Montgomery, AL

Ok I found out that is was the carrier (to whome Courtney, my agent, is contracted), who fronted me all that money while I was down. Korena, who works with Courtney, is something like a liason between the carrier and Courtney, and it was she who went to bat for me.

Remember: this is business, and they could have left me stuck there without a carrier, flat broke, and...I don't want to think about it.

Anyway, my first settlement check was kept by them to get some of that money back. I can't argue with that. But Korena is now trying to get them to pay me half of my checks til my balance is paid. I've got bills piled up, and owe road-use taxes.

What I actually spent was a little over 3k, but meanwhile I was racking up the weekly charges, and I had been advanced money on the load I never delivered.

Among the weekly charges are trailer rental, insurance, a 50.00/week (to 1k) bond deduction, transflo, and some other stuff.

However, after my most recent Damian APU repair, they've been running me pretty hard. I remember that Central Hauling (owner-operator side of Cal-Ark) was pretty damn efficient, but these guys take the cake. The load before last, I loaded twice within five miles of the truckstop I landed at. On the last load, I had to downright hustle about 14 miles from that delivery to get the load taking me to Midland GA.

That one paid peanuts, but now I know they probably have good freight out of this area. That was a backhaul, and they use those only to get you from point a to point b for a "real" load.

I also asked if they went to Texas e voila--they're planning to send me there. If that one delivers monday, I'll have a monster week.

NOW: I finally at long last got to my PO Box and got my "Thirty-Second Smile" electric toothbrush. It has two opposing sets of bristles: One for your uppers, and one for your lowers. The brushes are "U"-shaped, to sort of wrap around your teeth, and the bristles are angled accordingly. They wrap around your teeth, see?

You need to hold it between your thumb and one finger, as it sort of needs to move in your grip to work right.

Anyway, I tried it and was pretty shocked. I was bleeding from my gums. The thing had scoured some of my back teeth to the roots...which were partly exposed because my gums are trying to recede. Plus, I felt it get all the way behind my back teeth.

COOL! My sonic care toothbrush never got into that area, no matter how hard I tried. So I guess I had those nasty bacteriae mining away with impunity! Not anymore--this thing WORKS!

Of course, now my teeth hurt again. But this time I knew it was a good hurt. I rinsed with ACT, and resumed my aloe-vera gel treatments.

Aloe Vera is not snake oil. It kills just about all bacteria, and penetrates all seven layers of skin. This is one of the reasons it works so well for healing: without infection, you heal faster. It came in handy for me recently when I burned myself on a hot pipe. Second degree: I've had this kind before, and a major infection set in almost immediately.

But with this, I just perieodicly rubbed some aloe-vera gel on it and never had to worry. It's true.

Anyway, I get the Gel. "Juice" can legally be less than one percent real aloe. Gel, legally, has to be mostly real aloe-vera.

I rinse with it and then swallow it. Then I put a little in my tea. You've got to be careful because it's like Ex-lax and you can get in trouble with too much. I'm convinced that aloe-vera is a big reason I've kept all but one of my teeth.

A day later, my gums/teeth don't hurt anymore, and my gums didn't bleed this time. Thirty-Second Smile really works, and so does Aloe-Vera.

Texas...cool.