rilly good

From that one kid who is usually goofing around more than the rest. And when they're quiet it's a bad sign. But this time...

Even Better?

Peace Graffiti by MechanicalLazarus

The dramatic events that lead to some strife at work is way back in my rear view mirrors. The cool thing about the aftermath is that the person that I fought with and I seem to be closer than we were before that confrontation. Not that we're best friends and helping each other move or anything, but there is genuine small talk.

For example, he talks about how a high-school sweet-heart found his number and sort of tries to seduce him and how he ought to resist. I feel close enough to agree and encourage him to resist. I wonder if that encouragement is exactly why he tells me these things.

I can only guess why he shares these things with me. I'll keep on giving him my honest opinion about them since that seems to be working and what he wants.

At any rate, I told him I was glad things are cool between us and he agreed.

School Bus Drivers

In my line of work we can often see the absolute worst behavior the kids of today can provide. Transporting students to and from school is a job with a lot of responsibility. Each school bus driver is responsible for the safety of every single child on their bus. The demands on a driver's attention are just plain overwhelming. To be aware of everything around that size of a vehicle is daunting enough. Then add the other drivers in a metro area like the Twin Cities. On top of that there is the weather (which is becoming less and less of a problem every day this time of year, thank God). But the worst distraction for a driver on a school bus are the very students they're working so hard to protect and transport.

The attitude that manifests in some of these kids is astounding, vulgar, disappointing, and sometimes down right evil.

When there is a problem with behavior on a bus, the driver's only course of action, really, is the almighty Write Up. That's all a driver can do. Threaten to do it, and then actually write them up. Whether or not the write up has any effect or consequence for the student is entirely up to the school and/or school district. It's sad when the school falls short on that end of the process. This just shows the student that there is no negative effect for them for their actions on the bus. Almost every time I've had to write up a student with that horrid attitude, their reaction is- "Go ahead! Write me up!" I've heard that so many time.

The sad thing about this is there are plenty of adults who are exactly the same. This rant exists because of an incident at my work this evening with one of these bus drivers. A very minor situation of not following a simple simple company rule- a rule that exists to help all the drivers and their ability to safely maneuver these large buses in a very small yard and park in a way that allows the next drivers room to do the same. This one driver didn't follow this stupid little rule. No level of informing him that he had to worked. It very quickly blew up into a vulgar shouting and threatening scene! Not by any action, but by word I was actually threatened! They wanted to resolve the argument outside, physically! This person drives your kids home every day! The remarkable thing in the end is upon mentioning a write up for the behavior, his response was EXACTLY as a students would be- "Go ahead. Write me up".

Parents: make a point to meet your kid's bus driver. Divine what kind of person this is. There are a lot of wonderful people driving school buses. And then there are...

This rant is about the problem students. While it is a real problem, there are hundreds of students that ride the bus with no problems at all. Those that abide by the rules, treat others with respect, sit safely, and act mature are wonderful and deeply appreciated by all bus drivers. Thank you to every one of you kids who fit that description. You make this job quite rewarding.

Air-Brakes

One week ago I returned back to the base having finished some St. Paul School route to discover the cabal of bosses thought I was driving and training people air-brake buses without having an air-brake endorsement on my license.

It appears that the State of Minnesota issued me a license granting me the privilege of driving air-brake commercial vehicles even though I was not trained or tested on them. For the first two years at Monarch Bus Service I correctly did my job having some recall about not having the air-brake endorsement and it wasn't until last August when I joined the training department that anyone even looked at my license. When I was in the process of becoming a trainer I correctly assumed I had to go test, but someone looked and saw that my license stated Restrictions: None meaning that I was OK to drive any school bus. So I figured I was mistaken. Alright then, I guess I am Ok to drove air-brakes.

Well the State's error surfaced and now its on me to correct it. This small fact has made the training schedule complicated as the training needs to be done on a vehicle I can't drive or take trainees out on until the problem is corrected.

I went to the test facility up on 35W and County Rd. I as per my friend/co-worker, Melissa's advice. I sat in the parking lot and read the whole air-brake chapter. Went in and aced the pretrip test and missed 4 of the 25 questions on the air brake test successfully passing that one, too. It felt good lifting that weight off my back.

Now I just have to do the Behind the Wheel test.

Easy Day and Lunch

I had lunch at Cecil's with a former co-worker at KSTP. We used to go to Cecil's after the morning and midday news and we both left 5 around the same time. Hadn't seen him for a couple of years and he looked good. Too long. Good people.

Easy day at work. During the AM routes they had me go out and observe other bus drivers which is a default task when all the regular drivers show up to work. Then I had said lunch. And for the PM routes they sent me out to stand-by, which is like what I did in the AM, but with out the observing. I'm just a set of wheels available if something goes wrong. And nothing did. I got to choose a flat-nosed or transit style bus. Those are fun to drive.

