feet into the opposing lane’s traffic, plus he made a very hard and late stop.
We had a discussion about that and moved on. Basically, the first trip - not good. 2 kids ran out into the street right in front of us, I wanted control of the car at that point, but had no choice - SLOW DOWN, NOW@!!!! Because he wasn’t slowing down. ????
Second trip went much better and it was almost entirely on surface streets, but on low volume streets. Went to get some propane for the grill. A 6 mile round trip. I made him do a couple of left turns, but only at places that were “low pressure”. I see this is going to take a while to get him aware of everything he needs to be aware of out there. I want him to learn to drive a car the same way I drive a semi-truck. Which means driving for everyone else: expect the worst thing that could happen with any other vehicle in front of you or coming up behind you or coming up from a side street to the street you are on and prepare to take evasive action if “it” happens.
The homeless tenants requested me to get a DirectTV receiver for them. Sure, you pay for the receiver, you pay for the extra $5 or whatever it is per month that Directv charges for each additional receiver. They agreed to that - they aren’t lazy morons by any stretch of the imagination, the guy is always looking for odd jobs wherever he can find them. Oh, and they are going to have to get their own cable I just realized to go from the dish outlet box to the trailer. I found a used receiver for $25 in perfect condition. Getting it tomorrow.
That’s it. My goal for this weekend was accomplished - rent out the room. If I accomplish nothing else, I don’t really care.
I guess I could call this the beginnging of a 4-day weekend, but - I hardly think that Monday and Tuesday’s ordeal is going to be anything one would call fun.
In fact, I would FAR rather go to work than have to go through this testing crap. lllllllllll
More bad news from the world of tenants. The ex-Marine gives me even more news yesterday about his inability to pay. Basically, I will be getting nothing from him until the end of this month and the beginning of next month. IF he does as he says he is going to do, then I will be getting a large chunk of money - mostly from his monthly military benefits. If not, well, it doesn’t take a genious to figure out what a landlord does with non-paying tenants.
The other guy is out looking for a job all over the place. I suggested taxi driving, he could make a lot more money doing that than the pizza delivery junk. He says the census taking thing is going to hire him for 2 months at the END of this month. Nice………but what about the past due rent and the rent that is going to keep coming due at the beginning of every week?
I lowered my rent price on the empty room just to try and get someone in there and get some cash from it. Really didn’t lower it that much, more of a psychological thing for potential renters than anything.
Umm, so that’s really my focus on things right now. Well, it’s not EVERYTHING, of course. I am taking Caleb out on the residential streets today to drive around - slowly I might add - and get used to pulling up to stop signs, acceleration and braking. We’re not quite ready for surface streets yet : )
In fact, getting into a car with a driver that knows nothing about driving absolutely terrifies me : )
Work week almost gone. Amazing. I’ll be glad when - Tuesday is over, have these thyroid scans behind me, find out what’s wrong, move on with my life.
I sometimes take quite a lot of humor in traffic, when I’m driving my car, and people try to do the same stuff in front of me as they do when I am driving the semi. I probably take too much humor in it, but still. I drive very cautiously in the semi, I have no such restraints in my car. I can stop the car MUCH faster or speed up MUCH faster. Either way, it’s far easier to get out of intended trouble from another vehicle in a car than it is in a semi.
So, today, I’m driving on a major surface street in the “slow” lane, coming up to a car that is in the “fast” lane. I had looked in my rear view mirror maybe 20 seconds earlier, there was NOTHING behind us. I’m quickly closing the gap between me and the car in the next lane. Out of total blue sky, a car comes SCREAMING up beside me, apparently intent on cutting me off to get in my lane.
Yeah, not happening. I guess that driver thought I was going to slam on MY brakes so that they could avoid rear-ending that car. I mean, really? Next thing I hear is wheels screeching on the asphalt and smoke coming off the surface of the street. The car ALMOST slammed into the car in front of her - this stupid, dumb, moronic driver. She veers her car into the center lane in order to avoid a collision.
