Gulfport, Mississippi. I'm still here. I've been here since Monday. I'm really getting tired of this shit. Whenever you complain someone always says “well, it's pretty good money.” It's not good money if you're not getting paid because the Pro number you're stuck on drags on and on and on. I got a little bit of money last week, but probably won't get anything this week. I don't get it. I seem to be at the end of every list. When I got here this list was full of trucks with water and ice. Most of them are gone. Why am I still sitting here?

Something has to give soon. We can't afford this shit. We have a lot of bills and Mara has been out of work. We literally cannot afford for me to be sitting like this. I will be incredibly relieved when this nightmare is over and I'm released. I don't want to hear anything else about FEMA or disaster relief. My heart goes out to the people who have been affected by the hurricanes, but the logistics end of all this FEMA stuff is a joke. No one really seems to know what's going on. Well, I'm sure someone does, but whoever that is does not seem to want to share it with everyone else. So people make it up as they go along, and they usually seem to make the wrong assumptions.

For instance, when I arrived in Camp Shelby earlier in the week, the first thing a guy did was scratch out FEMA on the paper that I'm supposed to keep in my dash. He said “this isn't a FEMA load, you're pulling this for the Army Corps of Engineers.” Later on, when a woman came looking for trucks with water, she thought I was with a group other than the one I was with, because “FEMA” has been scratched out of my dash sign. So I just about didn't get dispatched out with the other water trucks that they send down here to Gulfport.

Well, I'm not going to spend too much time on this. What is is, right? I just can't wait for this to be over. I knew this was going to be fucked up from the beginning. That's why I complained about getting stuck with it. Just as I expected, USX has no idea what the hell is going on most of the time in regard to these loads. The Corps of Engineers know what's going on, but seems to regard it as “need to know only” and no one but them needs to know. I don't know that I've actually had anything to do with FEMA except for the temporary hires that they put out in some locations to tell us where to park. All I know is that I've been sitting on this same load of water for over two weeks, and I've had enough.