The new year has me running back to back with very little rest. It has me moody as hell I hit the road hard, got as much as I could done, then hit home and went right to sleep. I was back up and ready to roll two hours early. I am not sure how long I can keep pushing like this. The new year is here, but it does not fill me with a happy outlook on what may be around the next corner. I guess only time is going to tell.

Just another day of back-to-back running. I got home at 730am and got a my new windshield. That put me to bed for the day about 1100am where I had some really weird dreams about ferrets. I have no idea where that one came from. It is annoying. I am just feeling VERY tired right now.

You are here because you are curious. You have found my website, or my social media or even one of my books or other works. And you want to know what it is all about. You want to know if I am really as strange as I come across....

The answer is YES...I am ... but that really does not matter.

If you have come here because you are curious about Christopher Klein the person, then you have reached the right place. But there are two faces. There is the social and work oriented family man.. and that is where you are. You will find out what happens in the day-to-day life, what projects I am working on, what I am cooking and general personal information. You will even see the day-to-day struggles of my cats and what silly things they have been up to.

The other side of me is a liberal, highly opinionated jerk. But you won't see that here. If you want to see my take on the antics of the administration, opinions on our leadership and some fire-born statements about how the adults in the room need to put some of our leaders into the time-out corner, I would suggest you visit my other blog, Journey Noir at ... (update 12/9/22 - the Journey Noir has been deleted and all entries have been moved to this blog. I made this choice because I got tired of the advertising that was assaulting my users when they would visit wordpress.

The Day

I am kind of feeling like crap today, and I am even a bit dizzy. I got off work early in the morning and spent the entire day in bed before I doubled back. What a day. OYE.

I tried and managed to succeed to set myself up for a long weekend this week. I ran back to back all week and hard and fast to get done. I managed to finish my route at 100am this morning, about 30 hours ahead of time. Now I am off until Monday morning at 600am. Now I just have to figure out what to do with all this time. I have been feeling very "down" lately and that has to stop. I am not willing to say that this is an old time holiday funk, because I am well past that. What I think that it is could be a rising displeasure with my work environment. Since they decreased by pay by nearly a quarter while not significantly reducing my workload, I have been irritated.

To figure out what I am going to do with this extra time may be a bit rough. I have a lot on my "list" but I have very little drive. So it is going to be a force issue.

I plan to do some cooking. I am going to make Thai Beef for dinner one night and I am going to make some angel hair pasta to freeze. Not sure if I am willing to do the foodie thing or not, time will tell. Laura cleared the path for me to get some wood today so that I can continue on the craft cabinet and I have to fix the headlights on the jeep. Now that I have the new windshield and it is not leaking, one of the bulbs decided to go out. I also have to look up headlight restoration, but that can wait. Other than that, a call to TruGreen to cancel their service (again) is on the list and a few errands. We shall see how things go. Not sure I am comfortable with this amount of time alone, but nothing I can really do about it.

Pushing through the day

Today was pretty much a full day off. It was raining all day but I managed to pull it together and get out to get my medication and ran over to Hobby Lobby to get wood. I am still feeling a bit light-headed, but I am pretty sure that it is my sinuses, we shall see.

Yes it was nasty and rainy and i was forced to sit and read faceBook for a while. But that is okay. I was able to get out and run errands as well. I got to Walgreens and Hobby Lobby, Lowe's and the UPS store. I was not in the mood, but I forced myself to get out, even in the rain.

At Hobby lobby, I picked up a 6 yard roll of painting canvas so that once I get the garage done, I can start making my painting canvases instead of spending a fortune on them.

The current project is the craft cabinet. The big cost thing has been the increase in wood prices, but I am playing Lowe's against Home Depot right now, and Lowe's is winning for this week. I was able to pick up enough wood to make the side boxes, and that will be on the agenda for Saturday I think.

Down, but not out

Also on the agenda is making homemade Angel Hair pasta and Thai Beef. The pasta to freeze and the beef to eat. I am still moody as hell and I was not nearly as productive as I wanted to be. But I did get some family time and even had time to make some manicotti, so I am counting the day as a win.

I actually worked through my second day off without a hitch. I was able to be both productive and relaxed at the same time. I was unable to get a decent amount of sleep, so I began working through my new lists and it went well.