Here’s the ‘funniest’ part about this: This woman’s turn was, I found out, just ahead of me. She was going to cut me off and slam on her brakes to make a right turn, when she easily could have waited a nano-second and turned in there BEHIND me. I have no sympathy for this woman or her stupid driving. I would have been MAD if she had cut me off and then slammed on her brakes, causing ME to slam on MY brakes to avoid a collision with her car. THIS is exactly the reason I do NOT let idiots just cut me off.
She slowed way down in the center lane, waited until we passed and then made a right turn across the 2 lanes into the shopping center she was apparently intent on getting to.
Umm, well whatever. I gave notices to both tenants yesterday and received no kind of reply back from either. The first was to the ex-Marine who is taking food out of my refrigerator and cupboards. Yesterday he took Michael’s food that belongs to - who else - Michael that was bought by his mother. He has taken his food in the past, as well as mine. I mean, sorry he’s not doing so well financially, that should change tomorrow when he gets his first full paycheck from work.
The second to the ex-pizza delivery driver who is not paying, either. I will not have people that are “renting” rooms in my house staying here for free. My patience waxes thin. I haven’t actually seen either of them in several days - I just know they’re here because their cars are parked out front. It was not an eviction notice, it was a “gee, when are you going to pay rent”, or “I don’t have tenants living here consuming my resources that don’t pay rent”, stuff like that.
If the delivery driver doesn’t respond by sometime this weekend, he will be getting a 5-day eviction notice.
Well, I have things to get done around here and I want to do so before the sun goes down.
I pretty much put in a complaint once per month about this guy’s property. Specifically, that weeds and grass are growing all over the place, are growing tall and are growing into my front yard. It’s been over 3 months since he last cut all that crap down. I have complained - 3 times since then. They must have put some fuel to the fire - they being the City of Phoenix - because he is finally out there with a weedeater cutting all that junk down.
Why do people like to live in squalor?
His back yard is a landfill. Junk and garbage laying everywhere. Well, I stopped complaining about that because the city kept writing me back asking me if they could come onto my property to see what I was seeing, I kept writing them in reply and saying yes, PLEASE do, gave them my cell phone number - nothing. I will, however, not back down on the weed and grass problem. That problem is all over his property, yes, but I do not have to tolerate it being in his front yard. The city HAS to come out, do an inspection and then issue a warning if it isn’t up to code - which it never is by the time I have to call the city about it.
I could care less if he knows I’m the person doing it, either. In fact, I am fairly sure he knows that I am calling the city about it. I wouldn’t do it if he would just take care of his freakin’ property.
Whatever. The ex-tenant who went to California for a funeral and never came back? His ex-employer calls me today. He wants me to send him the number for the guy I was going to use to move that 5th wheel. Sure, I’ll get it for you when I get home. He then throws in that “joe is in a real mess now, isn’t he?” Yes, I guess he is, stuck in California, no money to get back - not my problem, sorry. “Well, he’s back and living in a hotel”. Oh, I replied.
It was strange because my manager and I were talking about my tenant situation and he brought up this dude today as well - did he ever come back and get his stuff? I asked the guy to tell Joe to please come get his stuff. Conversely, if he had any money, he could come move back into the room. I mean, money as in paying up what he owes and at least a week’s rent. Beats living in a hotel any day of the week, guarantee that.
So, I keep forgetting to write up a notice for the non-payer. That was solved today, I wrote it up and will be printing it out here shortly. It isn’t TOO in-your-face, but - I was very blunt. You can’t just continue to ignore the landlord and the mounting amount of money owed without thinking that the landlord is going to confront you on it. In it, I ask him why he didn’t pay me anything for the 2 weeks previous to his losing his job, why he didn’t offer me anything out of his tax refund check, and how he thinks he is going to pay the past-due amount plus the continuing, weekly amount that “never goes away”. It ended in - I can’t have people living here that don’t pay rent.
