#36... Leftover Panda. And playing trucker.

One of my older brothers drives a semi. He is also the brother who I turn to when I'm having issues with cars, dishonest businesses, or both. My pretty new 05 Nissan Frontier has a horrible drinking problem. It's been going through 2 quarts of oil a week. Which is pretty ridiculous for an engine with less than 30,000 miles on it. And the dealership had been ignoring my issues for a few weeks. So... I let my brother go on them. He called and talked to the manager who had sold me the truck. He left a nasty message for whoever was in charge. He threatened taking it to the state, because it shouldn't have passed emissions the way it was running. He threatened to let my mechanic dad loose on them... it went on for a while. And then he called the service manager, who told him to just bring in the truck. Obviously should have gone there first...

On the day in question, my brother had just made it to Salt Lake with a load of drywall from California. We met at the dealership, where we passed off my poor sick truck. The service manager apologized for the run-around we had been getting. Apparently the owner of the dealership had died a few weeks prior. So... maybe I could understand that. My admittedly less-than-sensitive brother managed to stop himself from saying, "I haven't heard that excuse before." If I'm lucky, I'll see my truck in a week. It needs a top end rebuild.

Anywho. After we left my truck, I got my first ride in a semi. It's a cozy little thing. Bunk nestled right in behind the seats. He had a couple of shelves built over one end for his bags and some snacks. I rode on the bunk because it was too much of a bother to move the cooler from the passenger seat.

So I played trucker for a while. I went with my brother to drop off his drywall. I even helped him fold his tarps and untie his load. I ate some lunchables, which are apparently his trucker snack of choice. I went with him to pick up his next load at the steel yard. It was an eye-opening experience. Mostly in that I realized that I had no desire to be a trucker. I had thought it would be an acceptable fallback if ever I lost my job. Now I know better. It's not that fun.

Once that was all said and done, we went to Panda Express. Which is where this not so bad looking lunch comes from. Because they give you a massive amount of food.

This is leftover black pepper chicken with the onions and junk pulled out of it. It's not that I don't like onions. I just don't like the way they cook them... Over the leftover mixed chow mein and rice I added broccoli, and some awesome broccoli stem shapes. It should have been all broccoli, but I had a major duh moment this morning... While dumping the water out of the container I had microwaved the veggies in, I wasn't holding the lid on tight and so managed to also dump most of the broccoli out. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

The bottom container has strawberries, bell pepper strips, and grapes. I suppose I have to count the lettuce as well, since I actually ate it. I found a raspberry vinaigrette that makes it bearable...

I realized today that I've hardly touched my produce from last week. I need to work on that, considering I pick up another day after tomorrow. So I need to start cooking. I should probably skip a week, but I don't know that I can do that. I'd feel like I was missing Christmas or something. Although I would get to sleep in on a Saturday... I haven't done that in a couple of months...