Once Laura was up and in motion, I was able to sneak in a nap, then a board game with the wife and daughter and then cooking together. We made home-made manicotti and Thai beef. Both were pretty good. yeah!

I am still feeling mentally under the weather, but I am doing my best to cope. Tomorrow is my last day off of the long weekend, and I have quite a few things that I want to get done. I was able to almost get out of my bad mood, but not quite. I am happy with what I got done for the day, which included cleaning the garage.

I had such a productive day yesterday. I finished all my tasks for work including end of year reporting on tractor, trailer and bins as well as completed entering the Holy Bible over at www.ancientpathway.com . That has been more than a year of a project. I got the headlight on the jeep repaired and got the garage cleaned out. I should feel very accomplished, but for some reason I don't. Weird.

I have been running very tired and this morning is no exception. I was able to get a decent amount of sleep, but still feel like I could lay back down. And today could be either a long day or a short day, I have not yet decided.

I am working a double back shift so i am tired. But to top that off, I am going to have dreams of big K, Kitska, Neko, a shower, the bathroom and missed phone calls. No idea what is going on in my head right now, but not really liking it.

I got about 7 hours sleep and was up by 11pm ready to double back. But I am very much not feeling it. I am about to hit a confrontation and work, that could or could not work out in my favor. A new SOP requires us to "sign off" on hours / shifts work and our pay increases on our anniversary dates are dependent on working assigned routes. Ever since exception pay time, I have run slip-shot routes to make sure I run a full truck, and I don't even have dumps on my route list. That will have to change...and since they took away exception pay.... Well..... Fun times.

Not a great day

The day did not start well because I had some very weird dreams about Karen that I don't want to go into. I will let them fade away from memory and see how that works out. I also dreamed about Kitska and Neko, that was not too bad. I am behind and running back to back shifts right now, so that is degrading the mood.

I am still working back to back shifts and i am really not happy about it. At the end of the day when I start my 3rd shift for the week, I will be two days on paper behind. It has me grumpy. I had dreams during my sleep cycle of being trapped, but having fun, in a walk-in cooler with my sister and using Apple Juice in 5 gallon bottles as bombs to break our way through the wall. The problem is that I don't have a sister and I did not recognize my face in the mirror. Weird huh?

I am running tired today. I have no idea what the overnight is going to bring.

I have been rolling back to back for well over a year now, and it is starting to get on my nerves I think. I am about halfway through the week and behind, with three more runs to go. I am having trouble sleeping and it is really making me grumpy. But, I did come up with one surprise. I am actually taking my vacation this year, and the first week is in just about a month from today. So 4 more weeks and downtime.

On the same note, I have a summons to appear in court on the 11th of next month, and with all irony, that is vacation week. I could not have planned that better.

I am still rolling back to back. I got off work at 0600 this morning and came home to go right to bed. I am feeling very tired. I got about six hours of sleep and then I was back up and at it.

But I did notice today that I am about a month away from vacation. So that is a good thing. I do not remember the last time that I took one. I have no idea what I am going to do with it, but it will be nice to take some down time.

Right now, i am about 5 stores behind where I wanted to be. I will be heading back out round 4:00 this afternoon and then doubling back sometime tomorrow to hopefully finish up. There is a very slim chance that i may try to finish tonight, but that may be pushing it.

On a positive note, I have been working on the new craft cabinet and I am hoping to be able to make some serious headway this weekend. I have to get some pictures taken for inclusion here.

I got in from work, still nowhere close to being done for the week, about midnight. It is getting really cold out, i think that cold snap they have been promising is finally here. It does not help that I am really feeling like crap and just going through the motions.

Even though I went right to sleep, it was far from restful. I had zombie dreams. I have never had zombie dreams before. It was about a really old house, a grinding machine and feeding "living" zombies into it. The only problem is that people around me were unaware of the problem. I woke up after less than an hour of sleep from what of these dreams. I went back to sleep and slipped into a similar one. And that happened throughout the night.

Not feeling to well. I have had a very persistent headache and that is no fun at all. Today, I have to finish up 22 stores and then be done until Monday. Fun times.

I have officially hit tired! Very tired. I only put in 50 hours this past week, but it was across six shifts beginning Monday morning and ending Friday night. And it has me exhausted. I have been unable to get an answer about how to run going forward considering that I am at tolerance for how I have run this week. It has me a bit irked off. One of the things that is rolling off my mind is that to make it work, I had to skip a few bins. That is not a good thing and it bothers me to cheat a bit. It made me moody as hell.