These are the days of my life, lol. Sometimes the tenant situation glides along smoothly, other times it’s like falling into a volcano. Right now I’m falling into the volcano. Hopefully there is a safety net along the way to stop the fall.
There were several emails today regarding the room, but most of them are interested in the overnight stay thing. I am trying to rent it out at night until it gets “permanently” rented. One person wants it for a week starting on the 14th. That’s 4 days from now, I will not commit to that. I want the place available for whoever to come look at it. A nightly thing would be a day by day deal - but - people don’t read ads very well. They see some of the words and fill the rest in with their imagination, apparently. Or perhaps they think they can just say whatever they need and hope you will agree to it. If I could afford to do a few nights here, a week there, I would do it. Right now, that’s out of the question. Or is it? I have no idea when I will actually, finally rent that room back out. Today? Next week? SOME money out of it is better than nothing.
That’s it. I’m tired. I was awakened twice last night. In both those cases, it wasn’t my normal wake up for no reason deal, it was noise being made that I had to deal with. Nothing drastic or major.
I am only saying that I am going to go take nap : )
ben
Had a guy come over and take a look at the room a little bit ago. We talked quite a while - he wasn’t interested in making a decision right here and now and I wasn’t going to push it. Dunno about whether I will hear back from him or not.
Meanwhile, a United Airlines pilot wrote me - I am very close to PHX - wanting to rent the room and would only be here 5 days per month. Well and fine - but the rent stays the same. Not really, I can go down a bit for less usage of electricity and facilities and still make the same net amount as someone who is here everyday, consuming much more.
A few others who said they wanted to see the place but never called back after the initial conversation.
Funny how I can rent a room in a few days one time and then take weeks on another.
Finally called my mother today about this thyroid issue. Her tones changed dramatically when I told her what was going on. Oh well, what can I do. I asked about our family lines - no thyroid problems, instead, a lot of cancer. However, the cancer is almost always on the female side and that most of the men live into their late 80’s. I see. I don’t mind living that old if I am in relatively good health. I do not want to be alive but a permanent vegetable laying in a bed in a nursing facility.
My focus right now is almost entirely on getting the room rented and dealing with non-paying tenants. This stuff gets old. When I am getting 3 tenants paying regularly, life is grand. When not - then it gets a bit scruffy. I have no choices, really. I’ll get past this, but, as always, it’s a bit of a drain.
Anyway, it rained half the day today. It has also gotten considerably colder outside. Although I will go to work tomorrow, there are no deliveries to be made because of rainouts and a general slowing of orders coming in.
SaveMy@$$.com
Oh, not a real website, just making it up.
Because of non-paying tenants, finances are going down the tube. Yesterday, I spent no money on anything, I never even left the house. Today, I spent $5.41 on a Subway sandwich and that was the extent of my spending.
Tomorrow will be more of the same.
2 non-paying tenants. However, I do expect the ex-Marine to give me money this week as he gets his first, full paycheck from his new employer. He has been going to give plasma as often as they allow it.
The other guy - is starting to piss me off. I am going to write up a notice and leave it under his door today. He got a tax refund check and gave me nothing - the reason for my irritation with this individual. He stated he had to pay his car insurance. I have never heard of a tax refund check only affording a person enough to pay for their car insurance, I have serious doubts that paying that one, single bill left him with nothing beyond that.
Every time I see him now, he says he will be receiving unemployment benefits from the state and that he “should” be receiving it this week. I doubt that. You don’t get that until about 2 weeks after you apply for it.
I have received numerous calls about the room, but only one individual actually came by - he was terrified of the Great Danes and I am sure I won’t be hearing back from him.
Meanwhile, I have Monday and Tuesday off, as verified by both my manager and the main branch manager. The main branch manager has to get involved because he has to send someone over to take my place when I am off. My fears of taking a pill that irradiates your body, basically, are calmed more than at first when I learned that I would have to engage in such an activity.
I slept 4 hours last night. I was awakened by my own body, I was feeling strange stuff. I was physically unable to go back to sleep because of whatever. I will assume, since I have no other reason in front of me, that whatever this “high thyroid activity” is doing is also the culprit. Perhaps it’s BEEN the culprit for a long time?
