ahhh...some down time..I hope

I finally have a minute to post..yay!! Wow, what a week it has been. As most of you know, I was out of town on a business trip most of last week, well when I returned from that trip I didn't have to time catch my breath before I was off and running again.

Before I go any farther let me take a minute to explain what I do on these business trips because I don't think I have ever done that. I count traffic at intersections. No I don't sit in my car and go 1,2,etc.. I have a little machine made just for counting intersections called a "counter". This machine looks like an intersection and it has numbered buttons for each lane. When cars go by you punch in the correct button for the lane it was in and the direction it was going, pretty simple. The hard part is sitting in a vehicle alone and trying to count especially if it is a very busy intersection as was the one we counted on Wednesday. There was another woman there to count with me and for the intersection we counted Wednesday we could have used two more people counting, it was that busy. What we do is find a parking lot or grassy spot near the intersection that gives us the best view then we park there. If two people are counting then they are normally across the intersection from each other because you want to be close to the lanes you are counting so that you can see all the cars.

Anyways, the town was very beautiful and maintained well. On Wednesday I had to count from 7am-9am, 11am-2pm, then 2:30pm-6pm. That was hard because I only got about two hours sleep the night before because there was a lady that owned two small yapping dogs staying in the room beside mine and of course those ankle biters barked all night. At one point I threw a shoe and hit the wall and yelled "shut them up or I will call the front desk", after that the dogs quieted a bit because the hotel I stayed in had a no pet policy. I was so glad to see 6pm come that night and I was in bed and asleep before 10pm that night. On Thursday I had an intersection that I had to count by myself and so did the lady with me. These two intersections were about a mile apart and they were not even half as busy as the first. Thursday I counted from 7-9am, 11:30am-2pm, & 3-6pm and it wasn't as bad because number one it wasn't as busy, number two it was an overcast day and even rained a couple of times. The entire time there was a nice cool breeze blowing so I had my windows down and my cd's playing.

I like doing the counting because I travel to do it and I love to travel. Most of the counts I am sent on are out of state. This is only the second one I have counted in Tennessee, most of them are in Kentucky. More or less it gives me a break from my every day grind and I get to see places that under ordinary circumstances I wouldn't get to see or that I wouldn't think of stopping to see.

I had talked about the Bible Marathon being held here in my county and it was this weekend. Mr. B and I stayed over night on the courthouse lawn Friday to watch over the reading. We were there from 10pm till 6am and we were zonked by the time we got home, of course we had been up for a little over 24 hrs at that point. We were able to grab almost three hours of sleep then get up, get showered , then we met another youth council member and took our youth group from church out to lunch then to read at the Bible reading. We didn't get home until around 5pm and Mr. B finally grouted those 63 tiles he had to replace in the kitchen..yay! Around 7pm we went back to the courthouse to read a bit more then we went out for dinner with my mother-in-law. We got in bed finally about 1am then got up and had a full day of church and meetings yesterday.

With all that being said let me say that I am going to take it as easy as possible through the day time hours this week, my evenings are pretty much booked solid but I am going to milk my days because I need a break. I will spend them doing my regular house work and blogging.

I am going to get off here and get a jump start on that cleaning and I will see you all around blogland today!