abbracci gratis.

some days you just need one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN8CKwdosjE

ciao.

to do:

at the ripe old age of 24 i have come to the conclusion that there are certain life goals that need to be achieved. some of them are mandatory rights of passage and some of them are just for shits and giggles if i am being perfectly honest with you all.

so in my 24 years on this earth i have:

traveled to Europe
been to many states in the us - some still have managed to avoid me
seen multiple oceans
flown in a plane
flown in a plane piloted by my dad
white water rafted down the middle fork in Idaho
white water rafted in middle Tennessee
eaten real live, honest to god, tried and true gelato in Italy
run 2 half marathons
graduated from the college of my dreams
paid taxes
helped grow a small business
started a small business (very small at the moment)
been through breakups
played in the snow
been to numerous concerts
rock climbed (albeit indoors - hey hey i'm working my way up)
eaten fresh off the boat lobster
eaten fresh picked fruit
been out of my comfort zone
been completely and utterly lost (not directionally - those are adventures, oh and i NEVER get lost)
and a multitude of others that i am just not remembering right now.

but there are a select group of other things that i also have not done and it seems silly in retrospect that i have never done them:

driven a stick shift
driven cross country
shot a gun
seen jurassic park (yes i know, ridicule me if you will) or castaway for that matter
successfully given a speech without nervous breakdown ensuing
built something completely from scratch
danced on a bar
eaten an entire box of girl scout cookies (i am sure i have come dangerously close)


this year i have decided that i am going to add to my list of accomplished things.

now this list may not get completed with things solely on the not done yet tasks, but that is also because i am sure there are a gajillion things that should be on there that i haven't thought of. live in the moment, right?

but 2 of those things are going to be accomplished via work. gun shooting and stick driving. get your country on folks...hahaha

ciao.

bossy pants.

you know what i like? i like being in charge. i find it entertaining. i really like being in charge when i have about 80 other things i have to do that day. makes one wish they had magical powers to do 4 things at once (maybe a solid 15 things). i always seem to be left in charge when things are going to go wrong. it is inevitable. sometimes i am in charge when darwin is going to be in the truck all day; other times it's when darwin is going to be on a whole another continent that has no service: internet, phone, etc.; or he is off, oh i don't know, surfing...yes folks surfing.

there was the one time that darwin went to new zealand to see his sister. anything that could go wrong that was completely out of my control did go wrong. go figure...the truck wasn't supposed to leave the shop, i had to make the executive decision for it to leave the shop. one of the guys got kick out of his "housing" facility and i had to figure out what to do with him. darwin had absolutely no internet service and he was like 18 hours ahead or something absurd, so it made communication next to impossible and me a little frantic for 10 days. AMAZING.

take today for instance. he needed to head to the kiln. so i am in charge of dexeley, the shop, getting money from people, calling vendors, checking the mail...all of these things require me to be in multiple places, all the while with remembering we have a 2 o'clock appointment (which still hasn't shown up...). so off around the city i go. collecting dollars, eating in the car, checking the mail, depositing checks. phew. get back to the shop and the roll-off guy is here. he proceeds to try and bully me and i tell him darwin will be back in 10 and walk away. success, i think so. darwin shows up, surprisingly in 10, and the guy is super nice to him....i see how this game is played....

i really liked being in charge when there was nothing to do, but answer the phone and drive the rover around. those were my favorite days....

ciao.

happy st. party's day!

i have neglected you all and for that i apologize! today is st. party's day (yes i've renamed it, deal with it) and i am excited! i don't particularly like st. patrick's day, but for some reason i am super pumped about it this year...

yesterday consisted of me being in the truck or my car for most of the day. not exactly one of the more exciting days i have had in a while. keisha (the veggie truck) had to go for a heart transplant yesterday. it was a sad day in our lives to realize that she was going to need a new engine. she is in good hands with the folks at powerstroke specialty (coincidentally enough he is from memphis...go figure) and we cannot wait for her to come back.

i had to drive her out there and it felt a little bit like a viking funeral. driving her out there like everything is okay, and then wham see ya. the night before her goodbye, darwin texted me and told me he wanted to leave for powerstroke by about 8 or 815. i replied with a sure sure whatever....so i'm driving to work, i am about a block away, and darwin calls me. "hey, where are you?"...a block away..."oh, alright well can you get keisha and meet me at the gas station around the corner, george (the other truck...darwin calls it dolly now...) needs gas."...yea.... so i stroll up to work and unlock the gate, open the roll-off, gather the belongings that keisha will need while away undergoing her transplant, make a lot of noise starting keisha, back keisha out, re-lock everything and away we go. there is a group of guys walking by as this whole transaction is going down looking at me like i am crazy. whatever, i love that truck, and honestly who is going to say anything to me when i am in that monster? i did get to hurl a dip cup (athankyou darwin) out the window....away we go to meet darwin and georgedolly. darwin proceeds to inform me that he is going to follow me because he will know if something goes wrong with keisha before i do...gee this sounds like fun...off we march up 85-N and we are almost to the 985 interchange when darwin calls me and tells me his back teeth are floating he has to pee so bad...asks me if i remember how to get there, he will just meet me....not 20 minutes ago he told me he wanted to follow me incase something went wrong with keisha...not untypical i will say. i proceed on, roll on up to powerstroke and the guy says hey, oh darwin must be coming behind you...yep you guessed right...well on second thought, i figured i could just chill with you guys...really? this job is going to take a week at the very least....geez.

