Montgomery, AL

Wow! Usually, when one of us goes to Laredo, we have to sit in queque for at least 18 hours, but I got assigned within one hour. A LONG one, with two stops.

I didn't have the hours. Getting here puts me over 4,000 miles. This is as far as I could get, using black holes and adjusting for my odometer errors, and I had to get here 12 hours before I arrived. (I had a dream in which I slept at a rest area 65 miles south of here, but of course that was just a dream, as my log will prove.)

I'm 60 miles from my first drop. I'm supposed to get there before 3 pm tomorrow, then go 900-odd miles up to Wisconsin to deliver at final. All this is illegal as it is, but I am insideously diabolical.

I'm glad that I got here last night, since that means that 34 hours from then, I can reset (zero out) both my miles and hours. So, at about noon, I make the drop, and have plenty of time for Wisconsin.

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME.

A few days ago I got up to Fort Smith and got my tax stuff to my new tax-lady (who turned out to be a real babe, which I didn't dare mention.) She was quite unpretentious and open, and I really appreciated it. She also had a few questions for me, which--when I stuttered--she said "I'll get that from them".

Now THAT was cool! One of the reasons I tried to duck this in the past was the fact that the last tax person I talked to expected me to do damn near all the books for myself. In an earlier incarnation, I had to go to the IRS website, find a rule, and fax it to my "tax professional" before she'd believe that I didn't owe over THREE GRAND for an insurance settlement!

I mean, I could do this myself, but am just too lazy. The whole REASON I need a pro is because I don't want to mess with it. I would have had to dig and study for several hours, probably, to learn what I learned from this cool lady in about ten minutes. I don't even know what she'll charge me yet--didn't bother asking. She's GOOD, and will keep me off aspirin and pepto-bismal.

The company charged me a hundred bucks to print out and mail to her my detailed records. I dumped my quarterly reciepts on her desk. I found out that I'd driven over 156,000 miles, and told her.

The bitch of this? I gotta pay sixteen percent in damn SSI! So clearly, I need to incorporate, or maybe bury a big amount in a 401k--I mean, I don't want one thin dime going to SSI. The communists will never permit market-based SSI reform, which is the only way to save it.

They won't permit it because they know what those investment dollars would do for the markets and economy, and know that it could prove how vastly superior free markets are to government-run social programs. They need helpless, dependant people. It's their power base.

How do they know it would work? PERS--THIER retirement system!

But I digress. I took this opportunity to get a tax-deductable hotel room. I'll watch TV and play internet poker til check-out time. My truck is 50 feet away. Did my laundry. Recharging the old batteries.

A Jim Kerry comedy is on. A motorcycle cop gets no respect because he's a wimp. Then he explodes, and his alter-ego kicks ass. Something like that happened to me. My mother was a pacifist. 'Nuff said.