An easy day was what I needed, too. Because I'm sick AGAIN! This variety of cold is the ever-running flow of snot out of the nose along with more sneezing than I've ever experienced in my life. I wonder if this is actually allergies.

And I also found time to get comics today.

The Willis East Posting Board

As an attempt to kickstart this blog back into gear, I'm going to promote another blog. The other one is focused on the children of Willis East. Cara and I are the main contributors so far. Since that blog has such a defined focus, this blog will become (or return to, rather) an outlet for my geeky interests and general observations about this strange world I live in.

So here's the link to the other blog...

The Willis East Posting Board

Its coming along well and it has been fun recording all the things Jack discovers everyday.

Its been a while since I've posted regularly here. A lot has been going on. My role at Monarch Bus Services has changed to where I'm now a trainer. My schedule is all over the place as I don't usually drive the same route anymore. I'm more of a stand-by driver when not training. So in anticipation of having days with downtime we saved up (during the early part of the school year, when we were overworked due to all the training going on, resulting in some extra cashflow) and I got a new laptop or notebook, but technically a netbook. What I'm using now is an ASUS EEE PC. And the model I chose runs on Linux instead of Windows.

It also turns out that I'll be working through the break. That's kind of nice and kind of not, too.

First Day of Summer School

First day of Summer School and I feel like writing.

Got to work early. I like it like that. Early. Had little problem with either route when dry-running it last week, but still. There is that anxiety of not really knowing what it'll be like till your on the other side of the experience. Cara, Leesha and Jack all got up early with me. They dropped me off at work so we can save on fuel costs. Works for me. I have to get up early anyways. We'll see how long the rest of the fam can handle that kind of schedule.

First school, Highwood Hills Elementary, was going very well. Nearly 80% of the bus were Hmong students. This is very good. Hmong are the most well behaved kids I've ever seen. 2nd to last stop brought on a kid who seemed to have a lot of potential of being trouble. But he's 2nd to last before we head for the school. Can't do much better than that. On top of that almost half the stops were dead - no one got on or off at those stops.

Second school is one I'm quite familiar with- Wellstone. Not this route, however. Pretty evenly balanced between African American and Hispanic kids. I didn't recognize any of them. I asked a couple if they knew some of the names from my regular school season route (which is another Wellstone route, but in a different area of St. Paul).

I was able to steal some time at home between routes. As I pulled up in front of our house I waved at Carla, our neighbor who frowned. What?

Taking the kids home was just as smooth as picking them up. Except for one thing, on our way return from Wellstone, a small Somalian girl got sick. It wasn't too bad on the bus, she caught most of it in her dress fabrics or whatever they wear. I had a whole bunch of towels which I gave to her and she used up. It was a striking orange, whatever she ate. Hopefully that was it for the summer and got it out of the way.

Called Cara when I was finished with work and the family came and picked me up. When we got home I was able to lay down for a nap.

David and Darlene came over for a late Father's Day dinner. We grilled pork and steaks and had a good time.

Turns out that our neighbor may be upset seeing the bus return to the neighborhood. Geez, some people need to relax. Cara said she told her school would be out in five weeks about six weeks ago. Cara failed to mention that summer school would follow shortly there after.

3 Years

Married for three years today.

It stormed a lot today. It also stormed a lot three years ago.

For our anniversary, Cara painted a picture of us dancing from a photo taken at our reception. She did a wonderful job.

I got her three red roses and wrote her a love letter.

Leesha made a very nice card for both of us from her and Jack.

We bus drivers had our St. Paul route picks today. Starting at something like 6AM the most senior drivers choose first. Mine came at 7:56 or sometime around then. I think that means I'm moving up, or older drivers are quitting. Yay for me.

I chose a route that winds to and fro all around this side of St. Paul (this being closer to where I live). The first school is Highwood Hills, which is the school I was driving for on my noon route over the regular school season. The second school is Wellstone. I have a good history with Wellstone, but this route will be a departure from what I usually drove for them. This route guarantees around 6:30 hours a day. Not too bad for a summer school route. I plan on helping out the Monarch Bus Service staff with training to maybe pick up even more hours.

Comics!
I was hoping to pick up Clandestine #5 (of 5) today because its by Alan Davis and its great. But either the Source didn't get any or it sold out already. There was supposedly a new Indiana Jones comic out today that didn't get shipped. So the only comic I was expecting was Captain Britain and the MI-13 #2. This series started off in the middle of the Marvel Secret Invasion. Its been great so far. For me, Marvel + the UK = goodnes (ala Excalibur). Since I only had one comic in my hand I check out a couple of back issues. I picked up the IDW Doctor Who #1 and White Tiger #1. Haven't read either one yet.

