A two-pipe night

Been a rough couple of days. Tuesdays are always long and exhausting for me because of extra stuff I have to do at night. Also it seems that the universe is conspiring to dump on me somehow every Tuesday and make it even worse than it should be. This time it was a route that I am not familiar with, was all alleys, all the alleys were still flooded, and whoever has been doing that route has not been putting the lids back on the meter boxes. So all the boxes were choked with mud. Also all the lids behind a strip mall at one point had been stolen. They like to steal the big lids to turn it at the metal salvage place.

Today when I got home I put up a new dog trolley, my most professional-looking and bad*ss trolley yet. Ninety feet long, made from 3/16-inch galvanized cable. Eye bolts that would hold a dump truck. We'll see if it can hold a 30-pound dog. Then I replaced all the skirting on the house that the dog knocked down while on her temporary short trolley.

After six months, my cop-boots were in terrible shape. I call them cop-boots because my employer got us a good deal on the same boots that all the emergency services people wear. They were excellent boots, but they were tattered. Anyway, I'm going back to W*l-M*rt for boots now, because their $35 boots last just as long as those special $120 (which I got for half price) boots did. This time, however, I put new insoles in them right off the bat, because I know from past experience that the soles of these boots are too hard. I couldn't find any black leather waterproof boots that weren't also steel toe (steel toe are too heavy), so I got the old suede kind I used to get. But this time, I sprayed them with suede protector right away. We'll see if this helps them stay in decent condition longer. As you might expect, I go through footwear like nobody's business. My other new thing in footwear lately is that I bought some knee-high rubber boots for when it rains, so I won't have to drag my regular daily boots through the water. It doesn't do any good to wear waterproof ankle-high boots when the water goes halfway up to your shins. The waterproofing is still important for everyday wear because heavy dew can also make your feet wet, and wet feet will ruin your whole day.

A company email yesterday revealed that the board of directors are all in a tizzy because the weather experts are predicting a wetter than normal year this year because of El Niño. Therefore, less irrigation will be needed, less water used, and (horror of horrors!) revenues will be down. Rather than cut down on their yearly supply of ivory back-scratchers, they are asking all departments to figure out ways to cut expenditures by 10%.

I just squeaked in under the wire this month with 18 errors--max allowed is 19 or they start getting upset.

All this to say: it's a two-pipe night.