Slow Week

So from Winston Salem, in keeping with the deja vu theme, I headed over to Elizabethton, Tennessee to pick up more metal building parts destined for the northeast, Robbinsville, New Jersey namely, a suburb of Trenton, if Trenton has suburbs, per se.
The building parts weren't due until Monday and it being Friday and Winston-Salem being less than 600 miles from Trenton I would take these through the house. I am glad that the route could justifiably take me through the house otherwise the shortness of this weekend load would have really frustrated me.
So after another pleasant weekend at home I tootled up to Robbinsville and delivered the building parts to the inside of a big empty warehouse in an industrial park. Apparently the building would eventually be built a few miles from here but the crew who were supposed to be preparing the site had fallen behind but they were forced to take delivery of the building anyway. What an added expense for when the site is ready they will have to truck it all out again.
It was the crew that unloaded me that made the "grizzly adams" and "chuck norris" comments made famous in the previous post.
From there I waited (waited!? no way!) the rest of the day before getting a load to pick up in New Jersey and deliver to Laredo but as soon as the assigned it to me they took it away like dangling $100 bills in front of your face and then snatching them away (or more like $780, in this case). Not long after I got another load, a pick up in Sunbury, Pennsylvania (central PA) with a delivery in Aurora, Illinois. This one as well giving me about a day's worth of extra time (even though it wasn't the weekend.) I would get to see my friends in Chicago but, while I love seeing friends and family I was also, as it turns out, trying to make some money in the mean time. I spent the time in Chicago biking around eating good cheese and sweating a lot and then delivered the load in Aurora, it was fibreboard insulation from a company called Celotex. To explain I will quote a poster in their shipping office"

Want Structural: Use OSB
Want R-value: Use foam
Want both: CELOTEX

(that, i am sure, is perfectly clear to all my building contractor readers.)

Then it as more waiting (yes!) before getting a load to pick up the next day (waste of time) in Joliet at a company called Johns Manville who makes a similar product to the one I had just hauled from Celotex, though it seems less structural. The delivery was to Dallas. To Dallas a week before I had requested to be there.
I stopped for fuel at the Love's in Rolla (atcha boyz) Missouri and found that my fuel card had been "turned off." Evening dispatch turned it back on for me but something was getting fishy.
It was the weekend again and I got to Dallas on Saturday afternoon and tinkered about with the truck I had purchased. I replaced the window motor and changed the oil and cleaned up the battery whose corrosion was becoming an issue. The next day I drove the pickup to a big confusing mall whose directory listed two stores I wanted to check out, a camera store and a book store. Both had closed and were boarded with festive anticipatory plywood.
I needed a drink and some cheese so I stopped in at El Chico, a chain trying to wrest the "mediocre mexican in a drab atmosphere" crown from ChiChi's. I ordered a beer and found myself in an odd corner of the blue laws of the United States.
Before bringing me the beer julio brought me a small piece of paper about 6"x3". Three quarters of the sheet was a carbonless copy form and the remaining quarter was a detachable buisness card sized card. Julio handed this to me and asked me to fill it out without an explanation. When he returned and i asked him what the deal was he explained that we were in a dry county and since we were in a dry county any establishment that wished to serve alcohol had to be a "private club." In order to order a beer at this restaurant I had to "become a member" of their "private club" I had to fill out this card which would be good for thirty days at this restaurant only. If i went somewhere else i would have to fill out another card and on and on. For anyone who was worried i can assure you that prohibition is not over, it has just gotten stranger. This New York Times article explains the whole thing nicely.
Then I went to the movies. I'm not sure how I got there given the absurd complications (at least to this outsider) of the Texas frontage road system (explained in a previous post). I watched Wall-E, a beautiful little movie and then thought that, given that I paid $9.25 to see this movie (and it was before 6pm) I was owed another movie. I haven't snuck into a movie since I was 13 and snuck into Indecent Proposal with some friends who were equally excited by the promise of lasciviousness. (We were disappointed), I was less disappointed with The Dark Knight which, though at times was very loud and somewhat disjointed in its quest for special effects gold, was thoroughly entertaining. It was surprisingly easy to sneak into this movie and I think I could have continued to sneak into movies all night but i was tired and drove back to the terminal where I hopped in the truck and drove over to Spec Roofing Wholesale where I would deliver in the morning.