Seems like its been a three day full moon.

Monday
Train parked across Como Ave.- The train was dead and there was no going around. An engineer helped me back the bus up. I was 10 minutes late for all the stops after that.
Puker on the bus from Wellstone- There was a bad smell right after picking up students at one of the stops. We dismissed it as another funky odor from the Somalian kids. After we got to the school a boy was complaining about someone puking on his backpack. Apparently a Somalian girl puked, but no one said anything to me (which was fine, because we were already late). Not much we could've done anyways. I drove the bus home and hosed it out and sprinkled baking soda all over. Smell lingered for another day, but not nearly as bad.
Released with not all the kids in PM- Loaded at Wellstone after school and all was fine, routine. The kids were a little crazy so as soon as I cleared downtown St. Paul I pulled over (into the parking lot of Sears right by the state capitol). I called into the base to let them know I was stopping. Got the kid moved to the front (I bet it was the same Somalian girl who puked) and called into base that we were moving again. They said OK, but that I had to go back to the school to pick up more students that were left behind. WHAT!? Its the teachers that clear us to depart. So we went back. It was only Dah and another girl, Wendy, that heard dispatch tell us to go back. So we decided to not tell anyone else and see how long it would take for them to figure out we were going back to the school. We were by 6th street before someone piped up!

Tuesday
worked on cars- fixed nothing! Jeremy is Leesha's bio-father and he is a bit car-savy. It could be a lot more awkward hanging around with my wife's ex-boyfriend/step-daughter's father, but its not too bad. He has changed his attitude about Cara and Leesha and we've found common ground to actually be friends. Jeremy had some nice things to say to me about who I am and who Cara ended up with. As for the car work. I think he messed up the spark-plug wires and tried to hide it from me and to make up for it he put 110% effort into the work that morning. We also topped off the transmission fluid, which he purchased for me. It wasn't bad hanging with him. The only bad part was it took up the time I usually spend chilling. So I lost some 'me' time.

Wednesday
actual full moon.

First day of school - went very well. Its good to see many of the same kids from last year. Seems most of the trouble makers on the Elementary route graduated last year. Yay!

Really good bible study

We had our 2007/2008-School-Year-Is-About-To-Begin-meeting today.

The company is expanding so much that they didn't have room to hold the meeting at the base. So it was held at the owner's other business (or one of the other businesses), the top floor/meeting room of Premiere Bank. Everyone hopped on a bus and was shuttled there. I took my own bus because I had a YMCA charter after. As soon as I parked the bus near the bank and walked in, I was informed that my charter was canceled. Oh well.

Oklahoma

Sunday evening my work called me to see if I was able to go down to Oklahoma on Monday and drive a bus up with a few other guys, just like I did last week from IL. I was able. So I was at work at 3AM Monday and we piled into a cha
rter van like this one, but ours had an AC unit on the top back-->
A lot of reading and sleeping. Somewhere around Iowa and Missouri we entered triple digit temperatures. The van was our inverted oven. The windows were very hot to the touch from the outside temperatures.
We arrived in Oklahoma at around 4PM. The bus manufacturing facility was huge. It was an old military bomber factory in its history, I guess. Paperwork was processed and we ran down a checklist on our brand new buses. If it was over 100 degrees outside, imagine what it was inside the buses!
We were on the road at about 5pm, but then it took over an hour to fill all 7 buses at the very first diesel station. Eventually we got going. Drove for about an hour and a half to Joplin, MO to a hotel our leader was familiar with. Got in at about 7 and finished paperwork and logbooks at around 8PM.

Comfortable Hotel. I roomed with 3 other guys while another room held 3 more. 7 in total. Mark, Marty, Josh and I in one room. Dave, Steve and Kirk in the other.

We had a very good breakfast at about 6 and headed North just after 7. Somewhere in Iowa three of the fellas kind of took off ahead lead by the grumpy Mark. He wasn't excited about following anyone else's bus- even when I was leading most of the way. Someone passing him lead to him trying to one-up them and they went on ahead.

When the van needed to refuel, Dave just had us remaining three fill up our tanks which made us good for the rest of the trip. He drove off to go find the other jokers so they could have means to refuel- I believe they would be waiting for him in Albert Lea, MN. That left Marty, Josh and I to make our way by ourselves.

We decided to stop at the last rest stop in Iowa- a two level barn which was very nice. Once we had our rest we got back onto 35. As I passed the exit for Albert Lea, Mark fell in right behind my bus. He stayed there all the way back to base. The other two jokers were about 5 minutes ahead of us.