Physically, I am feeling quite a bit better than at the turn of the year. Still a bit tight in the stomach, but nowhere near where it was. Hoping for a really good day today.

Yesterday moved way too fast. It was dreary and rainy and I did some work on the craft cabinet but that did not go over too well. I could not get my bits to stay in place and kept ruining wood. I have to work those machines and clean them up. I finally chose a different path of creation and will work on that later.

Even an afternoon nap or so did not help my mood. I have a feeling nothing is going to until I have a new career path. I am trying, but I do not get any responses. It is very frustrating.

Another thing that is frustrating is that every company seems to have it's own portal for employment with the exact same questions and of course they start out by asking you for your resume / cv. Then, they ask you all the questions that should be on your resume or cv. Redundancy is such a waste of time.

The personal stuff

I am having problems with my master storage drive, and that kind of thing always causes me to tighten up mentally. Then we will add the fact that Phil and Jenny are at it again. It was a long day and I was really not ready for that. The probem is that Jenny has done a full 360. She met Phil when she was In the business and now she is pretty much a vestle virgin, but not by choice. Phil has no interest, and that means that Jenny does not get her needs met. She is now a good Christian girl and would never disobey. My how people change. One of the issues is that I know the other half of the story as well. And since this entry is being added post-time, about five years after the date, and after the death of Jenny, I am comfortable explaining it here. Phil has evoloved to desire some more colorful things in his physical life. I really wish that he would discuss this with Jenny, and I have suggested that. He won't because she will think he is a pervert. I have tried to tell him that it is okay to be a pervert once in a while. The problem is that when I was around Jenny, I witnessed her in the exact situations that he is looking for, and she loved it. But unless they open a dialog, it is never going to happen. And they are both stubborn as hell. I really wish, sometimes, that I was still a busybody. But I would never break the trust of either of them. It will work out, or it won't.

The weekend is supposed to be the time to sit back and relax. This was not the case this past weekend. Saturday was okay, even though I was in a seriously icky mood, but Sunday hit like a sledgehammer. I was already in a mood because my plans for the cabinet fell through .. the bits for the router could not be tightened down enough and they slipped. After the 4th piece of wood ruined, I switched over to biscuits. That would have been good if one of my hard drives had not failed. It took a while to get it back online and start a backup. Once that was cleared and a plan was in place, the infamous call from Jennifer. She is leaving this time...for real. It took more than an hour to get the information out of both of them and get them to stop sniping.

I finally decided to sit and watch some of the Twilight series because the Universe obviously did not want me to get anything else done.

I did get a major portion of my paper files cleared out. That was nice.

Back to work today. Just a quick run to the farm and back, under 7 hours of so and then home to bed. Last week, I finished "reading" the Tar-Aiym Krank and Bloodhype by Alan Dean Foster and today I started Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K Hamilton. I should be done it tomorrow.

I did take the time to find out that I only lost 3 important files in the hard drive crash. But I was too tired to worry about replacing them. Maybe I will do that tonight.

I am very tired today, at least on a physical level. I have to double back to work to try to stay on beam for the weekend off. I got off about noon and slept to get back up before 700pm. Part of it was the girls. I was dreaming about Lazarus and all through the dream there were these "beeps" which would incorporate in the dream. Turns out that those beeps were from the show that they were watching with dinner. The dream was about a story that I have been thinking of for some time now, and I am going to take this time to get it down in writing.

My mood is kinda dark right now. It is a mixture of being tired and being highly dissatisfied with my job. Sigh. I did finish Guilty Pleasures by Laurel K. Hamilton, but I am still tired and moody, and I am moody about being tired. That is quite a vicious circle.

My dreams are weird lately. I don't remember them all, but I know that they are disturbing. I cut the workday short this morning because my tummy was acting up and came home and pretty much went right to bed. I got close to six hours sleep and woke up with the song "almost lover" by A fine Frenzy playing in my head. Weirdness.

My mood is still tanked, but I think that I have better control of it right now. So that is something. I still have 3 full day runs to do, and we shall see what this evening brings. Time rolls on. I was not feeling well again today and I cut the morning run short. I did manage to get a bit more sleep than I have been getting, so that is something in the green column of my life.