That’s it. I am mentally forcing myself to not allow myself to be stressed because of financial junk going on. Giving myself that freedom would only mean short and curt confrontations with tenants who apparently think that “other” things take precedence over paying for the roof over their heads. I tend to get very blunt when I feel the urge to do so with such situations. I am trying to better myself in life and be a little less intense about things that don’t warrant such : )
So, this guy was supposed to come over yesterday to look at the room. I was right when I thought it was him driving up and down the street in his little blue yap car with one of those obnoxious tailpipes that make it sound like the lawnmower from hell.
What I didn’t know - I emailed him a short little “quip” - is that he apparently was arguing with his girlfriend and was upset, mad, angry, a whole list of things and didn’t want to talk to anyone after that.
No biggie. I have several people lined up to look at the place - if they show up of course - hopefully I’ll have that room rented out shortly. Or not. Lol, the world of Craigslist and the people that use it, amazing stuff, really.
Overcast sky and the forecast says it IS raining right now. Not here, but I assume it will - I hope it will - sometime today. Then I don’t have to water my plants.
Speaking of which, I spent a couple of hours yesterday working on installing the drip system for the front of the house. I have almost all the plants covered now, plus the main tubing that goes to the station and the third station is now built. The only thing I’m lacking is a 90 degree elbow. I had forgotten that I used the remaining elbows on the front yard last week. I am NOT buying them at Home Depot. I get them SO much cheaper at work, it’s worth it to wait. I wanted to get the area around the stations levelled out - the mounds of dirt that is - and start getting that area covered with the landscaping rock: it will just have to wait.
I was only going to have 3 stations, but I have decided now for the sake of enough water pressure on each line that I’m going to have to install yet a 4th station. That’s going to have to wait - it will cover a row of plants next to the house on the east and south side. Waiting because money is tight right now with non-paying tenants. The now-unemployed non-payer is avoiding me - usually that happens when people don’t have the money to pay and probably can’t give an expected date to start repaying the arrears. Unfortunately for him, I will not wait forever and if I don’t hear from him by the end of today, he will be getting that 5-day notice that I keep putting off, hoping he will get the intestinal fortitude up to approach me, give me a repayment plan and let’s get on with it. What - irritates - me is that he got a tax refund check and gave me nothing out of it. Even a gratuitous $20 would make me feel better.
I baked a half ham yesterday - darn that stuff is good. What’s amazing is it was sitting in my refrigerator - not the freezer portion but the fridge portion - for well over 2 months. The amazement is the “shelf-life” of a ham - the expiration date on the thing wasn’t until the 12th of this month, I got it in December, lol. I have 2 more in the freezer. I will be making a ham something or other this morning : )
redressing the concerns about this thyroid issue, I am now rather perplexed by the prospect of having to take a pill that basically irradiates me. I’m sorry, I want to voluntarily fry my innards because……..why? Okay, it’s a low dose. Who cares, I’m not really into the internal cooking thing - at all. I’m going to call that lab and my doc tomorrow and ask some rather pointed questions about this procedure and also whether there are any alternative methods to determining what’s wrong. Probably not, I’m guessing, or they would already be doing it. Something like an ultrasound, or perhaps taking a sample of the tissue, cat-scan? Anything?
Pipe dream, I guess. We all have to go out of this world one way or another - I would prefer not to go out by cancer; drowning or any prolonged, slow method. A simple airplane crash, getting run over by a train, a horrific car accident that takes my life in an instant might be preferrable, but that’s only preferrable for those that are in a constant state of being “ready to meet your Maker” mode. I dare not delve into that on a Sunday morning, a day of rest as mandated by the Lord Himself, lest I am accused of being a religious nutcase.
Well, I HAVE been accused of far worse in the religious realm, so maybe not such a big deal after all.
Have a great day and blessed is the name of the Lord~!
Ben B