A Tale of Two Trucks

This will be short and sweet today because I finally got a good night's sleep and thus, am running a tight time schedule to get to the pool on time this morning. Today's post is a tale of two trucks, and I'm starting with one that bothered me for a week. 

I live across the street from the campus of a small, private Christian university. Although most students park on the campus (I think their parking permit costs $200/school year), many others park in front of their dormitories and still others commute and park on the street. There is a short section of road where parking is allowed, but most of the road in front of my house is restricted parking - no parking from 8:00 am through 6:00 pm. Illegal cars parking in that section occurs daily, especially at my house since mine is the first house after the permitted parking zone. I'm not ashamed to say that I contact the police often to issue parking tickets. Usually a single ticket is enough to teach the lesson. 

The police tow rig (a pretty impressive set-up) had that illegal
truck rigged and towed within 10 minutes. Finally, after a
week, it is gone! 

Last week, Wednesday, the 12th, a large black pickup truck parked too close to my driveway in the illegal zone. It was ticketed on Thursday, but nothing happened. Other cars came and went, other tickets were issued, but the truck sat there. It had Nebraska license plates, so I could tell at a glance that it was the same vehicle. On Tuesday the 18th I contacted the police, hoping for a solution. I reported how long it had been parked illegally, that it had already received a ticket, and that it had not moved at all in almost a week. The police placed a larger notice on the windshield, and yesterday afternoon, this happened ... SUCCESS. The truck is gone. Maybe it was stolen, maybe it was abandoned, or maybe a student will have a very expensive impound fee, but it's gone and I'm SO happy. 

Shadow is home. It's a tight fit, less than four inches between the
front bumper and the drying wood and extension ladder, but it
fits and it seems happy. Crowds aren't always bad - LOL. 

I'm including one more photo for you in this truncated entry today. Here is Shadow, comfortable in its new home yesterday morning as I was leaving for the gym. Sorry about the reflections in the photo, but you can see - it's a bit of a tight fit. Still, it works. We may have to do some shifting - move the snow blower from one side of the garage to the other. DH will check that out today as he fine tunes things. But I'm very happy, my (our) pickup truck is home and looking VERY happy. DH is thinking it might become my pickup after two-three years and he'll drop down to a sedan. We'll see. I'd love that, but the mileage won't be as good for me, and I do love my Minion. 

So there you have it - a quick Tale of Two Trucks. I hope you have a phenomenal Thursday and that everything goes smoothly for you. As usual, my plan is to be back tomorrow. Huzzah! 

We Have Cement!

Do you remember those fuel tanks that were removed from my store's parking lot in early August? The parking lot has been untouched since those huge holes were filled in and the rusty metal taken away. The trees that used to line the center of the lot were removed and two months of parking in the mud without any guidelines ensued. Fortunately most people using our lot were already familiar with the format - which driveway was the entrance, which the exit, and what angles were usually used for parking. 

One week ago our parking lot was blocked off and the promise of concrete curbs and asphalt was spoken of. But then it rained, so the parking lot was one again opened. We were hopeful that eventually something would happen, though, and two days ago returned to a blocked-off parking lot. Now we have cement! Take a look at all that happened yesterday. 

When I arrived in the morning, there were machines, trucks and
guys in bright neon all over the parking lot. My store's building
is beyond the trees, this corner is the far corner of the parking lot where
it is closest to the street. 

Directly in front of my door was this large green truck from the
"Bituminous Roadway" company. They had done all of the asphalt
in front of the store two years ago when our street was completely
eaten up by dinosaurs and restructured. They do very good work. 

By the time I left at 6:15 pm, I had concrete in front of my back door! I
had to take a rather fancy 90-degree turn from my door to the dirt
on the side, because the concrete wasn't 100% set, but it was
do-able without too much hassle. Chickie had a harder time getting out. 

If you look carefully at the previous photo near the door, you'll see one
solitary footprint. That's from Chickie as she attempted to make the jump
from the store (where I'm standing while taking the photo), to the
dirt on the right side. It's a distance of approximately a foot, but it's
straight sideways. I managed to do it without stepping on the new
cement, but Chickie "left her mark" in the lime. 

The concrete guys did a really nice job. This is the back of the parking lot, the
only place we now have trees left. They did curbs around the trees and angled
the spaces in the way we need it for traffic flow. Within the next day or so,
the asphalt guys should arrive and cover the dirt with new asphalt. Then
we should get new parking lines painted and our "Reserved for our customers"
signs replaced. I'm pretty happy right now! 

It's been quite the haul to get this far, but I'm hoping that we enter the winter with a new, smooth parking lot with definite curbs. It'll help with the water drainage too. I've been in this location since the early 1990's and this project is LONG overdue. I can hardly wait for the next step. 