With a few stops for stretching and one for fuel we made it back to the Twin Cites at about 6:30 to 7pm.

It was a good trip. And a good bus.

Went to Illinois for work

7 of us rode a bus to Hastings, got on a different bus to Sycamore IL to pick up newer buses for Monarch. 4:30 AM to 9:00 PM. I lead the convoy.

The one we rode from Hastings to Sycamore had seats in the front half. The rear was nothing but mattresses. Strange.

The buses we took up to MN are not brand new, but they are very nice. AM/FM radios, tinted windows. Nice ride.

Dispatch called select drivers to see Don after routes. I was not one of the names called. Worried. After the day Don signed my time sheet and told me about a meeting on Thursday morning (even though I wasn't called). Not about Summer routes. Worried.

The Very Long Day

We had a Safety Meeting which means I don't get to go home in the morning. Bummer. Makes the day long. In the meeting they used my accident from the beginning of the year. Changed some of the details (or got them incorrect) but made it anonymous. The lady giving the talk said "It was a first year driver mistake, but they're still with us and doing a VERY GOOD job even today." After the meeting, she said she hoped I didn't mind that they used my accident- of course I didn't mind. I told her that I appreciated what she said at the end. They like me.

My activity route (that means after school stuff) was drastically changed. They removed over half of my students to add two different ones. These two new girls are alarmingly well behaved. Not sure how this bit of fortune fell on me, but I thank God for it.

And now for what made my day REALLY long:

Last night Laura Beth's car died before small group- way over by University Ave and 694!. We got things moving FAST - within 15 minutes, Jon and Lara were on the scene. They took care of the car best they could and brought her all the way to our house with them. After small group, Eric, Jon and Lara went with Laura Beth. They managed to get her car home with her. But the car wasn't fixed.

Today they determined that the car was going to need some major repair. Laura Beth needed a car. Eric suggested she take the Mazda sitting in our driveway (the one we're trying to sell). However, she doesn't know how to drive clutch AND the Mazda isn't very safe brake-wise. So it was decided that she'll take our Honda CRV. So Almost as soon as I got home tonight, I went out again with the Honda. I found her house and had her take me to Cara's parents house (from there I'd go home in Darlene's car since Darlene was out of town and didn't need it). So between Laura Beth's house and Cara's parents, I gave Laura Beth a crash course (pardon the pun) on how to drive a clutch. I was getting nervous because I could smell the clutch burn as she was getting (or not getting) the hang of it. She managed with difficulty.

Prayer started out as - "let us not have to spend much money"- this prayer didn't feel good. Felt wrong.
Changed to - "what ever your will, Lord. If car is totalled, so be it. you will provide."
felt great about that version!

Pee in a Cup
Today was a rough go. My precious me time every day between 9 and 11:45 was destroyed by chance. My name was selected at random again for a drug test. I had to unsettle myself from my computer and go pee in a cup. Altered my whole day. Didn't eat until after my noon route and got comics early. I'm tired.

Its snowing.

Bopper
We had a rough weekend and this was the day that made it worth while. We heard Bopper's heart today.

I wanted to get up earlier than normal to get a head start on the day anticipating the roads, but I overslept! Cara woke me up realizing that I was still in bed. Forgoing my morning routines, I still manaaged to get to work very early and out of the yard before the big exodus of buses.

The roads were good and bad. Main streets were effortless, but many side streets hadn't been touched with plow. Over the radio it sounded pretty bad, but my routes went almost as easy as any day.

The Yu-Gi-Oh Caper

Had to dissolve a high tension Yu-Gi-Oh Trading Card dispute on the bus this morning. In the end I found out who this kid, Willie, really is. I don't like it. My friend Davyon (who has caused much trouble in the past) was involved. But in the end, I like him even more. He is a good kid who sometimes makes bad choices. Willie seems more like a bad kid who stays under the radar more often than not.

Kids and their Boundaries

Got 192 back. I love my old bus.

On the Murray route, this morning, there were no girls except for Miss Laura- the bus aid. All boys.

Leesha and Cara were home when I got here. My me-time was less than private. Leesha is feeling much better. She's also reacting favorably to having those boundaries again.

Leesha was very well behaved, tonight. I believe it all has to do with boundaries. See, for the last couple of days she's been with Grandma. Grandma kind of lets Leesha decide what she wants to do or what she wants to eat. This leaves her in a most unpleasant state. She becomes a real pill. Its strange how once we crack down and tell her how it is, she's great.

Ordered Melaleuca.

David Sorley returns home today. He's been out east taking care of his mother, giving his sister, Mimi, a break. He's been gone for about 2 weeks.

LOST wasn't finished downloading before it was bedtime. We'll have to watch it tomorrow.