long story short, keisha is in the hospital and now we are searching for a new vehicle...darwin sold the rover (cassandra) and he has been tootling around in georgedolly and i don't know if any of you have noticed, but diesel ain't cheap...like $4.00 a gallon cheap...and steadily rising. so we've been looking into natural gas powered vehicles and honda makes a civic gx that is powered by natural gas. the kicker is they don't sell them in georgia yet apparently because there are no stations readily available with natural gas (even though there is one around the corner from us, ahem...ahem). currently we are in a bitter struggle with honda to make this happen because georgia natural gas company is giving one away through a honda dealership...now is that just ludicrous? silly honda, let's all get on the same page please...it's that or darwin buys a jeep and converts it to propane...do we really need any more toys around here? short answer no, long answer of course we do...who doesn't love toys? ha.

sunday is my half marathon...i may die or still be drunk from st. party's day festivities...i'll keep you posted.

ciao.

tomorrow sounds promising. but then again, not really.

do you ever have those days where you just think to yourself, 'i just want to crawl under the covers and never think about today.'? i most certainly had one of those this morning. i have about a week and a half until my half marathon, and i needed to get up and go running today, but i definitely turned off the alarm and went back to bed. it was GLORIOUS! however, i did eventually have to get up and get ready for work. by work, i mean sit at darwin's house while some guy installs shutters or something...whatever. it's raining and it's cold at the shop, so i would just assume not be there. so me and the p-dog are hanging out.

when it rains, it pretty much shuts us down. there just isn't a whole lot to do aside from catching up on paperwork and office malarkey. we're not exactly out making deliveries or doing hauls in the rain. that just doesn't make sense(you would be amazed at the number of people who do not grasp that concept.) speaking of office malarkey, i did a lot of streamlining yesterday. hopefully some of it will make us more efficient and make customers less dependent on darwin and i so that we can breathe for a nanosecond. we will see how that works out. i hope well because some days, the monotonous questions get well, monotonous. i know people are genuinely interested in what we do, but sometimes they ask the silliest questions. and they get really upset when i don't call them back within about 14 seconds of them leaving a voicemail. i am sorry, but i am not in the office at all times. some times i am out schlepping boards, or stickering packs, or i don't know god forbid i use the restroom at any given point. that is why our voicemail specifically says to leave a message if you must, but e-mail or fax works much better for us. silly.

also, if you ever want to come down to the shop and see what we've got going on, please, please, i beg of you, let me know ahead of time. we are an appointment only facility and i would prefer to not get yelled at when people call and say they are at the gate and i tell them no one is there. i was unaware that my psychic ability had to be that far reaching. i've got to use it enough to keep darwin from imploding, there is no way that i am going to be able to do it with customers too. so please save my poor little brain some effort, and your cars some gas, and do me a favor and call me. i can usually work you in the same day, but i need to know about it.

for anyone who would like to know, i've implemented a new e-mail policy for the 4 stages of Missississippi Wood Trader: information, directions, sales, and salvage work. they are four different emails and they are each equipped with an automated response stating that in 2-3 business days someone will reply, and also with information as where to be directed if need something else. that being said:

general inquiries: info.mswt@gmail.com
directions: directions.mswt@gmail.com
pricing/sales: sales.mswt@gmail.com
salvage work: contact.mswt@gmail.com

salud.

p.s. "like" us on facebook (or whatever disturbing terminology is to be used these days) and check out our blog (should be entitled my blog with a different name) mswoodtrader.blogspot.com....

punxsutawney phil, you may have been right...

spring time is almost here. i can smell it, i can almost taste it. it has been beautiful around here for the past 2 or so weeks (i am hoping it's not some sort of long term fluke), and i cannot wait for warm weather to finally be here. the past couple of weeks around here have involved a lot of car fixing. i mean a lot.

my car. the mercedes. the rover. keisha. george. that makes for all of the cars (not too mention the forklifts...). all of them. it's been an eventful few weeks.

but i'll tell you the story of my car. so i just got it back from the shop and i am tootling along with the dogs. we've hit the post office, the bank and then we stopped at my house so i could have a pb&j and some cheez-its (yes i am a toddler.). we all load up and off we go. i get about maybe 3/4 of a mile from my house and my temperature gauge starts to slowly creep up. so i turn the heat on full blast and pray. i get to a light and smoke is coming out of my car and the needle is spiking. so thankfully, the turn lane was open and i pulled a u-turn as fast as i possibly could (sorry mom and dad if i get a red light ticket...). i am flying down the road trying to cool down my car. then wham, i get trapped a red light. i am screaming profanities and then finally, i just turn in front of people because my car is about to explode. i come to a screeching halt (shuttering as well), and proceed to have to walk the dogs, sans leashes, down the block to my house. not soo bad. i go to check on the car, it is just billowing. i am panicky and can't get in touch with darwin and leave a terribly horrific message with drew (i sounded like a beaten 12 year old.). i called my mom and just started cursing and screaming, and she told me to call my father. so i called daddy, a little calmer, not much, and he proceeded to tell me to call darwin....don't you think i've tried that? well finally get in touch with darwin, and we decide best option is to get it towed down to the warehouse instead of taking it to the repair shop. we could look it over and decide what was best from there. so $20 worth of coolant and $50 worth of new hoses later, my little baby is fixed, again, for like the 80 zillionth time this year...

well so when i got the car towed (thank you AAA, you are a godsend), the guy gets out of his truck and low and behold it's the same guy that towed the mercedes back to the warehouse. so he looks at me and asks, hey didn't i tow something for you? and i smile and say yes, yes you did, a mercedes. chit chat a bit, he tells me he buys old storage lockers that are up for auction, it was a grand old time. he was a super nice guy. favorite part, i told him the story of darwin getting keisha and trailer towed back to the shop in 5 o'clock downtown traffic when the brakes went out (that's a fun story) and he broke 2 AAA trucks...the guy says wait wait wait, i've heard that story. that story has been circling around AAA. HA, we are legends...what a calamity of vehicles we are these days....

ciao.