I hope you have a terrific Wednesday. My day is PACKED with stuff that I need to do, repairs to make, and I'm continuing work on my holiday cards. I'll be collecting names and addresses from all of you soon, so keep your eyes open or message me if you want one of my cards for this year. Enjoy your day and spread kindness wherever you go. 

Running In Place

It's one thing to run in place purposefully such as on the elliptical or a treadmill. It's something else entirely when circumstances cause me to repeat and repeat the same actions again and again. *sigh* It's the way I'm feeling today and I'm just a bit frustrated.

I wear a set of Sporti goggles right now, but I'm thinking about
getting a set of Speedo because the set I borrowed from the
life guard were incredibly comfortable. 

First - new swimming suit looks pretty, but not on me. I need to lost more weight before I start wearing that size. I quickly changed into one of my older suits yesterday and ran off to the gym, arriving almost on time. I had my tunes (thank goodness, because the shuffled playlist that came through in my swim was AWESOME), but in my hurry to get going I forgot all of my accessories - my swim cap (DH calls it my 'Guppy Helmet'), my paddles and, most importantly, my goggles. I have a spare swim cap that I always have in my gym bag, so I was OK with that, but no goggles. Fortunately we had my favorite life guard on duty and I looked up after four laps to see her at the end of the lane with two sets of goggles for me to borrow. One of them fit perfectly and I ended up with saved eyes and a great swim despite events.

DH wanted a bit more of a shag to the carpet, so back I went. The
samples I brought back are still in the grey, but have a bit more
brown to them. I need the bigger samples to really get a good
look with our furniture, though. 

Next running in place was carpeting. I went to the decorator's when they opened and picked out three more carpet samples to come close to the one DH loves that we got at Home Depot (I'm NOT getting Home Depot carpeting - just NO). I got small samples and ordered larger ones to be sent to me, then headed out to do other errands. It seems like I've been looking at carpet samples f____ng FOREVER and I'm so tired of it. So now we're debating again, and once again I have to listen to how he likes the color and texture of the Home Depot sample the best. Well, he'll have to choose something else. But I think we'll be able to tell much more when the larger samples arrive next week.

Lunch was Massaman chicken curry at my new Thai restaurant find. Oh so
good. I only ate about 1/3 of the rice because rice packs pounds
onto me. But the curry itself was just perfect! 

After all of that argh, I decided to treat myself to a nice lunch before diving in to scanning books from our library (I already have 1000 books scanned in and there are probably another 600-700 in the library that need to be done, so yeah - big job). I went to our new Thai restaurant and had a fabulous lunch of Massaman curried chicken with rice. It was spicy sweet and oh so good. My nose ran and my eyes watered and I was in heaven. I'll have this again, for sure!

Sometimes things do get accomplished. Last week I took a chance and met
with the Safety Manager of my town to complain about the parking issue. It's
been 6 months since they put the "No Parking" sign up, and I'm still having
problems. Because of my meeting, the no parking sign that's next to my driveway
here has now been moved up the block to where the telephone pole is and our
ability to see oncoming traffic and get our trash collected has improved.
Squeaky wheels sometimes work well. Yippee! 

Here's hoping that the only running in place I do today is on the elliptical first thing this morning before I hop on the stationary bike for eight miles of push. Have a great Thursday, all, and enjoy yourselves. Life is good, even if I still can't come to a decision on carpeting with my DH.

Bad Parking - A Photo Blog

I'm currently working with my city to change the parking situation in front of my house. Since I live close to a college, I get the students parking their cars in front of my house to an extent that I cannot see oncoming traffic when I am leaving the house for work or to do errands. I thought I'd feel better if I saw other poor parking decisions, so here we go, a photo blog for Thursday.

How did this driver even manage this parking job? It's rather amazing
and a good way to start us out this morning. 

Really? REALLY? What makes you so special?!

Not many could fit into the cart return and still exit the car. I almost
have to give this one an award for ingenuity. 

Hmmm ... there's one kind of person, and then there's this kind. The world
is made for him. Pity he doesn't have a nicer looking car. 

Sure you've got a pipsqueak of a car that can do this, but just because
you can doesn't mean you should. 

Getting out of this one will be difficult. Ouch! 

What I don't understand here ... well, aside from all the strange
stuff under the Ford's bumper ... is how the driver of the Toyata on the
left managed to get out of his car at all. 

I think I need some of these cards. 

So there you have it, some horrible parking jobs. I guess mine aren't that bad, but they still need to be resolved. Have a great Thursday, one and all!