Today was all work and no play. I did another back to back and managed to get caught up. But then I was faced with an extended drive home. What should have taken about 20 minutes, took closer to two hours due to traffic. It really did no help with my mood. But I am dealing.

I may be caught up, but that is not always what it takes to get on top of the pile. I am still rolling through a deep saddness, or a deep blue funk, I am not really sure which. This is usually something that pokes out around Christmas time and goes away quickly. This year, it is just hanging around like some unwanted relative.
I waited until 1100am to go to work and I did manage to finish up, but it took until midnight. A very long day.

I finally got some time off and had some time to relax. That included a date day with the wife and we went to the Crosstown Concourse. It was a very interesting experience. They renovated an old industrial building and turned it into condos with a progressive and liberal mall. They even have a maker lab that you can join. I wish that I had time for something like that. There were a lot of open air type eateries and shops including organic food items in the middle of a city. I am sure that there is some irony there, but I can't put my finger on it. What I liked most is the unfinished look that they used. They did not cover and enclose things like ductwork and superstructure. It offers a unique look. After that experience, it was time to get home, unwind and go to sleep early.

A real lazy day today. I had some really weird dreams and then sat around all day, mostly watching Netflix. It was not the best use of my time, but I think that I deserve it.

I am really glad that I took a lazy day yesterday, because today sucked. My trailer is down and that means that after a 12 hour work day, I got nothing done and I am now a day behind. That does not bode well for the rest of the week. I am already fighting the bad mood for the week. Breathe deep my friend, breathe deep.

This was an unwanted day off. The trailer is still not fixed, so I have no way to run. I sat around the house, half-heartedly getting things done. But it was not a productive day. And we all know what happens when I am unproductive, or things don't go as planned. I spiral into a hell of a dark mood.

Not the greatest day. I got the call a little after noon that my trailer was repaired and ready for me. I rushed down, then spent a few hours getting tires. After that, I only got two stores done. This is not turning out to be a wonderful week. I am still fighting the bad moodies.

Today was just one delay after another. I hit the ground ready to roll and then it all went to hell. First there were delays at the Pilot while trying to fuel, then Peoplenet decided to take the train and get all screwed up. It does not help that I was feeling like crap. I rolled as hard as I could, and I was done by 800pm, home, and ready to double back. But that does not mean that it was a good day.

A day of pure work, as well as pure hell. I was out of the yard at 600am and home by 900pm. The saving grace was that John picked up 15 stores to pick up some of the slack. That really helped a lot, and I am done, but he should not have to do that. They really need to rework these routes. This is going to be a lot worse once product picks up for the season. But we will worry about that later.

I am still not feeling well, but I am off today. I did some relaxing and did lunch with Laura's family. Once that was over, I headed home and made Ravioli from scratch. That was an interesting experience. Maybe when it is time to retire, I will open a nice eatery where everything is made fully from scratch? That could be an interesting experience.

I had a full down day today. Not like Watership down but a day off with nothing that had to be done. I did not get much sleep, but that is okay because I could rest, or not, depending on the mood. My mood was one that made me want to get things done. So I worked on the art cabinent and worked on upgrading my office space. All things considered, I will say that this was not a terrible day.

A hectic day that was a turn and burn followed by home to bed. There is one hell of a cold snap incomming and I really don't want to be on the road. The grumpy and the tired came back in full force. I really need to make some changes, but that is going to have to wait until I have more time to consider how and what to do and when.

Things may be boring for you, my gentle readers, for a while. Right now, I am rolling back to back so it is pretty much work - sleep - work. Things are getting heavy and I am not sure why that is happening. That is something that is usually held back for spring. But here it is and I get to deal with it. I am still moody as hell, but I think that adjusting to it. We shall see.

I am pretty impressed. Rowan got a tech job on his first interview. Something to do with repairing laptops. I am not sure how it will work out, but he is excited, at least for him.
The cold snap is here and it is cold as hell. I am tired and still running back to back trying to keep ahead of things. I am just feeling overwhelmed at this point and I have no direction in my life.

I pummeled myself into the ground and ran as hard as I could. But it payed off because I am done for teh week. I have just one more week before it is time for vacation, and I cannot wait. I have no idea what I am going to do with my downtime, but I am going to do my best to enjoy it.