I’ve been restoring an old pickup truck, and have started to paint the exterior.  I went down to the auto parts store and bought a couple of gallons of hot rod orange paint.  A couple of days ago I gave it the sixth coat of paint, and it was looking good!   Today I opened the second gallon of paint and started spraying the hood.  I was so upset because it was NOT the same color as the first gallon of paint!  So now I have to sand the whole thing down and start over.  NOT HAPPY!  When I go to the auto parts store next week I am going to have a few choice words to say to them over how their paint was NOT matching, even though the cans said they were!

Well it has been a very busy week doing fall cleanups for my customers this week.  Foliage is peak, and there are a lot of leaves already on the ground.  It is a beautiful time of year, and the air is crisp and clean.  I love the weather like this - this is one of the reasons I love having an outdoor job - being outside to enjoy the fresh air.  I’m lucky to be living in this part of the country where the air is still so clean and where you can still see the stars at night.

It’s going to be a busy week ahead of me, getting my fall contracts in order - a lot of customers are going to be unhappy with price increases due to fuel increases, but there’s nothing I can do about that.  When your job is driving around going from place to place to plow and sand, a big part of the cost of doing business is the price of gasoline, and the cost has to be passed on to the customer.  I’m not a big enough operation to be able to absorb that cost, I barely make enough money to pay the bills and make payroll!  I hope the price of gasoline goes down dramatically and stays down!

I was reading an article on TheStreet.com about how retrofitting a company to be more “green” is a good business move; it generates positive publicity and may attract more customers.  I agree that it is a good idea.  But I also seem to remember reading an article (I don’t recall where) about how some unscrupulous companies are making “green” claims that they don’t deserve.  So that brings me to pondering how a company can go “greener” and be transparent about it in such a way that it doesn’t cost the company too much money.  Going green is great, and much needed, but we also need to make sure that the company can still make a profit!

I’ve been hearing on the news recently about how a local rescue helicopter crashed, killing four people.  The patient that was being transported from a car accident to the hospital survived, but the pilot, a paramedic, another police officer and a nurse all died in the crash.  They don’t know what happened to cause the crash, other than the helicopter was flying in a bad storm and he radioed his base asking permission to abort the flight because of dangerous flying conditions and he was told to keep coming because he only had three or four miles to go.

Rumors are that the high winds forced him into some trees.  He took off the tree tops at 80 feet in the air before crashing to the ground.  The entire area is in shock over this tragedy.  I think that when a pilot radios his base and says it is too dangerous to fly, his “base” should respect his judgement!  I hope the families of the victims sue the company for a lot of money!

I was reading in The Discovery News website that it has been discovered that some plants generate an aspirin-like chemical when they are under stress.  The article goes on to explain that this discovery was an accidental one, it was discovered near a walnut grove.  Scientists were monitoring the air (it doesn’t say why) when they discovered that the trees were emitting this gas.  Then the article goes on to explain that aspirin was originally made from the bark of willow trees.  I didn’t know that!  You learn something new every day!